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THE PEOPLE AND THE LAND RELIGIOUS ZIONIST LEADERS

OUR SERIES ON LEADERS WHO HAVE SHAPED RELIGIOUS ZIONISM OVER THE LAST 150 YEARS

Rabbi Yehuda Bibas

n 1789, Yehuda Aryeh Leon Bibas By 1852, one year after his wife passed Dead Sea Scrolls were originally housed
was born in Gibraltar to a Sephardic away, the 63-year-old Rabbi Bibas made in Rabbi Bibas’s library:
Ifamily. One of his maternal ancestors the permanent move to the Land of “The charge that the Hebrew Scrolls
was Chaim ibn Attar (1696–1743) one of Israel and was welcomed by his stu- discovered sometime ago at the Dead
the most prominent rabbis of the Moroc- dents in Jaffa. Sea came from looted synagogues and
can Jewish community and author of the the library of Judah Bibas in the city
influential Or HaChaim. He made his home in Chevron, where of Chevron, which were sacked by the
Bibas’s father came from a line of Rabbis he built his extensive library and was Arabs in the bloody riots of 1929, is
in Tétouan who emigrated to Gibraltar appointed supervisor of the Magen made by Prof. Solomon Zeitlin in the
in 1859 after a pogrom. Bibas studied as Avot Fund, a local organization that current issue of the Jewish Quarterly
a child in Gibraltar and after his father’s helped purchase property and maintain Review, published by Dropsie College.”
death, he moved in with his grandfa- community institutions. “...Prof. Zeitlin, who from the beginning
ther in Livorno, Italy, home to a presti- questioned the antiquity and authentic-
gious and educated Jewish community. ity of the Scrolls, claims that they were
It was there Bibas received his Jewish not in fact discovered in caves near the
education, became a doctor and gained Dead Sea by Bedouins, but were stolen
fluency in English, Italian, Spanish and by Arabs in the Chevron massacres and
Hebrew. He then returned to Gibraltar then hidden for many years before being
where he established himself as head produced as new finds. He points out
of a local yeshiva, attended by students that for the last few years many of the
from England, Italy and North Africa. Torah Scrolls which were stolen from
In 1810 he came to London, England, Chevron were offered for sale by men
where he met with the famous Jewish connected with the Syrian Convent who
activist and philanthropist Sir Moses also bought the Dead Sea Scrolls from
Montefiore. The two later collaborated an Arab.”
on many projects, Montefiore also We will never know whether Rabbi
being a staunch advocate of strengthen- Bibas knew he was in possession of one
ing the Jewish population of the Land of of the world’s most important ancient
Israel. documents. However, the ransacking
In 1831, Bibas was appointed Chief of his precious library and the selling of
Rabbi of Corfu, Greece. Jewish holy texts was not nearly as rep-
By 1839, Bibas was well on his path of rehensible as the razing of the cemetery
activism on behalf of uniting World and desecration of his final resting place
Jewry regarding the Land of Israel. It by the Jordanians who controlled Chev-
could be considered the beginning of After years of advocacy work on behalf ron from 1948–1967.
the Zionist Movement, proto-Zion- of the Jewish homeland, Rabbi Bibas Today, Rabbi Bibas’s legacy is in the phi-
ism. The Land of Israel at the time was died only two months after arriving in losophy of the Jewish right to self-deter-
ruled by the Ottoman Empire, based Israel and was buried in the Old Jewish mination and a return to the ancestral
in Turkey, which was not always hos- Cemetery in Chevron, near the graves homeland based on religious precepts
pitable to the indigenous Jewish com- of many other great Jewish sages. and national aspirations. These con-
munity. Inspired by a series of Serbian His vast collection of rare books was cepts were revolutionary at the time
and Greek revolts against the Ottoman but went on to influence the creation of
Turks, Rabbi Bibas advocated mass donated to local yeshivot. a thriving Jewish State that today is at
repatriation of Jews to Israel. In 1839, According to a brief article from the the forefront of high-tech, environmen-
he embarked upon a tour of European Jewish Telegraphic Agency dated Octo- tal and medical fields, and a haven for
Jewish communities to advocate aliyah. ber 23, 1952, the now world- renowned seekers of spirituality. 

Israel is the only place in the world where Jews can create a society,
48 | and that is a religious task even though Israel is a secular state.
RABBI SACKS