The History of Galilee, 1538–1949: Mysticism, Modernization, and War by Matthew M. Silver (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The History of Galilee, 1538–1949: Mysticism, Modernization, and War by Matthew M. Silver Lawrence Frizzell The History of Galilee, 1538–1949: Mysticism, Modernization, and War. By Matthew M. Silver. (Lanham: Lexington Books. 2022 Pp. ix, 391. $125.00. ISBN 978-1-7936-4942-3.) The two-volume History of Galilee begins with the period 47 BC to 1260 AD: From Josephus and Jesus to the Crusades (Lexington Books, 2021) and the volume under review. The author, a professor of Jewish history and world history at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College and the University of Haifa, presents this work "based on principles of liberal humanism and inter-faith dialogue" (p. 5). This volume moves from sixteenth-century Kabbalistic mysticism in Safed to "the 1948 events known as Israel's War of Independence or the Palestinian Nakba" (p. 1). Silver notes "… Galilee's history attains singular import in world history as the place where monotheism multiplied" (p. 1). The prominence of Galilee in Jewish thought relates to the centers of study developed after the disastrous result of two revolts against the Romans. Unable to return to Jerusalem, Jewish scholars founded academies in Galilee. In medieval Spain the life of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (Rashbi), a hero of the second revolt (132–135 AD), was idealized. Scholars in the mystical traditions of Judaism looked to Rashbi as their hero. As healer and martyr he was portrayed in ways that seem to provide an equivalent to Jesus of Nazareth. Tracing Jewish mystical teachings to this period, the Zohar (Book of Splendor) was attributed to him. With their imagined background of Galilee, Spanish Jewish mystics prepared for Jews exiled from Spain to return to the area where Rashbi was buried. In the Sixteenth century the mystical traditions developed by Isaac Luria, linked with Joseph Karo's Set Table of Jewish Law, exercised enormous influence on Jews of Europe. The chapter "Ottoman Galilee" begins with the rule of a Druze prince Emir Fakhr al-Din about 1622. He paid tribute to the Ottoman empire but, facing its army and navy, he fled to Florence under Medici auspices. He dreamed of leading a crusade to recover his dominance in Palestine. The Franciscans are mentioned in this context, for the only time in this book. Captured by the Ottomans, Fakhr al-Din was executed in 1635. Orthodox Jews from eastern Europe and from within the Ottoman Empire became immigrants to Safed and Tiberias. They included members of Hasidic communities, followers of the Baal Shem Tov. Chapter 3, "The Quest for Historical Galilee," portrays the increasingly secular images of Jesus in his home region. Silver reviews the works of David F. Strauss, Ernest Renan, and Albert Schweitzer's evaluation of this quest. Silver includes Abraham Geiger, founder of Reform Judaism, and Heinrich Graetz, for whom Jesus was a country yokel pitted against the sophisticated teachers in Jerusalem. The review of the last century moves from Joseph Klausner's 1922 "biography" of Jesus to Richard Horsley and John Hanson's Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs (1985) and Reza Aslan's Zealot (2013). Silver follows Horsley to question "[t]he pertinence of [End Page 387] Zealotry to the specific period of Jesus's life in Galilee, its impetus, and its scope" (p. 201). In contrast to European gentiles, "Americans have had a manifest tendency to see the Holy Land, its past and ongoing development, through their own American frames" (p. 202). Silver reviews the Protestant "lives of Jesus" in the nineteenth century and then looks at "the American pilgrimage scene in Israel today" (p. 204). Protestants are not impressed with the traditional shrines (in the hands of Orthodox and Catholic clergy) but seek "the fifth Gospel in Galilee" (p. 210), where these pilgrims feel most at home (p. 228). Chapter 4, "Zionist Pioneering Galilee," describes the migration of Jews, especially from Eastern Europe, with return to the land to develop its agricultural potential, with less emphasis on piety than earlier immigrants had. Chapter 5, "The Fight for Galilee, 1948," begins with mini-biographies of a prominent Arab fighter, Fawzi al-Qawuqii, a native of Tripoli and leader of the Arab Liberation Army, and a Jewish native of Galilee...