Judah Alkalai

Who was Judah Alkalai?

Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai was a Bosnian Jew Sephardic rabbi in Zemun in the Austrian Empire's Military Frontier and one of pioneers of modern Zionism.

Alkalai studied in Jerusalem under different rabbis and came under the influence of the Kabbalah. In 1825 he became Rabbi of Semlin.

He became noted through his advocacy in favor of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. By reason of some of his projects, he may justly be regarded as one of the precursors of the modern Zionists such as Theodor Herzl.

Herzl's paternal grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl, reportedly attended the Alkalai's synagogue in Semlin and the two frequently visited. Grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl "had his hands on" one of the first copies of Alkalai's 1857 work prescribing the "return of the Jews to the Holy Land and renewed glory of Jerusalem." Contemporary scholars conclude that Herzl's own implementation of modem Zionism was undoubtedly influenced by that relationship.

His work, Goral la-Adonai, published at Vienna, in 1857, is a treatise on the restoration of the Jews, and suggests methods for the betterment of conditions in Palestine.

After a somewhat able homiletical discussion of the Messianic problem, in which he shows considerable knowledge of the traditional writers, Alkalai suggests the formation of a joint-stock company, such as a steamship or railroad trust, whose endeavor it should be to induce the sultan to cede Palestine to the Jews as a tributary country, on a plan similar to that on which the Danube principalities were governed.