Seder Olam Revisited: C48b- WW-I
- Albert Benhamou
- 2 hours ago
- 15 min read
CHRONOLOGY OF JEWISH HISTORY
Generation 48: Hebrew years 5640-5760 (1880-2000 CE)
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Introduction
This 48th chronological generation continues with the human disaster caused by World War I which changed the old order and destroyed the multi centennial colonial empires. It brought more violence into the conflicts and saw the making of weapons of mass destruction (aircraft, bombs, gas). At the same time, with the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the project of a national Jewish home was taken shape.
Hebrew Year | CE | Event |
5674 | 1914 | Start of WW-I |
5677 | 1917 | The Russian Revolution |
5678 | 1917 | The Balfour declaration |
5678 | 1917 | The British troops enter Jerusalem |
5678 | 1918 | The Faisal-Weizmann agreement |
5679 | 1919 | The Palestine Arab congress |
5679 | 1919 | The Third Aliyah |
5680 | 1919 | The prophecy of the Holocaust |
5680 | 1920 | The San Remo conference |
5681 | 1921 | Transjordan |
5684 | 1923 | Meir Shapira and the Daf Yomi |
5689 | 1929 | Riots in Palestine |
5690 | 1930 | The White Paper |
5693 | 1933 | The Chazon Ish |
Year 5674 – 1914 CE – The Jews during the First World War
After it ended in 1918, WW-I has been described as the largest butchery of modern times. Yet the world would have to witness worse atrocities done to human kind in the same 20th century, and in the same 48th chronological generation, that started just a few years after the world had experienced the biggest leap in modernity, education, science, and the rest.
The theory of Karl Marx proved to be a failure when his followers assumed that, the war being motivated by rulers' interests in colonialism and world domination, the proletarian masses of all the nations would rather "unite" their voices and refuse to serve: this did not happen. Nationalism proved a stronger vector than Socialism.
As for the Jews, they served their countries as normal citizens. The recent ZO (Zionist Organisation) even declared itself "neutral" in the conflict. Yet, in Germany, Jews were required to sign humiliating declarations of "loyalty". And in Imperial Russia, they were looked upon with suspicion of sympathy towards Germany. On the Eastern front, some 4 million Jews lived in the Pale Settlement at the time. The Tsarist army found it wiser to displace some 600,000 of them to other regions, by fear they may join and ally with the German enemy in case of invasion. In short, the world at war generally did not trust the Jews. As a result, after the war ended, the migrations of European Jews to Palestine were on the increase.
Year 5677 – 1917 CE – The Russian Revolution
Troubles started for the Tsarist regime as early as 1905, showing that the attempts by the Russian authorities to blame the Jews as scapegoats did not work for them. Then Russia suffered a first defeat in their war against Japan in 1904-1905. The start of the Great War in late 1914 gave another blow to the Tsarist regime as masses of people opposed further involvement in the conflict between Western powers. And, as soon as the first months of the war proved a disaster for Russia who was inflicted several defeats and losses, a series of strikes paralysed the country. In March 1917, Tsar Nicolas II abdicated and a provisional government was formed. However, this government was not popular and another revolution led by Vladimir Lenin from the Bolshevik Party toppled the regime in October 1917. This triggered a civil war between the supporters of the Tsar, the White Army, and the Bolsheviks, the Red Army.
The White Army continued its rant against the Jews, hoping to revive popular support in their favour, by blaming the Jews for the Bolshevik revolution. Some 100,000 Jews is estimated to have been killed during the Russian civil war, and 500,000 left homeless. Luckier ones opted to emigrate to Palestine as soon as it became possible. Meanwhile the Red Army abolished the Pale Settlement so Jews were free again to move to Russia.
Another pamphlet was produced by the White Army in 1917, The Jewish Bolshevism, and the conspiracy theory was later used by Nazis to mix Judaism with Communism, thus creating popular fear that the revolution of Russia was created by Jews who will spread it to the rest of Europe.
The real fact is that, out of 10,000 members of the Bolshevik party in 1917, only 364 were Jews (3.6%). But it is true that some of them had prominent roles in the first political bureau, such as Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. Yet, as it happens with many revolutions, a struggle for power ensues and all Jewish members of the initial political bureau were eliminated in the years that followed, especially by the time when Hitler came to power in the 1930's.
Year 5678 – 1917 CE – The Balfour Declaration
While a long stalemate that took place on the European fronts with Germany, Britain and France were both in competition to gain much advantage in the forthcoming collapse of the vast Ottoman Empire. But France was busy defending their territory, and Britain played the most active role in the Middle East, with two main strategies: one to effect an Arab uprising with the promise of creating a vast Arab kingdom with the Hashemite family, and second to enrol Jews from Ottoman Palestine to help a British army, led by General Allenby, to undermine the Ottoman authorities. This was done in exchange for the promise that Britain would support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. (Lord Balfour's declaration to the Zionist Organisation, 2 November 1917)
This declaration proved a huge success for the ZO which only had about 10 years of existence and yet became acknowledged so publicly as a spokesbody for the Jewish people worldwide. It is also remarkable that this turning point, which officially gave to the Jews a right on their own ancestral land, occurred just after a Sabbatical year (November 1917 fell during the Hebrew year 5677, which marks 811 Sabbatical years since Adam) which marked the renewal of the land of Israel.
Year 5678 – 1917 CE – The British troops enter Jerusalem
The following month, on 11 December 1917 (26 Kislev 5678), General Allenby liberated Jerusalem and entered the Holy City. He did so on foot rather than on horseback, as he considered it was not right to enter on a horse the city when Jesus was crucified.
Also remarkably, this event took place during the Jewish festival of Chanukah, because the 11th of December 1917 corresponds to the 26th of Kislev 5678, which is the second day of the eight days festival. Why is is remarkable? Because this festival marked the return of Jewish rule over the Temple after its desecration by foreign hands, the Seleucids (see document C30b, year 164 BCE). Many saw in Allenby a sort of "prophet", marking the start of the Messianic. After all his name in Hebrew is written אלנבי and when we read its syllables left to right it would read נבי-אל which means "prophet of God". No less ! And he entered the Holy City on the day "26" Kislev, where 26 is the numerical value for God (to read about the Jewish symbolism in numbers, click here) ! This is to say that Allenby was guided (or sent) by divine support. The following year, in 1918, when he finally expelled the Turkish troops from the Holy Land at the battle of Megiddo, which is the "Armageddon" of the Christian scriptures, he took the title of "Lord of Armageddon" at the end of his campaign, to mark his final battle in the Holy Land. The Ottoman rule over the Holy City had lasted 400 years, from 1517 to 1917, as Rabbi Judah of Regensburg had predicted in 1217 (see document C42b).
Year 5678 – 1918 CE – The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement
In the prospect of the war to end soon, Chaim Weizmann and Emir Faisal, representing the two main bodies to benefit from British politics in the Middle East, met in June 1918 to discuss the possible borders between the potential future Jewish "homeland" and the Faisal kingdom promised by the British. Weizmann declared that the Jews did not wish to set up their own government but will want to be able to settle agricultural colonies in Palestine, develop the country and make it to prosper compared to the abandoned state it was left in by the Ottomans. Weizmann also declared that the Jewish "homeland" would remain under British control, a step which obviously pleased Britian and did not antagonise Faisal. As a result, and in advance of the peace conference to be opened in Paris, Weizmann and Faisal signed an agreement which served as the basis for a settlement for their part of the region.
Year 5679 – 1919 CE – The Palestine Arab Congress
At the end of the war, and following the steps of the Zionist Congress that was perceived by the Arabs as a decisive influencer in the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs of Palestine formed the Palestine Arab Congress in 1919. Although they gained broad support from the Muslim and Christian population in Palestine, it never won recognition by Britain, who, as a reminder, had promised to the Faysal family an Arab kingdom. In addition, the Palestine Arab Congress had no revendication to become a national entity, but their goal was to merge Palestine into Syria. This obviously didn't arrange the affairs of the winners of WW-I because Palestine was under British control while the control over Syria was being claimed by France in the Paris Peace Conference held in Versailles in January 1919. The two European powers had already held secret talks in May 1916, in the so-called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, where they agreed on the way to divide the Middle East after the war.
The Palestine Arab Congress held meetings about every year from 1919 until 1931 when it excluded Christians from the organisation and turned more Islamic. Several members later formed different political parties with different visions.
Year 5679 – 1919 CE – The Third Aliyah
The third mass emigration to Palestine started soon after the end of WW-I and was mostly from Russian and Polish Jews. Some 40,000 of them made Aliyah from the end of 1919. For the Jews of Russia, it was a way to escape the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. For the Jews of Poland, it was a matter of escaping their deteriorating situation in that country which experienced various attacks as a British mission led by Sir Stuart Samuel in 1919 reported:
Wholesale slaughter of Jews to the number of 348 persons, and numerous cases of flogging, robbery, blackmail, and violent persecution unquestionably took place, and there was little or no remedy at law. In many cases the police, who appear to have been dishonest and undisciplined ruffians, were active in their aggression against the Jews whom they were supposed to protect. [...] At the time when the report was written, however, an intense anti-Jewish press campaign was raging throughout Poland, boycotts of Jews were being preached and practised, and Jews of all classes were subjected to public insult and minor acts of violence at all times and in all places. (The Times, 5 July 1920, article titled "Jews in Poland - British Mission's Report - Cases of murder and ill-treatment.")
The Aliyah however ended in 1931 when British Mandated authorities put a stop to Jewish emigration.
But this Aliyah was restricted by the Zionist Organisation itself, who feared that the infrastructure in Palestine would not be able to absorb more than a certain number of immigrants. As a result, many more Jews from the Pale Settlement and Russia were compelled to rather move to Western Europe (such as Britain and France) and to the USA.
Year 5680 – 1919 CE – The prophecy of the Holocaust?
In an article published by The American Hebrew on 31 October 1919, former Governor of the State of New York, Martin H. Glynn, described the situation of the European Jews in these times:
From across the sea six million men and women call to us for help and eight hundred thousand little children cry for bread. [...] In this catastrophe, when six million human beings are being whirled toward the grave by a cruel and relentless fate, only the most idealistic promptings of human nature should away the heart and move the hand. [...] In this threatened holocaust of human life, forgotten are the niceties of philosophical distinction, forgotten are the differences of historical interpretation. (Martin H. Glynn, "The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!", The American Hebrew, 31 October 1919, page 582)
This article was premonitory...
Year 5680 – 1920 CE – The San-Remo Conference
This post-war conference took place in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920. Its goal was to make decisions concerning the fate of the Middle East following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The main dispute was over Syria which was secretly promised by Britain to Faisal for his Arab kingdom whereas France had different views. This caused a war between France and Faisal's army a few months later and the exile of the later to England after losing to France. Concerning Palestine, the conference approved the Balfour Declaration and thus the region was passed under a British Mandate to affect the creation of a Jewish homeland and an Arab state:
The Mandatory [Great Britain] will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. (San Remo Conference, resolutions of 24 and 25 April 1920 , Hebrew dates 6 and 7 Iyar 5680)
It is worth noting that the same conference mandated France over other parts of the former Ottoman Empire to create regional states, and thus the creation of countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon was derived from the same international conference in San Remo that should have equally led into the creation of two states in Palestine under the British Mandate.
The news of the British Mandate did not please everyone in the region. Jews from two rival political parties, Communist and Socialist, decided each to do a march from Jaffa on 1 May 1921, Labor Day, to demonstrate against the British rule. The marches resulted in a fight between the two groups, and then Arabs joined in with knives, clubs, swords and pistols to kill Jews. This turned into a pogrom in the neighbouring Jewish houses. During the unrest, Yosef Chaim Brenner, a Jewish poet from Russia who immigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1909 and became a pioneer of modern Hebrew literature, was murdered with other tenants of a Jewish hostel where they lodged. The Jaffa riots were probably the first incident of the kind, between Jews and Arabs, during the British Mandate.
Year 5681 – 1921 CE – Transjordan
After accepting the mandate over Palestine, the United Kingdom did something wrong: they cut off a big part of the mandated territory to create a puppet state, Transjordan (meaning the other side of the Jordan river), over a "Palestinian" population with a ruler from the Arabian dynasty. In other words, the creation of Transjordan was a double blow: to the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine because they lost sovereignty over a vast territory (about two-thirds) where they were in majority of the population and where they could have had a state, backed by international treaties, and to the Jews who saw the creation of an Arab state but not of any Jewish state at parallel. This bold British decision impacted the fate of the global solution because, as a result, two populations have since been confronted to the sharing of a much smaller portion of territory (roughly one-third).
Historically the territory of Transjordan had always been part of the "Biblical Lands" with the ancient kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom, and with the settlements of two and a half Israelite tribes. Somehow a Biblical prophet, Zechariah, from the First temple era, hinted that this situation was going to happen:
And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, says the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say: 'It is My people', and they shall say: 'The Lord is my God.' (Zechariah 13:8-9)
One can easily understand these verses as follows: towards the end of days (Zechariah's prophecy is entirely related to the Messianic times), the Promised Land will see two thirds of its territory to be cut off and "die" (in the sense that this extracted land will no longer be part of the Promised Land). The rest of the verses refer to the prophecy of what will God do with His land and His people: try and refine them through the "fire" (conflicts, wars) until they will call His name (praying to God) and He will respond (God will protect His people in His land, against all odds).
Year 5684 – 1923 CE – Meir Shapira introduces the Daf Yomi
Meri Shapira was a Chasidic rabbi from Lublin, Poland. He descended from one of the students of the Baal Shem Tov. His major contribution to religious Jewry was the study of one folio (two pages) of the Talmud each day which, translated into the number of pages of the total Talmud, meant a cycle of studies that lasted seven and a half years. This was called the Daf Yomi (meaning Daily Folio). The first cycle of the Daf Yomi started on Rosh Hashanah 5684 (11 September 1923). Over the years, the programme engaged many more students and today, the end of the cycle of study is always commemorated by events gathering large crowds. In January 2020, at the end of the last 7.5 years cycle, the event gathered 90,000 Orthodox Jews in New Jersey, USA.
Sadly, Meir Shapira died young from typhus, in 1933 at the age of 46. He can be considered as having been one of the most important enablers to religious study in the 20th century.
Year 5689 – 1929 CE – Riots in Palestine
In late August 1929, following a dispute between Jews and Arabs about access to the Western Wall, Arab demonstrations turned into riots, and even caused pogroms on 24 August in Hebron and Safed. It was the first time that Jews of the Holy Land experienced such events normally reserved to Christian Europe. The 1929 Arab riots caused great damage to Jewish properties in many cities, and over 100 Jewish deaths within a few days.
The British authorities used force to stop the Arab rioters, who thus experienced casualties at the hand of the police. An investigation (the Shaw Commission) was led after the quiet was restored. It was proven that the disturbance did start because of the dispute at the Western Wall, caused by Amin al-Husseine, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who arranged to have noisy events just above the Western Wall to disturb a Jewish religious festival. The Mufti also fuelled the riots by claiming the Jews wanted to take over the Temple Mount. The riots then spread to the rest of Palestine when Arabs started a rumour, for example in Hebron, that the Jews were murdering Muslims in Jerusalem. The Shaw Commission proved these allegations unfounded. They were created to cause public unrest and raise the Arabs against their Jewish neighbours.
The major riotds against Palestinian Jews led some intellectuals to assess the case for Zionism. One pacifist priest wrote:
This is the country to which the Jews have come to rebuild their ancient homeland. [...] On all the surface of this Earth there is no home for the Jew save in the mountains and the well-springs of his ancient kingdom. [...] Everywhere else the Jew is in exile. [...] But, Palestine is his. [...] Scratch Palestine anywhere and you’ll find Israel. [...] There is not a spot which is not stamped with the footprint of some ancient [Jewish] tribesman. [...] Not a road, a spring, a mountain, a village, which does not awaken the name of some great [Jewish] king, or echo with the voice of some great [Jewish] prophet. [...] [The Jew] has a higher, nobler motive in Palestine than the economic. [...] This mission is to restore Zion; and Zion is Palestine.” (John Haynes Holmes, Palestine Today and Tomorrow – a Gentile’s Survey of Zionism, McMillan, 1929)
Year 5690 – 1930 CE – The White Paper
Despite the conclusions of the Shaw Commission of 1929, which proved the Arabs to have caused the riots by spreading false rumours, the British authorities decided a year later, in 1930, to impose a restriction to Jewish immigration. The Hope-Simpson report which put forward this recommendation was called the White Paper. So, in essence, the doors to Palestine were closed to Jews from October 1930 at a time when, in Europe, Fascism, unemployment and Anti-semitism were on the rise following an unprecedented financial crisis caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Year 5693 – 1933 CE – The Chazon Ish
The rise to power of Hitler in 1933 signalled the religious establishment in Europe that Judaism would become at risk of survival. A decision was made in Lithuania, in imitation of what the Patriarch Jacob did before his feared encounter with Edom/Esau, to divide the leaders of the Torah so that they could save students with them and re-build schools of Torah study outside Europe. One group went to USA, another to Britain, and the third went to Palestine under the leadership of religious leaders such as Rav Abraham Yeshaya Karelitz (the so-called Chazon Ish which is the name of this main published work). He was followed in 1940 by Rav Elazar Shach, also from Lithuania.
The Chazon Ish is remembered among the religious circles as having argued in 1952 with David Ben Gurion (the first Prime Minister of Israel of a Labour government) against his proposed law to enrol the maidens into military service. His argument was that, if young girls would be taken out of their parents’ home into military or even civil service, they would be exposed to assimilation and a portion of them would be deviated from the Torah. The Chazon Ish argued that young boys taken from the yeshivot into the army could become lost to the Torah and even some yeshivot could close, but losing young girls would be worst because it would mean losing Jewish homes. He also argued that Judaism could survive the lack of yeshivot but not the lack of Judaism in the homes. The law was however passed, due to the personal insistence of Ben Gurion, but was never applied to religious people. It took until the arrival of a Conservative government in Israel, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, to change the law and remove this obligation for the young religious girls, if they did not wish to enrol.
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Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Cheshvan 5786 - November 2025
