timents. While it was largely disreputed at first as a gentile concept with no bearing on the strong social and religious unity of the Jews, the necessity for an escape from the unequal laws of the government, together with a growing –and erronate- outside opinion of the Jewish community as a simple religious aggregate, artificially national, attracted the beliefs of many Jews in Western Europe towards a strong nationalistic stance. As the movement towards national recognition spread to the East, more adepts were found among the Jews sharing communities with majoritary gentiles. Nonetheless, in a true parallel to the development of the entire European continent, the Eastern Jews of the Russian Tsarist Empire and surrounding states did not find the call for national unity until much later, towards the end of the 19th century.
             It was in this very East-West split, basically and categorically divided among the lines of political liberalism that the first
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