1799 - A Jewish Perspective

1799 C.C.

 

A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE

{5559/5560 – September 30}

 

ASIA

 

Napoleon’s armies entered Israel, taking Jaffa (March 6).

 

The Jews of Israel supported Napoleon and sent a delegation to explain the messianic hopes embodied in his conquest.

 

EUROPE

 

As a result of the restoration of the old rulers in Italy, the Jews were again ghettoized and the restrictions against them reimposed.

 

The first blood libel case in Russia occurred south of Vitebsk, near Senno, on the eve of Passover.  The accused were released.

 

John Meshullam (1799-1878), a British Jew who established an agricultural farm in Palestine in 1850, was born.

 

John Meshullam (1799–1878) was a British born Jew. His family was killed on their way to Jerusalem in riots between Turks and Greeks. John, as the only surviving sibling, inherited the considerable family assets. John then moved to Berlin to study the German language and decided to move to the Levant. There he came to know Joseph Wolff, then doing missionary work for the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, and converted to Anglican Christianity. In 1840, he moved with his wife and children to Jerusalem.

Meshullam played a part in establishing the agricultural farm at Artas in 1850 in Palestine. In 1850, he leased lands in Artas to the Mennonite Peter Claaben (1809–1865) and his brother Isaac (1815–1850).  The Claabens were from Tiegen in West Prussia (a part of today's Nowy Dwór Gdański).  The Claaben families moved to Artas but left again between 1851 and 1853 for Jaffa. By the end of 1853 another group of leaseholders around Clorinda S. Minor left too, following a dispute with Meshullam.

Meshullam was buried in Jerusalem and his grave is preserved in the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery, there.

 

 

Isaiah Berlin (1725-1799), a Talmudic scholar, died in Breslau (May 13).

 

Isaiah ben Judah Loeb Berlin, also called Isaiah Pick   (b. October 1725, Eisenstadt, Hungary [now in Austria] — d. May 13, 1799, Breslau, Silesia, Prussia [now Wrocław, Poland]), was a Jewish scholar noted for his textual commentaries on the Talmud and other writings.

The son of a well-known Talmudic scholar, he moved to Berlin as a youth and was educated by his father and at the yeshiva of another eminent rabbi. Berlin became a member of the rabbinate late in life (1787), and in 1793 he was elected rabbi of Breslau, in which post he tried to reconcile the various opposing factions in the local Jewish community.

Berlin’s writings are distinguished for their critical and historical insight. Among his works are commentaries, notes, and glosses on many early works of Jewish scholarship. His commentary on the Talmud entitled Masoret ha-Shas (“Talmud Tradition”) supplements an earlier work by a Frankfurt rabbi and is the best known of Berlin’s numerous collated texts (noting variant readings and parallel passages).

 

Yitzhak HaLevi ben Mordechai Raitzes (c.1730-1799), a Polish rabbi, died (June 14).

 

Yitzhak HaLevi ben Mordechai Raitzes (circa 1730, Lviv – June 14, 1799, Kraków) was a Polish rabbi.  He was born around 1730 in Lviv to Mordechai Halevi Raitzes the Rosh Mesivta [rosh yeshiva - dean of the Talmudical academy] in Lviv, who was the son of Yehoshua (Joshua) Raitzes (Reizes) who was martyred in Lviv on May 13, 1728. Yitzhak HaLevi married Sara Leah Lowenstamm, the daughter of Aryeh Leib ben Saul the Rabbi of Amsterdam, and the granddaughter of Tzvi Ashkenazi, the Chacham Tzvi. Halevi's first rabbinical position was Av Bais Din [av beth din -senior judge of the rabbinical court] of Leshnev, a small town in the Brodivskyi Raion, Lviv Oblast in the Ukraine. From 1769 to 1778 he was the Av Bais Din of Chełm. In 1778, he became the Rabbi of Kraków, a position that he held until his death on June 14, 1799.

One of his sons Mordechai Halevi was the Rabbi of Tykocin, while his other son Tzvi Hersch David Levin held the post as the Rabbi of Szczebrzeszyn before moving to Kraków to help his father in the rabbinate of Kraków. From 1799 to 1816, Tzvi  held the post of acting Rabbi of Kraków, and became the Rabbi of Kraków in 1816 (the Rabbi appointed in 1800 stayed in his position for a week before leaving for Warsaw, thus leaving Kraków without an official Rabbi until 1816).  Tzvi held this position held until his death on December 18, 1831.

 

 

UNITED STATES

 

In Charles Brockden Brown’s (1771-1810) novel Arthur Mervyn, written in two parts and completed in 1800, the hero married Achsa Fielding, a rich Jewish widow.  The poet Shelley is reported to have been displeased by the transfer of the hero’s affections from a simple peasant girl to a rich Jewess.