Rabbi Judah Alkalai: The Sephardic Visionary Who Planted Zionism’s Seeds
Contrary to popular belief, Sephardic thought helped build the foundations of Israel.
This article originally appeared on the July/August 2025 edition The Barnes Review.
Long before Theodor Herzl’s vision in Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”) galvanized European Jewry, a Sephardic rabbi from Sarajevo had already laid the intellectual and practical groundwork for Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel.
Rabbi Judah ben Solomon Hai Alkala…