Coufrafitwtiaw Viewpoints on Zionism DISPERSION AND RETURN ELIEZER LIVNEH THE WORLD ZIONIST ORGANIZATION THE DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATION THE YOUTH AND HECHALUTZ DEPARTMENT JERUSALEM 1970 Printed in Israel at Alpha Press, Jerusalem DISPERSION AND RETURN ELIEZER LIVNEH Common palance has it that 18 centuries considered as a distinct Arab-Palestinian elapsed between Jewry's Dispersion and nation? the Return to Zion. True, in the year 70 C.E. the Second Temple was destroyed; From the Destruction of the Second Temple and in 1870 a turning point in history to the Arab Invasion. was marked by the establishment in the The period preceding the destruction of ancestral Jewish homeland of the first the Second Temple is well summed up modern agricultural school, Mikveh Israel. by the eminent Arab historian Ibn Khal- This has been mistakenly regarded as dun. In his "Introduction to the Science the begining of the return to Zion in of History," published in 1377 C.E., he modern times. What happened in the land writes: "Jewish sovereignty in the count• of Israel during that long lapse of time? ry extended over 1,400 years It was To what extent and for how long have the Jews who implanted the culture and Jews been living here during that period? customs of the permanent settlement.'5 Zion in the The British-appointed Palestine Royal־When did the Return-to modern era begin? What was the nature Commission, wholly composed of Christ- of the relationship between the Jewish ians, states in its official report issued in people in the Dispersion and its home- 1937 (p. 3): "The gift of Hebraism in land? Was it a mere literary-sentimental ancient Palestine to the modern world attitude or an experience of deeper signi- must rank with the gifts of ancient Greece ficance? and Rome/' On the other hand: who were the in- When the Jewish Revolt against the habitants of the land in the period since Romans broke out in 66 C.E., Eretz the Jews ceased to be the majority there? Israel had a predominantly Jewish po- For how long have the Arabs lived and pulation of at least four million. Josephus ruled there? Was the country ever an Flavius gives a higher estimate. Certainly Arab center culturally, politically or eco- Jerusalem, with several hundred thousand nomically? Have the Arabs themselves citizens, was one of the four great metro- regarded it as an independant national- polises of the ancient world. The other territorial unit? Were the Arab inhabitants three were Rome, Alexandria and Ant- 3 ioch. Under the last kings of the Has- even when these abided by Jewish law monean dynasty and under Herod, various (Divorce Laws — Talmudic Tractate, 88,2 changes took place in the political status Mekhilta (Midrash 21,1). Pagan Roman and in the boundaries of the Jewish State; and Christian as well as Jewish chronicles but always Jewish territory included the of the period enumerate some four to eastern bank of the Jordan from north to five hundred Jewish villages and cities in south and the Sinai area around El Arish Eretz Israel {vide Settlement Book, Vol. Rhinocorura). No one questions the fact 1, published by Bialik Institute, Jerusa- that Eretz Israel was one of the major lem, 158/1). From places as far apart as cultural, economic and geostrategic cen- Etzion Gever in the deep Negev and Beit ters of the Hellenistic-Roman-Iranian Yerach in Galilee, the Jews brought their world. disputes and problems to the wise men In 73 C.E., three years after the Roman of Yavne. The circuit of the Nassi — head legions had overrun Jerusalem, Massada of the Sanhedrin — Raban Gamliel en- fell. This was the end of the Jewish War compassed Achziv, Acco, Ashkelon, Je- — the fiercest uprising that the mighty richo and "towns lying along the Jordan." Roman Empire ever had to contend with From. 132-135 C.E., the irrepressible anywhere in its vast domains. Judea, scene Jews staged under Bar Kochba yet another of the hottest fighting, was ravaged by the rebellion, which resulted in a far worse Romans, who carried out massacres and blood bath. The Roman historian Cassius heavy deportations. But little harm came Dio, who wrote soon after the event, to the Galilee and Transjordan which had rates the Jewish dead at 580,000 — not surrendered to Rome at an early stage counting prisoners. He reports that about of the struggle. a thousand Jewish villages and five hund- On the whole, the ethnic make-up of red Jewish "fortresses" were razed. Even the country remained unchanged. The if these figures are exaggerated, it is patent Jews still constituted the overwhelming from Cassius Dio's account that the Jews majority of the population. at the time were the people of Eretz They soon won back from the Romans Israel. a measure of internal autonomy. The Jewish sources confirm the magnitude Central Yeshiva, the High Court and the of the disaster brought on by Bar Koch- Presidency of the House of Hillel — first ba's defeat. The Jerusalem Talmud tract- located at Yavne, but later moved to ate on Fasts, 69,2, declares: "For fifty different places in Galilee — were the re- two years no fowl was seen flying in the cognized authorities of Jewry, not only land of Israel." The Great Lamentation, internally in Eretz Israel, but vis-a-vis the 1,50, brings an echo of the harrowing outside world. terror as perceived by the nations of the In this situation, we can understand the world: "What does their God to them prohibition of the Jewish sages who lived that every hour they are thus killed for at the end of the first and beginning of Him?" the second century. They rejected abso- Destruction was great, but Jewish re- lutely the legal authority of Gentile courts, construction was rapid. In the days of 4 Rabbi Yehuda the Nassi, that is, during Roman Empire. Anti-Jewish oppression the second half of the second and the reached a climax in the days of Justinian beginning of the third century, the re- called the Great (527-565 C.E.). It was building was completed. The land enjoyed then, in the middle of the 6th century, an interlude of peace. The Roman govern- that the Jews became a minority in their ment confirmed the status of the Nassi land, albeit a substantial minority that as the head of the people of Israel in stubbornly persisted. the land of Israel. According to Origenes During the last period of Byzantine rule (185-254), resident in Eretz Israel from over the coutry, there was no majority the year 232, the authority of the Nassi ethnic-religious group at all, but a mis- was tantamount to that of a king. The cellany of minorities — Jews, Samaritans, Jews were tried in their own courts. Rabbi dissident Christians and orthodox Christ- Yehuda the Nassi kept order with the ians loyal to the Byzantine Empire. From aid of a Jewish police force. Origenes Christian documents (of Antoninus Pla- maintains that the Jewish courts were even centinus, known as Antoninus the Mar- empowered to pass the death sentence. tyr), we learn that a Jewish community Rabbi Shimon Ben Yakim, who lived in lived in Nazareth even at the end of the the second half of the third century, re- 6th century. Many Jews fled from the counts in Hilchot Leket (Gleaning Laws center of the country and established new — the Forgotten Sheaf and the Poor settlements in the Hebron area across Man's Tithe): "Earlier, when no olives the Jordan (Edrei), at the southern were available, Adrianus the Wicked tip of the Dead Sea (Zoar) and having laid the land waste, the Jews were along the Gulf of Eilat (Tiran, B'nei unable to carry out the gleaning laws, Jenda at Mekna). The southern settle- but now that the olives are plentiful they ments flourished as independent political do so." (The gleaning laws obliged the units. According to Moslem sources, when owner of the land to leave some part of Mohammed's influence spread northward the crop to the poor). from Arabia, the Jews signed treaties of The systematic dispersal of the Jews protection with him. dates from the middle of the fourth In 614 the Persians invaded Eretz Is- century, when the Roman Empire embrac- rael — with the help of the Jews. Do- ed Christianity. After the Council at minion over Jerusalem was given to a Halcydon in the year 451, the Jews began Jewish leader called Nechemia Ben Hu- to be methodically dispossessed of their shiel. Before long, though, the Persians country by administrative, economic and violated the agreement they made with fiscal means and by outright violence. The the Jews. persecutions went on relentlessly, gaining In 629, when the Byzantines returned, in intensity. The office of the Nassi con- the Jews still carried enough weight to tinued to exist in the name only; its induce the Emperor Heraclius to promise authority was whittled down to next to their leader, Benjamin of Tiberias, a ge- nothing. Many Jews migrated to Babylon, neral amnesty for the offenders who had others scattered to various parts of the sided with Persia. 5 The Arab Rule 640—1071 richo, Gaza, Ashkelon, Rafah and El Four years later, in 633, the Arabs made Arish. their entry into Eretz Israel by force of It appears that outside the cities and arms. In 640 they took control of the townships the Jews had largely vanish- entire country. Within a generation or ed — either through emigration from the two, most of the inhabitants of the land, unsafe rural areas or conversion to Islam.