Zionism= The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel to found there a Jewish State.
While the term “Zionism” was coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1890, Rabbi Yehuda Bibas (1776-1852) should be credited with the idea of modern Zionism. Rabbi Bibas was born in Gibraltar (an English colony). From his mother’s side, he was the grandson of the famous Moroccan rabbi Rabbenu Hayim ben Attar, the Or-haHayim-haQadosh (1696-1743). His father belonged to the prestigious Bibas family of Rabbanim, Dayanim, and Shochatim in Tetuan, Spanish Morocco. He was for many years the rabbi of the prominent and affluent Jewish community of Corfu, a beautiful island that today belongs to Greece.
Rabbi Bibas saw the opportunity for the Jewish people to have their own State because many countries in those years (1820-1835) revolted against the ruling empires and thus gained their independence. Living in Corfu allowed the Rabbi the privileged perspective of being a direct witness to the revolution of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire and the victory that led to the creation of the independent Greek State. Israel, then called “Palestine”, was also under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. in 1835, Rabbi Bibas believed that, like the Greeks, Jews could gain their own independence, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly weak politically and militarily. In his opinion: “The Jews must conquer the land of Israel militarily from the Turks, just as the Greeks conquered their own land from the Turks.” Rabbi Bibas traveled through Europe and North Africa, visiting Turkey, the Balkans, Vienna, London, Germany, Hungary and Prague, and many more Jewish communities. The main message he preached to all the Jews of the world was “TESHUBA,” a call to return as a Nation to the land of Israel and founding a Jewish State.
Rabbi Bibas gave a broader meaning to the term Teshuba. Literally, “Teshuba” means “return.” But beyond the conventional meaning of the return of the Jewish individual to God, in the Tora, we find the idea of ”Teshuba / return” primarily as the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. In the book of Debarim, chapter 30, 1-11, “Teshuba” is mentioned eight times, first, as “collective repentance,” followed by a national “reconciliation” with HaShem. Then Teshuba defines the way that HaShem will “return” the Jewish people to their land. Just as the exile in the previous chapter (Debarim 29) resulted from the Jews abandoning HaShem, the return to the land of Israel is presented as the result of the reconciliation between Am Israel and HaShem, our God. Rabbi Bibas explained that by dwelling in the Diaspora: “We are turning our backs on HaShem (the opposite of “teshuba”, i.e., “facing” HaShem. YB), as our rabbis explained: A Jew living outside Israel is like a Jew without God. And why are we living in exile? To seek our sustenance? Did not the Tora say that the land of Israel is a land that HaShem constantly monitors, where bread will not be eaten with poverty? Is it not a land that will not lack anything? Day after day, when eating our bread, we thank HaShem for the land of abundance, Israel, that He has granted us …”
Rabbi Yehuda Alqalay (1798-1878) brought the ideas of Rabbi Yehuda Bibas to writing. Unlike Rabbi Bibas, who did not get to publish his ideas (or his books did not reach us) Rabbi Alqalay was a prolific writer. Like Rabbi Bibas, Rabbi Alkalay did not conceive the return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel just as a solution to the eternal problem of anti-semitism, but as the only way of fulfilling the Jewish aspiration for “normalization”: that is, the people Jewish, living in its land, Israel, ruled by its law, the Tora of Israel. Both rabbis, Bibas and Alqalay, understood that the people of Israel did not need to wait passively for the arrival of the Mashiach to materialize this aspiration. Rather, Jews should actively seek the re-establishment of an independent Jewish State in the land of our ancestors as a way of advancing and facilitating the arrival of the Mashiach.
Inspired by Rabbi Bibas, Rabbi Alqalay formulated his plan and ideas for restoring the Jews in Israel in his book “Goral laHaShem,” published in Vienna in 1857. In this book he designed a comprehensive plan with the religious foundations and the practical steps to bring to fruition a national “TESHUBA”: The return of the Jewish nation to the land of Israel. The book was published in three different editions and translated into many languages, including English.
I present HERE to the readers of Halakha of the Day the book of Rabbi Yehuda Alqalay, where you can see once and again that the word that defines “Zionism” is TESHUBA.
By the way, it is fascinating to read the haskamot (letters of recommendation) that this book had from many prominent rabbis. In my opinion, the most interesting letter is that of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885, originally written in Hebrew) the most famous philanthropist and leader of the Jewish people in the 19th Century.
יום העצמאות שמח
