Abstract
This essay explores one very significant but for the most part forgotten milestone in the history of Zionism: the publication in 1876 of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and the nearly simultaneous publication of one section of the novel, nicknamed The Club Scene, that was widely disseminated in numerous periodicals throughout Europe. The Club Scene, informed by Charles Darwin’s recent publications as well as a much older tradition of racial theory, was a fictional depiction of a meeting of ‘The Philosopher’s Club” whose characters, particularly Mordecai, a Jewish mystic, suggested an intriguing new way of looking at the relationship between Christians and European Jews. It suggested a much more secular connection than had been widely envisioned before, downplaying religion as a sole motivating force for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the east, and putting forward a joint restoration project that emphasized kindred races rather than kindred religions.
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