In 1903, Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, stunned the Jewish world with a proposal that ignited fury across the movement. The British government had offered him land in East Africa as a potential refuge for the millions of Jews in Russia suffering from violent persecution. On paper, it looked like a solution. But in reality, it split the movement and threatened to destroy Zionism before it could get off the ground.
When Herzl presented the Uganda Plan at the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, delegates broke into shouting and tears. Some threatened to walk out. For them, this was not just a matter of safety or practicality. Accepting Uganda meant betraying something that could not be compromised: the connection between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel.
What’s fascinating is that much of the outrage came from secular Jews who had abandoned Torah observance and the religious beliefs they were raised with. These were socialists, nationalists, and intellectuals who no longer believed in the Bible – and yet they rejected the British offer of Uganda with passion. Menachem Mendel Ussishkin, a Russian Jewish engineer and early secular Zionist leader, denounced the Uganda Plan as a betrayal of historic Zionism. He warned at a famous convention in Kharkov that if Herzl advanced the plan, he and his faction would break away entirely. Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg), the pioneer of Cultural Zionism who had abandoned religious observance, dismissed the idea in even harsher terms: “Giving up Zion for even an hour seemed like a severe and elemental ideological heresy.”
Why did Jews who had turned their backs on Scripture still insist that no land could replace the Land of Israel?
Uganda was a practical and reasonable option, backed by Great Britain and promising land and protection. But the ferocity of the response from secular Jews showed this was no rational calculation. It was something deeper, rawer, and more powerful. Herzl’s opponents did not calmly weigh Uganda as a refuge; they wept, shouted, and threatened to split the movement. Words like heresy and betrayal poured from men who denied the divine authorship of the Bible. Their ideologies could not explain their own reaction. They were caught between what they declared publicly and what their souls carried within. They published secular manifestos and mocked the covenant in their speeches, yet when Uganda was placed before them, their composure collapsed. They could not explain why, but they knew Zion was not negotiable.
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap explained that every creature has a natural place where it belongs and where it can live in peace. If it is forced away from that place, it becomes uneasy and restless, unable to find calm. So it is with the people of Israel: “They cannot be content in exile, they cannot settle as slaves under foreign nations.” This is not merely a matter of belief or practice but of the basic nature of the people of Israel. Even Jews who abandon Torah still carry this nature within them. They may try to adapt to foreign lands and foreign identities, but deep inside, they cannot feel settled. Their spirit pushes back against exile itself, showing that the pull toward the land is not really a matter of choice or free will, but part of their very identity. It is like the instinct of a bird that migrates back to its nesting ground—it does not reason its way there, it is simply drawn by its nature to return home.
The Bible made this eternal bond explicit:
The bond between Israel and the land is not symbolic or sentimental. It is a divine covenant, unbreakable and eternal, and it lives within the people whether they admit it or not.
Writing during the Holocaust, Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal made the same point. He explained that many Zionists were irreligious only because they had never been raised with a true understanding of God and the Bible. Yet deep within them was a pull toward the Land of Israel—the natural longing of their souls. This, he wrote, is a form of teshuva, a return to who they really are: “What they do not observe of Torah commandments is because they were not raised and educated in this, and they are in this like a child who was captured among the gentiles.” Their refusal to exchange Israel for any other territory was itself a testimony that the covenant still lived within them.
The Uganda Plan briefly gained some traction after the Kishinev pogrom, when many Jews were desperate to escape Russia. But even then, the vast majority of Jews refused to even consider Uganda as an option. The movement’s heart remained fixed on the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the land that is eternally bound up with the soul of Israel.
This is why Jews who had turned away from God still wept when Herzl spoke of East Africa. They shouted “heresy” not because they suddenly returned to Torah but because something inside them could not bear the thought of severing themselves from Zion. They may have denied it in their speech and writings, but in that moment, their souls betrayed them. The land itself pulled at them, even in their rebellion.
After the horrors of October 7, hundreds of thousands of outwardly secular Jews with little knowledge of the Bible, far from Torah, were shaken awake. Across America and Europe, Jews who had long abandoned tradition suddenly marched with Israeli flags, wore the Magen David, and sang Am Yisrael Chai. They did not rediscover this in books or synagogues. They felt it in their bones. Whether they acknowledge it or not, Israel’s covenant with God lives within them.
The same inner pull that once drove secular Jews to reject Uganda is stirring again today. I pray that it will not stop at marches and songs, but that it will soon lead to the recognition that the God of Israel is real, and that the people of Israel are His chosen children. The hand of God is moving, and His people are coming home.
