Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 71

sympathy for a mistreated people and his resentment of those very
people. especially when focusing his analysis on the Jews’ role in the
economy, he at times accepts antisemitic claims as he watches Jews
gradually acquiring his homeland by means of their seemingly endless
supply of capital. From his vantage point in Jerusalem and Istanbul,
al- Khalidi found himself wondering whether some of the blame for
antisemitism might belong to the Jews themselves.

Questioning Jewish Faith in an Afterlife

Let us now look more closely at al- Khalidi’s treatment of Jewish faith
and religion. In the course of his extended account of the books of the
Hebrew Bible, which al- Khalidi undertakes so that the reader will have
the necessary background to understand the biblical roots of Zionism
that Gottheil identifies at the opening of his encyclopedia article, al-
Khalidi concludes the following:

So the Jews do not anticipate reward or punishment after death

for their service and their deeds because the prophets of the

children of Israel did not promise them compensation for their

deeds other than worldly, earthly, physical happiness.^113 In some

phrases of the Torah, there is allusion to the future life, but this

allusion is not as clear as it was to the ancient egyptians who

professed an accounting and punishment after death.

Acknowledging a verse from the book of daniel (12:2) that declares
that “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,”
al- Khalidi insists that “in this expression, there is a hint of the resurrec-
tion^114 but there is no elucidation of it nor is there insistence upon it as
there is in the Holy Gospels [al-­injīl­ash-­sharīf] and the Holy Qurʾan, in
terms of verses and proofs that are mentioned repeatedly,” several of
which al- Khalidi proceeds to quote.^115
Though al- Khalidi does not typically cite his sources in this work,^116
he does do so in this case. For the general notion that the Jews do
not have a firm belief in reward and punishment or in an afterlife, al-
Khalidi points to a thirteenth- to fourteenth- century Muslim historical

(^113) Al- Khalidi’s footnote here references Abu al- Fidaʾ, the thirteenth- to fourteenth-
century compiler of history, who quotes ash- Shahrastani.
(^114) Here al- Khalidi uses two of the classical Qurʾanic terms for this concept: al-­baʿath
and an-­nushur.
(^115) Ibid.
(^116) In the 124 pages of the copyist’s text, there are only thirteen source footnotes, at
least two of which are the sources cited in Gottheil’s Jewish­Encyclopedia­entry.