Inspiration and Implementation: The Story of the Salomon (Zoref) Family
The Gra's Followers in Eretz Israel: The Beginning of the Redemption
In the early nineteenth century, a messianic awakening was felt all over the Jewish world, and thousands of Jews poured into Eretz Israel, expecting that the Messiah would arrive in 1840.
From 1808 - 1813, 511 families, followers of the Gra, arrived in Eretz Israel. They had been the elite of Lithuanian Jewry, and immigrated to Eretz Israel for ideological reasons.
Even among the other Jewish immigrants, these followers of the Gra were exceptional. Instead of passively waiting for the Messiah, they actively prepared for him. They laid the foundations for new settlements and for the ingathering of the exiles as necessary prerequisites to the process of redemption.
The Gra (Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna - 1720 - 1797), one of the most charismatic and authoritative rabbinic figures of the century, had laid the foundations for a new understanding of redemption as a gradual process requiring immigration to Eretz Israel, making the desolate land bloom again, and building Jerusalem.
On Hoshana Rabba (last day of Succot holiday) 1811, after many months of journeying, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Zoref, his wife Tesa and three sons, Mordechai, Yitzchak and Moshe, arrived in Acco.
Zoref, and his sons and grandsons after him, worked tirelessly to fulfill the Gra's aspirations.
This exhibit focuses on the inspiration and the achievements of Zoref and his descendants: Their dream of the return of the Jewish People to their land, and their efforts to realize it by building the "Hurva" Synagogue, developing agricultural settlements and laying the foundations for a productive economy and organized communal life.
Jewish Quarter During the 19th and Early
20th Centuries what was the Old city like in the second half of the 19th century and under the British Mandate? A walk through the Jewish Quarter including: colorful descriptions by S.Y. Agnon and Mark Twain and visits to the 4 Sephardi Synagogues and the Old Yishuv Court Museum.
Meet at the Old Yishuv Court Museum
29/4/13 at 13:30
30/5/13 at 13:30
75NIS for registration and information call the museum 02-627-6319
|
