Mizraḥ U-Ma'arav (East and West)
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Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav (East and West): A Sephardi Cultural and Political Project in Post-Ottoman Jerusalem Michelle U. Campos, University of Florida1 In 1919, only months after the end of the disastrous war that shattered the world of Ottoman Jewry irrevocably, the Jerusalem-based Jewish journalist and intellectual, Avraham Elmaliach (Elmaleh), began a new, ambitious project: to collect, archive, and disseminate the history of Sephardi and Mizrachi Jewry. His journal, Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav (East and West), aimed to give a “true and complete picture” of their world, which he argued was missing from both Hebrew letters and Jewish historiography more generally. As Elmaliach complained, despite the fact that there were “many authors and wise men” writing in foreign languages on Jewish history in a variety of countries, “such [a volume] is missing in the history of the Sephardim in their dispersion. It is unbelievable that the history of our brothers in North Africa, Syria, Turkey, the Balkans, the cities of Iran, India, and Yemen – those are the places with large numbers of our brothers and from those cities their light has shone 1 Dear Colleagues: I first came across Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav many years ago while reading the work of its editor, Avraham Elmaliach, for a different project. It struck me as unique, but since it was published in a later period than my project was focused on, I left it aside to gather dust on my bookshelves. Three years ago I was inspired to return to the journal after reading Julia Cohen and Sarah Stein’s JQR article on Sephardi historiography, in part in an effort to appraise its contribution to Sephardi intellectual history. I presented a different version of this paper at a Sephardi Studies conference at UCLA in 2011, but immediately afterward this side-project got pushed aside yet again due to other projects and deadlines. I revive it now in an attempt to continue my thinking on these issues as I move into the Mandate period in my other work, but unfortunately I have not had access to some of the primary sources back in my office in Florida since I am on sabbatical in Germany this year. Lastly, I have recently become aware of Yuval Evri and Amos Noy’s important work on this topic, but I have not yet had a chance to read their theses. **Please do not cite or circulate. 1 on all of Judaism – [yet] the history of these brothers is cloudy and a book has not yet been written [about them].”2 Of course Elmaliach was exaggerating his claim, as he himself immediately acknowledged in recognizing the efforts of a handful of Sephardi scholars who had devoted their lives to documenting their communities’ histories. Among those who merited Elmaliach’s conditional approval were the polyglot scholar Shlomo (Solomon) Rosanes (1862–1938), author of Divrei yamei Israel be-Tugrama (1907-14),3 Avraham Danon (1857–1925), the Edirne-based author of the anthology Yosef Da’at (1888),4 Moshe (Moise) Franco (1837–1918), the author of Histoire des Israélites de l’Empire Ottoman (1897) and director of Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) schools in various cities including Safed, and David Cazès, author of Histoire des Israélites de Tunisie (1882) and the director of the AIU school in Tunis.5 In fact, these men already comprised part of the second generation of Sephardi scholars active in the Ottoman Empire, men who were products of the many 19th century transformations that affected urban Ottomans, Jews and non-Jews alike: a reforming and Western-oriented empire, ‘modern’ education, a popular press and emergent public sphere, and changes in technology, mobility, consumption, and social relations. These men saw themselves as part of the Jewish enlightenment, actively consuming and contributing to Haskala publications, and 2 Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav, v. 1, n. 1, August-September 1919. Translation mine. A valuable full translation of this introductory essay recently has been provided in Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, eds., Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture 1893-1958 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013). 2-9. 3 Rosanes was based in Ruschuk and authored a study in 1914 of the Jews in his hometown; during WWI he moved to Sofia. Between 1930-45, Rosanes published the six-volume Korot ha-Yehudim be-Turkyah ve-Arẓot ha-Kedem. 4 In addition to his Toldot bnai Avraham, published in 1887, Danon also wrote books on the Sabbatean sect, on Turkish words integrated into Judeo-Spanish, on Ottoman Jewish superstitions, on Judeo-Spanish romanceros, and on Jewish poetry; after World War I, when he moved to Paris, he published a history of two Ottoman sultans, excerpts of which were published in Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav. 5 Cazès also published a study of Tunisian Jewish literature in 1888, Notes bibliographiques sur la literature juive- tunisienne. 2 tried to bridge the world of their fathers’ religion with the world of modern scholarship and science.6 At the same time, they were undoubtedly integrated in the Ottoman world which surrounded them. Some of these men and their contemporaries were educated in Ottoman state schools and were fluent in Ottoman Turkish, and some had working relationships with Ottoman Muslim intellectuals. Avraham Rosanes (father of Shlomo and a scholar of Sephardi history in his own right) hosted the Ottoman reformer Midhat Pasha in his home; Franco collaborated with an Ottoman Muslim scholar to translate textbooks for adoption in the Ottoman school system; and Danon’s book of Jewish poetry was partially translated into Ottoman Turkish. And yet, despite their pathbreaking work, Elmaliach complained that these earlier studies were limited variously by language, scope, periodization, sources, and epistemology. What was needed, in his mind, was a journal that would be interdisciplinary in focus, covering the multifaceted aspects of Jewish life from the Maghreb to Asia, spanning from ancient times to current days. Elmaliach’s vision was of a journal that would fulfill a variety of functions, some of which would prove to be contradictory: scholarly, communal-historical, educational, and political. What follows is a very partial, fragmented introduction to the potential scope of Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav as intellectual history, as communal identity producer, and as political contestant in a changing landscape. ***** Avraham Elmaliach, a Sephardi Hebraist Ottomanist 6 Julia Phillips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, "Sephardic Scholarly Worlds: Toward a Novel Geography of Modern Jewish History," Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 3 (2010). The literature on the 19th century Ottoman Empire is vast, but a good place to start is M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). For excellent studies of 19th century Ottoman Jewry, particularly with an emphasis on the Ladino press and the Ottoman public sphere, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). And Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 3 The son of a Maghrebi (North African) rabbinical family born in Jerusalem in 1885, Elmaliach studied at the local Sephardi schools (Doresh Zion and the Tiferet Yerushalayim Talmud Torah), where he learned Jewish religious subjects in Ladino and also took courses in modern Hebrew, Arabic, and Ottoman Turkish. 7 Although Elmaliach excelled in calligraphy and started a promising career as a sofer stam (religious scribe) at a young age, before long, he left it to undertake secular studies at several of Jerusalem’s new schools—the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Laemel, and briefly, the French Dominican fathers’ École pratique d’études bibliques (today’s École Biblique), founded in 1890 and offering instruction in archeology and Biblical exegesis.8 After finishing his studies in 1902, Elmaliach took a job as a Hebrew and French teacher at the AIU, which had a habit of recruiting its brightest young graduates as teachers. There, he joined the ranks of Jerusalem’s leading Hebraists: Eli’ezer Ben-Yehuda, David Yellin, and Yosef Meyuchas. In 1904, Elmaliach became a founding member of a Sephardi Hebraist circle called “Youth of Jerusalem” (Ẓe’iri Yerushalayim), committed to the revival of Hebrew as a lived language. In conjunction, Elmaliach entered into the field of Hebrew letters, publishing articles and eventually becoming an editorial assistant at one of the newspapers of the Ben-Yehuda 7 For biographical information see Avraham Elmaliach, "Mi-zichronot ben Yerushalayim," Tesoro de los Judios Sefardies VII(1964)., Va'ad ha-yovel, Manhe le-Avraham: Sefer yovel le-kvod Avraham Elmaliach (Jerusalem: Ahva, 1959)., and David Tidhar, ed. Entziklopediat ha-yishuv u-vonav (Tel Aviv: 1947). 8 At the Alliance, Elmaliach learned French and continued his modern Hebrew and Arabic, but also took classes in the history of ‘am Israel, geography and government of the Ottoman Empire, math and science; occasionally students went on field trips in neighboring villages and historic sites. For description of the curriculum, see the letters from David Yellin, a teacher at the AIU in the late 1880s-1890s, to the director Nissim Behar. CZA A153/110/2-3. One AIU teacher wrote that there were 416 boys in the Jerusalem school in 1901, half of whom were local Jerusalemites, with the others boarders from Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and the Balkans, Yemen, North Africa, and even Persia. Aron Rodrigue, Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Transition: The Teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1860-1939 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993)., 166-70. 4 family, Hashkafa.9 He soon expanded his literary portfolio, writing widely as a Palestine correspondent and as a Sephardi commentator in the Hebrew press published in Europe.10 The topics of Elmaliach’s early writings were varied and suggested the wide-ranging interests that he would later try to corral in Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav.