Testimonies of this type, like the widespread messianic calculations of that period, reflect a strong messianic sentiment. Alongside the reports of miraculous events, they also contain a clear political element: While some testimonies portrayed Muslim rule as the essential obstacle to the redemption, others cited it as the factor that would permit the Jews to return to their own soil, and even to rebuild the Temple under the aegis of the Mameluke regimes. Crescas himself, for instance, raised this possibility as early as 1406: “In the final analysis… perhaps the king of Egypt who now rules in the land of Israel would allow the Jews in the extremities of his kingdom to go up and build the Temple, on condition that they dwell under his rule….”³⁵ In light of this expectation, it is not surprising that Jews of the time portrayed the Ottomans’ capture of Constantinople, the capital of eastern Christianity, which took place in 1453, as heralding the redemption. This change in the world order—Christianity’s defeat at the hands of Islam—gave the Jews reason to hope for the victory of the true religion, Judaism, over these two leading competitors.

At about the same time, persistent rumors that the ten lost Israelite tribes had been discovered—an event that tradition considered a clear sign of the redemption—added fuel to the messianic fire. These rumors, which spread in 1404 and again in 1430, were precipitated by the new geographical discoveries that resulted from the voyages of explorers to China and India. Various interpretations of these discoveries captured the Jews’ imagination. For example, rumors that the lost kingdom of the ten tribes had been discovered somewhere in distant Asia, on the Indian subcontinent,in a place where the nations of the world did not rule, made a powerful impression, and led to speculation about the possibility of reuniting all the world’s Jews.³⁶

But the most explicit expression of messianic awakening during this period was a mass movement of aliya embracing thousands of Jews from Spain, Italy, North Africa, and Egypt. We find evidence of this movement in a contemporary edition of an anonymous historical text that had first appeared two centuries earlier, in 1240, and was recopied in Rome in 1429, discussing the “aliya of the three hundred rabbis.”³⁷ After quoting the original text, the copyist added an aside concerning the events of his day: “And now many people have awakened, and have decided to go to the land of Israel, and many think that we are close to the coming of the redeemer, seeing that the nations of the world weigh heavily upon Israel.”³⁸

In this movement, the Jews of Spain, among whom messianic visions and calculations were particularly widespread, played a central role.³⁹ The historian Binyamin Ze’ev Kedar has discovered an account of a Jewish voyage from Spain to the port of Jaffa in the early fifteenth century: “Old and young, women and youths and infants, they went up to Jerusalem and there built [houses]….” Kedar goes on to quote a contemporary witness, the learned Christian Thomas Gascoigne: “The Jews who are gathered there from various lands believe that they shall in the future be victorious over the Saracens, the pagans, and the Christians. And after the golden Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord are built, they say that their messiah, that is, the Antichrist, will come to Jerusalem to his holy sanctuary.”⁴⁰

We can also judge the scope of the Spanish movement of Jews to Palestinefrom the opposition that it elicited within some Spanish Jew­ish communities, whose leaders occasionally took exception to what was viewed as a violation of the “three oaths.” Such opposition appears, for example, in a letter that the Jews of Saragossa wrote to the community of Castile, in which they complain about the exodus of a large number of Jews from Spain to Palestine: “For God has created a new thing in the land: People of little quality and large numbers have set out, their children and families with them, infants and women, saying: Let us go to the land, unto its length and breadth, until we come to the mountain of the house of the Eternal, to the house of the God of Jacob.…”⁴¹ The authors call for bringing the movement to an immediate end, out of a fear that all of Jewry will suffer because of it: “We have come to beseech you, distinguished Tora scholars, that you take all possible measures to turn back all those who are going in this way, and let each man return to his tent in peace, and let them not hasten the end.”⁴² It is important to note in this regard that the Saragossans’ denigration of the quality of the olim did not at all correspond to the reality. Joseph Hacker, who has studied the immigration from Spain, has demonstrated that it included not only “people of little quality” but also serious scholars who engaged in halachic discussion about aliya, and wrote passionate letters on the subject. Several of them went on to become leaders of the Jewish community of Jerusalem.⁴³

Another large diaspora community, that of Italy, also experienced a messianic awakening at the time, as we learn from the case of R. Elijah of Ferrara, a leading rabbi who arrived in Palestine in 1435 and left an account of his journey. R. Elijah appears to have taken this trip in order to verify rumors that had reached Italy in 1419 about the discovery of the ten lost tribes.⁴⁴ His journey prompted many other Jews from the Italian communities to leave for Palestine to take part in the imminent redemption. The movement was substantial enough that the Italian authorities took action to stem it. In 1428, a papal order was issued prohibiting sea captains from carrying Jews to Palestine. Soon afterward, the Venetian government forbade the use of their city’s port for this purpose, while Sicily issued a similar prohibition in 1455.⁴⁵

The Vatican’s concern about the growing strength of the Jewish settlement in Palestine was not without grounds. In 1427, for instance, the Jews of Jerusalem attempted to wrest control of the Tomb of David on Mount Zion from the members of the Franciscan order who held it, and to acquire ownership of the site from the Muslim authorities. As a result of the subsequent dispute, the Franciscans were removed from the holy site, but the Jews of Jerusalem also lost their hold on it. The audacity of Jerusalem’s Jews, which elicited the anger of the Church against them, was certainly fueled by the messianic euphoria which had come to characterize Jewish life at the time. The Jews were energized not only in their bid for Mount Zion, but also in their success in expanding the area of their residence into a new quarter of the city: The “Street of the Jews’ Synagogue,” today known as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Jews purchased extensive property in this area, as a Christian traveler reports in 1421.⁴⁶ The confidence of the Jews during this period led them to build a synagogue on the Street of the Jews—despite the strict prohibition in Omarite law against building new synagogues under the rule of Islam. A document from 1425, discovered recently in the archive of the Islamic court in Jerusalem, indicates that in exchange for payment, the authorities accepted a Jewish claim that a synagogue had already existed on the site in ancient times, and that it could therefore be left in Jewish hands.⁴⁷

The assertiveness among the Jews of Jerusalem also stemmed from a major demographic boost they received from immigrants who had arrived in anticipation of 1440. One source from this period depicts worshippers in Jerusalem on the festival of Shavuot. According to the report, the community was overwhelmed with pilgrims and local Jews; the author was deeply moved by the display of devotion, which he describes as a miraculous sign of the approaching redemption: “At the time there gathered there on the festival of Shavuot more than three hundred celebrants, all of whom came in and could be seated comfortably, for it [Jerusalem] still retains its sanctity, and this is a sign of the third redemption.”⁴⁸ Another testimony mentions that at this time there were as many as five hundred Jews residing permanently in Jerusalem; a later source places the number at 1,200.⁴⁹

But the boom of the Jewish community in Jerusalem did not last long. A heavy increase in taxation forced many members of the community to sell their property in order to pay off debts.⁵⁰ The erosion of the economic power of the Jews played into the hands of their Muslim rivals in the city. After the Mameluke sultan and his court in Cairo rejected the demand of the Waqf to tear down the synagogue on the Street of the Jews, Muslim fanatics took matters into their own hands, destroying it in 1474. If not for the protection of the government in Egypt, they would have expelled all the Jews from the city as well. These and other events led to a waning of the Jews’ hopes for imminent redemption.

Nonetheless, the aliya leading up to the year 1440 played an important role in setting the stage for future efforts to settle the land of Israel. Most importantly, it was much larger and more diverse than the “aliya of the three hundred rabbis” that preceded it, and included both ordinary Jews and intellectual elites. In this respect, it laid the foundation for the great messianic ingatheringthat was to take place during the first half of the next century.