Alkalai, Yehudah ben Shelomoh

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ALKALAI, YEHUDAH BEN SHELOMOH

ALKALAI, YEHUDAH BEN SHELOMOH (1798–1878), rabbi and writer, one of the forerunners of modern Zionism. Born in Sarajevo and raised in Jerusalem, Alkalai became the rabbi of Semlin (modern-day Zemun), the capital of Serbia, in 1825. His interest in nationalism was probably sparked by the nationalist ferment in the Balkans in the wake of the Greek struggle for independence. He was also influenced by Yehudah ben Shemu'el Bibas, the rabbi of Corfu, who was one of the earliest nineteenth-century proponents of Jewish national settlement in the Land of Israel.

Alkalai's first nationalist writing was his 1834 pamphlet Shemaʿ Yisraʾel (Hear O Israel), in which he called for Jews to establish colonies in the Land of Israel as the first step in the messianic redemption. Alkalai thus argued for human initiative in a process that most religious Jews considered the province of God.

He further developed this idea in his 1839 Ladino-Hebrew textbook, Darkhei noʿam (Paths of peacefulness). By interpreting the word teshuvah ("repentance") according to its literal sense to mean "return," he turned the traditional doctrine that repentance was a necessary precondition for the messianic redemption into a requirement that the Jews first "return" to the Land of Israel.

Alkalai's nationalist thinking took on much greater urgency as a result of the Damascus Affair of 1840, when the Jews of Damascus were accused of using the blood of non-Jews for ritual purposes. Alkalai held the event to be proof that the Jews needed to regain their homeland. His first response to the Damascus Affair was the Ladino work Shelom Yerushalayim (The peace of Jerusalem); it was followed in 1843 by his first Hebrew work, Minḥat Yehudah (The offering of Judah), in which he developed his nationalist thinking in a more systematic way.

Traveling throughout Europe, Alkalai devoted the rest of his life to attempts to set up societies that would foster settlement in Palestine. These efforts bore little fruit. He also advocated the establishment of an international Jewish organization, which eventually came into being with the founding of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860. Alkalai, however, played almost no role in the developments of the 1860s and 1870s that laid the groundwork for later Zionism. He died a forgotten figure in Jerusalem in 1878. Only after the establishment of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century was Alkalai remembered as a religious precursor to modern Jewish nationalism.

Bibliography

In addition to Getzel Kressel's article "Alkalai, Judah Ben Solomon Hai," in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), further biographical information as well as an example of Alkalai's writings can be found in The Zionist Idea, edited by Arthur Hertzberg (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 102–107.