Page 363 - להפוך לבולגרים / קונפורטי

x ‫ ׀‬Becoming Bulgarians

regulations to oversee community organization and regulated the
process of electing the Chief Rabbi and Consistory, including their
authority and roles. In April 1900 the Congress of Community
Representatives was summoned to approve the regulations and
elect a Chief Rabbi.

Chapter 4 discusses modern antisemitism and the emergence
of the Zionist movement in Bulgaria. Modern antisemitism
was fostered and disseminated in Central Europe from the mid-
nineteenth century and was presented in the guise of a new science.
Antisemitic literature from France, Germany and Russia began to
appear in Bulgaria in 1882, and the Jewish reaction was apologetic
and ineffective. Each year around Passover, blood libels would
spread, accompanied by rapidly increasing instances of terror
and riots. These riots followed a pattern: rioters would enter the
Jewish neighborhood, fight and pillage, break windows and wreak
havoc. The police would become involved when it was already
too late, and when they could not subdue the rioters, would call in
the military to put matters in order. Two of countless blood libels
made it to court, one in 1891 and another in 1898. The accused
were cleared of all charges after the Consistory brought prominent
Bulgarian politicians and lawyers to defend them.

In the final years of the nineteenth century, while Bulgaria was
in the midst of a grave economic crisis and antisemitism was at
its peak, the first signs of the Zionist movement began to emerge.
The first was the Union for Settlement of the Land of Israel, whose
members established Har-Tuv in the Judean Mountains. That same
year, an odd young man by the name of Joseph Marco Baruch
arrived in Bulgaria and began spreading the idea of forcefully
seizing the Land of Israel from the Ottomans. This book proposes
a different, critical view of the struggle, of the image of Joseph
Marco Baruch as having laid the foundations for modern Zionism
in Bulgaria, and of the contribution of the founders — Ashkenazi
intellectuals from Eastern Europe.