In 1866—over a decade before the earliest Zionists founded their first agricultural settlements—a group of 157 Christians from Maine arrived in Jaffa, hoping not just to live in the holy land but also to help the Jews trickling in from Europe learn to farm. When the colony was struck by disease, and several members died, most of the rest returned to the U.S. But a few stayed on and lent their name to a Jaffa neighborhood. Sara Toth Stub explains what motivated George Adams, the colony’s leader:
Adams, a young Methodist preacher who also moonlighted as an actor in Shakespeare plays, heard an early follower of Joseph Smith’s newly formed Church of Latter-Day Saints preach in New York. The sermon about gathering up people from around the world to come to America, a promised land that would soon see the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, greatly excited Adams, and he joined the new church.
“I was called by the spirit of prophecy,” Adams wrote to a friend at the time. . . .
This religious fervor was not unusual for its day; it came at a time in American history when many preachers made a connection between settling the new land of the American West and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. . . . Adding to this excitement were reports of European Jews beginning to immigrate to Palestine, then under the control of the Ottoman empire, which many Christians in these circles saw as fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of the return to Zion.
Adams eventually left the Mormons and started his own Church of the Messiah, with a goal of helping Jews return to the land of Israel. He established several congregations around New England, as well as a newspaper heavily devoted to news about Palestine. He also emphasized that he did not want to convert Jews to Christianity—he wanted them to return to Israel as Jews. . . .
After losing twelve members to dysentery, the colonists continued with their project, eventually moving onto the land Adams had selected and building houses. This gave hope to the early Zionist settlers in Jaffa, who pointed to the American Christians as an example of what Jewish immigrants should strive to do.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/208952/maine-on-the-mediterranean