David Alroy

Alroy is the title of novel about a Jewish false messiah ( of which there have been many), written by a young Benjamin Disraeli who was Prime Minister of Britain during Queen Victoria’s reign. It illustrates that despite Disraeli’s having been forced by his father into Christianity in a fit of pique, he still had very powerful Jewish roots that only on rare occasions became evident. In fact, there was a real-life Alroy, and there is a street in Jerusalem named after him, where I and my family spent a year when I was on sabbatical. 

This past Shabbat in the Torah reading, Hagar flees her mistress Sara and ends up at a well called El Roi ( Genesis 16:13). Which in the context means “God who sees me for who I really am” and might well be how and why Disraeli saw himself, partly, in his character. 

Alroy was born  Menachem ben Shlomo in 1160 CE , in the town Amadia, in Kurdistan, and claimed he was descended from the “Ten Lost Tribes.” He studied Torah and Talmud in the Jewish academies of Baghdad and was also well-versed in Muslim literature and known as a faith healer and a mystic.

The caliphate, then, was in a chaotic state. The Crusades had caused unrest and a weakening of the authority of the sultans of Asia Minor and Persia. Competing chieftains setting up small independent states in constant competition. 

We don’t know why he chose to name himself David Alroy. Was it because Crusaders called him “The King” ? Or the Biblical reference combined with the Jewish hope for King David to return as the Jewish “messiah”.  But Alroy emerged to lead led an uprising against Seljuk Sultan and called on the Jewish community to follow him to Jerusalem. There he would be their king and free the Jews from the hands of the Muslims.  A  repeated dream of the diaspora. Alroy recruited supporters in the mountains of Chaftan between Iraq and Turkey today, and sent letters to Mosul, Baghdad, and other towns, proclaiming his divine mission. Alroy soon found himself with a large following ad soon had a private army.

Our main source was Benjamin of Tudela ( 1130-1173). A Jewish Spanish traveler and diarist. He visited and recorded Jewish life in communities across Europe, Asia, and Africa in the twelfth century. He tells the story that Alroy’s revolt was initially so successful that he challenged the authority the Seljuk Sultan. But he was eventually defeated, captured and imprisoned. But while the Sultan and his council were considering Alroy’s rebellion, so the story goes, he suddenly miraculously, appeared in front of them, to prove his divinity. The Sultan ordered Alroy’s rearrest. But once again, using magic, Alroy escaped once more. The Sultan threatened to put all the Jews to death if Alroy did not surrender. The Jewish authorities in Baghdad pressed Alroy to abandon his messianic aspirations. The governor of Amadia, bribed his father-in-law to assassinate him, ( Jew against Jew once again) and the revolt was ended. For many years afterward, a sect of Menachemites, continued to revere the memory of Alroy.

Disraeli’s novel  was originally published in 1833 and revised several times. Its significance lies in its being one of two of his novels with Jewish themes. The other was  Tancred; or, The New Crusade (1847). The English historian Cecil Roth described Alroy as the earliest Jewish historical novel and others as the earliest literary Zionist work. In, Alroy, the Jewish hero states: “You ask me what I wish: my answer is, a national existence, which we have not. You ask me what I wish: my answer is, the Land of Promise. You ask me what I wish: my answer is, Jerusalem. You ask me what I wish: my answer is, the Temple, all we forfeited, all we have yearned after, all for which we have fought, our beauteous country, our holy creed, our simple manners, and our ancient customs.” They should post that quote in parliament today.

Alroy was reasonably profitable. Nevertheless, reviews of the novel were mainly damning. His  biographer  writes, “Most modern critics would attribute no value whatever to Alroy which is written in a deplorable sort of poetry-prose and is perhaps the most unreadable of his romances”. It is not a book I would recommend anyone to read unless they have nothing better to do. But it is an interesting footnote on Anglo-Jewish literature and a revealing insight into Disraeli’s personality. And yet another example of how the idea of a Messiah has been such a universal myth for people of all faiths.

Why did Disraeli choose Alroy as his subject? Was it his knowledge of the Jewish Bible or Benjamin of Tudela’s diaries? The question remains blowing in the wind. British Anti-Semites (of whom there were and are any)  never forgave Disraeli’s Jewishness and constantly identified him as a Jew in spite of his conversion to Anglicanism. In response to a vicious anti-Semitic comment made in the British parliament, Disraeli famously retorted: “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon.”

Shabbat Shalom Jeremy November 2024