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

Arie Morgenstern

IV

Though we know nothing of messianic efforts to move Jews to the land of Israel around the date 1340 (5100 on the Jewish calendar), there is ample evidence that in the years leading up to the start of the next century, in 1440 (5200), intense messianic ferment culminated in a mass movement of aliya that lasted for decades, involving Jews from North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the German lands. As in similar cases where radical changes in the status of the Jews prompted messianic activity, the awakening that took place around 1440 followed a severe crisis in Jewish-Christian relations throughout Europe. Spain, a country in which the Jews had hoped to prosper, became the scene of waves of violent persecution for nearly fourteen years, beginning in 1391. A similar fate befell the Jews of Central Europe during this period: In 1389 the Jews of Prague suffered a pogrom; in 1391 the Jews were driven out of France; and in 1421 Austria expelled its Jews. During the years 1415-1431, a bloody war took place between a reformist religious group, the Hussites, and the Catholic Church in Bohemia. The Jews found themselves caught in the middle, suffering the depredations of the Catholic armies while the latter were pursuing their "crusade" against the Hussite heretics.

These grim events nourished hopes for redemption, and messianic calculations of various sorts flourished in the literature of the period.(32) One of the most prominent devotees of calculations of this sort was R. Yom-Tov Lipmann Mulhausen, a leading rabbi in Central Europe and the dayan (chief rabbinic judge) of Prague, who was not only a leading halachic authority but also a respected theologian and mystic. His calculations fixed the date of the redemption for the year 1410 (5170), and again, later on, for the year 1430 (5190).(33) Indications of messianic ferment at the time can also be found in the writings of R. Hasdai Crescas, one of the eminent Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages. He recounts a prophetic revelation that took place in 1393, according to which the redemption would take place in the year 1396 (5156, the numerical value of the Hebrew word "Zion"). Crescas goes on to cite a testimony from Jerusalem, also of a prophetic character, which tells of a divine command directing the Muslims to transfer their rule over Jerusalem to the Jews. According to this testimony, a voice emerged from the site of the Temple and addressed the Muslims, calling to them, "Leave my house, and let my sons enter!" and the Muslims were filled with fear. Another story from Jerusalem told of three elders who appeared before one of the Muslim leaders of the city and said to him: "We are of the children of Israel. Now, go and tell the Ishmaelites to leave this place, for the time of their end has come."(34)

Testimonies of this type, like the widespread messianic calculations of that period, reflect a strong messianic sentiment. Alongside the reports of miraculous events, they also contain a clear political element: While some testimonies portrayed Muslim rule as the essential obstacle to the redemption, others cited it as the factor that would permit the Jews to return to their own soil, and even to rebuild the Temple under the aegis of the Mameluke regimes. Crescas himself, for instance, raised this possibility as early as 1406: "In the final analysis... perhaps the king of Egypt who now rules in the land of Israel would allow the Jews in the extremities of his kingdom to go up and build the Temple, on condition that they dwell under his rule...."(35) In light of this expectation, it is not surprising that Jews of the time portrayed the Ottomans’ capture of Constantinople, the capital of eastern Christianity, which took place in 1453, as heralding the redemption. This change in the world order—Christianity’s defeat at the hands of Islam—gave the Jews reason to hope for the victory of the true religion, Judaism, over these two leading competitors.

At about the same time, persistent rumors that the ten lost Israelite tribes had been discovered—an event that tradition considered a clear sign of the redemption—added fuel to the messianic fire. These rumors, which spread in 1404 and again in 1430, were precipitated by the new geographical discoveries that resulted from the voyages of explorers to China and India. Various interpretations of these discoveries captured the Jews’ imagination. For example, rumors that the lost kingdom of the ten tribes had been discovered somewhere in distant Asia, on the Indian subcontinent, in a place where the nations of the world did not rule, made a powerful impression, and led to speculation about the possibility of reuniting all the world’s Jews.(36)

But the most explicit expression of messianic awakening during this period was a mass movement of aliya embracing thousands of Jews from Spain, Italy, North Africa, and Egypt. We find evidence of this movement in a contemporary edition of an anonymous historical text that had first appeared two centuries earlier, in 1240, and was recopied in Rome in 1429, discussing the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis."(37) After quoting the original text, the copyist added an aside concerning the events of his day: "And now many people have awakened, and have decided to go to the land of Israel, and many think that we are close to the coming of the redeemer, seeing that the nations of the world weigh heavily upon Israel."(38)

In this movement, the Jews of Spain, among whom messianic visions and calculations were particularly widespread, played a central role.(39) The historian Binyamin Ze’ev Kedar has discovered an account of a Jewish voyage from Spain to the port of Jaffa in the early fifteenth century: "Old and young, women and youths and infants, they went up to Jerusalem and there built [houses]...." Kedar goes on to quote a contemporary witness, the learned Christian Thomas Gascoigne: "The Jews who are gathered there from various lands believe that they shall in the future be victorious over the Saracens, the pagans, and the Christians. And after the golden Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord are built, they say that their messiah, that is, the Antichrist, will come to Jerusalem to his holy sanctuary."(40)

We can also judge the scope of the Spanish movement of Jews to Palestine from the opposition that it elicited within some Spanish Jewish communities, whose leaders occasionally took exception to what was viewed as a violation of the "three oaths." Such opposition appears, for example, in a letter that the Jews of Saragossa wrote to the community of Castile, in which they complain about the exodus of a large number of Jews from Spain to Palestine: "For God has created a new thing in the land: People of little quality and large numbers have set out, their children and families with them, infants and women, saying: Let us go to the land, unto its length and breadth, until we come to the mountain of the house of the Eternal, to the house of the God of Jacob...."(41) The authors call for bringing the movement to an immediate end, out of a fear that all of Jewry will suffer because of it: "We have come to beseech you, distinguished Tora scholars, that you take all possible measures to turn back al l those who are going in this way, and let each man return to his tent in peace, and let them not hasten the end."(42) It is important to note in this regard that the Saragossans’ denigration of the quality of the olim did not at all correspond to the reality. Joseph Hacker, who has studied the immigration from Spain, has demonstrated that it included not only "people of little quality" but also serious scholars who engaged in halachic discussion about aliya, and wrote passionate letters on the subject. Several of them went on to become leaders of the Jewish community of Jerusalem.(43)

Another large diaspora community, that of Italy, also experienced a messianic awakening at the time, as we learn from the case of R. Elijah of Ferrara, a leading rabbi who arrived in Palestine in 1435 and left an account of his journey. R. Elijah appears to have taken this trip in order to verify rumors that had reached Italy in 1419 about the discovery of the ten lost tribes.(44) His journey prompted many other Jews from the Italian communities to leave for Palestine to take part in the imminent redemption. The movement was substantial enough that the Italian authorities took action to stem it. In 1428, a papal order was issued prohibiting sea captains from carrying Jews to Palestine. Soon afterward, the Venetian government forbade the use of their city’s port for this purpose, while Sicily issued a similar prohibition in 1455.(45)

The Vatican’s concern about the growing strength of the Jewish settlement in Palestine was not without grounds. In 1427, for instance, the Jews of Jerusalem attempted to wrest control of the Tomb of David on Mount Zion from the members of the Franciscan order who held it, and to acquire ownership of the site from the Muslim authorities. As a result of the subsequent dispute, the Franciscans were removed from the holy site, but the Jews of Jerusalem also lost their hold on it. The audacity of Jerusalem’s Jews, which elicited the anger of the Church against them, was certainly fueled by the messianic euphoria which had come to characterize Jewish life at the time. The Jews were energized not only in their bid for Mount Zion, but also in their success in expanding the area of their residence into a new quarter of the city: The "Street of the Jews’ Synagogue," today known as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Jews purchased extensive property in this area, as a Christian traveler reports in 1421.(46) The confidence of the Jews during this period led them to build a synagogue on the Street of the Jews—despite the strict prohibition in Omarite law against building new synagogues under the rule of Islam. A document from 1425, discovered recently in the archive of the Islamic court in Jerusalem, indicates that in exchange for payment, the authorities accepted a Jewish claim that a synagogue had already existed on the site in ancient times, and that it could therefore be left in Jewish hands.47

The assertiveness among the Jews of Jerusalem also stemmed from a major demographic boost they received from immigrants who had arrived in anticipation of 1440. One source from this period depicts worshippers in Jerusalem on the festival of Shavuot. According to the report, the community was overwhelmed with pilgrims and local Jews; the author was deeply moved by the display of devotion, which he describes as a miraculous sign of the approaching redemption: "At the time there gathered there on the festival of Shavuot more than three hundred celebrants, all of whom came in and could be seated comfortably, for it [Jerusalem] still retains its sanctity, and this is a sign of the third redemption."(48) Another testimony mentions that at this time there were as many as five hundred Jews residing permanently in Jerusalem; a later source places the number at 1,200.(49)

But the boom of the Jewish community in Jerusalem did not last long. A heavy increase in taxation forced many members of the community to sell their property in order to pay off debts.(50) The erosion of the economic power of the Jews played into the hands of their Muslim rivals in the city. After the Mameluke sultan and his court in Cairo rejected the demand of the Waqf to tear down the synagogue on the Street of the Jews, Muslim fanatics took matters into their own hands, destroying it in 1474. If not for the protection of the government in Egypt, they would have expelled all the Jews from the city as well. These and other events led to a waning of the Jews’ hopes for imminent redemption.

Nonetheless, the aliya leading up to the year 1440 played an important role in setting the stage for future efforts to settle the land of Israel. Most importantly, it was much larger and more diverse than the "aliya of the three hundred rabbis" that preceded it, and included both ordinary Jews and intellectual elites. In this respect, it laid the foundation for the great messianic ingathering that was to take place during the first half of the next century.

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Notes

32. And indeed, a series of messianic calculations from around the year 1440 deals with the different stages of the anticipated redemption: The beginning of the ingathering of exiles, the discovery of the ten lost tribes, the return of prophecy, the restoration of the Sanhedrin, the appearance of the Messiah, and the building of the Temple. The calculations closest to the year 1440 are based on astrological calculations of the "system of the stars," and are directed towards the years 1444 (5204 in the Hebrew calendar) and 1464 (5224), and towards the year equal to the numerical value of the Hebrew word for "the end" (haketz), which came out to 5190 on the Hebrew calendar, or 1430 c.e. Earlier calculations from this period were based on similar methods of notarikon and gematria. One of them, drawing on the verse in Habakkuk 2:3, "for still the vision awaits its time," was understood as referring to the year 1391 (5151). See Joseph Hacker, "The Aliyot and Attitudes Towards the Land of Israel Among Spanish Jews, 1391-1492," Katedra 36 (1985), p. 22 n. 83.

33. About 1400, Mulhausen stated: "And many among the multitude agree that the coming of the Messiah and the building of the Temple will be no later than the year 170 of the sixth millennium [1410]." See Yom-Tov Lipmann Mulhausen, Sefer Hanitzahon (Jerusalem: Dinur, 1984), par. 335, p. 187.

34. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, p. 223.

35. I.F. Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1965), p. 320. [Hebrew] Based upon Crescas’ Or Hashem, part iii, 8:2.

36. Avraham Gross, "The Ten Tribes and the Kingdom of Prester John: Rumors and Investigations Before and After the Expulsion from Spain," Pe’amim 48 (1991), pp. 5-38.

37. The primary source is the Darmstadt manuscript. See Yisrael Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), p. 276 n. 27. [Hebrew] By contrast, the manuscript copied in 1429 was the Rome manuscript, cited by Reiner, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, p. 115 n. 232. My thanks to Yisrael Yuval, who allowed me to compare the manuscript in his possession with the Rome manuscript and to discover that the section beginning "And now many people have awakened…" appears only in the latter.

38. Reiner, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, pp. 114-115 n. 232.

39. Baer, History of the Jews, pp. 318-319.

40. Binyamin Ze’ev Kedar, "Notes on the History of the Jews of Palestine in the Middle Ages," Tarbitz 42 (1973), pp. 413-416. Kedar ignores the connection between the messianic expectations expressed here and the aliyot originating in various countries. As a result, he does not see in messianism a motivation for aliya, and can only wonder why the latter took place at all, just when the situation of the Jews in Spain was improving, while the situation in Palestine had worsened.

41. Benzion Dinur, "The Emigration from Spain to the Land of Israel After the Decree of 1391," Tzion 32 (1967), p. 162.

42. Dinur, "Emigration," p. 163.

43. According to one testimony of the time, "And now, of late, people have come, great sages and elders together with their disciples… and have continued to settle and to increase the study of Tora far more." Quoted in Hacker, "Aliyot and Attitudes," p. 28 n. 107.

44. Joseph Hacker, "R. Elijah of Massa Lombarda in Jerusalem," Tzion 50 (1985), pp. 253-256.

45. Moshe Schulwas quotes historical sources indicating that the inhabitants of Malta captured Jews who were on their way to Palestine. See Moshe Schulwas, "On the Immigration of German Jews to Palestine in the Fifteenth Century," Tzion 3 (1938), pp. 86-87.

46. Elhanan Reiner, "‘For Do Not Jerusalem and Zion Stand Apart?’: The Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in the Post-Crusade Period (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries)," in Yossi Ben-Artzi, Israel Bartal, and Elhanan Reiner, eds., A View of His Homeland: Studies in Geography and History in Honor of Yehoshua Ben-Aryeh (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), pp. 314-315. [Hebrew] The discovery that the Jewish settlement in the center of the Old City dates only from the beginning of the fifteenth century is consistent with Reiner’s conclusion that the Nahmanides Synagogue was near Mount Zion, where the Jewish neighborhood was located after the Crusader period, and not as the folk tradition has it, near the Court of the Ashkenazim. See Reiner, "The Jewish Quarter," pp. 277-279.

47. Reiner, "The Jewish Quarter," p. 306 n. 106. Around 1452, the Jews of Jerusalem were compelled to give money to the rulers of the city, and the community was forced to sell much of its land. Three hundred Tora scrolls, ancient books, and precious ritual objects that had been brought to the country by the immigrants around the year 1440 were also sold. These findings suggest an aliya of wealthy people during this period. See Avraham Ya’ari, ed., Letters from the Land of Israel (Ramat Gan: Masada, 1971), pp. 129-130. [Hebrew]

48. Hacker, "Aliyot and Attitudes," p. 12.

49. Hacker, "Aliyot and Attitudes," p. 32.

50. Michael Ish Shalom, In the Shadow of Foreign Rule: The History of the Jews in the Land of Israel (Tel Aviv: Karni, 1975), p. 312. [Hebrew]

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Azure • WINTER 5762 / 2002