Dispersion and the Longing for Zion, 1240-1840 (continued)
reprinted with the permission of The Shalem Center ©

Arie Morgenstern

III

The messianic aliya that preceded the year 1240 took place in the wake of the collapse of the Crusader kingdom in Palestine and the subsequent improvement of the situation of the Jews there. In 1187 the Muslims reconquered Jerusalem, and the new rulers not only allowed Jews to settle in Jerusalem, which had been forbidden during the Crusader period, but even encouraged them to do so. In 1216, fewer than thirty years before the beginning of the sixth millennium on the Hebrew calendar, the poet Judah al-Harizi visited Jerusalem, and described the change in the status of the Jews:

God is zealous for his name and has had mercy for his people.... In the year 4950 of the creation [1190], God awakened the spirit of the king of Ishmael, and he and all of his army went up from Egypt and laid siege to Jerusalem, and God delivered it into his hands.... And he bid a proclamation be made throughout the city... saying: Speak unto the heart of Jerusalem, that whoever from the seed of Ephraim wishes may go unto it....(24)

The Jews understood the Crusader defeat as a fulfillment of the divine promise that the land of Israel would not tolerate foreign conquerors, and that the struggle for the land between Christians and Muslims would ultimately pave the way for the Jews’ "return to Zion." The new Muslim rulers were seen to be playing their part in the process.

Against this background we can understand a prediction dating from that time, which appeared in a letter sent to the Jews of Egypt, which was discovered among the findings of the Cairo Geniza in the nineteenth century. The letter cites a new "prophecy" according to which a series of messianic events—including the ingathering of the exiles, the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel—would begin some fourteen years before the end of the fifth millennium: "Letters have come from France... [saying] that there has arisen among them a prophet... who has said that in the year 4986 [1226] the great ingathering will begin, and our master Elijah, of blessed memory, will come.... And in the year 4993 [1233] the Messiah, son of David, will come... and kingship will return to the house of Jerusalem." On the basis of this prophecy, the author decided to move to Palestine and take an active part in the ingathering.(25)

The belief that the redemption would begin at this time prompted Jews from many lands to move to Palestine.(26) By 1211, groups of immigrants were already arriving, including a large number of the leading Tora scholars of France, England, North Africa, and Egypt. This movement, which historians refer to as the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis," was unusual in both size and composition. It included several key figures of the French school of the Tosafists, such as R. Samson of Schantz, one of the leading scholars in France, whose talmudic commentaries are studied in yeshivot to this day; and R. Jonathan Hacohen of Lunel, one of the outstanding scholars in Provence and a follower of Maimonides.

The messianic impulse behind this movement comes through clearly in an anonymous pamphlet written at the time, which was uncovered by the historian Yisrael Yuval. According to its author, the time for the coming of the Messiah had already arrived, "for the fifth millennium will not end until the King Messiah has come." The author calls upon the Jews of the diaspora to go to the land of Israel, in order to prepare the Jewish settlement that would greet the Messiah.

Let no one say that the King Messiah will be revealed in an impure land... and let no one make the mistake of saying that he will be revealed in the land of Israel among the gentiles. Rather, the matter is clear: In the land of Israel there will be Tora scholars and pious men of good deeds from the four corners of the earth, a handful from every city and every family, and then the King Messiah will be revealed among them.(27)

The author insists that the messianic era will come as the result of a critical mass of aliya and the creation of an infrastructure of Jewish settlements in the land of Israel. The next stage in the redemption will involve a great awakening, including a mass immigration to the Holy Land—a mighty host of Jews which, under the leadership of the messianic king, will smite the resident gentiles and expel them from the land. By Yuval’s estimate, preparations for this multi-staged messianic movement were meant to begin about thirty years before the end of the fifth millennium, or around 1210—at just about the time of the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis." As he describes it, this messianic idea was a product of growing messianic expectations, which were amplified in the wake of the Crusades.(28) The efforts of Christians to wrest the Holy Land from the Muslims appear to have raised hopes in certain Jewish communities that they might follow in the footsteps of the Crusaders and organize their own sort of crusade, laying the groundwork for the establishment of the messianic kingdom.(29) Over time, this led to other daring ideas: In 1256, some Jewish writers were still meditating on radical measures, such as offering sacrifices on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to help bring about the redemption. The traveler R. Estori Hafarhi described this in the early fourteenth century, relating that R. Yehiel of Paris, one of the central figures among the French sages of the previous century, "said that one should go up to Jerusalem—and this was during the seventeenth year of the sixth millennium—and that one should offer sacrifices at this time."(30)

We know little about the fate of the three hundred rabbis and the community they established. Some settled in Jerusalem, but when the city again fell into the hands of the Crusaders in 1229, the majority of the immigrants and their families apparently were forced to move to the city of Acre. The bloody battles that took place in the area, and the shifts from Muslim rule to Crusader rule and back again, wore down the Jewish communities of Palestine and were, apparently, a major factor in preventing them from taking root in the country. Jerusalem’s Jewish population withered and was not to flourish again for many years. Finally, after Acre fell into Muslim hands in 1291, the large Jewish community of that city, where the yeshiva of R. Yehiel of Paris had been established, was destroyed.

Evidently, the failure of the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis" and their descendants’ return to Europe left their mark on the Jewish people, who did not make another similar effort for some time.(31) Nevertheless, this movement stood as a model for future messianic aliyot: Unlike the pilgrimage of isolated individuals that had preceded it, this was an organized effort, spearheaded by a large group of communal leaders and Tora scholars from all over the diaspora. As we will see, this activist model marked the beginning of a new age in the history of the land of Israel, beginning a trend that was to repeat itself with increasing intensity in later centuries.

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Notes

24. Avraham Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel (Tel Aviv: Gazit, 1946), p. 67. [Hebrew]

25. Aaron Ze’ev Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1988), p. 188. [Hebrew]

26. Yisrael Yuval, "Between Political Messianism and Utopian Messianism in the Middle Ages," in S.N. Eisenstadt and M. Lissak, eds., Zionism and the Return to History (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 1999), p. 84 n. 10. [Hebrew]

27. Yuval, "Political Messianism," pp. 85-86. A short passage from this manuscript is quoted in another anonymous travel journal of around the same time, Totza’ot Eretz Yisrael. See Ya’ari, Travels, p. 98.

28. Regarding the expectations of redemption, see Maimonides’ calculation for the renewal of prophecy in 1212, mentioned above. On the reaction to the Crusades, see Yuval, "Political Messianism," p. 87.

29. Parallel to the messianic activism that found expression in the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis," the opposite tendency, a lowering of the profile of messianic expectations, could also be found among the Jews of Central Europe. Unlike the Jews of France, the latter were worried about the possibility of a Christian backlash to any Jewish messianic ferment, and tended to be resistant towards any activity aimed at bringing the redemption closer. The spiritual leaders of this community focused their efforts on mass repentance, and refrained from expressing their messianic hopes. Concerns about persecution were exacerbated by the Mongol invasion that was menacing Europe at the time. Christians identified the Mongols with the ten tribes, and subjected the Jews to reprisals as "partners" of the invaders. R. Moses of Coucy, author of Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, conducted a campaign for repentance in 1236, four years before the decisive Hebrew date of 5000. According to him, Jews were to refrain from any efforts of a political nature to hasten the coming of the Messiah. The only activity capable of bringing the redemption in his view was mass repentance. Yuval, "Political Messianism," p. 87.

30. Estori Hafarhi, Kaftor Vaferah (Berlin: Julii Sittenfeld, 1852), p. 15. See Reiner, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, p. 79; and cf. Yisrael Ta-Shema, "Land of Israel Studies," Shalem 1 (1974), pp. 82-84. [Hebrew]; Arie Morgenstern, Redemption through Return: The Vilna Gaon’s Disciples in the Land of Israel (Jerusalem: Ma’or, 1997), pp. 182-185. [Hebrew]

31. Avraham Grossman, "A Letter of Vision and Rebuke from Fourteenth-Century Ashkenaz," Katedra 4 (1977), pp. 190-195.

Copyright © 2002 The Shalem Center. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Shalem Center or Azure.

Azure • WINTER 5762 / 2002