The Invention of a Tradition: The Messianic Zionism of the Gaon of Vilna - Hardcoverby Immanuel Etkes (Author) The Gaon of Vilna was the foremost intellectual leader of non Hasidic Jewry in eighteenth century Europe; his legacy is claimed by religious Jews, both Zionist and not. In the mid twentieth century, Shlomo Zalman Rivlin wrote several books advancing the myth that the Gaon was an early progenitor of Zionism. Following the 1967 War in Israel, messianic sentiments spread in some circles of the national religious public in