What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.
- Thread starter jacob ningen
- Start date
If those mitnagdim manage to get to TTL Eretz Israel....will they actually suit there?
I mean, what is waiting for them there is a cultural mosaic which is turning a melting pot where more eclectic, pragmatic and Haskalah-friendly attitudes prevail over the rest , at least among Galilee Nagidate.
Outside the Tzfati court authority, things can turn even far more herem, with all those followers of Judah the Pious' teachings, who at the moment look a little like the hated Chabadniks, spreading in Lower Galilee and as far as coastal lowlands moshavot, let alone the Acre Spinozist heretics.
All that about religion and modernity mindset, but it must be added that these mitnagdim could be considered "pro-Napoleon collaborationist", and TTL Yishuv ended up mainly in the opposite side.
Perhaps TTL mitnagdim olim would rather settle in Jerusalem, where attitudes towards the French were more mixed, and as far as I remember it was the place where the most traditionalist Sanhedrin faction prevailed.
Therefore, there are a few paths the Mitnagdim Aliyah could follow
A. Settle in a isolated location and being left alone to their own devices, where they can mimic their way of life back in Russia., and lead a haredi-like separatist lifestyle.
Bearing in mind that Yishuv is getting more and more integrated economic and politically, and the distances are shorter, I'm not sure if this can be a viable option.
B. They settle in a friendlier place (namely J'lem), where they dash their own pinch to the Yishuv cultural melting pot....perhaps kinda contribution to the Yeshiva world.
C. Given that they migrate in little numbers and they are a fringe group within Mitnagdim community with their distinct Pioneer mindset, they end up totally assimilated among their host society
D. ...
Keep on with this stuff, it's fascinating!!
I mean, what is waiting for them there is a cultural mosaic which is turning a melting pot where more eclectic, pragmatic and Haskalah-friendly attitudes prevail over the rest , at least among Galilee Nagidate.
Outside the Tzfati court authority, things can turn even far more herem, with all those followers of Judah the Pious' teachings, who at the moment look a little like the hated Chabadniks, spreading in Lower Galilee and as far as coastal lowlands moshavot, let alone the Acre Spinozist heretics.
All that about religion and modernity mindset, but it must be added that these mitnagdim could be considered "pro-Napoleon collaborationist", and TTL Yishuv ended up mainly in the opposite side.
Perhaps TTL mitnagdim olim would rather settle in Jerusalem, where attitudes towards the French were more mixed, and as far as I remember it was the place where the most traditionalist Sanhedrin faction prevailed.
Therefore, there are a few paths the Mitnagdim Aliyah could follow
A. Settle in a isolated location and being left alone to their own devices, where they can mimic their way of life back in Russia., and lead a haredi-like separatist lifestyle.
Bearing in mind that Yishuv is getting more and more integrated economic and politically, and the distances are shorter, I'm not sure if this can be a viable option.
B. They settle in a friendlier place (namely J'lem), where they dash their own pinch to the Yishuv cultural melting pot....perhaps kinda contribution to the Yeshiva world.
C. Given that they migrate in little numbers and they are a fringe group within Mitnagdim community with their distinct Pioneer mindset, they end up totally assimilated among their host society
D. ...
Keep on with this stuff, it's fascinating!!
The Kedouries were already in India at this time - they may have a part to play, but it will be there. The Sassoons were still in Baghdad, and some may go to a different place.
There's always the possibility that they just won't fit in well, and that some might return or move on - this isn't uncommon among immigrant populations. But as you say, Jerusalem, which is both more Ashkenazi and more traditional than the Galilee and its outlying areas, would probably be where most of them would feel most comfortable. It won't be perfect - they aren't urban and there isn't really any place in the Levant where the shtetl economic model would work - but they could get used to living in the city and they'll be able to make a living with the trades they know.
OTOH, it's not inevitable that they'd all go there or that they'd go directly there. Some, as individuals, might find the opportunities in the Galilee or the coastal cities more attractive, and some might try your Option A before finding out that there aren't many places left to set up a new village and that villages of small retailers and jobbing tradesmen aren't how the local economy works. And even if the first generation mostly ends up in Jerusalem and Hebron, as they probably will, who knows what the second generation might decide to do? They're going to become a piece of the cultural landscape, but maybe not a unified or static one.
Some "problems" could arise if both Mitnagdim and fell from grace Chabadnik Cossacks make Aliyah and settle in Eretz Israel....
add in left Maskillim expelled during the Restoration or June Rebellion and things get even worse.
will chelm still be libeled by maskillim?They'll need a common enemy to set aside their differences...
i was on another site where pragues golem came up which led to how a town with an actual golem maker is now viewed as a town of fools.
AND THE SOLDIERS CAME HOME JUNE-AUGUST 1813
AND THE SOLDIERS CAME HOME
JUNE-AUGUST 1813
JUNE-AUGUST 1813
The soldiers had come home to Tzfat, and so they were there to see the inauguration of the Va’ad ha-Aretz. Some had even come to take oath and become part of it.
The Council of the Land had been long in the making, and the nagidah had laid the groundwork for six patient years, sowing its seeds where she had to and nurturing them where they’d already begun to grow. The soldiers’ return three months ago had been the time to bring it to fruition. The nagidah had gone to every village and to every neighborhood of the towns; it had been a good time to show her face, praise the people for their victory, and learn their concerns directly and immediately rather than through officials or after the fact through audiences and petitions. And it had also been a good time to learn who the people thought would best speak for them.
She had listened and she had learned – shura, her Muslim advisors called it, and there were other words for it in Judaism. In some places, it had been obvious who the leading man was; in others, it had taken hours of discussion and multiple visits to reach a consensus; still others had agreed to accept her arbitration.
She’d announced the names a month ago, together with a long brief that drew from treatises on shura, from rabbinic writings on consent of the governed, and from the history of Jewish municipal governance. It was a brief that reminded many of the one by which the Paris Sanhedrin had justified itself, and indeed, that was where the nagidah had got the idea. But it was also a brief that had been carefully written so that the hahamim and qadis of the Holy Land could raise no quarrel.
Today they would take the oath – nineteen Jews, fourteen Muslims, five Christians and two Druze. Had the choosing gone strictly according to population, the number of Jews would have been twenty-five, but in the decades that the nagidate had ruled the Galilee, they’d learned how important it was for government not only to be shared but to be seen to be shared. The council would be a fractious one; let it fracture along other lines than that.
They will be fractious, Netanel had said when she’d shown him the list. But some of them are strong-willed men, Dalia. They may show their strength against you.
Then we will see who is the stronger, she’d answered. She’d known, even then, that sometimes she wouldn’t be. But the risk of such times was worth the many others when the councilmen would add their strength to hers and let the Sanhedrin know that they weren’t the only ones who could speak for the people. The Sanhedrin was strong when its members spoke together; let there be a balance now, on the civil side.
She would rather work with the Sanhedrin than against it. She’d married the Sanhedrin. When she and the hahamim were in unity, they had done mighty things. But the Sanhedrin was a force, and forces needed restraint.
Then what about the times when the Va’ad and the Sanhedrin both oppose you? Sahar Zuabi had asked.
Those are the times when they’re probably right.
Sahar had been content to leave it at that, but Leah Karo had asked the next question: And if they aren’t? If you truly believe you are right and the Va’ad and Sanhedrin will lead the country to disaster? Will you be able to stand against them all?
I will try, she’d said, and that was the only answer she, or anyone, could give.
And now it was the day.
The council would meet – four weeks a year, or when it was called – in the same building that housed the municipal authority and the hall of records. It would advise on appointments and matters of civil law; it would ask questions and answer them. But their oath would be taken in another place. There was only one place where such a thing could happen: the ruined courtyard of the Nasi palazzo where all things that must be done in the sight of the public were done.
The nagidah stood alone, facing the forty men who would take office and the thousands who had come to witness. Some of them came from families that had lived in the Galilee since immemorial times; others had come from Yemen and Sudan, Poland and Spain, and everywhere in between. She herself showed nothing of her Iberian ancestors; it was important today that she be of the Galilee and nothing else. Her gown and mantle were blue and silver Peki’in silk; her elaborately-tied hair covering was of the same; her necklace, made by Tzfat’s silversmiths, was linked grapevines.
She stepped forward, and there was silence. What she was about to do had never been done before. Women had reigned, women had governed, but for a woman to administer a judicial oath – not even Deborah had done that.
“My judges, my advisors, my guardians,” she said, “raise your hands to the Name.”
_______
The soldiers had come home to Kfar Tirah. There were always soldiers coming home to Kfar Tirah, as there were always soldiers going off to serve. All the agricultural villages owed personal allegiance to the Zaydani emir, sworn to provide food and soldiers for his armies in exchange for their grants of land, and the Polish Regiment remained their regiment even though only three in ten of its men these days were Polish. But homecomings at war’s end were still unlike all others, and three months ago, Kfar Tirah had known feasting and joyous prayer.
Three soldiers who had missed that homecoming came to Kfar Tirah now by the Ashdod road. One of them, wounded at the gates of Diriyah, had spent long months convalescing. The other two were part of the new rotating garrison at Khaybar, and had stayed beyond their tour of duty to accompany their comrade home.
The wounded one – scarred, blind in one eye, and walking with a cane – was named Noah. Like many citizens of the agricultural villages, he was descended from the followers of Judah the Pious – in fact, from Judah himself. He’d grown up praising the Name with song and dancing with the Torah at midnight, a dance he would never do again.
He had found other ways of praise. The second soldier, Elias, had taught them to him.
Elias was from Cairo, and his family followed the Rambam’s son. Many Jews in Egypt had once done so – adopting the rites of Sufism, holding fasts and vigils, contemplating the Name for hours in silence, going on mystical quests for His higher worlds. These practices had declined in Egypt for centuries, but some families had kept to them, and they were gaining new life now that so many documents had been unearthed from the Fustat geniza.
They’d taken root especially in the villages. One might think that Sufi asceticism was opposite to Judah the Pious’s holy joy, but in Kfar Tirah and many other places, the people had found them instead to be complementary. Ecstasy was how they prayed together, but abstinence was a guide to seeking the Name when they were alone. It had become common to do so in the coastal villages, which were newer and where many Masri Jews had settled, but the Egyptian ways were spreading even to the older settlements in Wadi Ara and Jezreel.
They had spread to the third soldier, whose name was Muhammad.
More than one man of Kfar Tirah had that name; there were many Muslims who sojourned or found work in the villages, and some had decided they liked that way of living. A few had become Jews, but most had added Judah’s rites and prayers to their Islam as the Rambam’s son had added Sufism to his Judaism. The qadis and mufti of the cities thought them as close to the edge of heresy as the Sanhedrin had regarded Judah; they had their own imams, and they didn’t care.
The three were within sight of Kfar Tirah now; they’d reached the point where the road crested a hilltop and ran down to the land that the villagers had reclaimed from the swamp. On the hilltop itself was the ruined castle that gave Kfar Tirah its name – whether built by Crusaders, Mamluks, Romans, or others far more ancient, no one knew. Lately it had become a place of prayer. A high place of Baal, some rabbis called it, and the Sanhedrin discouraged such practices in the towns, but they could hardly ban them when the Rambam’s descendants had written of them with approval.
They would stop here for now.
“Help me to the top?” asked Noah. It was still a question for him, not a statement; it had taken him long before his pride would let him ask it at all. Elias took one of his arms, Muhammad paused to draw a bucket of water from the well and took the other, and together, they climbed the ruined stairs.
Grass grew in the cracks of the roof, and much of the parapet was missing; Noah made a full, slow turn, looking down to his home and the sea, looking east to where Jerusalem was hidden in the hills. He washed the dust of the road from his feet with water from the bucket, and the others followed; he and Elias stretched their hands toward Jerusalem and Muhammad toward Mecca, and they found places against what remained of the wall. They would spend two days and nights here; they would fast and keep watch; they would recite the ninety-nine divine attributes under the stars; they would engage in hitbodedut, silent prayer and contemplation of the Name. Maybe, in Asiyah or Yetzirah – or Beriyah, if only they could reach it – they would find Him.
“What will you pray for?” Noah asked. He knew what he would pray for: the strength to bear his wounds, to make them part of him.
“Peace,” said Muhammad. “What else does a soldier pray for?”
There was that, too.
Maybe there was peace in the tower. And maybe if Noah found it, he could return to Kfar Tirah’s joy.
_______
The soldiers had come home to Nablus, and Nathan Mayer – once a chef de bataillon in Napoleon’s army, now a chorbaji in Faisal Tuqan’s – came home for the second time. He’d had a month of home leave after Diriyah surrendered, but then they’d sent him with the Galilean officers to oversee the Khaybar fort’s repair.
There were a dozen forts now along the Hejaz border, partly to guard against the House of Saud and partly to keep watch on Ibrahim Bey. Since he’d installed himself as vizier and warlord of Hejaz, Ibrahim had been loud in his protestations of loyalty to the Porte, Muhammad Ali, and the Sharif of Mecca, but no one really believed him. He was a lion, and a lion was needed in case the Diriyans broke the peace treaty, but lions were never tame.
That would be someone else’s problem now. They’d offered Nathan command of three forts and noble rank if he took it, but as Rottembourg had told him on the day of Tilsit, his destiny was not to be a peacetime soldier.
Nor was it to be a diplomat. He was still the French consul in Jerusalem – at least no one had told him differently – and he’d tarried a week there on the way home catching up on the pilgrims’ and foreign merchants’ affairs. But Rottembourg’s parting words to him notwithstanding, the post hadn’t led to any further preferment, In fact it seemed that the foreign ministry had forgotten him; his reports were rarely acknowledged, and it had been years since Paris had sent him orders. He supposed that France had more important fish to fry than a consulate in the Levant, and after the disaster in Russia, he doubted that it thought much of Jerusalem at all.
But there were compensations to being in a post no one cared about – it meant they also didn’t care about what else he did. No one cared that he’d married into the Farhi clan; no one cared when he’d accepted a commission as a Nabulsi officer; no one cared that he now worked openly as the Rothschilds’ man of business in the Levant. For a while, he’d had a wistful sense that great things were happening in Europe and he wasn’t part of them, but that sense had vanished along with the Grand Army in Russia – and if he ever still wondered, all he had to do was remember that here was where Sarah Farhi had become Sarah Mayer.
He would see her in an hour’s time.
He rode through the hills south of the city, past olive groves and farms, past the estates where many of the new-rich had built mansions. Haim Farhi had built a villa here, and that was where Nathan and Sarah had been married. He rode past it. The Farhis would want to see him, but there would be plenty of time for that.
Over another hilltop, and he could see the city. It had visibly prospered even in the year he’d been away, and he flattered himself he had something to do with that; he’d made sure that in addition to Galilee vineyards and pilgrims’ hostels in Jerusalem, the house of Rothschild had invested here too. The Rothschilds imported olive-oil soap, fine cloth, and furniture; the workshops of Nablus were busy, new neighborhoods were going up outside the walls, and the qadis had their hands full enforcing the labor codes.
His house was inside the walls, past the south gate in the district where the Samaritans had lived for centuries and that Jewish newcomers preferred. There were enough Jews in Nablus now for a synagogue – the Damascene Synagogue, it was called, and its founding members had indeed followed Farhi from that city, but most of the new arrivals were Yerushalmis who preferred Nablus’s dynamism to Jerusalem’s tradition. Nathan couldn’t blame them, not when he was one of them himself.
The synagogue, too, could wait. Because two streets up and one to the right, there was an ancient stone house where Sarah had planted jasmine at the garden wall in the first year of their marriage, and he knew that was where he would find her.
_______
The soldiers who were members of the Sanhedrin had come home, and the Sanhedrin – those who had been soldiers, and those who had not – met in Hebron. The statute they were to approve today was, like the nagidah’s council, years in the making, and it would never have got this far if there weren’t a consensus for it. But there were still details – there were always details – and the Yerushalmi rabbis would have to agree with them, so it was best to meet on their territory.
Netanel bin Saleh al-Khaybari – so the emir had titled him two years past – rose from his seat at the head of the table. He was neither Nasi nor Av Beit Din, but this was his proposal, the product of a month in France eight years ago and many hours of conversation with the nagidah since. By now, nearly everyone had had their say about it, but by the courtesies of the Sanhedrin, it was still his, and it was his right to move it.
“You have all read the latest brief?” he asked, but the question was a formality: everyone had. The brief – that seemed to have become the way of doing things – began with the Talmudic writings on the education suitable to a rabbi, a survey of the historical academies, a review of the statutes of the new rabbinical schools in France and Italy, and ended where it began, with a draft curriculum in arts and sciences for the Or Tamid.
Netanel didn’t propose to go nearly as far as in France, where secular and military studies made up a full third of the coursework, nor would such studies even become mandatory. But the Or Tamid would have a budget to hire lecturers in subjects of interest to its students, to buy books, to subscribe to scholarly journals. And it would have a mandate to incorporate new knowledge into its jurisprudence.
There had been little disagreement, even with the latter of those; the Rambam had cited medical treatises in his rulings, so how could they ignore such things? There were many other examples being unearthed from the geniza. Molcho himself, to Netanel’s surprise, had observed that it was fortunate for the Sanhedrin to have had engineering treatises from Ferrara and Lisbon when it had reformed its commentaries on the Law of the Parapet after the last century’s earthquake. “This was one time the other Sanhedrin was right,” he’d said – he, Molcho, the dean of the Yerushalmi traditionalists, had said it.
But there had been the arguments over the subjects to be taught, the places where the money would come from, where the libraries would be, and it was on the last two that the Yerushalmi faction had dug in its heels. Molcho had insisted that not a piaster be taken from the subsidies to the holy sites, and that there be a library in Jerusalem as well as one in Tzfat. His long-term goal was plainly to have a full branch of the Or Tamid in his city, but for now, he’d settle for an arrangement that gave him a say in the courses to be taught and the books to be purchased.
And now, having finished the latest draft of the brief, he looked up and nodded.
“Are we agreed then?” asked Netanel, and the word “yes,” in four languages, answered him.
Then it is done, compromises and all. Netanel himself regretted only one of them – that there wouldn’t be a post for a lecturer in geography. After Diriyah surrendered, he’d been one of the officers the emir had sent to the Bahrain coast to oversee the Saudi withdrawal. He’d lived for a year among the pearl-diving Jews of al-Qatif; he’d been sent to negotiate in Muscat and Shiraz; he’d come home by way of Baghdad. There was so much more of the world out there, Jewish and not, and the Sanhedrin would have to know it to be part of it.
There will be time to learn, I hope – before the soldiers march again.
Not only of the genizah, but of all the tumultuous events of the Napoleonic period - the intent of the 1813 update was, in part, to show how formative this period was for the Yishuv and beyond, how the two Sanhedrins synergized as well as clashed, and how the threads of the three prior centuries are being woven together under the pressure of new challenges. The Napoleonic arc is denouement from here, although hopefully in a way that still draws interest.
For the record, this is a brief but effective summary of the Sufi-inspired pietism practiced by late medieval Egyptian Jews, including the descendants of the Rambam. I may have cheated a bit by portraying it as still a living practice in the late 18th-early 19th centuries, but given how eclectic Egyptian Judaism still was at the time, I don't think it's beyond possibility that a few families might have kept the Sufi practices alive as family traditions and brought them to the agricultural villages which are most likely to appreciate them.
The usual churches for the region - Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic (Melkite), Latin Church (Western-rite Roman Catholic), Syriac, and Chaldean. There has also been Coptic immigration from Egypt during the Zaydani period - most of the Christian immigrants from Egypt settled along the coast, but some are in the Galilee as well. There are also a few Armenians, although the Armenian churches are much more common in Jerusalem on the one hand and Lebanon on the other. The issue of which one is represented on the Council of Seven is never really resolved and often has to be renewed given how the churches and their clergy get along at any given time; the custom has been for the post to rotate between churches and for the rabbis and imams to appoint a priest who is respected by as many of the different Christian populations as possible, but it doesn't always work. The new council, which as can be seen has its consociational aspects and in which several Christian denominations are represented, may help settle this issue but might also at times contribute to it - these things often work out that way.
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At the time (at least as far as I can tell), the firmans involving the holy sites applied only to places that were disputed between Christian churches, so they wouldn't concern Molcho one way or the other. As far as the sites that were added to the agreements later, we already know that he has bought the Western Wall, subject to easements in favor of the Mughrabi quarter, so there's a legally enforceable contract that both Jews and Muslims can cite. He probably also made similar arrangements for Rachel's Tomb during the window of opportunity that existed during the Napoleonic occupation. I doubt he'd care about David's Tomb, given that it was well known by this time not to actually be David's tomb.
Have you got any more reading material about the inter-Hasidic and Hasidic-Mitnagdim struggles?
Bar that source you linked, most of what I could find remained in the realms of excommunications and book burnings rather than raiding, which is much less entertaining.
Splendid TL, by the way.
The link is to a book review; the actual book goes into much more detail. Unfortunately, like most academic books, it isn't cheap; maybe you have university access or know someone who does?
Fights between rival Hasidic sects, BTW, still happen today in Israel and the US - there was an outbreak in Jerusalem a couple years back, and a long time ago when I worked for the Satmarim, there were two rival factions of the dynasty and it sometimes got physical. We're talking about societies that are still partly on a feudal/tribal model, and were even more so in Hasidism's early days.
Thanks! My usual question - are there any high points/things you particularly liked, is there anything that I could be doing better, and is there anything I haven't shown that you'd be interested in seeing? No guarantees, but I do sometimes take requests.
(That question is open to everyone, BTW.)
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Wait, you worked for the Satmarim? As in you worked for some people who were Satmar or some official org?
(Please don't answer if you don't feel comfortable doing so)
I taught English and math in one of the Satmar boys' schools for a year. I was 19, they didn't require teaching licenses for secular subjects, and I needed to pay the rent. I have stories. Message me if you have any particular questions, although my experience is 30-plus years out of date.