Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s Choice: Jerusalem or the Jewish People?
Shortly before the destruction of the Second Temple, with Jerusalem under siege by the Romans, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai made a very difficult decision, leaving his beloved and holy city behind to its fate. Feeling he could not save it, he decided to try something different in an attempt to keep the Jewish People alive.
Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Abba Sikra. From the film "Legend of Destruction". Paintings: David Polonsky, Michael Faust
At the end of the Second Temple era, with Jerusalem besieged by the Roman army, the wealthy of the city donated all the food in their warehouses to the public. In doing so, they hoped the Jews of the city would have what they needed to survive the siege.
The Jewish zealots had other plans, and they set fire to the stocks of food. Comfort and convenience do not maintain the spark of rebellion, and so they needed to be snuffed out. The rebels were seeking hunger, anger, rage. These are the things that nourish rebellion.
As hunger began to increase, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, a leader of the moderate camp, summoned the leader of the zealots, Abba Sikra, to try and find a solution. The Gemara explains that this happened privately. No-one knew about the meeting but the two of them.
Abba Sikra (or Sikkara) is the name the Jewish sages attached to one of the leaders of the rebellion, who was named Ben Batich (or Batiach). This mysterious person was likely linked to the sect known as the Sicarii. The Gemara tells of his large and exceptionally imposing figure and how his fist was the size of an average man’s head.
The Sicarii were a sect of zealots who fought the Romans and who are primarily famous for their role in the last stand of Jewish rebels at the desert fortress of Masada, where many of them eventually committed suicide.
But Abba Sikra was also a blood relative of Yochanan Ben Zakkai – he was the son of the Rabbi’s sister. Thus did two members of the same family find themselves leading opposite sides in the bitter divide which had torn the Jewish People apart during an existential war. Now they came together in a desperate attempt to salvage what was possible.
“Why do you act in such a manner? Will you kill us by famine?” Ben Zakkai asked Abba Sikra in their secret meeting (Gittin 56a). The rebel leader suddenly didn’t seem so tough. He shrugged his shoulders and replied “What shall I do? If I tell them anything of the kind, they will slay me.”
The rebel leader admitted to his uncle that he had little sway over his soldiers, who were so caught up in the fight that even he couldn’t get them to think of doing otherwise.
With the hope of saving Jerusalem gone, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai understood that he had no choice but to leave the city. Consulting his nephew, the rebel leader, he asked him to think of some solution, some way to get him out. The only way out, Abba Sikra explained, was death.
And this is exactly what Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai did. He disguised himself as a shrouded corpse, asking his two faithful students – Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer – to take him outside the walls, ostensibly to bury him there. Once out, he met with the Roman general and future emperor Vespasian, who was besieging the city. Ben Zakkai asked the general to give him the town of Yavneh and its sages, guaranteeing the survival of a remnant of a glorious nation whose world had been destroyed.
Grave of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai in Tiberias. Photo: Rudi Weissenstein, all rights reserved for the Photohouse, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, National Library of Israel
There, at Yavneh, Yochanan Ben Zakkai created the Jewish world as it would continue to exist for the next two thousand years. He rebuilt Judaism after the destruction. Some say the Jewish People still exists thanks to him.
But some judge him more harshly, and Ben Zakkai’s actions have been the subject of much criticism over the generations. Should he not have fought harder for Jerusalem and the Holy Temple? Maybe he shouldn’t have given up, instead working to convince the Roman general to not destroy his city? For all the criticism, though, there was widespread recognition among the Jewish sages that Judaism was still alive and kicking thanks to him.
A 19th century photo of the entrance to a burial cave in what is today Sanhedria Park, in the heart of the neighborhood of Sanhedria in north Jerusalem. From the Lenkin Family Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel
Generations of Israelis have been raised on the story of Masada, which tells of how the rebels resisted to the last drop of blood, and preferred to take their own lives rather than surrender. But even as these zealots and extremists were taking drastic action which would be mythologized for centuries, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai and his students were sitting in Yavneh and studying. They chose a different option, one which exalts moderation and the ability to find solutions, even in the midst of an existential conflict.
What can we learn from Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai? He teaches us that even if reality is complex and difficult, one can always find a solution, regardless of what side you’re on.
The 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av), the day of the Hebrew calendar on which the Holy Temple was destroyed, is an appropriate day for placing faith in the Jewish People, who survived the destruction and pogroms and always managed to continue marching forward.
A Rare Document: When Haredim Proposed That Religious Zionists Join Their Draft Exemption
A fascinating piece of correspondence found in the archive of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria tells the story of the beginnings of the historic debate between Haredim and religious Zionists regarding enlistment in the IDF.
It was the beginning of 1948, just over a month since the fateful UN vote on partitioning the Holy Land into Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish public in the Land of Israel was busy preparing to establish the state, preparations which were taking place while the early battles of the War of Independence were already underway. It was in this historic moment that Agudat Israel and Poalei Agudat Israel – the two most prominent Haredi political movements – called for enlisting Haredi and religious youth in the national army (the IDF) that was just coming into existence. Except, that is, for women and yeshivah students.
Both within the Haredi community itself and between the Haredim and the religious Zionist community, the main debate revolved around the following issues: Would women be exempt from mandatory enlistment or from any sort of enlistment whatsoever? Would yeshivah students be exempted or be forced to serve part-time? Would yeshivah students be sent into combat? Or perhaps only receive training with service limited to auxiliary forces? And who would be considered a yeshivah student?
A fascinating document from the archive of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria kept at the National Library of Israel provides a glimpse into the beginnings of the historic debate between Haredim and religious Zionists regarding service in the Israeli army – a debate which continues to this day.
The Protagonists
Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria was born in Lodz, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1913. He studied in his youth in yeshivahs in the cities of Shklov and Minsk, in an era when yeshivah studies were considered subversive in the formally atheist Soviet Union. He made Aliyah to the Land of Israel before his 18th birthday with the aid of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, and began studying at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav. At the same time, he was also one of the leaders of the religious Zionist Bnei Akiva youth movement.
In late 1939, Rabbi Neria established the yeshivah in Kfar Haroeh, the first such yeshivah in the Bnei Akiva educational network. In the early years, the sole focus at Kfar Haroeh was on religious studies, just like Haredi yeshivot. Rabbi Neria’s views on education at the yeshivah were famously summed up in his quip: “Hairs will grow on the palm of my hand before secular studies are taught at the yeshivah.” However, by the end of the decade, pressure from parents of students who joined forces with Rabbi Avraham Zuckerman, another member of the yeshivah’s leadership, led to secular studies such as math and English being taught as well.
The yeshivah at Kfar Haroeh was run like a typical and traditional yeshivah, but it was also part of the Bnei Akiva movement and followed its principles and ideals: In addition to religious study, yeshivah students also worked in agriculture. The yeshivah even sent one of its rabbis, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, to the British detention camps in Cyprus, where Jews caught while attempting to immigrate covertly were detained, to establish an extension of the yeshivah there. The yeshivah’s internal atmosphere was much the same: Students enjoyed broad autonomy, which included the right to receive new students. They frequently conducted meetings and assemblies, and the student council was partner to administrative decisions.
Yeshivah students working in gardening at the Bnei Akiva yeshivah at Kfar Haroeh. This item is part of Archive Network Israel, and is made available that to the collaborative efforts of Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel
Rabbi Meir Karelitz was born in 1875 in Kosava in Belarus. He studied in Lithuanian yeshivahs, married the daughter of the elder Rabbi of Vilna and served as a Rabbi in the town of Lechovitch.
He was the brother of the Chazon Ish, had close ties with the leading Haredi rabbis of Europe in the period leading up to WWII, and was among the founders of the Vaad Yeshivot (yeshivah committee) of Poland.
Just before the war broke out, he made Aliyah to the Land of Israel with his entire family, where he continued to be very active in leading the Haredi public and establishing its main institutions – the independent education stream, the Moetzet Gedolei Hatorah (council of leading Torah scholars), and the most important institution for our story – the local Vaad Yeshivot in what would soon be the State of Israel.
“We have come to an agreement with the institutions”
On January 1, 1948, Rabbi Meir Karelitz sent a letter to the head of the yeshivah at Kfar Haroeh, Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria. In his letter, Rabbi Karelitz spoke of a temporary arrangement formed with the Zionist national institutions regarding the draft of yeshivah students, an arrangement which was valid for 1948. At the end of the letter, Rabbi Karelitz suggested Rabbi Neria send him – if he was interested – a list of his yeshivah students, so that they could be included among those exempted from the draft.
Rabbi Meir Karelitz
Rabbi Meir Karelitz
7 Shevat 5708
My friend the Rabbi R. M.Tz. Neria, may he live a good long life, amen
[…] I wish to inform [you] that we have come to an agreement with the institutions, regarding the draft of the yeshivah students according to the following formula: The yeshivah students appearing in the lists approved by the three leaders of the yeshivot, are exempt from service in the army (in full or partial drafts).
b. The management of the yeshivot must provide capable students with training in self-defense, according to the orders and instructions of the high command.
c. This arrangement will be considered a temporary arrangement for the [Hebrew] year of 5708 and will come for renewed discussion at the beginning of the year of 5709. It may not be cancelled but by a new agreement.
At the assembly of the yeshivot leaders last Thursday it was decided: A yeshivah student is anyone that is a regular student at the yeshivah and whose Torah is his craft, as it has always been in the yeshivot, and who studies and observes all the orders of the yeshivah.
The leaders of the yeshivot from Petah Tikvah, Ponevezh and Slonim were chosen to the committee of the three yeshivot leaders. The yeshivot must provide notification if any student leaves the yeshivot – to the aforementioned committee of yeshivot leaders. If the management of Yeshivat Kfar Haroeh has in mind to join the aforementioned, may forgive me … and immediately send a list of students of draft age to that committee to the address: Tel Aviv, Montefiore 39, Poalei Agudat Israel, for … the committee.
“We are interested in including them in the campaigns of the armies of Israel”
In many cases, archives only contain the letters received by the owner of the archive and not their own response, but in this case Rabbi Neria wrote the draft of his response on the back of the original letter, preserving it for posterity.
In his response, Rabbi Neria rejected Rabbi Karelitz’s proposal politely but firmly. Rabbi Neria did agree that yeshivah students needed to be exempt from a full draft, but when it came to part-time drafts, his view was the opposite:
For
The Gaon Muvhak [the outstanding genius]
My teacher and mentor Meir Karelitz, may he live a good long life, amen
Blessings and greetings to you,
[…] forgive me for the lateness of my response to his letter. Illness and distractions delayed me until now.
As to the actual matter, while we indeed agree that yeshivah students should be exempted from a complete draft, regarding a partial draft it seems that we ourselves should to be interested in including them. Both for internal spiritual reasons and also for the sake of raising the honor of Torah and sanctifying the name of Heaven in public.
Procuring a list of our students at draft age is therefore unnecessary since as noted we are interested in including them in the campaigns of the armies of Israel, and in their war [against] the hand of an enemy poised against them.
Rabbi Neria’s archive contains no sign of any continued correspondence between the two, and we don’t know if they continued to discuss the draft issue. We do, however, know that with the escalation of the War of Independence, many members of the religious Zionist community enlisted in the army – some in separate religious units and others in regular IDF units.
Rabbi Neria’s yeshivah at Kfar Haroeh sent most of its graduates to serve in the army. Rabbi Neria accompanied them and supported them, even writing the anthem of the 7th Brigade in which the students served.
76 years have passed since that correspondence, but the worldviews reflected therein have hardly changed.
Things You Never Knew About the Printed Bible
When was the first Jewish Bible printed? How did the annotated Bible we are familiar with today first come about? What competition took Bible publishers by storm in the 19th century? How does one handle a Bible that is over a foot and a half tall? Here's a deep dive into the history behind the printed Bible.
Kehilot Moshe, Amsterdam, 1724. On display in the permanent exhibition of the National Library of Israel – "A Treasury of Words"
We’ll begin with an unsurprising fact: The first book ever printed was a Latin version of the Bible, including the New Testament. It was printed in Germany around the year 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. Somewhat more surprising is the fact that when Jews first began printing books, the Bible was not their first choice. Jewish printers started out by investing their time and money in printing Bible commentaries by Rashi and Nachmanides (Ramban), the Arba’ah Turim collection of Halachic rulings, and other books.
One possible explanation relates to the diacritics of the text. Diacritics (niqqud) in the Hebrew Bible are extremely important. Indeed, many biblical manuscripts contained these small glyphs which indicate how Hebrew letters and vowels are to be vocalized. Printing these diacritic symbols must have been a challenge when the printing industry was just starting out, and what’s more, manuscripts of the Bible were relatively common, so Jewish printers may have simply preferred to print other texts. Two decades later, the Book of Psalms became the first book of the Bible to be printed by Jewish printers, along with commentary by Rabbi David Kimchi (The Radak), which was published in Bologna in 1477. In this book, each verse appears followed by the commentary for that verse, unlike the more commonly used method of printing two blocks of text next to each other, one being the source and the other the commentary. The early sections of the book contain diacritics, but the printers soon stopped printing the symbols after a few sections, as it proved too complicated a challenge.
The Radak’s commentary on the Book of Psalms, the first of the Bible’s books to be printed by Jewish printers, Bologna, 1477
A complete Hebrew Bible containing diacritics was only printed 11 years later, in 1488, by the Soncino family printing house in the Northern Italian city of Soncino. Over the following 30 years, about 60 books of the Pentateuch and Bible were printed, most of them only partial versions.
A version of the Pentateuch was printed, with the Targum Onkelos (a famous Jewish Aramaic translation) and commentary by Rashi, by the famous printer Daniel Bomberg in Venice, apparently in 1511. The original cover had of course stated the year of publication, but this page was lost over time. So how do we (ostensibly) know the year of publication? A copy of this edition was sent to the National Library of Israel, and its cover page states the year 1511 alongside the coat of arms of King Henry IV of France. This page was not the original but was prepared for the King, who ruled France from 1589 to 1610. Whoever printed it believed that the original year of publication was 1511.
The Pentateuch, i.e. the five books of the Torah, Venice, approx. 1511. From the private collection of King Henry IV of France (according to the symbol in the center of the page)
In 1515, Bomberg received a license to print a complete Hebrew Bible. In 1517, Bomberg and his partner Felix Pratensis, a Jew who converted to Christianity, printed a complete Bible in two almost identical editions. One was intended for Jewish readers, and the other included a dedication to the Pope and was intended for Christian use. For the first time since the invention of the printing press, a complete Hebrew Bible was published, alongside an Aramaic translation, and at least one commentary for each book. Rashi’s commentary, for example, accompanied the books of the Torah and the Radak’s commentary appeared in Prophets. Pratensis was meticulous about comparing old biblical manuscripts to ensure that he was printing an accurate Bible. The Hebrew title that appears on the cover of the book, similar to many manuscripts before it, reads Four and Twenty, named for the 24 books of the Bible. Pratensis’ Bible included two innovations that are used to this day: the division of the text into chapters (based on a Christian division), and the division of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles into two parts each.
Four and Twenty, the complete Hebrew Bible (in four volumes), Venice 1517
Seven years later, in 1524, Bomberg was working on a new edition that he called Sha’ar HaShem HaChadash (“The New Gate of the Lord”). This time, he recruited an editor named Jacob Ben Hayyim Ibn Adonijah, a learned Jew who came to Venice from Tunisia. Ben Hayyim strove to print a more accurate edition than that of Pratensis. To accomplish that goal, he mainly based his work on Middle Eastern Jewish manuscripts, which were considered more accurate. One of the most important aspects for Ben Hayyim was the addition of the Masoretic text, a set of instructions and rules for writing the biblical text according to the tradition passed down from generation to generation. The purpose of the Masora is to maintain accuracy and uniformity for all Torah books in the world. This is reflected in its meticulousness concerning diacritics, cantillation, words that are pronounced differently than they are spelled, special use of smaller or larger letters, etc. Ben Hayyim edited this new Bible according to the instructions of the Masora, printing the rules of the Masora alongside the text, while also including Ibn Ezra’s commentary for some of the sections. He was able to convince Bomberg that printing this version was worthwhile, in large part due to the inclusion of the Masoretic text, which was a key feature of the edition. The Masora is of great value to Jewish Kabbalah, and this interested Bomberg as well as other Christian scholars at the time.
Sha’ar HaShem HaChadash (“The New Gate of the Lord”), Venice, 1524
In the first of the four volumes of “The New Gate of the Lord”, Ben Hayyim wrote a long introduction explaining the importance of the Masora, including the different opinions and the differences between the pronounced and written words. His name is only mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, in the first edition, which was published in 1524.
Ben Hayyim later converted to Christianity, and in subsequent editions, instead of his name he simply wrote “the copyist”. The introduction is important for understanding the Masora, so it was also copied and printed separately several times. It was even translated into English in 1865 and again in 1867 by the Bible scholar Christian David Ginsburg. The translated copy that is kept at the National Library contains a dedication by Ginsburg to the German theologian and scholar Professor Konstantin Schlottmann. For the purpose of this article, we will simply note during the last quarter of the 19th century, Ginsburg and Schlottman were involved in an episode that gained international notoriety when they clashed with Moshe Shapira – a Jewish antiquities dealer in Jerusalem who converted to Christianity and was exposed as an international forger of biblical manuscripts that he claimed to have found. But that’s a story for another article. In any case, the English-translated copy of “The New Gate of the Lord”, from Schlottman’s collection eventually ended up in the hands of the Chief Sephardic Rabbi in London, Dr. Moses Gaster, a scholar of languages and folklore. In the 1950s, the National Library acquired some of Gaster’s books, including this copy.
English translation of Jacob Ben Hayyim’s introduction, London, 1867
Back to the 16th century: In a manner similar to the format he used when printing the Talmud, Bomberg designed the pages of his printed Bible so that a selection of commentaries would appear alongside each portion of the biblical text. This format proved to be very successful and popular and remains common to this day (mainly in Prophets and Writings).
There is no major difference between Bomberg’s Venice print from 1524 and the book I used to study for my high school matriculation exams. Although different commentaries were added, they generally appear at the end of the book, and the general appearance is still quite similar.
The Book of Joshua from an edition printed in the 1990s next to a similar book printed by Bomberg in 1524
But that is not where the evolution of the printed Bible ends. In 1724, a Bible with multiple commentaries was published in Amsterdam, which was a major center for Jewish printing at the time. It was called Kehilot Moshe, named after the publisher Rabbi Moshe Frankfurter, who printed many books in Amsterdam. This Bible, which was also published in four volumes, has no less than eight commentaries printed around the text, including Rashi, the Ralbag, Sforno, and the Chizkuni. Some editions even included small colored illustrations. The title written across the cover is Mikra Gedola (“The Large Reading”), alluding to the book’s importance and size. Some argue that “large” refers to the physical size of the books, which are in fact over a foot and a half in length.
Beginning of the Book of Exodus in the Kehilot Moshe Bible, Amsterdam, 1724
The next milestone event occurred in the city of Lviv, or Lemberg as the Jews called it. In 1808, another large edition featuring many commentaries was published in the city. This publication only included Prophets and some books from Writings, leaving out the five books of the Torah – the Pentateuch. This Bible was entitled Mikraot Gedolot (“the Great Readings”) – a name that has taken root and is commonly used nowadays to refer to Bible or Pentateuch editions which have many commentaries attached to the text or printed at the end.
The first time the phrase Mikraot Gedolot was used to refer to a Bible printed with commentaries. Lemberg, 1808.
Throughout the 19th century, Mikraot Gedolot books gained momentum, and more and more editions were printed. Publishers at the time boasted about how many commentators they could cram into their books in what became a sort of open competition, as follows:
Mikaraot Gedolot books are still staples of the Jewish bookshelf. Nowadays, there are many new, more accurate editions, featuring additional commentaries and high-quality printing.
And to think, it all started 500 years ago in Daniel Bomberg’s printing house in Venice.
Keepers of Jewish Treasures: Meet the Participants of the International Judaica Curators Conference
Some 50 men and women charged with preserving the cultural treasures of the Jewish People came from all over the world to attend a professional conference which now took on a different, deeper, and more urgent significance. “Here, we felt a little less alone” was something we heard from everyone we spoke to. Here’s a peek behind the scenes into the world of those who seek to protect the cultural heritage for the Jewish People.
Participants at the Fifth International Judaica Curators Conference. Photo: Aviad Waizman
They came from Europe, North Africa, Latin America, and from the United States, where an unprecedented wave of antisemitism is currently being witnessed. They work at prestigious European museums, the Library of Congress, Ivy League universities, and in one case, in the service of the King of Morocco. Many of them had already been to the National Library of Israel during previous iterations of the International Judaica Curators Conference (this year’s conference being the fifth). But this time, with hatred flooding the streets and campuses where many of them work, and with the treasures they guard facing real threats around the world, what should have been a routine get together turned into something a little different.
Photo: Aviad Waizman
The international conference, hosted last month by the National Library of Israel and its Gesher L’Europa program (an initiative of the NLI and the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe), became a safe place – a gathering bringing together different people from around the world, all with a shared purpose – to protect and defend Jewish cultural treasures. And what a mission that is, especially this year. We stopped them in the hallways, in the courtyard, or in the lecture halls. We even interrupted their lunch. The goal: to hear about their own personal experience in coming here. What’s it like to come to Israel in times like these? Why is this conference so important? We ended up amazed by the answers of these wonderful and special people and by what they had to tell us.
Avigaille Bacon, Head of Public Services and Outreach, the Klau Library, Cincinnati, OH – “I hope they still read our posts.”
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion is formally a college for Jewish studies, but it effectively serves as a center of knowledge, training, and research on various Jewish topics. The Institute has centers and campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem.
The Klau Library on HUC’s Cincinnati campus, where Avigaille Bacon serves as Head of Public Services and Outreach, has the second largest collection of Hebraic literature in the world, behind only the National Library of Israel, with over 700,000 printed works alongside a wide range of antique manuscripts. The library not only possesses and preserves this enormous collection but also works to attract scholars, readers, and the general public to come be exposed to the cultural and historical wealth it has to offer.
An inseparable part of Avigaille’s work relates to this effort to attract the broader public to come view the items in their enormous collection. They do so via posts on social media, lectures, and events related to the collection’s materials.
While their audience is predominantly Jewish, they also deliberately appeal to non-Jewish audiences, including Muslims.
Since October 7, it is impossible to ignore the change in the public mood, even though Bacon feels that people around her and those who interact with her have expressed empathy regarding the situation. That being said, she has noticed that there has been much less involvement on the part of the Klau Library’s Muslim social media followers since October.
“I hope that they’re still reading our posts,” Bacon said, “especially anything that we have that’s related to Israel. We try and remind everybody that even though Israel is only 76 years old as a state, the Jewish People have been around in the Land of Israel or Palestine for over three thousand years.”
“Do you feel you need to engage in active hasbarah now?” we ask, to which we receive an immediate and unequivocal – “Oh absolutely!”
“Maybe that’s just my personal feeling, but I think that it reminds everybody how important this land is to all of us, and that whatever uncomfortable things you hear from the outside world – even if you know the content already about how important the Jewish land is to the Jewish People – to be in a kind of “safe space” as they say, and to say that we’re all still proud of our heritage and our belonging here, I think is helpful for people… Especially now, it feels very important, to feel that we’re not alone… that we’re a part of something bigger, [that] the Jews have also existed in diaspora for 3000 years and that we have an important role to play in Jewish history.”
This isn’t the first time Bacon has visited the new NLI, an experience she describes as almost “spiritual”:
“When I first came here in February, the contrast between how empty the airports were, and how empty Jaffa was and the general tourist areas – and [walking] into the National Library of Israel – and it is packed with people! There are people in the reading room, there’s people on tours and it just had this absolutely vibrant culture that made me realize – there are places where people are scared to be, there are places where it’s uncomfortable to be, but the National Library of Israel is not one of those places. It’s kind of drawing everyone together for moving the Jewish narrative forward.”
Paul Dahan, Director of the Centre de la Culture Judéo-Marocaine (“CCJM”) in Brussels: “To be a Jew here is not like being a Jew in Brussels.”
Judging from the fluent Hebrew Paul Dahan uses when speaking with us, one could easily receive the impression he was born in Israel. The truth is he only lived in Israel for a few years and decades have passed since then.
Dahan was born in Morocco, made Aliyah immediately after the Six-Day War, worked on a kibbutz and then enlisted in the IDF. But after finishing his army service, he travelled to Belgium, where he lives to this day, to study Egyptology and archaeology (he ended up studying psychology, but that’s another story).
None of his time spent globetrotting made him forget his roots. Shortly before getting married, he returned to Morocco, the land of his birth, to study his own family history and culture.
“I myself was born in Fez, but my parents came from Tafilalt [a district at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert – M.Z.], so I went to see the place. In that whole area, people remained… as they were, for hundreds of years. When I arrived, I could actually see what life looked like back then.”
In the Tafilalt market, he found a bracelet, a common wedding gift among local Jews, and after haggling at length over the price, he purchased it. The seller refused to believe he was from Fez, saying: “You’re from here. Within a radius of a few kilometers. No-one else in the world haggles like that.” He discovered that he wasn’t just “Paul” – he was his parents’ son, and he had roots in a place he’d never been before.
“It was the first thing I bought, and then I continued to collect things. I felt that this was my way, I’d started at precisely that time to study psychology and psychoanalysis, and I understood the deep meaning of the concept of identity, of the roots I had. I bought an enormous number of books and manuscripts and since then, for more than forty years, I’ve bought something almost every day.”
Today, Dahan’s collection, which is kept at the Moroccan Jewish Museum in Brussels, is one of the most impressive such collections around: tens of thousands of books and manuscripts in a number of languages, as well as documents, inscriptions, letters, and halachic rulings by important rabbis, thousands of photographs and other items – all documenting and telling the story of one of the most ancient and illustrious Jewish communities in the world.
“What’s the atmosphere like in Brussels now?” we ask. He shrugs his shoulders.
“Listen, to be a Jew here [in Israel] is not like being a Jew in Brussels. Where I live, everyone knows I’m a Jew, I shout it from the mountaintops, even without a kippa or a necklace. And I feel safe. Precisely those who fear, those who don’t want [to go out and declare they are Jews], they see far more antisemitism. I move around with complete confidence. I had it even back in Morocco, and then when I came here to Israel, there was something Israeli I learned on the kibbutz – you mustn’t be fearful. You mustn’t.”
Since he is familiar with life in Israel, in Europe, and in the Arab world, he has a lot to say about the various types of antisemitism and the role the State of Israel has to play in this respect. He feels that European antisemitism is much more threatening.
“Every rock that’s thrown at someone’s head,” he says, “raises the horrifying fear in that same head that the Holocaust is about to return.”
Antisemitism is often connected to local history and mentality and the collective story a nation tells itself.
“In psychoanalysis,” Paul explains, “when someone speaks of others – our wife, our children, a thief who has stolen our property – that person is effectively speaking of themselves. Antisemites are also like that: When they speak of the Israeli occupation in France, they speak of themselves in Algeria.”
Back in his native Morocco, a Jewish museum was recently established on the orders of the King himself. Paul Dahan was asked to take responsibility for the museum, whose opening was delayed due to October 7 and subsequent events.
It turns out the Moroccan ruling dynasty attaches great importance to preserving the country’s Jewish heritage and demonstrating that it is also part of Morocco’s heritage.
“For me, to travel all over the world and then come back to the city where I was born and set up a Jewish museum, it’s really… hard to put into words,” he ended. He isn’t worried about the delay in opening the museum: “Just a bit more. We’re waiting just a bit longer and then we’ll open.”
Shai Abend, responsible for founding the Jewish Museum in Montevideo, Uruguay: “it’s also important that non-Jews come to us to learn about Judaism and what it generally means to be a Jew.”
Shai Abend, an Israeli responsible among other things for founding the Jewish Museum in Montevideo, Uruguay, made it to the conference from all the way over there, and never had any doubts it was worth the trouble.
“First of all, it was important for us to come to Israel, especially during this period. And to see this [NLI] building is an experience in itself, but especially for those of us from Uruguay – we are still in the process of learning (unlike older institutions), so we absorb a lot, every moment here. We take everything we can learn from the experiences of others, thinking together about possible collaborations.
Moreover, the truth is we’ve already started the process of collaborating with the National Library, so to be here physically and meet the people we’re already working with face to face – it’s an amazing opportunity.”
At the conference, he met a colleague from Mexico for the first time, as well as an Argentinian colleague who he had met before. It turns out that in some cases, it’s best to travel to Israel to meet your neighbors!
“We’ve strengthened the Latin American connection in recent times,” he noted. “We’ve met people like us, who do very similar work to what we do. It will allow us to promote shared work.”
While the significance of the work they do was always clear to him, it has now become crucially important in his eyes:
“The (Jewish) community in Uruguay is relatively small: 12-16,000 Jews. It’s a warm, active, and very Zionist community. After October 7, we’re in a pretty sensitive situation. Most members of the community define themselves as Zionists and very clearly identify with Israel. Almost all of them have relatives in Israel, including soldiers, evacuees, or casualties from the kibbutzim. Shani Goren, one of the hostages that was released, is of Uruguayan origin. They know her. So, on the one hand, it’s very difficult to function day-to-day, while antisemitism and anti-Zionism continue to rise in the background, but on the other hand, it arouses the need to connect to the community. The museum can be an anchor for this. At the same time, it’s also important that non-Jews come to us to learn about Judaism and what it generally means to be a Jew. We are trying to create and strengthen this connection between the Jewish community and the general public in Uruguay, despite and because of the situation.”
The Montevideo community is a bastion of “old fashioned” Zionism, with very active and strong youth movements, in which almost eighty percent of children and youth take part. Young members come to Israel every year via all sorts of programs, and many even make Aliyah afterwards. They hear Hebrew at home, as many community members attach importance to maintaining the connection in their daily lives. They even know Israeli folk dances. It’s part of the culture.
Photo: Aviad Waizman
We were also able to speak to some of the “locals” at the conference – specifically, Dr. Chaim Neria, the curator of the National Library of Israel’s own Judaica Collection and the man responsible for the conference itself.
“The curators of Judaica collections around the world are a layer of Jewish leadership responsible for the treasures of the past with a view to the future,” he says. “The encounter here strengthens the curators’ sense of community and the importance of their role in preserving, documenting, and making our spiritual treasures accessible. It warms the heart and gives us strength to see our colleagues from all over the world coming to the National Library in Jerusalem in these difficult times, seeing them take an active role in the various discussions and advancing collaborations and projects in the field of Jewish curation.”
Before the conference ends, everyone is given a guided tour of the new National Library building.
“The treasures that I’ve seen so far in the Library,” laughs Abigaille Bacon while looking entirely serious, “it’s the kind of thing that makes you want to move in and never leave the collection.”
May it be that next year, we can focus entirely on questions about conservation techniques, collection policies and other aspects of curation. In the meantime, these wonderful professionals will remain committed to maintaining and curating these Judaica collections in Israel and around the world, to ensure that they are made accessible to all of us and to future generations as well.
