The messianic aliya that preceded the year 1240 took place in the wake of the collapse of the Crusader kingdom in Palestine and the subsequent improvement of the situation of the Jews there. In 1187 the Muslims reconquered Jerusalem, and the new rulers not only allowed Jews to settle in Jerusalem, which had been forbidden during the Crusader period, but even encouraged them to do so. In 1216, fewer than thirty years before the beginning of the sixth millennium on the Hebrew calendar, the poet Judah al-Harizi visited Jerusalem, and described the change in the status of the Jews:

The Jews understood the Crusader defeat as a fulfillment of the divine promise that the land of Israel would not tolerate foreign conquerors, and that the struggle for the land between Christians and Muslims would ultimately pave the way for the Jews’ “return to Zion.” The new Muslim rulers were seen to be playing their part in the process.

Against this background we can understand a prediction dating from that time, which appeared in a letter sent to the Jews of Egypt, which was discovered among the findings of the Cairo Geniza in the nineteenth century. The letter cites a new “prophecy” according to which a series of messianic events—including the ingathering of the exiles, the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel—would begin some fourteen years before the end of the fifth millennium: “Letters have come from France… [saying] that there has arisen among them a prophet… who has said that in the year 4986 [1226] the great ingathering will begin, and our master Elijah, of blessed memory, will come.… And in the year 4993 [1233] the Messiah, son of David, will come… and kingship will return to the house of Jerusalem.” On the basis of this prophecy, the author decided to move to Palestine and take an active part in the ingathering.²⁵

The belief that the redemption would begin at this time prompted Jews from many lands to move to Palestine.²⁶ By 1211, groups of immigrants were already arriving, including a large number of the leading Tora scholars of France, England, North Africa, and Egypt. This movement, which historians refer to as the “aliya of the three hundred rabbis,” was unusual in both size and composition. It included several key figures of the French school of the Tosafists, such as R. Samson of Schantz, one of the leading scholars in France, whose talmudic commentaries are studied in yeshivot to this day; and R. Jonathan Hacohen of Lunel, one of the outstanding scholars in Provence and a follower of Maimonides.

The messianic impulse behind this movement comes through clearly in an anonymous pamphlet written at the time, which was uncovered by the historian Yisrael Yuval. According to its author, the time for the coming of the Messiah had already arrived, “for the fifth millennium will not end until the King Messiah has come.” The author calls upon the Jews of the diaspora to go to the land of Israel, in order to prepare the Jewish settlement that would greet the Messiah.

The author insists that the messianic era will come as the result of a critical mass of aliya and the creation of an infrastructure of Jewish settlements in the land of Israel. The next stage in the redemption will involve a great awakening, including a mass immigration to the Holy Land—a mighty host of Jews which, under the leadership of the messianic king, will smite the resident gentiles and expel them from the land. By Yuval’s estimate, preparations for this multi-staged messianic movement were meant to begin about thirty years before the end of the fifth millennium, or around 1210—at just about the time of the “aliya of the three hundred rabbis.” As he describes it, this messianic idea was a product of growing messianic expectations, which were amplified in the wake of the Crusades.²⁸ The efforts of Christians to wrest the Holy Land from the Muslims appear to have raised hopes in certain Jewish communities that they might follow in the footsteps of the Crusaders and organize their own sort of crusade, laying the groundwork for the establishment of the messianic kingdom.²⁹ Over time, this led to other daring ideas: In 1256, some Jewish writers were still meditating on radical measures, such as offering sacrifices on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to help bring about the redemption. The traveler R. Estori Hafarhi described this in the early fourteenth century, relating that R. Yehiel of Paris, one of the central figures among the French sages of the previous century, “said that one should go up to Jerusalem—and this was during the seventeenth year of the sixth millennium—and that one should offer sacrifices at this time.”³⁰

We know little about the fate of the three hundred rabbis and the community they established. Some settled in Jerusalem, but when the city again fell into the hands of the Crusaders in 1229, the majority of the immigrants and their families apparently were forced to move to the city of Acre. The bloody battles that took place in the area, and the shifts from Muslim rule to Crusader rule and back again, wore down the Jewish communities of Palestine and were, apparently, a major factor in preventing them from taking root in the country. Jerusalem’s Jewish population withered and was not to flourish again for many years. Finally, after Acre fell into Muslim hands in 1291, the large Jewish community of that city, where the yeshiva of R. Yehiel of Paris had been established, was destroyed.

Evidently, the failure of the “aliya of the three hundred rabbis” and their descendants’ return to Europe left their mark on the Jewish people, who did not make another similar effort for some time.³¹ Nevertheless, this movementstood as a model for future messianic aliyot: Unlike the pilgrimageof isolated individuals that had preceded it, this was an organized effort, spearheaded by a large group of communal leaders and Tora scholars from all over the diaspora. As we will see, this activist model marked the beginning of a new age in the history of the land of Israel, beginning a trend that was to repeat itself with increasing intensity in later centuries.

 

Though we know nothing of messianic efforts to move Jews to the land of Israel around the date 1340 (5100 on the Jewish calendar), there is ample evidence that in the years leading up to the start of the next century, in 1440 (5200), intense messianic ferment culminated in a mass movement of aliya that lasted for decades, involving Jews from North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the German lands. As in similar cases where radical changes in the status of the Jews prompted messianic activity, the awakening that took place around 1440 followed a severe crisis in Jewish-Christian relations throughout Europe. Spain, a country in which the Jews had hoped to prosper, became the scene of waves of violent persecution for nearly fourteen years, beginning in 1391. A similar fate befell the Jews of Central Europe during this period: In 1389 the Jews of Prague suffered a pogrom; in 1391 the Jews were driven out of France; and in 1421 Austria expelled its Jews. During the years 1415-1431, a bloody war took place between a reformist religious group, the Hussites, and the Catholic Church in Bohemia. The Jews found themselves caught in the middle, suffering the depredationsof the Catholic armies while the latter were pursuing their “crusade” against the Hussite heretics.

These grim events nourished hopes for redemption, and messianic calculations of various sorts flourished in the literature of the period.³² One of the most prominent devotees of calculations of this sort was R. Yom-Tov Lipmann Mulhausen, a leading rabbi in Central Europe and the dayan (chief rabbinic judge) of Prague, who was not only a leading halachic authority but also a respected theologian and mystic. His calculations fixed the date of the redemption for the year 1410 (5170), and again, later on, for the year 1430 (5190).³³ Indications of messianic ferment at the time can also be found in the writings of R. Hasdai Crescas, one of the eminent Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages. He recounts a prophetic revelation that took place in 1393, according to which the redemption would take place in the year 1396 (5156, the numerical value of the Hebrew word “Zion”). Crescas goes on to cite a testimony from Jerusalem,also of a prophetic character, which tells of a divine command directing the Muslims to transfer their rule over Jerusalem to the Jews. According to this testimony, a voice emerged from the site of the Temple and addressed the Muslims, calling to them, “Leave my house, and let my sons enter!” and the Muslims were filled with fear. Another story from Jerusalemtold of three elders who appeared before one of the Muslim leaders of the city and said to him: “We are of the children of Israel. Now, go and tell the Ishmaelites to leave this place, for the time of their end has come.”³⁴