118 • CHAPTER 3
Reports of this kind are not the exclusive domain of ha-Ḥerut. In Feb-
ruary 1909 Ben- Yehuda’s ha-Ẓevi published a brief report on a “rabbi
for the Jews and Christian Devotee” (ravla-yehudimve-ḥasidnoẓri).^96
The article describes a certain Rabbi Fleisher in new York who is al-
leged to have sermonized in support of Christianity and even claimed
that “Jesus was the greatest of Israel’s prophets.” the article notes that
the American Jewish newspapers criticized this rabbi and all those
“liberal rabbis who have recently begun to praise Christianity in their
synagogue sermons.” that the author shares the sentiment of the amer-
ican Jewish press is demonstrated in the article’s description of the
offender: “Fleisher, rabbi, so to speak, of a community of liberal Jews.”
the contempt here is not quite as vivid as in ha-Ḥerut, but “so to speak”
(kivyakhol) leaves little room for doubt that, in this author’s view, a
rabbi worthy of the title would never praise Jesus or Christianity.
That one finds no parallel anti- Islamic polemic in these newspapers
can be ascribed, at least in part, to the context of the Ottoman empire:
the editors and contributors might well have self- censored criticism
of Islam, fearing the newspaper’s closure and the editors’ imprison-
ment should an article deemed offensive to Islam have been published.
Such fears would not have been baseless paranoia. In august 1909,
for instance, after ha-Ẓevi’s editors were taken to court for criticizing
the Ottoman government’s alleged neglect of the welfare of palestine’s
Jews, Mendel Kremer reminded the readers of ha-Ḥerut that articles in
the hebrew press were translated into arabic and hebrew by govern-
ment officials. It is thus the responsibility of newspaper editors, warns
Kremer, to know the proverb “Wise people, be careful with your words,
and especially in your newspapers!”^97
At the same time, it is unlikely that the distinction drawn repeatedly
between the natural propensity of Muslims toward religious tolerance
and that of Christians toward religious bigotry was simply lip- service
paid to the paper’s Ottoman censor. after all, there was no need to raise
the issue of religious differences between these communities in the
first place. Rather, for Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire in particular,
this distinction was central to their collective memory and identity.
In expressing his loyalty to hebrew as the national Jewish language,
for instance, ha-Ḥerut’s editor smeared Ladino, the Judeo- Spanish that
was presumably among his native tongues, as “the language of the
Inquisition and torquemada.”^98 For this community, a reference to the
Inquisition was guaranteed a strong negative reaction.
(^96) Literally: “a rabbi for Jews and a Christian hasid.”
(^97) ha-Ḥerut 1:29 (August 4, 1909), 3.
(^98) ha-Ḥerut 1:3 (May 18, 1909), 1.