Moses Hess declares the restoration of a Jewish state a necessity both for the Jews and for the rest of humanity in an important book in 1862, Rom und Jerusalem, die letzte Nationalitätsfrage (Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism).

Among Hess's many contentions in Rom und Jerusalem, the major one states that the Jews will always be a homeless people, never fully accepted by others, until they have their own country.

A friend and co-worker of Karl Marx, his book calls for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine, in line with the emerging national movements in Europe and as the only way to respond to antisemitism and assert Jewish identity in the modern world. (Although Hess's synthesis of socialism and Jewish nationalism is ignored at the time of publication—the prosperity of European Jewry lessens the appeal of his work—it will influence such later Zionist leaders as Ahad Ha'am and Theodor Herzl, and will later become an integral part of the Labor Zionist movement.)