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Most discussions of the progenitors of Zionism include names such as Theodore Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, and Moses Hess. Yet, in 1876, 20 years prior to Herzl's publication of "The Jewish State," a British novelist by the name of Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, published "Daniel Deronda," a work that advanced the idea not merely of Jewish nationhood, but Jewish statehood.

Eliot's encounter with the "Jewish question" is the subject of a book by the distinguished intellectual historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot."

Himmelfarb writes: "It is one of the curiosities of English literary history and of Jewish literary history as well, that the most remarkable English novel about Jews, taking Judaism seriously as a faith and anticipating the idea of a Jewish state, should have been written by a non-Jew -- a Victorian woman, moreover, who was generally regarded by her contemporaries, as well as by some later critics, as the greatest English novelist of her time."

It is even more curious given Eliot's earlier rejection of her own Christian tradition and indeed religion as a whole.

As Himmelfard succinctly puts it, "How did the translator of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Spinoza come to write so sympathetic a novel about Judaism and so prophetic vision of Zionism?"

Himmelfarb begins her book with a concise overview of the status of Jews in the Western European polities, providing useful context to reveal how truly innovative Eliot was.

Though the French Revolution emancipated Jews as individuals, it also simultaneously repudiated Jews' claim of nationhood.

"The philosophes, in principle committed to the idea of religious liberty, were also committed to an idea of reason so antithetical to religion as to deprive religious creeds of credibility and religious institutions of moral legitimacy," she writes.

Moreover, while legally enfranchised, French Jews remained the frequent targets of discrimination and defamation.

East, the German Enlightenment, too, was "equivocal toward Jews." "The Jewish question as it evolved in Germany differed philosophically and rhetorically," she writes, "but not substantively from that in France."

The status of Jews in Britain, however, was different, in the mid-19th century having been accepted as full citizens, "not as individuals who had to prove their Englishness by denying their identity as Jews, but as English men who were also Jews -- many of whom, indeed, were observant Jews, practicing just that 'exclusive' religion which on the continent condemned them as 'a nation within a nation.'"

When Eliot wrote "Daniel Deronda" in the third quarter of the century, "the Jewish question" in Britain was hardly a question at all. There were no pogroms, no systemic discrimination. Furthermore, by this time though the anti-Semitic stereotypes portrayed in Victorian literature, most famously by Charles Dickens years earlier, remained, they had subsided and become less vehement.

"As the political aspect of the Jewish question had been amicably resolved, so, too, the cultural and social aspects had been not resolved, to be sure, but much alleviated," according to Himmelfarb. Contemporary readers, she writes, would not have been surprised to read of a Jewish hero who is also an English gentleman, as the protagonist Deronda is.

"What did surprise the public, and what made the book so controversial," she writes, "was the fact that an 'English gentleman,' as Deronda's mother described him, was pleased to discover that he was Jewish and proud of his 'race,' and that he chose to leave England and join his people in Palestine."

For Himmelfarb, it is Eliot's defense not only of Jewish nationhood particularly, but of national identities in general that makes the Victorian author so relevant to our times.

Himmelfarb is at her best when she reveals the present value of past genius. In her epilogue, she connects Eliot with Natan Sharansky, the contemporary human rights activist who has advocated for Jewish national identity, particularly in the former Soviet Union.

While Himmelfarb acknowledges that Sharansky perhaps has never read Eliot, that is beside the point. Central to both thinkers is the way they conceive of Judaism "as a communal faith finding its expression in a national identity -- a nationality, moreover, as elevating for the individual as for the nation itself."

Himmelfarb argues persuasively that Eliot and Sharansky are important weapons to combat not only post-Zionists within Israel (and I would add the Jewish community as a whole), but also "post-modernists, post-nationalists, and post-colonialists abroad." These ideas resist not only the expressively anti-Israel venom of those like Edward Said, but also those who disparage or rebuke the idea of nationhood in general: Intellectuals like historian Eric Hobsawm with his concept of "invented" nations or Benedict Anderson and his idea of "imagined communities."

"In deeds and in words," Himmelfarb writes, "Sharansky stands as a rebuke to these critics and as a moving (if unwitting) testimonial to Eliot."