Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai

Rabbi Yehuda ben Shlomo Chai Alkalai was born in Sarajevo in 1798 and from 1825 served as rabbi of the Sephardi community of Semlin (Zemun), across the river from Belgrade. In Shema Yisrael (1834) and, after the Damascus blood libel of 1840, in Minchat Yehuda (1843), he argued that redemption would not come by miracle alone: the Jews must prepare it themselves by returning to the Land of Israel. He read teshuvah, repentance, also as a literal return, and proposed an assembly of elders to lead the people, a national fund to buy land, and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. He travelled to Western Europe in 1851 and 1852 to win support, and in 1874 settled in Jerusalem, where he died in 1878 and was buried on the Mount of Olives.

With Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Alkalai is counted among the forerunners of Zionism: a traditional rabbi who joined messianic hope to practical work decades before Hovevei Zion. Theodor Herzl's grandfather, Simon Loeb Herzl, attended his synagogue in Semlin.