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The Perushim believed that redemption of the Land would precede redemption of the nation, and saw themselves as fulfilling a divine mission in settling and developing it. They actively favored broad-based immigration and economic development of the Land in fulfillment of the commandment to settle it, and their community organization (kolel) undertook to provide housing and other services for the immigrants. Zevi Hirsch Lehren and the Clerks’ Organization disagreed with this radical idea, and there was a profound gap between his traditional view of redemption as a heavenly phenomenon, entailing radical changes in the ways of the world and the Perushim’s idea of redemption as an extended natural process. The increasing Jewish population of Jerusalem, especially during the reign of Muhammad Ali in the 1830s, led to overcrowding, and Jews began to live outside the old Jewish quarter, beginning with the short-lived Jewish settlement in the Bab al-Hota neighborhood. Efforts were made to develop and diversify the community’s economic base, reducing reliance on the haluqah (charitable allocations from outside the Land) but also extending haluqah funding to people other than full-time Torah students — a step opposed by Zevi Hirsch Lehren. Among the leading immigrants to come with plans for pursuing business opportunities in the Land were Eliezer Bregman and his family. Bregman and Lehren had an extended adversarial relationship, grounded in their fundamentally different ideas about how the redemption should be brought about. The Perushim also pursued ambitious plans for agricultural development. The project secured the support of Moses Montefiore, but ultimately failed because of the inability to secure needed legal changes before the overthrow of Muhammad Ali in 1840.

A study of holiness in time and space illumines the phenomenon of holiness in ways that an abstract conceptual study would not. Holiness is not only about separation and restraint but also yearning and longing. It entails more than the combination of mysterium and fascination, awe and wonder. Although in part an affective state; holiness also presupposes the reality of a deity. Holiness draws humans to respond actively and to come close despite the awe of God. Holiness as attached to the world, to time and space, has ramifications for human action. It has both theological and legal dimensions. These two are often in tension, but, especially in the Torah, are never separated. The legal is in effect based on the theological; the theological dimension is expressed by the norms and rules of law. These two dimensions are found in the theology and laws of the land of Israel as expressed in the Torah.

In The Land of Promise, a Zionist propaganda film directed by Yehuda Leman and produced in 1935, there is a sequence depicting a prominent cultural phenomenon in the life of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) in the early 20^th century—the community sing-along....