Page 56 - HaMizrachi #25 Chanuka 2020 USA

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

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