Horowitz arrived early in 1622, staying for a short time in Safed. From there he went to Jerusalem, where he made his home. He had several reasons for relocating to Jerusalem, the most important of which was his belief that Israel’s historic capital, and not Safed, would come first in the process of redemption, and he wanted to focus his efforts on rebuilding it: “Our rabbis also said… ‘I will not come to the Jerusalem above until I come to the Jerusalem below.’ The simple meaning of this is that the Jerusalem below is the Jerusalem that is here, in the land, whose rebuilding we anticipate speedily in our days.…”⁷⁹ The growth of the Jewish community in the city during that period, driven by an influx of immigrants from various countries, also encouraged the move. In a letter he wrote while still in Safed, he observed: “For, thank God, it has become crowded in Jerusalem. For the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem is already twice that of Safed; may it be speedily rebuilt in our days, for every day it increases…. Also the Sephardim in Jerusalem increase greatly, to literally hundreds [of families].” Horowitz particularly praised the quality of the aliya, noting that “the Ashkenazi community includes quite a few important people, great scholars of the Tora.” This being the case, he cherished the hope that the number of immigrants would swell further in the wake of his ownarrival: “And in a short time, God willing, we will hear that the Ashkenazi community has become inspiring in its grandeur, for I know that, praise God, many will come there and wish to attach themselves to me.”⁸⁰

The enthusiasm Horowitz expressed over his expected move to Jerusalem did not subside after he settled in the city. In a letter from Jerusalem, which was recently uncovered by Avraham David, he again asserts that the city has changed profoundly, emphasizing its sanctity no less than the great improvement in the physical conditions that he found there.⁸¹ Whereas the praise in his earlier letter had been based on hearsay, now he extols Jerusalem on the basis of direct experience, and even compares its scope to that of the major cities of Eastern Europe: “And know… that it is a large city like Krakow, and every day large buildings are added to it and it is filled with people, whether of the nations of the world without number or limit, or of the children of Israel.”⁸² The rapid growth convinced Horowitz that the time of the Messiah was drawing close. “We consider all this a sign of the approaching redemption quickly in our days, amen,” he wrote. “Every day we see the ingathering of the exiles. Day by day they come. Wander about the courtyards of Jerusalem: All of them, praise God, are filled with Jews, may their Rock and Redeemer protect them, and with houses of study and schools filled with small children.”⁸³

Horowitz’s attempts to discover the manuscripts of R. Isaac Luria also reflected his messianic enthusiasm. He was convinced that the works attributed to Luria that were circulating in the diaspora were not authentic, since Luria’s disciple, R. Haim Vital, had forbidden his master’s writings to be copied or removed from the land of Israel. In one of his letters, Horowitz mentions that when he arrived in Damascus on his way to Palestine, local Jews allowed him to inspect the writings of Vital. He expressed the hope that after arriving in Jerusalem he would continue to study the Lurianic Kabala from Palestinian manuscripts, identify and confirm the authenticity of its mystical doctrines, and succeed in annulling the ban on their dissemination and publication:

Horowitz’s quest to uncover Luria’s original manuscripts was not motivated by intellectual curiosity alone. Vital had taught that the discovery of Luria’s true, original writings would be a sign of the coming of the Messiah: “In these generations it is a commandment and a great joy before the Holy One that this wisdom be revealed, for by its merit the Messiah shall come.”⁸⁵ The hope expressed by Horowitz—“But we hope to the Eternal that the time may come when the holy book of that godly man will be revealed, for there is a time and season to every purpose”—indicates his faith that the dissemination of Luria’s true teaching would assure the redemption.⁸⁶

Horowitz’s impassioned letters reflect the pervasive messianic ferment in the Jewish community of Palestine in the years before 1640 (5400). But, as at many times in the history of the Jews in the land of Israel, this period of success came to an end. In 1625, Jerusalem came under the control of the Ibn Farukh family. The family, which had purchased control over the city from the Ottoman government, saw themselves as free to oppress the city’s inhabitants and embitter the lives of anyone too poor to pay a sufficient levy. Most of all they targeted the city’s Jews, who were politically power­less and could be exploited by taking the financial support they received from the diaspora.⁸⁷ Within a two-year period, from 1625 to the end of 1627, the position of the Jewish community in Jerusalem was completely undermined. The governor, Muhammed ibn Farukh, persecuted the Jews of the whole country, issued various edicts against them, restricted their numbers arbitrarily, and extorted enormous sums of money.⁸⁸ When they were unable to pay their debts, they were summarily jailed and tortured. The new regime destroyed the Jews’ sacred objects; placed their synagogues in lien against debts and shut them down;⁸⁹ interrupted their prayer services; desecrated their Tora scrolls, tearing and stealing them to make clothing and bags; closed their religious courts and dispersed the judges; and shut down Jewish schools and sent the children away. Many Jews starved. Those with means fled far from the reach of Muhammed ibn Farukh. Among the refugees was Horowitz, who succeeded in escaping to Safed. Of the 2,500 to 3,000 Jews who lived in Jerusalem in 1624, on the eve of Ibn Farukh’s rise to power, only a few hundred remained by the end of his rule in 1627.⁹⁰

Nevertheless, the messianic excitement that had characterized the period prior to Ibn Farukh did not dissipate. The Christian traveler Eugene Roger, who visited Palestine between 1629 and 1634, was witness to persistent efforts by the Jews to greet the Messiah. Roger recounts two occasions on which he saw more than two thousand Jews awaiting the coming of the Messiah—on Shavuot of the year 1630, and again in 1633: “The gathering of the Jews took place in the city of Safed in the Galilee, because they think, as several of their rabbis have taught them, that in this city of Safed the Messiah whom they await will come.”⁹¹ A mood of optimism also suffuses an anonymous testimony of the time, entitled The Ruins of Jerusalem, printed in Venice in 1631, which describes the persecution of the Jews of Jerusalem, with all its horrors, as having been temporary in nature. The author expresses the hope that the Jews of the land of Israel will again prosper as in the past, as befitting the age of the “footsteps of the Messiah.” He thus begins his survey with a description of the settlement of the Jews in Jerusalem that preceded the arrival of the Ibn Farukh regime: “And the city of our God was settled by members of our people, more than it had been since the day that Israel was exiled from its land, for from day to day more Jews came to dwell there.… And many of them bought fields and houses and rebuilt the ruins, and old men and women settled in the streets of Jerusalem, and the streets of the city were filled with little boys and girls.”⁹² Further on, the author rejects the complaints of the Jews who remained in Jerusalem and regretted that they had not fled. He argues that with the passing of the danger, it is crucial to remain strong, to act so as to realize the hopes for redemption, and to settle the land of Israel, and especially Jerusalem:

According to the author of The Ruins of Jerusalem, the sufferings endured by the Jews during the two years under Ibn Farukh’s rule were essentially “birth pangs of the Messiah” that served to purge Israel of its sins before the redemption: “Reason suggests that God is testing us like one who smelts and purifies… [in order] to cleanse us and whiten us in the purifying fire that has passed over us, that he may relieve us of these birth pangs of the Messiah.”⁹⁴