In the comments to my camel post (
link) the discussion concerned notions of Jewish restoration to Palestine in the early 19th century. My friend Dan pointed out that after the failure of his Ararat project, Mordecai M. Noah made a speech about restoration of the Jews to Palestine, years before Rabbi Kalischer or Simcha Pinsker had begun advocating proto-Zionism. Perhaps this refers to his
Discourse on the Evidence of the American Indians Being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel (1837) in which he predicted that "Syria will revert to the Jewish nation by purchase." Actually, I'm not sure about his preceding Kalischer. It seems that he must already have had Eretz Yisrael on his mind, as he famously discussed the question of offering the Korban Pesach with his
rebbe Rabbi Akiva Eger, who died in 1838. However, his writings on the subject were not published until over 60 years later (assuming, as I am, that his
Drishas Zion's first edition was the 1899 one on hebrewbooks.org; even if it isn't, it is not listed in Ben Jacob's
Ozar He-Seforim, 1880 edition). So Noah may well have been the first, or among the first, Jews to publish about this, although clearly in the 1830s some Jews had already begun thinking about it, Rabbi Kalischer included. As for Pinsker, he was only born in 1821.
I'd been wanting to post the following for awhile, but now seems the right moment. The following is a passage in volume 2. of
David Hartley's Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749):
Most interesting to me is his observation (or fantasy?) that the Jews around the world can speak and write "the Rabbinical Hebrew" and therefore will be well-suited to joining together from around the world.
The Mordecai Noah speech that I was referring to was "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews," delivered twice in 1844. Among other things, he then called for land to be purchased from the Sultan of Turkey; Jewish "agriculturists" from Germany, Poland, and Russia to settle the Jordan valley; and the United States to lend a hand to the project.
ReplyDeleteKalischer's "Derishat Zion," advocating Jewish self-help to attain salvation, was first published in Lyck in 1862. Pinsker's "Autoemancipation" came in 1882.
Why do you consider it 'fantasy' that Jews around the world speak a Rabbinical Hebrew? The fact of the matter, as you well know is that the Torah was preserved in the original Hebrew worldwide, and almost all communities had Hebrew printing presses. They may not have conversed in this language, but the mere fact that they all understood it is certainly a reason in their favor for becoming a single people in their original homeland.
ReplyDelete>(assuming, as I am, that his Drishas Zion's first edition was the 1899 one on hebrewbooks.org; even if it isn't, it is not listed in Ben Jacob's Ozar He-Seforim, 1880 edition
ReplyDeleteThe 1899 printing was the third printing. The first was published in 1862 in but his public work on this idea was in major swing way before this. He wrote letters to Moses Montifiore and Anshil Rothchild in 1836 asking them to purchase major tracts of land in Palestine. This should be seen as the begining of a shift in his thinking from the idea of korbanot leading to redemption to his conception of geula derech haTeva and settlment as being the starting point.
Of course he was not the only proto-Zionist rabbi to operate so early. R' Yehuda Alkelai brought up the idea of mass aliah in his reaction to the Damascus libel in 1840.
BTW, the letter to Rothchild was printed in the 2002 Mossad Harav Kook printing of Drishat Tzion.
ReplyDeleteBen Yehuda
ReplyDelete>Why do you consider it 'fantasy' that Jews around the world speak a Rabbinical Hebrew? The fact of the matter, as you well know is that the Torah was preserved in the original Hebrew worldwide, and almost all communities had Hebrew printing presses. They may not have conversed in this language, but the mere fact that they all understood it is certainly a reason in their favor for becoming a single people in their original homeland.
I don't know why you're taking this post as some kind of an attack on Zionism. Furthermore, history has certainly shown that the Jews were able to reconstitute themselves, speaking Hebrew no less. However, in 1749 the fact that at best many Jews had some reading and writing knowledge of Hebrew (while many more had practically none to speak of) meant that there was some kind of worldwide lingua franca for the Jews was possibly a fantasy. (I don't know on what basis you say that "they all understood" Hebrew). That's why I included it as a paranthetical and added a question mark. In any case, it seems clear to me that David Hartley himself had little firsthand knowledge for his claim, and although there is some basis for it (it's not as if he declared that the Jews all knew Italian, and indeed Hebrew was a medium by which many Jews could communicate with one another all over the world) it seems to me justified to call it a fantasy (at least with a question mark) in 1749.
First, Mossad HaRav Kook has a beautiful edition of Derishat Tzion with notes and all.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, you shouldn't forget other luminaries of the time like the Netziv who were the founders of the Chovevei Tzion, the first group to advocate mass return to Israel.
Finally, I think it's quite interesting that Israel is referred to as Syria. Of course this is because under Turkish rule Israel was part of the satrap of Syria and had no separate "Palestinian" identity. This is a reminder that those who claim another people lived in the land with a distinct identity and geography don't know their history.
>Secondly, you shouldn't forget other luminaries of the time like the Netziv who were the founders of the Chovevei Tzion, the first group to advocate mass return to Israel.<
ReplyDeleteThe Netziv was not a founder but rather one of the major early rabbinic supporters (who withdrew some of the support when secularism crept into the picture). Further, the Chovevei Tzion were in 1882 and are not usually seen as proto-zionism but rather as zionism. Their aliah is generally called the "first aliah" by historians which really, of course means "the first major group aliah motivated by zionist ideology" as there were other group aliahs throughout our long history.
it wasn't quite a lingua franca, but just about everyone had SOME hebrew - they knew to say brachot, tefilla, etc and what at least some words meant. this is indeed why hebrew was able to take off as a national language. and the numbers who understood hebrew reasonably well was relatively large, but even those who did not, mostly spoke SOME hebrew, knew the alphabet,etc
ReplyDelete"Chovevei Tzion, the first group to advocate mass return to Israel"
ReplyDeleteWhat about the talmidei HaGra, trying to assamble 600.000 Jews (al pi sod) to bring the geula?
Anon: agreed.
ReplyDelete>What about the talmidei HaGra, trying to assamble 600.000 Jews (al pi sod) to bring the geula?
ReplyDeleteThat is why I wrote "Their aliah is generally called the 'first aliah' by historians which really, of course means 'the first major group aliah motivated by zionist ideology' as there were other group aliahs throughout our long history."
The Gra's students were primarily driven by the idea that 1840 would be the date of Geula BeIto. They also came, as you write with a fairly developed conception of the connection between yeshuv haAretz and Geula. They did not however, like the Chovevei Zion consider they aliah to be a direct an natural solution to the social and political problems of exile.