RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 67specific source for al- Khalidi’s use of this term has proved elusive, cer-
tain possibilities present themselves. The Hebrew term haskamah, (pl.
haskamot), literally “agreement,” has had various technical usages over
the centuries. For instance, printed Hebrew books beginning in the
early modern period would often have a letter from a well- known and
respected rabbi at the end of the volume; with the advent of title pages
in the sixteenth century, such letters began to appear at opening of
books. This letter, known as a haskamah, would serve as an imprima-
tur, offering praise for the book and its author and assuring, if not the
highest quality of scholarship, at least a religiously inoffensive work.
Haskamotwould often also operate as copyrights, threatening with ex-
communication those who might, within a certain period of time after
publication, reproduce the work without permission.^105
A second technical usage of haskamah, or more precisely, of ascama,
with the initial ‘h’ unpronounced, was current among Sephardim, Jews
of Spanish origin for whom an “h,” as in Spanish, would generally be
silent. In Sephardic parlance, an ascama was the set of laws governing
a Jewish community’s internal administration, essentially the by- laws
of a semiautonomous religious community or, later, of a particular syn-
agogue.^106 Having encountered Sephardic Jews not only in Jerusalem
but also in France and Istanbul, perhaps al- Khalidi had heard this term.
Or he might well have seen the JewishEncyclopedia’s entry entitled
“Ascama,” which mentions these two variant usages of the term. But
neither variant precisely matches the sense that al- Khalidi attaches to
the term.^107
Perhaps al- Khalidi learned the term from his Hebrew- speaking
acquaintance in Palestine, eliezer Ben- Yehuda, the renowned en-
thusiast for the revival of Hebrew as a modern spoken language for
the Jews of Palestine. While the possibility is surely tantalizing—
after all, we know from Ben- Yehuda’s interview with al- Khalidi that
they knew each other fairly well— it is problematic. The particular
(^105) According to Moshe carmilly- Weinberger, the first haskamah of this sort appeared
in the fifteenth century, in the Agur by Jacob Landau. Moshe carmilly-Weinberger, “Has-
kamah,” EJ^2. I thank elisheva carlebach and Malachi Beit- Arié for sharing with me their
knowledge about such haskamot.
(^106) The ascamot were a close parallel to the taqanot in the Ashkenazic communities
of europe. On the Sephardic usage, see Levy, TheSephardimintheOttomanEmpire, 51–
52; Angel, “The Responsa Literature in the Ottoman empire as a Source for the Study of
Ottoman Jewry,” 656– 76.
(^107) Moshe carmilly- Weinberger offers yet another definition of haskamah, as “rab-
binic approval and approbation of the legal decisions of colleagues, usually attached
to the original legal decision and circulated with it.” This, too, does not fit al- Khalidi’s
image of a mass, unanimous agreement of rabbis to a particular position. See carmilly-
Weinberger, “Haskamah,” 444– 45.