Uncompromising Zionism in North Africa

ABSTRACT

In July 1950, Moroccan Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh wrote a letter to his students chastising those exposed to ultraOrthodox anti-Zionist influences for disparaging and denigrating Zionist leaders and the founders of the State of Israel. This article discusses the historical background to the letter, including the ideological foundation of the rabbi’s vigorous protest: from his position regarding the messianic concept to the religious affirmation of Zionism as a national-liberation movement. As such, Ben Harosh’s stimulating letter is not an isolated episode but a reflection of the longstanding religious and ideological antecedents of Zionism, dating back to the 16^th century, which contained the main elements of the would-be Zionist endeavour. So much so that it is arguable that the 16^th century set in motion a fundamental process worthy of being the departure point of Zionist historiography.

KEYWORDS:

• Moroccan Jews
• Yahya Ben Harosh
• Gershon Liebman
• ultra-Orthodox
• Zionism
• anti-Zionism
• messianic concept
• Israel
• Sephardic
• Ashkenazi
• Lithuanian yeshiva

Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh (1913–2000), rabbi of the Moroccan city of Kenitra (Port-Lyautey) and rabbinic judge (dayan) of the cities of Casablanca and Rabat, wrote a letter on 25 July 1950 in which he sharply chastised his students, who had been exposed to ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist influences, for disparaging and denigrating Zionist leaders and the founders of the State of Israel.

This article discusses the historical backdrop of the letter, presented in its entirety with clarifications and emphases, and discusses the ideological foundations of the writer’s vigorous protest. These range from his position vis-à-vis the messianic concept – based on a normative historical construct of striving for re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel – to religious affirmation of Zionism as a national-liberation movement.

The historical backdrop

At the beginning of the 20^th century and after World War II, ultra-Orthodoxy began to penetrate the Jewish educational system in Morocco. School networks such as Em Habanim (Rabbi Zeev Halperin, 1910) and Otzar HaTorah (Rabbis Avraham Kalmanovitch and Raphael Abbo, 1947) opened with the aim of challenging the existing educational network. Alliance Israélite Universelle, founded in Morocco in 1862, was up to that point the dominant Jewish school network in the country with the largest number of students and an educational approach that was clearly modern and secular.¹ Otzar HaTorah network took under its wing Em Habanim, which was new to Morocco, and shouldered the responsibility of 10% of school-age Jewish children in Morocco. In 1947–62, some 3,000–4,000 exceptional Moroccan students were sent to study in Lithuanian yeshivas in France, Britain, Israel and the United States with the encouragement of Otzar HaTorah’s founders, who saw this as a way of rehabilitating and rescuing the Torah and yeshiva world that had been brought to the brink of destruction by the Holocaust.² They presented this as ‘an action intended to rescue students from the clutches of the Enlightenment and Zionism’, to save them from the dangers of modernisation³ and ‘other predatory animals’, in the words of Rabbi Gershon Liebman.⁴ This was a deeply-rooted sociocultural process that began during the period of the French protectorate in Morocco and shaped Sephardic-Mizrahi religious students as Lithuanian Bnei Torah.

In France, the arrival of some 35,000 Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe was a significant boost to Lithuanian yeshivas: Hachmei Tzorfat Yeshiva in Aix-les-Bains, the Pepinière Yeshiva⁵ near Versailles, Saint Germain en Laye, and Fublaines, in the eastern suburbs of Paris. It is worth noting that the Hachmei Tzorfat Yeshiva in Aix-les-Bains and Or Yosef in Fublaines struck deeper roots than any other Lithuanian yeshiva in France.

The Lithuanian yeshivas aspired to recruit the cream of Moroccan students – an aspiration that directly conflicted with the interests of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, or the Joint).⁶ The Joint, a Jewish American organisation that invested extensively in building long-term educational-communal infrastructures, stood by helplessly as the most promising students in Morocco were sent away with no intention of returning. Paradoxically, this educational policy, adopted by the heads of Jewish education in Morocco, harmed that education over the long term.⁷

Moroccan Jewry was targeted for recruitment by Lithuanian yeshivas more than their North African counterparts for several reasons. It was the largest, albeit most economically deprived, North African Jewish community whose future was shrouded in uncertainty, and had the reputation of being the Maghreb’s most observant, traditional Jewish community. Later on, as part of a general Jewish phenomenon, ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Jews made their way to Diaspora communities throughout the world – notably France, Canada, the United States, and South Africa⁸ – where traditional Sephardic customs and ways of learning would be abandoned in favour of a new approach to Halacha, a new style of dress, and a hostile attitude to Zionism and the State of Israel.⁹

Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh’s letter noted that his students went to learn in the Or Yosef Yeshiva founded by Rabbi Gerson Liebman (1905–97) in the French town of Fublaines, in the style of the Novardok yeshivas that combined Gemara studies with musar (ethical teachings). After a tortuous journey from Novardok, via Vilna, the Vilna Ghetto, Bergen Belsen (Nazi concentration camp), and Selsheim near Frankfurt, Rabbi Liebman arrived in France in 1948. There he founded the Or Yosef-Novardok Yeshiva, which grew into a network of close to 40 institutions,¹⁰ open to all ages and both sexes with branches in Morocco and Tunisia.¹¹ An estimated 1,000 Moroccan students attended its schools in the 1950s and 1960s.¹² The ascetic nature that characterised the Or Yosef-Novardok yeshivas and the fact that Yiddish was the language of instruction caused tension and division among the Moroccan students. These factors did not however detract from the prestige of the Lithuanian yeshiva in the eyes of the students.

The letter¹³

It has already been stated that Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh felt it necessary to remind his students about some fundamental tenets that had developed among Moroccan Jews during the era of the Gaonim (6^th–11^th centuries Sephardic rabbis) and, especially, after the Spanish Expulsion (1492). These tenets concerned the yearning for the revival of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel,¹⁴ which had diminished since students joined Or Yosef Yeshiva. It is fascinating to read how Rabbi Ben Harosh applied these traditional tenets to the new reality of the establishment of the nascent State of Israel.

My dear friends and pleasant, wise and discerning students … your brother and admirer sends warm greetings; convey my respects to the Gaon Rabeinu Gershom¹⁵ and to his followers shlita [title of respect usually given to rabbis] … Forgive me for not answering your letters immediately, as derekh eretz [courtesy] requires; I was preoccupied … When I received your letters, I was happy and sad,¹⁶ happy that you are diligent in your learning, especially the Talmud, that great sea, source of living waters; there is no water but Torah that gives life to those who find it … don’t let up and don’t be corrupted, because the generation is lacking.¹⁷

It grieved me that you spoke ill of the pillars of the Jewish people, as it says in the Torah: ‘You shall not curse a judge, neither shall you curse a prince among your people’ (Ex.22:27). I believe with all my heart that Benjamin Theodore Herzl of blessed memory was a true prophet and that David Ben-Gurion and his faction are the redeemers, of whom it is written ‘And David was successful in all his ways; and the Lord was with him’ (I Samuel 18:14). Anyone who denigrates our president, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion, acts as if he speaks of the Almighty and is banned from the seven firmaments, Heaven forbid.

And, what is it to you? Why should you get involved and ask whether they are religious or not? Our sages said, ‘Do not judge your friend until you have stood in his place’ (Avot, 2, 4).¹⁸ You have done enough; do not continue to denigrate G-d’s emissary lest you be scorched by hot coals. Bless the Lord and give thanks that He has redeemed us and removed the shame of the nations from us; thanks be to the Holy One in whose hand are all living things, and also to His servants Weizmann and Ben-Gurion and others, through whom He desires to redeem and raise the banner of Israel; the Jewish People lives and will live forever, Amen.

Take this to heart: whoever is not a Zionist is not Israeli.¹⁹ Have you forgotten the six-and-a-half million murdered by Hitler of cursed name? If so, what do you want - that we will be wiped out and the name of Israel forgotten, Heaven forbid?

I can state with certainty that anyone who speaks ill of our exalted government is none other than of Korah’s faction, who is called evil and whose prayer is considered an abomination; even if he prays incessantly, the Holy One will not listen. Our sages of blessed memory said: Issachar was occupied only with the study and practice of Torah, and Zevulun only with trade, dwelling on the seacoast, and each had a part in the other’s portion, in this world and in the world to come. I am astonished that you have not yet studied the musar writings,²⁰ which are replete with the punishment of one who speaks harmfully on his fellow man (lashon hara), whose sin is too heavy to carry. How you have spoken against the Lord’s emissaries—Weizmann, Herzl and Ben-Gurion. I, who am young and put on tefillin (phylacteries) every day, ask G-d to let my portion be with them; I only wish and hope to be their servant in the next world.

Leave the path you are on. Be assured that the Lord G-d has raised up Israel’s destiny, in the merit of truly righteous men who have given their lives to sanctify Him, and they are Herzl of blessed memory, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion and their cohorts. About these, it is said: ‘Happy is the one who saw their (sic) face in a dream,’ holy and pure are they; not only pure but of pure heart. This is said of the one who loves his land and his people and does not ask for greatness for himself.

Be among those who have a clear conscience; don’t be counted among the pious fools. This author has many times examined their words and their intentions. Anyone who [in the future] slanders any of our leaders, again, will be cast out by the Supreme G-d, the Lord of Hosts.

Rabbi Ben Harosh expresses himself in a particularly sharp manner for what I would call didactic purposes.²¹ He makes it very clear that his unqualified support for the Zionist leaders and the renewed State of Israel is based on analysis of the historical and national events, and the ‘righteousness’ of these people is not due to their personal qualities but to their crucial contribution to the fundamental change experienced by the Jewish People in the modern era. The rabbi purposefully cited laws and Torah principles to persuade his students of the magnitude of their error in interpreting events, which they learned from their teachers.

The ideological basis of Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh’s protest

The normative messianic concept as reflected in Zionism

At the time when the Land of Israel came under Ottoman rule (1517), western Christianity was divided and weakened – challenged by Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Anglican Church (with the enhanced status of the English monarchy), which showed strong interest in the Bible and the Land of Israel. In that year, a new era began, laying the foundation for a normative concept of messianism and, as a consequence, for the concept of Zionism in its ideological and practical aspects. It is arguable, therefore, that the 16^th century set in motion a fundamental process worthy of being the departure point of Zionist historiography. This could in turn focus the research on the history of Zionism and resolve historiographic issues that have animated and continue to animate this research.

The messianic concept, at its source, is none other than a normative historical construct prescribing the revival of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. A paradigm, proposed by the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon – Maimonides, 1138–1204) in The Laws and Wars of Kings, presents the King-Messiah as a political figure who, when Jewish sovereignty is re-established, will act through earthly, rational, concrete ways. The Rambam held in contempt those who understood the Messiah as an abstract, utopian ideal connected to miracles and wonders: ‘Do not think that the King-Messiah needs to perform signs and wonders and new creations in the world, or raise the dead, or other things said by idiots’.²² The messianic concept, which was a central element throughout Jewish history and the basis of the Jews’ aspirations for redemption as a vector for universal redemption, became more prevalent following the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The collapse of the largest, most glorious Middle Age Jewish community took on a cosmic dimension of Jewish exile and human exile. Soon after, the Jews in the Spanish Diaspora, as well as the Jews in the Land of Israel, Safed in particular, began to interpret these events as ‘the birth pangs of redemption’, the beginning of the era of redemption in Jewish history. The eminent leader of the exiled Spanish community, Don Yitzhak Abarbanel, who wrote the trilogy Migdal Yeshuot – Tower of Salvation (Mayanei Hayeshua, Yeshuot Meshiho, and Matzmiah Yeshua), together with the great 16^th century Kabbalists (mystics) – R. Luria Ashkenazi, R. Haim Vital, R. Shlomo Alkabetz, R. Yosef Caro, and R. Menashe Ben Israel – brought hope and strength to face the crisis of the Spanish expulsion. Events in the 16^th century deriving from the attachment to the Land of Israel, in the Diaspora as well as in the Land of Israel itself, were seen as a renaissance and rehabilitation of the Jewish nation. They confirmed and validated the perception that Jewish sovereignty was being re-established and the normative messianic concept was being realised. A flurry of activities in a variety of spheres resulted:

• Political-military actions aimed at military conquest of the Land of Israel (David Hareuveni and Shlomo Molkho).

• Settlement activity: Immigrating and settling the land (Don Yosef Nasi and Doña Gracia); fortifying cities in the Land of Israel by building walls around them (Avraham Kastro in Jerusalem and Don Yosef Nasi in Tiberias).

• Political-economic activity: The Ancona boycott (Doña Gracia), the Safed weaving and Tiberias silk industries, and the lower Galilee tourist industry.

• Revival of the Hebrew language in administration, education and religious literature, and Hebrew printing that spread the writings of Safed and the Land of Israel, including the poetry of R. Shlomo Alkabetz and Israel Najara, throughout the Jewish Diaspora;

• Political-messianic-legislative activity in the form of the renewal of the Sanhedrin and of semikha (rabbinic ordination), together with national halachic codification in the form of the Shulhan Arukh (Rabbis Yaakov Berab and Yosef Karo). Pride of place was given to the ten tribes, which were added to the vision of redemption and to the future Sanhedrin. And finally, a minor ‘ingathering of the exiles’ took place, as Jews made aliya (return to the Holy Land) from Spain, the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy and Germany,²³ while, from the Netherlands to Poland, Jewish liturgy reflected the profound influence of the Land of Israel on Diaspora composers.

The messianic concept at the base of all these activities was not an abstract, philosophical, metahistorical ideal but rather a practical, operative, and historical concept.²⁴

During the 19^th century, the Zionist enterprise, which sought to re-establish Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, adopted all of the elements of the 16^th century precepts: sovereignty and conquest of the land, settlement, ingathering of the exiles, the work ethic, and the Hebrew language. Indeed, in the 19^th century, the views of Marco Yoseph Baruch and Rabbi Dr. Yehuda Bibas, Zionist leaders in the Sephardic Diaspora and Muslim countries, dovetailed naturally and directly with the 16^th century vision of Jewish revival in the Land of Israel. They believed that this was the way to realise the basic messianic concept and saw Zionism as a modern phenomenon deeply rooted in ancient traditions.²⁵

Continuity/discontinuity in Diaspora communities between the normative messianic concept and Zionism

The real reason for the essential difference between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Diaspora communities was the former’s emphasis on studying the Bible and Kabbala as opposed to the latter’s emphasis on the Oral Tradition (the Talmud), throughout the period under discussion. Bible and Kabbala studies in their spiritual and educational orientation shape an identity of aspiration and anticipation of the redemption of the Jewish People and the entire human race. The difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities is apparent in the way they related to four parameters of continuity and disconnection during the 16^th-19^th centuries: 1) The crisis caused by Shabtai Zvi; 2) The shaping of Jewish identity; 3) Attitudes towards the Three Oaths; and 4) Attitudes towards the concept of Mashiah Ben Yosef (Messiah son of Joseph). This article will attempt to show that, throughout the period, in contrast to the Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic communities maintained the link between the messianic concept and Zionism.

• The Sabbatean Crisis. Shabtai Zvi’s conversion to Islam in 1666 shocked the Jewish world and led most of his followers to abandon faith in him. The betrayal of the self-proclaimed Messiah left many in despair, and thousands of Jews converted to Christianity or to Islam. As the shock waves receded, Jews in various Diaspora communities began to adopt diametrically opposed views concerning the concept of the Messiah. The crisis became a watershed in modern Jewish history. In general, because of the importance of the normative messianic concept as a central element of national identity, the Sephardic communities adopted a position that called for rehabilitating and redefining the messianic concept, following the Biblical meaning as a historical, political and earthly concept. In contrast, in Ashkenazi communities, the mainstream wanted to erase all memory of the shameful subject. Community records were destroyed or censored, and it was forbidden to mention Zvi’s name. In order to prevent another case in which a person would declare himself the Messiah, the Committee of the Four Countries in Eastern Europe imposed restrictions on Kabbala study; only those who were proficient in Talmud and Halacha were permitted to study this mystical branch of knowledge, to protect Jews from being led astray. As a rule, the subject of Messiah was relegated to ‘the End of Days’ and ceased to be a concrete concept due to the terror felt by Ashkenazi Jews that another false messiah would make an appearance. This very real anxiety created a ‘model of division’, an intrinsic dichotomy that characterised Jewish society in Ashkenazi communities in the modern era: secular vs. religious; the Hassidic movement vs. the Mitnagdim; Orthodoxy, neo-Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy vs. ‘enlightenment’, reform and the Conservative Movement; tradition vs. modernity. This divided dichotomist world would also apply to the conflict between Zionism and anti-Zionism. Indeed, the anti-Zionist worldview was born in the religious, Ashkenazi context. In order for Zionism to flourish in the Ashkenazi Diaspora, it had to rebel against religious norms. This was not the case in the Sephardic Diaspora, where the Sabbatean crisis did not put an end to the continuum of the normative messianic idea of the 16^th century and the attraction to Zion of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, on the one hand, and the Zionism of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, on the other.

• Shaping of Jewish identity in different Diaspora communities. While in Christian countries Jewish identity was on the defensive, as Christianity professed to be versus Israel – the true Israel – and proclaimed that the Messiah had already come, in Muslim countries the Jews had no problem with national identification since Islam was more of a threat to the status of the Jews than to their identity. While Judaism was perceived by the Jews living in Christian countries as a religion, or as an ancient religious community, in Muslim countries the Jews saw themselves as a nation. Accordingly, the Jews living in Muslim countries continued to anticipate the Messiah, as they always had. Furthermore, Sephardic Jews were not put off by secular Zionism, which was compatible with their emphasis on the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.²⁶

• The Three Oaths. According to ‘the Three Oaths’, Jews were forbidden to take the initiative and migrate to the Land of Israel ‘like a wall’ (i.e. en masse or against the will of the nations), thus ‘forcing the end’. However, none of the great legal authorities (poskim) stated that this was halachic law – neither Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Yaakov Alfasi (the Rif), nor the Rambam, nor Rabbeinu Asher and his son Rabbi Yaakov Ben Asher, nor Rabbi Yosef Caro. It is not even hinted at in discussion on the issue by the early sages in Tractate Ketubot – not by the Ramban (Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman–Nachmanides), or Yom Tov Ben Abraham of Seville, or Menachem ‘Hameiri’ in France. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Ben Yitzhak, the great medieval commentator in France), does not mention the three oaths in his commentary on Canticles – the Song of Songs. Rabbi Zera, a student of Rabbi Yehuda in Babylon (who taught that the oaths prohibited aliya) changed his views when he immigrated to the Land of Israel, as told by Rabbi Mordechai Atiya (1895–1978) in his booklet, The Secret of the Oath. According to Atiya, Rabbi Yohanan and other sages in the Land of Israel taught that it was not only allowed but obligatory to immigrate to the Land of Israel ‘like a wall’, i.e. en masse.²⁷ Among Sephardic Jews, the three oaths were not considered an obstacle at all during any period. In contrast, the three oaths continued to deter the ultra-Orthodox community leaders in Europe from immigrating to the Land of Israel. They were not moved by the words of Rabbi Meir Simha HaCohen of Dvinsk, author of Meshekh Hokhma, following the 1920 San Remo Conference, who stated, ‘The fear of the oaths has been removed and, with the permission of the monarchs, the mitzva (commandment) of settling the land, which is equal to all the mitzvahs in the Torah, has returned.’²⁸

• Mashiah Ben Yosef. Israel’s revival (komemiyut) is a gradual, dialectic process comprising two stages, one built upon the other.²⁹ Both stages have independent vitality and ‘equality’ from a historical perspective. Indeed, Mashiah Ben Yosef (the Messiah son of Joseph) precedes Mashiah Ben David (the Messiah son of David), not because it is secondary in importance to the era that follows but because of the nature of the development and essence of the process of national revival. Mashiah Ben Yosef is an era in which the earthly, sovereign, administrative, military, economic and institutional messianic entity will be built, whereas Mashiah Ben David is a spiritual era in which the Hebrew identity becomes complete and all encompassing, with universal validity. For the Jews living in Europe, under the religious influence of Christianity, messianism became part of the hidden knowledge. This was the result of a decision made by Ashkenazi sages to stop teaching the subject in order to prevent confusion between the Christian concept of messianism and the Jewish one. By contrast, for Jews in Muslim countries the study of messianism was part of the revealed knowledge. The result was that, in Christian countries, Mashiah Ben Yosef was quickly forgotten whereas in Muslim countries it was understood that the abovementioned gradual process should and would take place. Rabbi Kook, in his eulogy of Herzl in July 1904, expounded a ‘great hidush’ (new interpretation) for the Ashkenazi Diaspora, an idea that had been included in the Sephardic prayers for many years. He spoke of Mashiah Ben Yosef, alluding to Herzl’s activities as laying the physical foundation for Israel’s renewed sovereignty.³⁰

All of this served as the source and inspiration for Rabbi Ben Harosh’s position regarding Israel’s revival, in all of its shades of complexity. Rabbi Ben Harosh focused on the national aspiration and its realisation as obligatory and, at this point, did not enter into controversial issues.

Conclusion

Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh shared the position of the majority of rabbis in the Muslim world who viewed the establishment of the State of Israel as fulfilment of a prophetic vision and, at the very least, the achievement of national objectives that have religious value.³¹ As such, his letter invites a multi-layered, direct confrontation between the two main Jewish Diasporas in the modern era and opens a new methodological and historiographical window to Jewish history, in the complex period of Holocaust and revival.

The strict distinction between the terms ‘attachment to Zion’ and ‘Zionism’ – a dichotomous terminology employed in academic research for many years – is engraved in the minds of graduates of the Israeli educational system. Both Gershom Scholem and Benzion Dinur, who set the standard for the historiography of Zionism, chose to ignore the 16^th century. In their view, the starting point of the Zionist enterprise was the 17^th century, featuring the Sabbatean crisis and its consequences, on the one hand, and the Aliya of Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid (1700), on the other. Dinur was more moderate than Scholem, arguing that Zionism was not a clean break with Jewish history but rather a complete realisation of Jewish history. In his view, Zionism was an original expression of an ancient national consciousness, the natural and necessary consequence of Jewish history. However, he did not address the 16^th century, though he should have. In contrast, Scholem believed that the Sabbatean debacle allowed for a process of secularisation and for modern movements – the Enlightenment and the Reform Movement – to infiltrate traditional Jewish society. Secular ideologies followed, such as socialism, Communism, and Zionism, which could not have taken root in Jewish society had the walls of the spiritual ghetto not been breached in the days of Shabtai Zvi. Zionist historiography portrayed Zionism as a Diaspora revolution founded on ‘crisis consciousness’. In addition, while the ‘attachment to Zion’ characterised a traditional, passive worldview, ‘Zionism’ constituted a rebellion against tradition that resulted in activism.

Was this indeed the case? Not among Sephardic Jews, but it seems to have been the case in Ashkenazi communities, where a sharp sociological schism developed between tradition and crisis, in the words of Yaakov Katz.³² Zionist historiography is consistent in its desire to stress change, fracture, and revolution, as opposed to continuity, continuum, and development. Furthermore, it attempts to differentiate between messianic Aliya with the goal of redeeming and being redeemed, and Zionist Aliya with the goal of building and being built. I contend that the messianic concept, at least as perceived by the Sephardic Diaspora, is the symbiosis between ‘redeem and be redeemed’ and ‘build and be built’, is natural and organic, and the distinction between them is artificial.³³

The ‘attachment to Zion’ is none other than the same longing for the revival of Israeli sovereignty. While the Sephardic Diaspora was steeped in organic consciousness, characterised by continuity, continuum, and development, in the Ashkenazi Diaspora, a crisis consciousness characterised by schisms, splits and built-in dichotomies developed and eventually influenced the historiography of Zionist history. The following word pairs illustrate the dichotomies: attachment to Zion vs. Zionism; the old Yishuv (the traditionalist communities in the Land of Israel before the secular Zionists arrived in the late 1800s) vs. the new Yishuv; the Holy Land vs. the Land of Israel.

The Sabbatean syndrome insinuated itself into academic research, blurring the distinction between the normative messianic concept of the 16^th century and the chaotic and apocalyptic one of the 17^th century, manipulatively distorting the normative messianic concept and giving preference to the chaotic narrative. Research gained political clout, ridiculing certain researchers as ‘messianic’ while cultivating ‘messianism-free’ historical theories, leading to the ‘normalization’ of history. Israeli academic research is characterised by a dialectical and paradoxical approach: on the one hand, it views messianism as a mythological, allegorical, abstract and metaphysical phenomenon, while, on the other, it normalises the concept of Zionism in its secular form, removing any hint of redemptive inspiration. Thus, academic research attempts to blur the dualism of messianism – normative vs. chaotic – and normalise Zionist history and present Zionism as just one of many national liberation movements in the modern era.

This article challenged the ‘crisis historiography’ that has dominated Zionist historiography until now and examined the roots of Zionism in Sephardic Diaspora communities. The purpose of Zionist historiography in disconnecting the 16^th century from the 19^th century is to take credit for Shivat Zion – the great return-to-Zion movement that began in the 16^th century, the century that announced a new era in Israel’s history. It wants to take exclusive credit for national activism and to ‘normalize’ history, leaving out any element of redemption. This explains the historiographical dispute in recent decades among historians concerning messianism and the history of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel in the modern era.³⁴ Nineteenth-century Zionism is none other than a stage in the above process, a reflection of the normative messianic concept, declaring a monopoly on the entire intellectual process. Zionism’s unprecedented success distracts attention from the shades and stages of its development. Historical research has ignored the stages that preceded Zionism by many years, which nonetheless contained the elements of the Zionist endeavour: spiritual foundations, conquest and settlement of the land, and nationalist legislation.

It is important to recognise that the wellsprings of traditional Jewish wisdom were ever, and still are, the source from which Zionism was nourished,³⁵ and it is inaccurate to settle for the triple paradigm that supposedly shaped Zionism: emancipation/secularisation, antisemitism, and modern nationalism. This paradigm is correct concerning the communities in Christian countries but less relevant in the Jewish communities in the Muslim world. At the end of the 19^th century, these were the immediate factors that shaped the national ethos of Zionism in eastern, central and western Europe. However, the deep roots that led to the birth of Zionism were always the cultural roots. The Zionism nourished by the messianic concept embodies the aspiration for its destined land, which also has a universal destiny; the Zionism that arose from pogroms and crises, which aspired to a land of refuge and an answer to existential distress, was also nourished by cultural roots. The essential difference between the approaches discussed above concerns the quality and the motivations of the Zionism that developed in the different Diasporas.

Furthermore, Jewish nationalism preceded modern European nationalism, having its origins in the Biblical period – nationalism that confronted and challenged the imperialist regimes of the ancient Near East. Essentially, Jewish nationalism is rooted in Biblical times, when the Israelite nation lived as the ‘first true nation’ (to use Adrian Hastings’ words).³⁶ In the same vein, Gershom Scholem saw in Zionism and Hassidism, dialectically and paradoxically, a reflection of ‘Shabtaism’ and, in this respect, drew from the wealth of Jewish wisdom independent of European nationalism. He saw in mysticism the national power of Judaism and in Zionism, the factor that added a political aspect to Diaspora mysticism.

By contrast, there has been some recent movement away from the dominant theme of ‘crisis historiography’ towards a minor note of ‘organic historiography’, certainly regarding Zionism in the Sephardic Diaspora. Alon Gal describes it as ‘a movement of national continuity rooted in Jewish civilization and the cultural-political Jewish tradition’, as well as ‘the Zionism of tradition, continuum and rebirth with a high Zionist potential’.³⁷ In the same vein, in the title of his study Yitzhak Bezalel quotes Nahum Sokolov, who told the Sephardic Jews in the Land of Israel: ‘We became Zionists, and you were born Zionists’.³⁸ Or take the last book written by historian Yaakov Katz, in which he follows Jewish communities in Christian countries from the Middle Ages up to contemporary times. Just as Katz focused on the development of two ongoing phenomena – the tension between the Jews and the Christian nations, and the Jewish attempt to preserve and maintain its collective identity – it is important to study the development of the messianic concept over 500 years in different Diaspora communities. Just as Katz, who saw in these two phenomena the historical roots of both the Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel, one must examine the roots and the factors that shaped the attitudes of the different Diaspora communities towards Israel’s rebirth.³⁹

In this respect, Rabbi Yahya Ben Harosh’s stimulating letter is not an isolated event but rather evidence of deep processes – at times intersecting, at times coming into conflict. More historical research is needed for a deeper understanding of the dialectical tension in these processes.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yossef Charvit

Yossef Charvit is a lecturer at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Preparation of this article was made possible by a partial grant from the Rivlin Institute for the Research of Settlement in the Land of Israel, Bar-Ilan University.

Notes

1. Lasker, “Jewish Education in Morocco,” 78–99.

2. Already in 1945, students from Morocco began arriving at the Hahmei Tzorfat Yeshiva in Aix-les-Bains, the first yeshiva established after the Holocaust, due to the efforts of Rabbi Chaim Yitzchok Chaikin (1907–93), aided by the Fez Rabbi Yedidya Monsonego. The yeshiva combined religious and secular studies, as mandated by the French government. The great wave of students who left Morocco for Europe and the United States began in 1947, urged on by Rabbi Avraham Kalmanovitz, Head of Mir Yeshiva in New York.

3. Loupo, “The rescue of Moroccan Jewry,” 112–28. See also Loupo Métamorphose ultra-orthodoxe chez les juifs du Maroc where he argues that, beyond the ethnic group crisis in modern Israeli society, Shas (a Sephardic political party) was born of those days of the Lithuanian ‘takeover’, in his words, at the beginning of the 20^th century. He claims that ‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’ (Vilna) took over ‘Jerusalem of the Maghreb’ (Mèknes, a city in Morocco).

4. Liebman referred to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the liberal camp in the Land of Israel, the kibbutzim, the youth Aliya – all of which he perceived as ‘spiritual annihilation’, ‘destruction’, ‘loss’, ‘incitement’, etc. See Loupo, “The rescue of Moroccan Jewry,” 116.

5. The Rosh Yeshiva was Rabbi Yitzhak Bezalel Orlansky; the students came from the Slabodka, Telshe and Mir Yeshivas.

6. Represented by Stanley Abramowitz, appointed by the JDC to be in charge of Jewish education in Morocco during the 1950s and 1960s.

7. Loupo, “The rescue of Moroccan Jewry,” 117.

8. The Ponevezh and Slabodka yeshivas in Bnei Brak and the Porat Yosef yeshiva in Jerusalem were involved in this broad ongoing process, especially after Morocco became independent, up to the 1960s.

9. Loupo, Comment des Séfarades sont devenus Ashkénazes.

10. Beit Yosef Yeshiva, Gateshead, England, is considered a branch of the French yeshiva.

11. Etkes and Shlomo, Memories of the Lithuanian Yeshiva.

12. Loupo, “The Rescue of Moroccan Jewry,” 124.

13. With thanks to Rabbi Haim Amsellem for permission to use the rabbi’s picture and reproduction of the original letter.

14. From ‘lead us speedily to sovereignty in our land’ (from the liturgy and the blessings after a meal) to Yehuda Halevy’s poems.

15. Emphasised in the original, hinting that Rabbi Liebman is no less important than Rabbeinu Gershom who is called ‘the light of the exile’.

16. This ambivalence is reminiscent of the attitude of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook (the Rayah) towards the founding of the Hebrew University. R. Kook quoted Isaiah: ‘Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall be startled and become enlarged’. The opening of a Hebrew college in Jerusalem, on Mt. Scopus, with such a glorious ceremony, a festive event full of radiance, where thousands and tens of thousands of our sons and daughters are gathered together from all corners of The Land of Israel and the Diaspora, presents us with the holy prophetic vision come to life, in a small way … and that, my beloved, is a reason to fear’ (Kook, The Writings of the Rayah, 306–8).

17. Rabbi Ben Harosh is certainly aware of the enormous upheaval in the Torah world caused by the Holocaust.

18. Here R. Ben Harosh shows his awareness of the radical changes that occurred in Ashkenazi communities in the modern era.

19. This refers to the “Nation of Israel,” similar to a saying of Rabbi YL Ashkenazi (Manitou). Zermati, Une Kabbale de Vérité, 72.

20. Here the author refers to the moral, ethical teachings of Novardok Yeshiva.

21. R. Ben Harosh’s rhetoric seems at times naïve, even idealistic. This allows him to make strong arguments and, at the same time, to undermine the arguments that his students learned in Novardok against Zionism and against the establishment of the State of Israel.

22. Chapter 11, Law 3.

23. The Jewish population in The Land of Israel in the mid-1500s stood at 10,000, of a total population of 300,000. Rozen, “The Story of the Jewish Yishuv,” 201–17; and Hacker, “The Attachment and Aliya.”

24. Nahon, La Terre Sainte au Temps des Kabbalistes, 79–93, 137–52, 155–67, 169–72.

25. In this context, it is interesting to note the comments of Mordechai Breuer, which reinforce this article’s position:

In the history of the yeshivas – and, it could be said, in other aspects of Jewish history – the 16^th century can be seen as the beginning of the new era. Centers of Torah proliferated in areas in which they had not been consistently active, and the yeshiva was perceived in a new light, in its form as well as its style of learning. In this century, the number of yeshivas in The Land of Israel increased … that is to say, in Jerusalem and in Safed. And this phenomenon was part of the yeshiva movement that appeared among the Spanish exiles in the countries of the Ottoman Empire in which they found refuge. With every wave of immigration to Israel, more yeshivas and study halls were opened, especially after the Ottoman conquest (c.1517), due to the ideal of learning Torah ‘in holiness and purity’ in the Holy Land, which was a strong factor in the desire to make aliya and settle the land. Breuer, Ohalei Torah, 38–9.

26. Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion.

27. Rabbi Yohanan quoted The Holy One Blessed be He: ‘I will not enter the heavenly Jerusalem until I have entered the earthly Jerusalem’. Rabbi Elazar [a student of Rabbi Yohanan] commented on this: ‘The Holy One Blessed be He said to Israel, “If you fulfill the oath, well and good; but if not, I will allow your flesh [to be devoured] like [that of] the gazelles and the hinds of the field”’ (Tractate Taanit, Amud 5:71).

28. According to Rabbi Mordechai Atiya, this is a reference to the Holocaust. Atiya, The Secret of the Oath, 15–20. See also Livni, The Return of Israel, 308.

29. The verse ‘and led you upright (komemiyut)’ (after G-d freed the Hebrew slaves in Egypt) hints at these two stages.

30. Charvit, Hebraism and Beyond, 237–68.

31. Zohar, “Zionism and the State of Israel,” 320–49; Zohar, “Religious Affirmation of Zionism,” 107–25; and Razbi, “Religious Thinkers.”

32. Katz, Tradition and Crisis.

33. Altschuler, “Against All Odds.”

34. Morgenstern, “Dispersion and the longing for Zion,” 89–90; and Bartal, Diaspora in Israel, 255.

35. Conforti, Shaping a Nation; Weisz, Theodor Herzl; and Malach, “Herzl’s Theology.”

36. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood.

37. Gal, World Regional Zionism.

38. Bezalel, You were Born Zionists.

39. Katz, A Time for Inquiry.