Rabbi Shlomo Mashiah and His “Shirah”: Modern Immigration and Mystic Redemption

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the ways traditional love of Zion was expressed through immigration in the Mashhadi community due to encounters with new phenomena like the Bukharan Jews’ immigration to the land of Israel, Russian and British imperialism, and early stirrings of Iranian nationalism and constitutionalism, as well as early Zionist activity in Palestine. It is viewed through the prism of a piyyut written by Rabbi Shlomo Mashiah, one of the prominent Kabbalists in Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century, and a member of one of the earliest groups of immigrants from Iran. I analyze the piyyut, written in messianic traditional language, and show that some of the terms may have had a political meaning, or at least were used a few decades later in political Zionist contexts. Thus, although Zionism is not supposed to be a characteristic of Iranian Jewish immigration before 1917, and the piyyut is messianic in language, I argue that it carries new, modern overtones, and shows the transformation of traditional language.