Seder Olam Revisited: C47b- Emancipation
- Albert Benhamou
- 2 days ago
- 20 min read
CHRONOLOGY OF JEWISH HISTORY
Generation 47: Hebrew years 5520-5640 (1760-1880 CE)
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Introduction
This 47th chronological generation witnessed major transformations in the world: calls for freedom, equalitarian rights, emancipation of people from the yoke of totalitarian regimes and absolute monarchies, huge progress in sciences, development of industrialisation, migration of people from the countryside to the big cities, from being farmers to being workers, and, also paradoxically, in another hand, a race and competition of these Western "liberated" nations to dominate other countries in Asia and Africa in a race for colonialism. The generation will unavoidably end with the seeds that led, in the next generation, to major world conflicts and wars.
Hebrew Year | CE | Event | Source |
5579 | 1819 | The Hep-Hep pogroms | |
5593 | 1833 | Wellington opposes the emancipation of the Jews | Parliament debate, 1833 |
5596 | 1836 | Reform Judaism | |
5600 | 1840 | The Industrial Age | Zohar, 117a |
5600 | 1840 | The Damascus Affair | Sultan Abdulmecid I |
5603 | 1841 | A people without a land | Lord Shaftesbury |
5604 | 1844 | Nathan Adler, chief rabbi for the British Empire | |
5608 | 1848 | Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto | |
5614 | 1854 | Emancipation of the Jews of Portugal | |
5618 | 1868 | Emancipation of the Jews of Britain | |
5618 | 1858 | The case of Edgardo Mortara | |
5621 | 1861 | When the Jews owned Jerusalem | Ermete Pierotti |
5622 | 1862 | Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem | |
5627 | 1867 | Mark Twain in the Holy Land | The Innocents Abroad |
5628 | 1868 | Emancipation of the Jews of Spain | |
5630 | 1870 | Malbim, Commentary of the Bible | |
5631 | 1870 | The Cremieux Decree | |
5631 | 1871 | The Mikveh Israel school | |
5633 | 1873 | The Chafetz Chayim | |
Year 5579 – 1819 CE – The Hep-Hep pogroms
The move towards emancipation of the Jews was not accepted broadly by the popular masses. The first antisemitic riots against such reform took place in the Kingdom of Bavaria, although it had been an ally to Napoleon during the era of his Empire. The riots started in August 1819 in the city of Wurzburg and spread to other cities within the previous zone of influence of the French Empire, meaning Bavaria and the so-called Confederation of the Rhine. The German people thought that the emancipation was the result of a pro-Jewish policy that Napoleon had and took the opportunity of his demise to settle their score against the Jews in their region who had lobbied the Congress of Vienna in 1815 for emancipation across Europe. The riots lasted until October 1819 and resulted in the death of many Jews and destruction of Jewish property in the cities of Bavaria and Western Germany.
Year 5593 – 1833 CE – Wellington opposes the emancipation of the Jews
The Duke of Wellington, the victor of Napoleon, was a very influential character of British (and European) politics of the times. After the failure of his government in the late 1820's, a liberal cabinet oversaw the affairs of Britain by 1833. It was a time for potential reforms, after many years of Conservatism, and naturally the question of religious emancipation came to be discussed in Parliament. Wellington made a declaration in favor of the emancipation of Catholics but strongly opposed the same for the Jews, arguing there was no need for it:
But no such necessity [for emancipation] existed in the present instance, nor did any reason, equally forcible, now occur. Indeed, no one noble Lord who had supported the Bill, had attempted to prove any necessity for it. They had heard of other countries. Buonaparte had granted great privileges to the Jews, it was true; but it was on reasons of strong-policy and not till he had carefully inquired whether there would be any danger in so doing. Whereas, here, there was not the slightest previous examination attempted. All that could be contended in favor of this Bill was, that the present was the age of liberal principles, and that this Bill suited the liberal principles of the age. (Report of Parliament debate, 1 August 1833; to see full text, click here)
So, the Bill for proposed emancipation was rejected. And England, the first major country of Europe to expel the Jews was on the path to also be the last to emancipate the Jews.
Year 5596 – 1836 CE – Reform Judaism in England
The main crisis that Chief Rabbi Hirschell met during his tenure was the rise of Reform Judaism in England. The Haskalah movement created by Moses Mendelssohn in Germany the previous century (see document C47a, year 1783) gained audience first in the synagogue of Hamburg, Germany, which introduced several changes in the religious service. This was done in response for the desire for more secular Judaism but, inevitably, it also opened the door for faster assimilation and intermarriage.
The movement reached England and several members of the Great Synagogue wished to introduce such changes in the service as German synagogues had already done. Hirschell's response was to oppose them vigorously and to excommunicate the Reformers from (Orthodox) Judaism. This led the latter to erect a temple for their own aspirations, in 1840, as the West London Synagogue. The first Rabbi of this synagogue was David Woolf Marks who largely contributed to establish the prayer books that are used since in Reform synagogues of Britain. Later in 1856, the British Parliament passed a law enabling this Reform Synagogue to register marriages, and this act established the Reform movement more strongly within Britain.
Year 5600 – 1840 CE – The Industrial Age
According to the author of the Zohar, human knowledge would improve after the 6th century of the 6th millennium from Creation:
And after six hundred years of the six thousand [when the sixth millennium will start], the gates of the supernal wisdom will be opened, as will the fountains of earthly wisdom, and the world will make preparations to enter on the seven thousand [the seventh millennium] as man makes preparations [for Shabbat] on the sixth day of the week, when the sun is about to set. (Zohar, part I, 117a)
This ancient prediction proved correct because, from Hebrew year 5600 (secular year 1840), humanity started to experience a huge leap into human knowledge, entering industrial age, mechanized work, and many more changes that followed. The world really took a drastic turn from the middle of the 19th century, and the limits of knowledge have been pushed further in the 20th century, and this process continues to this day as the world gets close to the end of the sixth day...
Year 5600 – 1840 CE – The Damascus affair
A Christian monk, who was a French citizen, and his Arab servant disappeared in Damascus in early 1840. The French consul in the city, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, led the investigation and quickly accused the Jews of having done a ritual murder. This false accusation which started in England during the Middle Ages (see document C41, year 1144) had long ago disappeared in Europe, So, it came to the surprise of other European consuls in Damascus to see their French colleague carry out this accusation to the Arab authorities. Eight Jews were accused of the crime, tortured, some finally confessed to it, one of them died from torture, and another preferred to convert to Islam to avoid the harsh ordeal.
The affair caused a big outcry in Europe, especially among the Jewish communities. After months of campaign, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, overruled the judgment of Damascus and condemned the accusation of blood libel:
...and for the love we bear to our subjects, we cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented as a consequence of accusations which have not the least foundation in truth... (firman/decree issued by Sultan Abdulmecid I, cited from Wikipedia)
The main consequence of this Damascus affair was to make the Jews of the Christian world, who started to enjoy from the benefits of Emancipation, realize that their brethren in Muslim lands were still under the uncertainty of archaic laws and rumors. It became a mission for the emancipated Western Jews to help improve the condition of Oriental Jews.
Year 5603 – 1843 CE – A People without a Land
The discrimination of Jews in oriental countries brought to light the need for the Jews to settle in their own land, the Promised Land. This became prevalent among some Protestants who also considered that the return of the Chosen People onto their ancestral land was a prerequisite to the Second Coming of Jesus. They became known as Christian Restorationists and later, in the 20th century, as Christian Zionists.
In Britain, already back in 1841 following the Damascus Affair, a memorandum was published in The Times as a call to monarchs of Europe to act upon the return of the Jews to their homeland. Then, in 1843, Rev. Alexander Keith published a book and coined the first version of a motto by stating that the Jews are a people without a country. Then, in 1844, by stressing the emptiness of the Holy Land in these days, the motto was repeated in a Scottish Free Church magazine in its definitive famous form: a land without a people and a people without a land.
The motto was echoed by many prominent people, among them Lord Shaftesbury who wrote to Prime Minister Aberdeen in 1853 that Greater Syria was a country without a nation in need of a nation without a country.
Year 5604 – 1844 CE – Nathan Adler, Chief Rabbi for the British Empire
Solomon Hirschell served as Chief Rabbi for 40 years until his death in 1842. He was succeeded by Nathan Marcus Adler in 1844, who came from Hanover, Germany. The post of Chief Rabbi for Britain was by then a significant role, because Britain had been victorious in Europe and controlled the maritime routes over the world. There was a dozen of candidates for the post, but Adler owed his election thanks to the special relationship he had with Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge and Regent for Hanover, who had recommended Adler as Chief Rabbi for Britain and the British Empire.
Under Adler's tenure, the Jews of Britain benefited from emancipation and better rights than ever before.
Year 5608 – 1848 CE – Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto
The advent of the Industrial Age increased the feeling of inequalities to ripe the benefits of human progress: some became extremely rich from it, but masses were poor workers whose job was to ensure that the machines of production worked. This led two political theorists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, to publish a small book in February 1848, The Communist Manifesto, which aimed to make workers realize their strength if they acted together: Proletarians of all countries, unite! This was a call for a mass popular revolt. This publication had a lasting influence over the following years as it was the root to the existence of trade unions, of Socialism parties in Europe, the Communist era, and more.
Karl Mark was born in Prussia in 1818 from a middle-class Jewish family. His ancestors were all Orthodox Jews from Holland, but his father was the first member of his family to receive a secular education and he adopted Enlightenment. His son Karl followed the same path and diverted further from Judaism. After his studies, he moved to Paris in 1843 where he met his long-life collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Being expelled from France in 1849 after the publication of his Manifesto, he found refuge in London where he took part in 1864 in the organisation of the First International, an association of workmen. The concept of this association greatly influenced the revolt in Paris, during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, called the Commune de Paris, harshly repressed by the French authorities while the Prussian troops stood and watched from the outskirts of the city.
Karl Marx died in London in 1883. Only about 10 people, among his family and close political friends, attended his funeral but he later became acknowledged as one of the most influential men in world history.
Year 5614 – 1854 CE – Emancipation of the Jews of Portugal
In 1854, the King of Portugal, during an official visit to Amsterdam, went to the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue where he publicly condemned the "impolitic conduct" of his predecessors and encouraged Jews to return to Portugal (source: Revue des deux Mondes, article "Les Juifs de Hollande", by Esquiros, 1856, période 2, tome 5).
Year 5618 – 1858 CE – Emancipation of the Jews of Britain
The emancipation of the Jews of Britain took a lengthy process as compared to Continental Europe and despite the nation's liberal society. Until it was won, many Jews who wanted to take part in public affairs or business felt compelled that conversion to Christianity was the only feasible way. This was the case, for example, for the Disraeli family whose conversion enabled one member of their family to become Prime Minister.
But other Jews patiently acted towards emancipation rather than renouncing their faith and tradition. This was the case of Lionel de Rothschild who was elected in 1847 as MP (Member of Parliament) for the City of London but, due to the fact that MP's were required to swear an oath on the New Testament, with a statement saying upon the true faith of a Christian, when entering first the House of Commons, he had to refuse to comply and was dismissed. This led to another election to elect an MP for his constituency, and he was again a candidate, and was again elected, and again unable to join the House. The saga continued until 1858 when, finally and after several previous attempts to amend the procedure of entering the House, he was finally able to become MP without oath to the New Testament.
This milestone could be considered as the main event that concretized the emancipation of the Jews in Britain who, from then on, could take public office while keeping their faith. Some years later, in 1885, another Rothschild succeeded to be chosen for the House of Lords and was the first Jew to enter this institution of peers.
Another dominant figure of this emancipation effort was David Salomons who became Sheriff of the City of London in 1835, and then Lord Mayor of London in 1855. Trained as a lawyer, he also was the first Jewish magistrate in England in 1849. By marriage, he was linked to both the Rothschild and the Montefiore families.
Year 5618 – 1858 CE – The case of Edgardo Mortara
The 6 years old Jewish boy Edgardo Levi Mortara was taken away from his parents in Bologna, Northern Italy, by the Church authorities in June 1858 after they learned that the family servant had baptized the child during a serious illness. As he had recovered from it, the Church considered that his recovery was owned to the baptism and that he thus ought to be raised in the Roman Catholic faith. The child was taken away from his family to a house in Rome dedicated to Christian converts. Pope Pius IX got personally involved in the case and only allowed the parents to have their child back if they would also convert to Catholicism.
This case caused an outcry across Europe, and the public opinion was critical of the Church authority which, at the time, controlled most of Italy through the Papal States. This didn't last long however because, when the French troops that protected the Eternal City were removed in 1870, insurgents stormed in and put an end to the authority of the Papal States in the Italian Peninsula: the road for the Italian national independence was paved. Already in 1859, Bologna was captured by Piedmont and, by 1870, only Rome remained under the authority of the Papal States while both the Northern and Southern regions of the peninsula had been taken over by nationalistic movements.
The case of Mortara was also the reason the Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded in 1860 in France: Adolphe Cremieux and other founders wanted to provide legal assistance to Jewish families in case such incident would occur to them. The case was also seen as a warning that Jewish families should neither employ Gentile servants nor at least leave their children in their unattended care. As a coincidence, the year 1860 also saw another event that later brought the solution to the Jewish question: the birth of Theodore Herzl.
In 1870, the abducted Mortara was 19 years old, the age of majority at the time, and now could choose to return to his parents' faith. But he wished to remain Catholic and entered the Augustine Order. His father died the following year and his mother in 1895. He spent most of his life to unsuccessfully attempt to convert Jews to Catholicism. He died in Belgium in 1940 at the age of 88.
Year 5621 – 1861 CE – When the Jews owned Jerusalem
An Italian scholar travelled to the Holy Land and remained there for about 8 years. This gave him the opportunity to learn about the customs of the Jews and of the Muslims. He also witnessed a peculiar circumstance that he narrated as follows:
We all know, and the Arabs also are aware, that God said to Abraham: "Unto your seed will I give this land" (Genesis 12:7), and repeated the promise several times to him, and to Isaac and Jacob. So fully do the Mahommedans believe this, that they kept a jealous watch over the tombs of these three patriarchs at Hebron, to prevent the Jews from approaching and obtaining them as intercessors with God to restore to them their country. Every Mahommedan also knows that Jerusalem once belonged to the Hebrews and was taken from them as a punishment for their infractions of the laws of Jacob, Moses, David and Solomon.
Now, on July 8th, 1861, the day on which the news of the death of Abdul Megid and the accession of Abdul Meziz arrived at Jerusalem, the Jews waiting with all formalities on the governor Suraya Pasha and requested him to restore to them the keys of Jerusalem, according to a right which they claimed on the death of one sultan and the accession of another. [...] Their decision was in favor of the Israelites, the whole council being aware that they were the original owners of the country. [...]
So, in 1861, the Jewish nation possessed for one hour the keys of Jerusalem, which were delivered over to them by the Arabs in consequence of the unvarying tradition which they had preserved. (Ermete Pierotti, Customs and Traditions of Palestine, illustrating the manners of the ancient Hebrews, translated by T.G. Bonney, Cambridge 1864)
Year 5622 – 1862 CE – Moses Hess' Rome and Jerusalem
Moses Hess was an emancipated Jew from Bonn in Germany, which was under Napoleonic French rule when he was born in 1812. His early journalistic and political career followed the path of Karl Marx. The salvation of the Jewish people would surely, in their eyes, be achieved by the broader Socialism. Hess thus collaborated with both Marx and Engels.
But, from 1861, while he lived in Germany, he was confronted to core "antisemitism" and changed radically his opinions. The word antisemitism had just been invented in 1860 by Moritz Steinschneider, an Austrian Jew, although the word 'Semite' had been introduced back in the 1770's by German historians to describe the descendants of Biblical Shem, son of Noah.
Hess published in 1862 a book titled Rome and Jerusalem. In it, he condemned the Jews' assimilation to Gentile societies as not offering them the emancipation they hoped for, and proposed that they should build their own state in the Holy Land! Hess was a Zionist before Herzl who professed the same solution 35 years later. Although he himself married a Gentile, before his change of opinion, Hess declared:
"Even an act of conversion cannot relieve the Jew of the enormous pressure of German anti-Semitism." (cited from Wikipedia)
His warning and solution went unnoticed or did not gather any support at the time when the emancipation of the Jews was becoming increasingly prevalent in European countries. Yet the optimism of the Jews was not going to last. For his early stance, Hess won the right to be a "proto-Zionist". He died in Paris in 1875. But his remains were transferred and buried in Israel in 1961 at the Kinneret cemetery on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Year 5627 – 1867 CE – Mark Twain visits the Holy Land
Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867 and published the memoirs of this travel. There he described the utter desolation of the land:
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons—Arabs, [...]
The narrow canyon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that tower on either side. One of these hills is the ancient Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses and wise men who seek for fulfilments of prophecy think they find here a wonder of this kind—to wit, that the Mount of Blessings [Mount Gerizim] is strangely fertile and its mate [Mount Ebal] as strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was really much difference between them in this respect, however. [...]
The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and distinct stonecutter's establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. (Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", from chapter 47)
This description fits the prophecy of the Bible which describes how God will drive His people away from the promised land, because of their sins :
And the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit; and you perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord gives you. (Deuteronomy 11:17)
But God did not allow any other people to live from the land as it will become desolate until the Jews will return to the land that God granted to them as an everlasting divine decree, confirmed by the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and even by the Koran.
Year 5628 – 1868 CE – Emancipation of the Jews of Spain
In Spain, the so-called Glorious Revolution took place in 1868 and resulted in the deposition of the reigning monarch, Isabella II, and the setting of new laws of rights for all citizens. As a result, the infamous expulsion decree of 1492 was de facto void, although it was only nullified 100 years later on 16 December 1968 by Franco. Thus, by a strange coincidence of History, the enforcement of this decree and its annulation occurred with the reign of the only two Isabellas of Spain !
Year 5630 – 1870 CE – The Biblical commentary of the Malbim
Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michael Weisser, called the Malbim, published a commentary of the Torah in 1870. It was the first monumental Biblical commentary since the Medieval times with scholars such as Rashi, Nahmanides, Maimonides and others. His motivation to undertake such work was to fight assimilation and Reform Judaism in particular, which were too keen to reject the Rabbinical authorities and their Oral Law which he wanted to prove to be correct.
He was born in 1809 in Ukraine, not far from a town named after the infamous Cossack leader Khmelnytsky and studied in Warsaw where his fame started to rise. In 1840 he moved to Kempen where he remained for 18 years. So, the Malbim is also known as Der Kempener. In 1858, he accepted the role of Chief Rabbi in Bucharest, Romania, which was then under the Ottoman rule. But, in 1864, for political reason, he left Bucharest and suffered a series of setbacks with calumny and persecution mostly because he opposed the trend for Jews in Europe to endorse enlightenment which he justly saw as a doorstep to assimilation. He died in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1879 during one of his travels.
In 1868, the Malbim gave a wrong estimate to the venue of the Messiah:
"We are writing these words in 1868 and according to our calculation the time of the redemption will be removed a further 60 years… for the rise of a scion of the house of David, the building of the Temple, and all the promises of the prophets will be fulfilled at the same time, and their luster will shine forth from the year 1913 to the year 1928 [Hebrew year 5688], when the Temple will already have been established."
(sources: Jewish Virtual Library)
More interestingly concerning the Biblical chronology, Malbim gave his explanation about the apparent contradiction of the so-called "Persian rule" which has been stated by Seder Olam Rabbah to fit the chronology of Jewish history back into the fixed date of the destruction of the Second Temple (see document C33b, year 160). According to Jewish tradition, set since the Seder Olam, it is assumed that the duration of the Persian rule over the land of Israel only lasted 34 years (see same document as above):
Behold! Regarding this verse [Nechemiah 12:10-11, which discusses the descendants of Jeshua, the first High Priest to office in the Second Temple, who was the son of Jehozadak, the High Priest who went into captivity in Babylon] “none of the warriors can find their hands!”[Psalms 76:6], Chazal [i.e. the Sages] state that “For thirty-four years the Persian Empire was spread before the Temple” [Talmud, Avodah Zarah, 9a] meaning that from the building of the [Second] Temple until Alexander the Macedonian was thirty-four years. And [they] say that Simon the Just went out to greet Alexander on his return from the war with Darius. If this is so, then Simon the Just was the second generation from Ezra and Nechemiah, as the Rambam writes in his introduction to Seder Zeraim and is also written by many great authorities. If so, how could there be six generations in such a short time? Especially according to Rashi who writes that all of them were Cohanim Gedolim [High Priests]?
Despite all this, I don’t know what all the noise is about. Who says that they were all born within thirty-four years? If we say that Jeshua son of Jehozadak was 105 years old when he returned from Babylon and built the Temple, and that he and his sons all had children at the age of fifteen, if so then when Jeshua son of Jehozadak was ninety years old, Simon the Just was already born, and when the Temple was built he was fifteen years old, and at the time of Alexander he was already forty-five years old. (Malbim, Commentary on Nehemiah, 12:10)
We see from the above that the Malbim supports the traditional Rabbinical view that, within 34 years of Persian rule, several generations of High Priests were born, from Jeshua until Simon the Just, according to Nehemiah 12:10-11: And Jeshua begot Joiakim, and Joiakim begot Eliashib, and Eliashib begot Joiada, and Joiada begot Jonathan and Jonathan begot Jaddua [who was the father or grand-father of Simon the Just]. Thus, from the Second Temple to Alexander, there were 7-8 generations of High Priests within 34 years... This is the view taken by the Sages and by subsequent commentators who supported the Seder Olam. They could indeed have been born successively at an early age of their fathers (the Malbim mentions that they must all of them have beget at the age of 15 years old in average) but then did they become High Priest and also died at a very old age in order to afford to have 7 to 8 High Priests in the 34 years period? Possible but unlikely...The Persian rule of 34 years not only poses an issue with the lineage of the High Priests but also with the actual number of Persian kings. In one place, the Malbim follows the Jewish tradition that says that four Persian kings were in fact the same one and in other places he admits that there is debate on the matter and that nothing can be concluded (see related passages in Malbim Commentary on Daniel 11:2, on Ezra 6:14, on Ezra 7:1, and on I Chronicles 3:24). This issue in the traditional Jewish chronology is not a closed matter.
Year 5631 – 1870 CE – The Cremieux Decree
In October 1870, when the Second Empire led by Napoleon III collapsed in France due to the French-Prussian War, the Republic was established again with a temporary government in exile outside Paris because the capital city was besieged. One member of this government was Adolphe Cremieux, a Jew who embraced French culture and was also the co-founder of the Alliance Israelite Universelle created in the wake of the Mortara affair in Italy (see above, year 1858). With a quorum of French deputies, while many other ones were on the roads escaping the war zone, Cremieux managed to pass a law on 24 October 1870 (29 Tishri 5631) granting automatic French citizenship to all Jews in the colony of Algeria.
Year 5631 – 1870 CE – The Mikveh Israel school
In 1870, another French Jew, Charles Netter, who also was one of the six co-founders of the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) in 1860 founded the first Jewish school since time immemorial near Jaffa in a location that later became part of the Jewish city of Tel Aviv. He had visited Palestine in 1868 on behalf of the AIU and obtained the right to build an agricultural school on a land granted by the Ottoman authorities. A couple of years later, the first Jewish school opened and was called Mikveh Israel. It first met with opposition from the early Jewish settlers in Palestine, who were more religious and only focused on reviving the presence of Torah in the Holy Land, while Mikveh Israel was a secular school. The funding came from wealthy European Jews who supported the AIU, such as the Rothschild family.
Charles Netter died in Jaffa in 1882 and was buried on the grounds of Mikveh Israel.
Year 5633 – 1873 CE – The Chafetz Chayim (the Seeker of Life)
Israel Meir Kagan was born in Zhetl, Belarus, in 1836. At the age of 10, his family moved to Vilnius where he started to study. At 17, he married and settled in Radun, Belarus, where he served as the town rabbi. In 1869, he established his own yeshiva in Radun which grew in fame and importance over the years and became known worldwide as the Yeshiva Chafetz Chayim of Radun. The name came from the teaching he professed, about bringing goodness and compassion to the world, and came from the book he published about it in 1873. He lived a long life and died in Radun in 1933, aged 95.
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Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Tishri 5786 - October 2025
