Judah HeHasid (Jerusalem)

See Judah he-Hasid (disambiguation) for other people who used this name.

Judah he-Hasid Segal ha-Levi^[1] (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה‎ הֶחָסִיד, romanized: Yəhūdā heḤasīd, lit. 'Judah the Pious'; c. 1660 in Siedlce – 19 October 1700 in Jerusalem, Ottoman Syria) was a Jewish preacher who led the largest organized group of Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel in the 17th and 18th centuries.

HeHasid travelled from one Jewish community to another throughout Poland, urging repentance, asceticism, physical mortification, and calling for aliyah.

In 1697, he and 31 families of his followers left for Moravia and made a stop at Nikolsburg. HeHasid spent a year traveling throughout Germany and Moravia, gaining followers. Many joined the group, influenced by his fervor. By the time the whole group gathered in Italy, they numbered about 1,500.

Almost a third of the pilgrims died of hardships and illnesses during the trip. On the way, they contracted debts, and in exchange for permission to enter the Ottoman Empire, they were forced to give the Turkish authorities financial guarantees in the name of Jerusalem’s Jewish community.

The group arrived in Jerusalem on October 14, 1700. At that time, about 200 Ashkenazi and about 1,000 Sephardi Jews lived in the city, mostly on charities from the Jewish diaspora. The sudden influx of Jewish immigrants produced a crisis: the local community was unable to help such a large group.^[2] In addition, some of the newcomers were suspected to be Sabbateans,^[3] whom the local Jewish population viewed with hostility. The situation grew worse when HeHasid died within days of his arrival in Jerusalem. He is buried on the Mount of Olives. Emissaries were sent to the Council of the Four Lands for aid, but it did not arrive.

Some of the immigrant Ashkenazi Jews left Jerusalem for other cities in Eretz Yisrael—mainly other Jewish holy cities, such as Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed. Others started to dress like Sephardi Jews.

The synagogue HeHasid's group founded after their arrival, the Hurvat Rabbi Yehudah he-Hasid ('Ruin of Rabbi Judah the Pious'), was rebuilt in 1864 by the Perushim, becoming the chief Ashkenazi synagogue in Jerusalem. The building was destroyed by the Arab Legion in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was rebuilt and rededicated in 2010, and is colloquially known as the Hurva Synagogue.

• The Land of Promise: The Return to Zion March 27, 2003 (Israel MFA)
• Pre-Zionism Archived 2006-10-23 at the Wayback Machine (Jewish Agency for Israel)