Judah Alkalai
Born in Sarajevo, Judah ben Solomon (Yehuda ben Shelomoh) Alkalai was a proto-Zionist leader. Studying in Jerusalem, where he grew up, he became influenced by Kabbalah. In 1825, he became a rabbi and teacher in the Sephardic community of Semlin, today a part of Belgrade. The nationalist events occurring in that era in the Balkans stimulated him to develop his Zionist ideas; he is said to have influenced Theodore Herzl. He believed that the Jewish year 5600 (1840) would be the start of the Messianic redemption. The Damascus affair, a blood libel against the Jewish leaders of that city in 1840, spurred him to work more actively in political Zionism.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Shalom Yerushalayim (Peace of Jerusalem)
Related Guide
Rabbinic Scholarship, 1750–1880
Despite the challenges of the early modern period, rabbinic scholarship flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.