Staging Hillula: Ariel Bension and Avraham Zvi Idelsohn in early twentieth-century Jerusalem

ABSTRACT

The writer, Zohar scholar and Zionist activist Ariel Bension (1880–1932) has attracted attention of late from scholars seeking to recover an alternative vision of Zionism with Mizrahi roots in Ottoman Palestine. Yet the instrumentalization of Bension’s biography for the politics of identity in present-day Israel has led to a flattening effect whereby Bension is divorced from his manifold ties to European and global Jewish culture. In this article, we demonstrate those complex transnational and multidisciplinary dimensions of Bension’s life, theatrical oeuvre and thought through a reconstruction of his brief collaboration on a Hebrew musical play and film project with music scholar, composer and educator Avraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882–1938). Presenting newly discovered archival documents, we explore both the tangled array of social identities present in the early Zionist cultural elite and the emergence of a shared global Jewish imaginary in a moment of profound historical change.

KEYWORDS:

• Ariel Bension
• Avraham Zvi Idelsohn
• Mizrahi
• Zionism
• Music
• Theater

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gribetz, “Arab–Zionist Conversations in Late Ottoman Jerusalem”; Jacobson, From Empire to Empire; Fishman, Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914. Cohen “Ḥayyav u-moto shel ha-yehudi ha-aravi”; Beška, “Responses of Prominent Arabs Towards Zionist Aspirations and Colonization Prior to 1908.”

2 Wallach, “Rethinking the Yishuv: Late-Ottoman Palestine's Jewish Communities Revisited.”

3 This article is part of our joint research project on the life and work of Avraham Zvi Idelsohn and his legacy. The project focuses on Idelsohn’s estates at the National Library of Israel and at the Hebrew Union College (New York and Cincinnati). For more information, see the Idelsohn Project, hosted at the website of the Jewish Music Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, www.theidelsohnproject.org. Accessed August 13, 2023.

4 Already in 1976 historian Israel Bartal pointed out to the problematics in the application of the concepts of yishuv yashan (old settlement) and yishuv hadash (new settlement) to the pre-existing and Zionist-driven (since ca. 1880) Jewish populations in Ottoman Palestine correspondingly. We use the term aware of its shortcomings just for convenience. See Bartal, “‘Yishuv yashan’ ve-‘yishuv ḥadash’: Ha-dimui veha-metzi’ut,” as well as Wallach, “Rethinking the Yishuv.” Also, the use of the term “Sephardic” needs qualification as the non-European Jewish population of Jerusalem included immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries who were not direct descendants of the Jews from Spain.

5 Evri and Behar, “Between East and West.”

6 For a broader overview of the current historiographical moment, see Behar, “Fusing Arab Nahda, European Haskalah and Euro-Zionism.”

7 Dotan, “Prophets of Secularization.” Dotan graciously made her expanded chapter on Bension available to us. Her dissertation appeared recently as a book. See Keren Dotan, Tsurah ʻosah tsurah.

8 Dotan, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion,” 192.

9 Bezalel, Noladetem Tsiyonim, 363, quoted in Dotan, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion,” 172.

10 See Cohen, “Ḥayyav u-moto,” n. 1 above.

11 Loeffler, “Do Zionists Read Music from Right to Left?” and Seroussi, “‘Yesod eḥad lahen.”

12 The literature on Idelsohn is vast. For a guide, see the aforementioned Idelsohn Project. Bension’s vision of Hebrew theatre comprises the kernel of Dotan’s article, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion.”

13 The relations between Bension and Idelsohn is briefly mentioned by Meir, Kabbalistic Circles in Jerusalem, 4. In the first section of the opening chapter of his book Meir focuses in detail on Bension’s “theory of decline” of the Sephardic kabbalistic circles in Jerusalem, a theory that was received positively, among others, by Gershon Scholem who was in contact with Bension and later with his second wife. Meir’s chapter offers a most important and updated evaluation of Bension’s overall work and a corrective to Scholem’s embracing of Bension’s views.

14 Behar and Ben-Dor Benite, Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought, xxxiii.

15 Bitton, Ḥovevei-Tziyon me-Moroko, 130–1.

16 On this yeshiva see Giller. Shalom Shar'abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El and Meir, Kabbalistic Circles.

17 Cohen, Last Century of a Sephardic Community.

18 The 1932 English edition of Bension’s book has a foreword by the renowned Orientalist Sir Edward Denison Ross, a recognition not only of the author’s merits but also of his networks in European academics. Two instalments from Bension’s book appeared first in Hebrew, probably the original language, a year earlier in the prestigious literary journal Moznaim. See Bension, “Sefarad shel sefer ha-“Zohar.” In a footnote to the first of these two instalments, Bension announced that the book will be published in Hebrew and Spanish. Indeed, the Spanish edition appeared in the same year with a preface by the distinguished philosopher and essayist Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936), a testimony to Bension’s standing also among Spanish intellectuals. See Bension, El Zohar en la España musulmana y Cristiana. Only three years elapsed, and a second Spanish edition already appeared. However, as far as we have been able to assess, the Hebrew edition did not materialize. Half a century later Bension’s volume reappeared in Spain under a different title and since then it has been periodically reprinted in different translations and with different titles. See Bension, Zohar; Bension, El Zohar; Bension, El Zohar en la España musulmana y cristiana; Bension, El Zohar en España y en el mundo sefardí; Bension, El Zohar en la España musulmana y cristiana. For the Portuguese edition see Bension, O Zohar: o livro do esplendor. New English editions started to appear around the same time as the Spanish ones. See Bension, The Zohar in Moslem and Christian Spain (1934) and Bension, The Zohar in Moslem and Christian Spain (2017). The book contains valuable ethnographic materials about the circles of mystics in Jerusalem’s Old City and pilgrimages to the tombs of saintly figures, most prominently to Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai in Meron.

19 This article was briefly discussed and quoted by Bezalel, “Ha-rabanim ha-Sfaradim ve-ha-‘itonut be-‘eretz Yisrael ba-tqufah ha-‘Ot’manit,” 68. It is also treated in the works by Evri and Behar and especially Dotan in her dissertation. The article is also mentioned in Meir, Kabbalistic Circles, 3, n. 8. However, none of these authors mention the Idelsohnian resonances in Bension’s article.

20 Loeffler, “Richard Wagner’s ‘Jewish Music’,” 18–21. Loeffler’s article analyzes in detail Idelsohn’s early writings on Wagner that Bension may have been aware of. See Ben Yehuda [Idelsohn], “Rikhard Vagner ve-hayehudim.” Later in the same year, Idelsohn further elaborated on his ideas about Wagner’s “contribution” to the rebirth of Jewish national self-awareness for his European (mainly German) Jewish audience in his essay, “Shirei ‘am Yisrael.”

21 Bension’s use of “greida” for “absolute” is puzzling.

22 The remarkable quote from Hermann Cohen may be of oral transmission as Bension apparently met the Jewish philosopher during his years of study in Germany and Switzerland. Idelsohn certainly met Cohen and vivid impressions of this encounter are extant. See Loeffler, “When Hermann Cohen Cried.” See also de Launay, “The Statute of Music in Hermann Cohen’s Ästhetik.” We can add incidentally that Idelsohn attended the eleventh Zionist Congress too and almost certainly met Bension, his acquaintance from Jerusalem.

23 Bension “humbly” dedicated the book to his father, “the righteous (he-ḥasid) Yehoshua Tziyon z”l.” Worth noting also are the modernistic illustrations of Bension’s work designed by Sascha Kronberg from the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem.

24 Loeffler, The Most Musical Nation.

25 Idelsohn, Jiftah; Musical Drama in Five Acts. On this work, see Cohen, “Yiftaḥ.”

26 We were thus far unable to locate this article that may have appeared in a German language journal.

27 Our search of the Ariel Bension Fonds at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal (JPL-A [#1003]) did not render any results. We thank Dr. Christopher Silver from McGill University for inquiring on our behalf at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal while it was still closed to the public due to the 2020 pandemic and to the staff of the JPL for their efforts on our behalf. We are at the moment unable to verify the existence in this archive of other materials pertinent to the present study.

28 In the trip to Baghdad mentioned in one of his letters to Idelsohn, Bension was given an audience with no less than the King of Iraq. See Katan, “Bagdad.”

29 See Dotan, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion,” 188, also quoting Meir’s work. The following description of the content of Hillula draws from Dotan’s summary.

30 The name is rare. It is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 27, 34: Jaziz the Hagrite oversaw the flocks. All these were the officials in charge of King David’s property.

31 The score is an unfinished draft, and nowhere in the Idelsohn archives in Cincinnati and Jerusalem another version of it has been so far located.

32 Idelsohn, Gesänge der orientalischen Sefardim, 250 (apparently its Sephardic Jerusalem version, in maqam Nawa per Idelsohn) and no. 378 (from the “Balkans” i.e., Salonica). Its first half is like the Moroccan version of the same zemer included in the fifth volume of HOM, dedicated to the Moroccan tradition. See Idelsohn, Gesänge der Marokkanischen Juden.

33 See Liebes, “Zemirot le-se’udot Shabbat she-yasad Ha-Ari Ha-kadosh.”

34 “Indessen scheint bezüglich der Auswahl den Melodien, wenigstens der kabbalistischen Texte, eine gewisse gewaltet zu haben. Denn sie zeigen Vorliebe für Bajat-, Sabba- und Nawa Geschmacksrichtung melodien, welche eine gewisse mystische Stimmung hervorrufen, was der Geistesrichtung des Kabbalisten angemessen ist: ein Sehnen und Verlangen nach überirdischen Wesen, nach mystischer Leibe und himmlischer Schonheit, nach dem Unerfasslichen, Unendlichen, nach dem En-Sof.” Idelsohn, Gesänge der orientalischen Sefardim, 50.

35 See Dotan, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion,” 173.

36 See his revealing vision, dutifully ignored by the leaders of the Zionist movement, in Bension, “Juifs et Arabes,” 2–3.

37 On fin de siècle Jewish primitivism, see Spinner, Jewish Primitivism. On the phenomenon of Jewish auto-exoticization, see Shelleg, Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History.

38 See Dotan, “Ḥazono ha-poeti shel Ariel Benzion”. Compare with Vogt, “The Postcolonial Buber,” and Rubin, “Zionism, Pan-Asianism, and the Postcolonial Predicament.”

39 It is hard to know to which branch of the extended Slutzkin family Bension is referring. Possibly he relates to the prominent Russian-born philanthropist and Zionist industrialist Lazer (Eliezer Moshe) Slutzkin (1868-1945) who lived between Australia, Palestine, and England.

40 Ariel Bension was delegate for Morocco in the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, 1–14 September 1921. See “Der XII. Zionisten-Kongres,” 3. Dr. Hoffman appears in the list of the same Congress as a German-speaking “Oberrabbinner” from Bukowina. He can be identified as Rabbi Dr. Jacob Jehuda Hoffman. Born on 9 March 1881 in Papa, he graduated in 1919 with a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He was rabbi at the Montefiore Temple in Vienna, Kostel (Mähren), Radautz (Rădăuți today in Rumania), Frankfurt am Main (1923–1937) ending his career at Congregation Ohav Zedek in New York (1938–1953). In 1954 he emigrated to Israel where he died in June 1956. A prolific author, Hoffman was a leading member of the Mizrahi movement and of the Zionist Action Committee. See Tsur, Ha-rav Ya’akov Hofman.

41 Morris Mayer (1879-1944) was a notorious social activist, author, journalist, and Zionist active from Rumania who was established in London for most of his life. See Reyzen, Leksikon fun der yidishe literatur, prese un filologye, 388-94.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edwin Seroussi

Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre. He is also a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on musical cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, interactions between Jewish and Islamic cultures, Judeo-Spanish song and popular music in Israel.

James Loeffler

James Loeffler is Research Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and Co-Editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. His research focuses on modern Jewish politics and culture in Eastern Europe and the United States.