For the longest time, there had been many Jewish leaders who had revived discussion in the Sephardic Jewish community – the Jews who lived under Muslim rule in North Africa and the Middle East, including the Ottoman Empire - about actually doing something about returning to the Promised Land. That was the land that God had promised Moses that the Jews would have forever – on one condition - that they honoured and worshipped God in accordance with his laws. Well the Jews had failed miserably on that deal. They had been punished by God more than once. By the Assyrians destroying the Northern Kingdom - forever. By the Babylonians destroying much of the Southern Kingdom, and deporting many Jews to Babylon – although that one was only temporary – for 70 years. That’s the exile that Boney M sang about in their song, “By the Rivers of Babylon”.

As early as the 1100s the famous Jewish rabbinical scholar, Jehudah Halevi, was urging a return to the Promised Land, a journey which he made – but not for long as I’ll soon share with you.

By the 1800s many of the world’s Jews lived under Muslim rule – which included the occupation of their homeland Israel by the Muslim conquerors. Who the masters of the Jewish homelands were was something that changed over time. It included the original Arab conquerors, the European Crusaders, the former slaves of the Muslims, the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks for the longest time. Finally there was a little post script when, after World War I, the British were put in charge of a new land, carved out of the Ottoman Empire, that was called Palestine, or the British Mandate – modern Israel and Jordan. The plan there had been to have all of that land as a new Jewish homeland, where the more recent occupants of these historic lands, who were living there at the time the Mandate ended, the Muslims, could live together with the Jews in peace and harmony.

Many Jews lived in Europe, including Russia. They had been persecuted there – at times very badly. But at all times, always, there were still, and always had been, Jews living in their Promised Land. Those Jews clung on tenaciously to their homeland, although they were living in abysmally poor circumstances. Largely they had to survive on charity from Muslims, from gifts of money from other Sephardic Jews in Muslim ruled countries, and with gifts of money from Jews in Europe. It was important to keep the Jews in the Promised Land and it was the duty of every Jew to make sure that they could survive there until they all came together again.

The Jews living in the Promised Land had been oppressed by the Muslims for most of the time. But from the late 1800s, beginning first with Yehudah Alkalay’s 1857 treatise, which inspired Theodor Herzl’s 1897 book Der Jüdenstaat - The Jewish State, the yearning to return to their land began to become a reality. In the late 1800’s, from about 1873, the movement of Jews from outside the Promised Land to the Promised Land began, with a lot of obstacles.

Tag words: Sephardic Jewish community; Ottoman Empire; Promised Land; Moses; Assyrians; Babylonians; Boney M; By the Rivers of Babylon; Jehudah Halevi; British Mandate; Yehudah Alkalay; Theodor Herzl; Der Jüdenstaat; The Jewish State; effendi; the notables; Rishon L’Tsion; moshava; fellahin; peasant farmers; Promised Land; Arab invasion; Genesis 26:13-15; Philistines; Baron Edmond von Rothschild; Zikhron Ya’akov; Metullah; farming research station; Triticum dicocoides; American Ministry of Agriculture; Atlit; Zionist movement; Mehmed Sherif Rauf Pasha; Lovers of Zion; Hovevei Zion; Kerak;