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Of all the messianic aliyot of the sixth millennium, the one that took place in the years leading up to 1540 (5300 in the Jewish calendar) is the best known, because of its formative impact on the development of Judaism and the Jewish world. During this period, a new wave of immigration sustained a material and spiritual flowering such as the Jewish community in Palestine had not enjoyed since the period of the Mishna. This relatively brief heyday, centering on the northern town of Safed, gave rise to some of the most important intellectual achievements of Jewish history—of which the most enduring were the Shulhan Aruch and Beit Yosef of R. Joseph Karo, which today remain two of the pillars of the Jewish legal tradition; and the kabalistic teachings of R. Isaac Luria, which revolutionized Jewish mysticism and later formed part of the doctrinal basis of Hasidism.
Not surprisingly, this revival came in the wake of one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history. In 1492, after a century of persecution, the vast Jewish community of Spain was expelled. Messianic thought of the period was strongly influenced by this catastrophe: According to many rabbis at the time, the scope and severity of the persecutions were indicators of a divine hand behind them, aimed at spurring the Jewish people to realize the “return to Zion” and bring about the redemption. One of the leaders of Spanish Jewry, the noted Bible commentator R. Isaac Abravanel, found a proof in the book of Isaiah: “I will say to the north, Give; and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”51 Abravanel interpreted this passage to mean that the expulsion from Spain was an act of God meant to push the Jews towards Zion:
And in the year 5252 [1492], the Eternal roused the spirit of the kings of Spain to expel from their land all of the Jews, some three hundred thousand souls, in such a manner that all of them would leave… and all of them would pass before the land of Israel, not only the Jews but also the Conversos [i.e., Jews who had converted to Christianity under the Spanish persecutions]… and in this way they would gather upon the holy soil.52
After the trauma of expulsion at the hands of the Christian rulers of Spain, the Jews viewed the Ottomans’ conquest of Palestine in 1517 as a significant turn for the better. The Ottoman government’s sympathetic attitude towards Jewish immigration raised messianic anticipations further, as did the religious upheavals in Christendom which accompanied the advent of Protestantism. In the words of the kabalist R. Abraham Halevi, who headed the Sephardi yeshiva in Jerusalem, “And now, there have recently arrived in Jerusalem faithful Jews from the lands of Ashkenaz and Bohemia… who tell of the man… named Martin Luther… who began in the year 5284 [1524] to reject the creed of the uncircumcised and to show them that their fathers had inherited a lie.”53
At the same time, messianic longing found expression in the feverish efforts of David Reuveni and Solomon Molcho in Italy and Portugal. These two figures created a new model of Jewish leadership, characterized by a combination of messianic and political activism. Reuveni, who claimed to be a member of the lost tribe of Reuben and the king of a portion of the ten lost tribes, went so far as to visit Pope Clement VII and urge that he advise the king of Portugal to form a military alliance between the Christians and the Jews to wage war against the Muslims and wrest the Holy Land from Turkish rule. Reuveni’s diplomatic efforts grew, in part, out of messianic calculations that placed redemption in the year 1540.54 Reuveni’s colleague, Solomon Molcho, was born into a Converso family and rose to the position of secretary of the Portuguese royal council. When Reuveni came to the Portuguese royal court in 1525, he convinced Molcho to return to Judaism—a decision which forced Molcho to flee to Salonika, where he met R. Joseph Karo and became deeply involved in esoteric studies and mystical rites aimed at bringing about the redemption. He believed that at the end of days, “all the secrets of the Tora which have been hidden from us due to our sins will be revealed, and then the teachings, laws, and testimonies, whose divine secrets we do not apprehend today, will be interpreted for us.”55 According to the scholar of mysticism Moshe Idel, Molcho saw 1540 as the date of the restoration of the Davidic dynasty: “The year 5300 will complete the appointed number of days, and over it will rule the house of David.”56 Reuveni’s and Molcho’s activity came to an end in Regensburg in the summer of 1532, when they were arrested by Carl V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and king of Spain and Germany. Molcho, the former Converso, was taken to Mantua, in Italy, where he was burned at the stake, while Reuveni was exiled to Spain, where his story, as far as we know, comes to an end.
As the year 5300 drew near, the messianic ferment intensified. R. Abraham Halevi, who immigrated to Jerusalem at that time, expressed this sentiment in describing what he considered to be clear signs of the coming redemption. He notes the troubles that have befallen the Jewish people in exile, and the special prayers that are recited in Jerusalem to arouse the mercies of heaven and bring the redemption; most importantly, he writes of the divine response to these prayers, in the form of a fire which he describes as having come down from heaven and damaged the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.57 Further testimony appears in a letter that students from the yeshiva in Jerusalem sent to Italy in 1521, in which they describe vigils held in the city on Mondays and Thursdays for the recital of special prayers requesting divine intervention to hasten the redemption.58 The authors of the letter also interpreted certain unusual events as a sign of divine response to their prayers:
And on the day that we arranged the vigil, that night the sleep of the King of the World was disturbed, and he showed us a sign of redemption, and the Eternal thundered in the heavens, and his voice was heard from on high, and there was a driving rain and a great wind that broke up mountains and smashed rocks. And this was on the eleventh day of the omer, when rain in Jerusalem is a miracle, for rain does not fall there in the summer days, but only during the rainy season between Succot and Passover… and this was nothing if not a sign of redemption.59
In the last few years leading up to 1540, the movement to bring Jews to the land of Israel, which encompassed thousands of families, intensified. Jews from Poland and Lithuania took part, in addition to those who came from Western Europe in the wake of the expulsions. In 1539 the land registry of Horodno (Grodno) records the sale of homes by Jews who intended to go to Palestine. About the same time, Lithuanian King Zygmunt I sought to verify rumors that the Jews were taking with them to Palestine Christian children whom they had circumcised.60 The historian Yitzhak Shefer attributes the messianic sentiment underlying this aliya from Central Europe to the appearance of Solomon Molcho in Prague and his meeting with Emperor Carl V.61 Messianic enthusiasm may also have prompted R. Jacob Pollack, the rabbi from Prague and Krakow who is credited with having founded the world of Eastern European yeshivot and pioneering the method of talmudic study known as pilpul, to moveto Jerusalem in 1530.62
The great majority of those who moved to Palestine at this time settled in the Galilee, particularly in Safed. The choice of this small town in the hills west of the Sea of Galilee had to do with a tradition that the Messiah would first make himself known in the Galilee,63 and also with the fact that neither Muslims nor Christians had a religious center there. Moreover, the income that could be gained from the local textile industry added a further incentive to settle there.64 The local authorities even commissioned some of the newly arrived merchants and businessmen to handle the collection of taxes and other state income, or to act as leaseholders in different areas. Safed and the Galilee were rapidly transformed into a flourishing economic center, which exported fruits and grain, sheep and wool, and woven goods. Merchandise was shipped abroad via the ports of Acre, Haifa, Beirut, Sidon, and Tripoli. A contemporary source describes the dramatic change that occurred in Safed within just ten years of the arrival of the first wave of Jewish immigrants: “Whoever saw Safed ten years ago, and sees it today, will find it remarkable, because more and more Jews are coming all the time, and the clothing industry grows daily…. Any man or woman who works in wool at any labor can earn his living comfortably.”65
Safed’s prosperity and the growth of its Jewish community were matched by the spiritual flowering that resulted from the arrival of a learned elite, which included such prominent scholars and kabalists as R. Jacob Berab, R. Joseph Karo, R. Solomon Alkabetz, and their followers. This vanguard added to the messianic spirit of the time, and sought to take an active role in bringing about the redemption. Within a very short time, the Safed community had transformed the city into one of the greatest spiritual centers of world Jewry since the redaction of the Talmud.
