Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai may justly…

Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai may justly be regarded as one of the precursors of such modern Zionists as Theodor Herzl.

A Sephardi born in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1798, he had at an early age been taken to Jerusalem, where he was reared and educated for the rabbinate.

At twenty-five, he had gone to Semlin, in Croatia, as a rabbi and found himself teaching Hebrew to the young men of his congregation, whose native language is Ladino.

He writes two books in this language, in the first of which he argues that a physical return to Israel is a precondition for redemption, instead of the symbolic “return to Israel” by means of repentance and resuming the ways of God.

This doctrine is unacceptable to Orthodox Jews and generates much controversy.

His second book is a refutation of the heated attacks directed at his proto-Zionist views.