Bialik (1873-1934 )Studying the Toah was supposed to be the best means of understanding divinity since the study of the sacred texts alone assured the continuity of revelation. When the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was inaugurated in 1925, the poet Haim Nahman Bialik gave a speech in which he reiterated the role and importance of study in the Jewish collective consciousness. An excerpt of his inaugural address follows.

The Role of Study

 

The notion of Torah won popular esteem and elicited more enthusiasm than any other notion. It offered the possibility of another existence that was more spiritual and more sublime and which superimposed itself upon secular existence or was a substitute for it. The secrets of the nation and the hopes and desires that it nourished in exile converged in the Torah. The saying that Israel and the Torah are one was not an empty formula. The non-Jew cannot truly understand the import of this saying, for the notion of Torah, taken in its national understanding, cannot be adequately rendered in any other language. Its meaning and connotations include much more than what we understand by religion, credo, ethic, commandment or study. The Torah is not even a combination of all of these ideas but far transcends them. It is part of a mystical and almost comical vision of things. It represents the instrument of the Creator and it is through and for this that he created the universe. Torah preceded creation and still represents the supreme notion of the world, its living soul. Without Torah, the world could not subsist, it would have no right to exist. 'The study of Torah is truly free.' 'Torah exalts mankind and places him above other creatures.' 'A pagan who devotes himself to studying the Torah is as important as a great priest.' 'A bastard knowledgeable in Torah is more important than an ignorant grand priest.'

 

This was the vision of the universe that guided the training of seventy generations preceding ours. It determined their spiritual life during the interim period of exile. For Torah, we were willing to suffer horribly; thanks to Torah, we survived. Such a long period of education gave our nation something like a sixth sense for things of the mind, a particularly sensitive sense that was always the first to awaken and one which almost everyone possesses. No Jew is not struck with horror by the cruel decree forbidding the study of the Torah. Even the poorest and the most humble Jew would suffer in order to ensure that his children be educated; he might even spend one half of his entire income on this education. Before even thinking of asking to have material needs satisfied, a Jew recited the following prayer daily. 'You graciously grant us knowledge, understanding and intelligence.' What was the first wish that our pious mothers asked when they lit the shabbat candles? 'That by your will, my children's eyes shine with the knowledge of Torah.' I have no doubt that had God appeared in a dream to one of these mothers as he appeared to King Solomon to say, 'Make a wish, what do you wish for?', the mother would have answered as did Solomon, "I ask nothing for myself, neither wealth nor honor, but grant me, oh Lord of the universe, that my children be disposed to learning Torah and have the necessary wisdom for differentiating good from evil."

H.N. Bialik

In the fifth century, a Christian community was established in Tiberias under the authority of a bishop. In 614, the tension between the Byzantines and the Jews forced the Jews to align themselves with the Persians who were invading the region. In 629, Bzantium won the city back and their victory precipitated the exodus of the Jewish inhabitants towards Babylon. In 636, the Arabs made Tiberias the capital of the province of El Urdun. Nonetheless, a cultural movement, the massora, perfected the system of vocalizing Hebrew grammar and left to us beautiful liturgical poems.

In 749 a first earthquake destroyed the roman baths which had made the city so popular, as well as the synagogues and homes. The city was rebuilt soon thereafter under the impetus of the Arab emirs who were attracted to the hot springs. In 1033, Tiberias was destroyed by a second earthquake. During the Crusades (1100-1274) it became the capital of the principality of Galilee, and was called Tabaria. Saladin won it from Guy de Lusignan and demolished parts of the city before handing it over to the Christians. In 1242, Baibars, the Mameluk sultan, destroyed Tiberias before killing its non-Moslem inhabitants. For centuries thereafter Tiberias was little more than a small town haunted by occasional inhabitants. In 1566, Don Joseph Nassi, the Duke of Naxos and counselor and ambassador of the Turkish sultan was given the city and its nearby surroundings by the Duke. Assisted by his aunt, Dona Gracia, Don Joseph tried to restore Jewish autonomy in the Galilee, drawing Jews from those who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal. Syrian opposition had annexed the territory of Tiberias, and the disgrace of Don Joseph, who died in 1579 just after his aunt, ruined this legendary attempt. The only vestiges that remain are a piece of wall and a synagogue where the Israelis have established a museum. Tiberias deteriorated and its Jewish inhabitants slowly left.

In the eighteenth century, Sheik Zaher al-Amr, governor of the Galilee, ordered the city rebuilt. A small Jewish community, headed by Rabbi Haim Abulafia was reestablished within its walls. In 1777, the city received a group of hassidim, pious religious men who believed in a renewed popular faith. In 1833, Ibrahim Pacha (1829-1840), governor of Egypt and in revolt against the Turks, rebuilt the walls and restored the baths. In 1837, another earthquake destroyed the old buildings of the city and killed many inhabitants. Slightly before this, Lamartine had written:

To Die in Tiberias

Tiberias does not merit even a quick glance, with its disorderly and muddy mixture of a few hundred houses, resembling Arab mud and straw huts. We are greeted in Italian and German by many Polish and German Jews who, at the end of their lives, when they no longer await anything other than the uncertain hour of their death, come to spend their last moments in Tiberias on the shores of their sea, at the very heart of their beloved country, in order to die beneath their sun and be buried in their earth like Abraham and Jacob. To sleep in the bed of their fathers. A testimony to the inextinguishable love of their country. It would be vain to deny the sympathy and affinity that exist between men and the earth of which he is shaped and from which he has sprung. It is good and sweet to return to its place this bit of dust that was borrowed for a few days.