{"id":137477,"date":"2023-05-29T15:42:36","date_gmt":"2023-05-29T12:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=137477"},"modified":"2025-12-07T13:19:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:19:57","slug":"david_gaon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/david_gaon\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowdsourcing History: Moshe David Gaon\u2019s Efforts to Document Sephardi Jewry"},"content":{"rendered":"

When imagining a historian, people might think of a lone individual hunched over old documents, fragile archives, or ancient manuscripts. There is some truth to this generalization, but it does not do justice to the collaborative work that makes historical writing possible. Historians build on what has been written by experts before, and they maintain ongoing communication with peers in the field or laypeople with information. Moreover, historians participate in ongoing conversations, sometimes conversations that occur over generations. Today\u2019s historian attempts to answer a question raised by one of her teachers by gathering information from a wide range of people and sources.<\/p>\n

This is doubly true for scholars who work to create a new field of study. One such scholar is Moshe David Gaon (1889-1958), a pioneering but underappreciated researcher who revolutionized the study of Sephardi Jewry in the Land of Israel as well as the history of the Ladino language and its journalism. Born in Bosnia, he spent much of his life in the Land of Israel, as an educator, publicist, scholar, and communal leader.<\/p>\n

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Moshe David Gaon dedicated his professional life to documenting Sephardi Jewry. His archive<\/a> is preserved at the National Library of Israel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His contribution is more impressive given the context and history of academic Jewish studies, which began in the 19th<\/sup>-century in German-speaking lands. This tradition \u2013 known as Wissenschaft des Judentums<\/em> \u2013 worked to present Judaism as on par with the greatest aspects of European culture, and it tended to emphasize the contributions of Judaism to the West and to Europe. Modern Sephardi Jewry was often ignored or looked down upon as unsophisticated. The Zionist historians, mostly from Eastern Europe, who began working in the first half of the twentieth century, emphasized the contributions of European Jews to the nascent Zionist movement, but tended to downplay the continuous history of Sephardi Jewish settlement in the Land, as well as Sephardi contributions to the modern renewal of Jewish life in Palestine.<\/p>\n

Gaon, among others, insisted on a correction. But that correction was hard to implement. After a century of work, Wissenschaft<\/em> had already created a basic infrastructure for the study of the past, including bibliography, networks of scholars, and journals. But Sephardi Jewish studies were way behind the curve.<\/p>\n

Central, then, to Gaon\u2019s project was gathering and creating new sources of knowledge, and this meant reaching out to sources of information far and wide. His extensive archive<\/a> reflects the work he did in creating a bibliography, particularly of important Ladino newspapers. It documents his groundbreaking work on the influential Ladino Biblical commentary, Me\u2019am Loez<\/em>. Gaon published works of Sephardi Hebrew poetry, and he gathered biographies of influential Sephardi Rabbis. His most important work is Yehudei HaMizrah BeEretz Yisrael <\/em>(1928), a compendium of information on Sephardi Jewry in the Land of Israel. It remains an important reference work today, and it has been reprinted several times. In that work, he emphasized the importance of Sephardi Jewry in the establishment of an economically productive but religiously observant Yishuv<\/em> in the land of Israel.<\/p>\n

He could not have done any of this alone, and part of what he set out to accomplish was creating a network of scholars, knowledgeable laypeople, and community members who would all contribute to an ongoing conversation that would give Sephardi Jewry the pride of place it deserved. His archive is full of his ongoing correspondence, some of which was haphazard, but some was a more systematically designed effort to gather information and share ideas.<\/p>\n

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A letter sent by Moshe David Gaon to “the distinguished author and journalist Mr. Joseph Anjil”, requesting him to provide the names of editors of various Ladino newspapers, 1953, the Moshe David Gaon Archive at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
Abraham Recanati provides names of newspaper editors, after he was asked a series of questions similar to those seen in the above letter, 1953, the Moshe David Gaon Archive at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of Gaon\u2019s efforts focused on making connections with those who shared his agenda, for example several written exchanges with an older contemporary, Shlomo Rosanes, who likewise believed that Sephardi Jewry had not been researched adequately. Gaon asked Rosanes for help with publishing and publicizing his own work, but more importantly used Rosanes as a source of information, particularly about Ladino newspapers and the lives of Sephardi Jews who had moved to the Land of Israel in the 19th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

Gaon also wanted to document information held by the general public, and in the 1930s he systematically sent questionnaires to hundreds of public figures of Sephardi background, asking them about their own lives, the path that their families took to the Land of Israel, and the communities they came from. Some responded briefly and laconically, while others provided elaborate personal and family histories. These questionnaires provided important background for Yehudei HaMizrah Be\u2019eretz Yisrael<\/em><\/a>. In one exchange in late 1930, Rabbi Joseph Haim Illos of Tiberias provided a complete life history of his own illustrious father, the recently deceased Rabbi Eliyahu Illos (1860-1929), who had come to Tiberias from Morocco as a young man. Gaon was particularly interested in figures who moved to Palestine prior to the Ashkenazi Zionist movement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A letter written by Rabbi Joseph Haim Illos to Moshe David Gaon in 1930 in which he provides a complete life history of his own illustrious father, the recently deceased Rabbi Eliyahu Illos, who had come to Tiberias from Morocco as a young man, the Moshe David Gaon Archive at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gaon\u2019s posthumous Bibliography of Ladino Periodicals<\/em><\/a> (a basic reference work today) was itself a kind of crowdsourcing project. Letters from around the Ladino-speaking world, whether from communities in the Balkans or from dentists in Tel Aviv, provide names of editors, information on the number of issues of each paper, or documentation of dates on which publications began or ceased. As he insisted in his Introduction to the Bibliography<\/em>: \u201cI avoided relying on rumor, trusting instead only eyewitnesses. I wanted to base this work on facts and documents that could not be questioned.” After Gaon\u2019s death, completing the work and bringing it to publication continued as a group effort, by staff at the Ben-Zvi Institute, the National Library of Israel, and by Gaon\u2019s friend and colleague Moshe Kattan.<\/p>\n

Gaon also kept his finger on the pulse of current events, asking colleagues for documentation of their own experiences in real time. When, in 1934, a man in the city of Basra in Iraq claimed to be the Messiah, Gaon immediate brought his letter-writing skills to bear on documenting the event. \u00a0Writing in the name of the Sephardi Community Council, Gaon insisted on getting as much information as possible about the man, his motivations and the community\u2019s response to his messianic pretentions.<\/p>\n

What is his name, his age, his birthplace, who are his parents, and what was his job? The man\u2019s habits interest me greatly. It is important to clarify the factors that led him to reveal himself as Messiah, and how did he prophecy. Do some believe in him, and how did the Jews and the community leaders respond to him? Have government officials gotten involved?<\/p>\n

He was not asking only out of curiosity. With a sense of urgency, he saw this correspondence as key to his role as historian. \u201cI hope that you do not disappoint me and as soon as you receive this letter you respond so that we can fully document this event and determine the place of this man in the history of Israel, whether for praise or blame.\u201d If the community responded, I did not find that response in the archive, leaving us less knowledgeable of this event and its aftermath.<\/p>\n

Which only demonstrates the value of wide-ranging communication in documenting history. Scholars operating alone know what they know. People with knowledge sharing and communicating create a community of knowledge and change how people view the world. As the Mishnah states (Avot, 4:1): \u201cWho is wise? One who learns from every person”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Moshe David Gaon Archive<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is being cataloged and will be made accessible thanks to the kind donation of the Samis Foundation, Seattle, Washington, dedicated to the memory of Samuel Israel.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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