My neighbor sat shiva during the week before Passover. Through her late mother’s family, she is a 7th-generation Jerusalemite, now residing in Shiloh. She is now a grandmother and so the generations extend. Her roots in the Land of Israel go back some 140 years, as her family was from the group known as the “students of the Gra,” the Gaon Eliyahu of Vilna.
Additionally, I know someone else whose roots go back to the Hassidim who came before, in the last third of the 18th century, in the footsteps of the 300 or so who arrived in 1777. As it happens, I was also acquainted with a descendant of the Jews who arrived in Hebron after the Spanish expulsion of 1492.
Jews are not foreign to the Land of Israel, nor are they colonialists. In fact, Jews have always been here, even if in small numbers at times. The attempts to return and resettle the country were constant and continuous. But how well-known is this aspect of the continuum of Jewish presence in the Jewish homeland?
Judging by results, whether in Israeli schools or throughout the Jewish Diaspora, the educational content relating to Zionism would appear to be quite unsuccessful in instructing and inculcating the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel throughout the centuries – and its centrality to Judaism and Jewish culture, literature, and art.
How did the trend of indifference take root?
Why, and how, did this trend of indifference, outright ignorance, or assigning the topics a lower grade of interest take root?
One researcher, Yosef Charvit, suggested that Zionist historiography has sought “to ensure that the mighty process of return to the Jewish homeland is attributed exclusively to Zionism of the modern era,” by which he means the First Aliyah of the 1880s.
Moreover, he accuses historiographers of attempting “to ‘normalize’ history so that anything hinting at redemption is summarily excised.” Seemingly frightened by messianism, the history of the Jewish settlement of Eretz Israel over the many centuries has, in essence, been censored or, at best, relegated to a minor element. It is therefore disregarded, at best, in schools in Israel and in the Diaspora.
Whether that particular theory is true, there is certainly a woeful lack of educational content on the subject of the continuum of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel between 135 CE to the First Aliyah of 1882. In fact, Charvit focuses on what he considers a slight to the Sephardi communities in that “conscious or otherwise... Zionist historiography... detaches the sixteenth from the nineteenth” centuries.
In Hebrew, there are the Yoram Tzafrir’s two volumes: From the destruction of the Second Temple until the Muslim conquest. Michael Ish-Shalom’s In the Shadow of Alien Rule deals with the period from the Roman-Byzantine rule until the Ottoman conquest. A 126-page booklet was published by Dan Bahat in 1976, Twenty Centuries of Jewish Life in the Holy Land: The Forgotten Generations and is good, if compact. The problem, however, begins with readily available, serious English-language resources.
Moshe Gil’s A History of Palestine, 634-1099, presents too short a timespan. The recent two volumes by Rivka Shpak Lissak, When and How the Arabs and Muslims Immigrated to the Land of Israel focus more on the Jewish population and demography and, perforce, are limited. On the Foreign Ministry website, I found 139 words devoted to the “continuous presence in the Land of Israel for nearly 4,000 years” but it ends in 636 CE.
The two-volume 800-plus page Phantom Nation concentrates on the Arab population of the region of historic Palestine and marks 1870 as the start of Zionist settlement activities. Harold J. Margolis published Jewish Continuous Presence in the Land of Israel but it appears to be more of a travelogue. A very short treatment of some 1,000 words can be found online, issued by Dr. Yechiel Shabiy, a researcher at the BESA Center (Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies).
In short, all these books and articles are rather inadequate.
I returned to this subject after an X post of mine received a response to the effect that not only can Zionists not claim rights over what happened 3,000 years ago but that, in any case, the “Palestinians” preceded the Jews in this land. In addition, Jews only began settling in the late 19th century. And we came from Europe.
This is standard fare pro-Palestinian propaganda. But can the average Israeli or Jewish high school student disprove that framing? Are they able to confront the incessant undermining of the Zionist narrative and the reality of Jewish indigenousness in and ongoing return to its historical homeland?
For example, not only were there dozens of Jewish communities throughout the Golan in the 3rd and 4th centuries but in 1885, 35 Jewish families moved to Ramtiniyeh, north-east of today’s Katzrin, after purchasing 15,000 dunams. In 1888, another 3,690 dunams were purchased at Bir A-Shagum, near today’s Givat Yoav.
Centuries before that, Jews resided in Galilee, Samaria, and the South Hebron Hills. There were communities in Baram, Gush Halav, Eshtemoa, Halhoul, Arraba, and Sakhnin.
A RESULT of the Arab conquest was the altering of the Hebrew place names of existing Jewish towns. Shfaram became Shfa’amr, Ganim became Jenin, Ashdod became Isdud, and so forth. There was an ethnic cleansing in Mandate Palestine but it was perpetrated by Arabs against Jews in Hebron, Gaza, Tulkarem, Nablus, and Jerusalem.
All of the above, and so much more, indicates a very simple truth: Jews continuously resided in Eretz Yisrael despite the difficulties in arriving, staying, and living under foreign rule. Jews abroad sent money to support Jews in the Land of Israel. They clung to the land. They viewed it as a holy land in which to fulfill religious commandments. And even if they did not live in the country, they sought all possible connections with it, even if just to be buried in its soil.
Jews and the Land of Israel are inseparable.
Much of this history has been neglected and is not being taught. That needs to be changed. Our future depends on it.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and opinion commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.