Most Jewish States post-1750

A challenge for you all (and myself). With a POD no earlier than 1750, how many Jewish states can you create? Bonus points if they're of decent size and stability, or someone could just hyper-balkanise Israel into a thousand microstates. The Jewish religion can't have some major transformation into a religion with proselytises in a big way, although a little conversion can occur.

Obvious examples include Israel, maybe larger than at present, or a cluster of decent-sized states where Israel is now and in its environs (Republic of Jewish Palestine, Holy Jerusalem, something in the Sinai, in the East and West Banks, maybe up in Lebanon etc), a state over in Siberia somewhere, following Jewish resettlement by the Russians in whatever guise. Maybe a Jewish state in the Americas or Australia, Ethiopia, Madagascar (a la Hitler) and I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities.

What ideas can you guys think of? Fleshed-out histories aren't compulsory, but are always more fun :)
 
Secular and democratic and commie Jewish states are quiet easy things. Secular democratic Israel could just form quiet similar way as OTL Israel. Communist Jewish state could be possible if Soviets found Jewish Soviet Republic for example to Manchuria or somewhere else to Far East. Perhaps theocratic Jewish state could be possible too. Perhaps somehow stronger religious Zionism. And perhaps somehow could be Yiddish language and culturally Germanic Jewish state. But this might be even more difficult. Perhaps after WW2 allies would found that kind but probably unlikely.
 
How about increased Jewish immigration to the Ottoman Empire following pogroms in Russia? They mostly settle around the Salonika region. They are significant enough that if the Ottoman Empire collapses in the Balkan region, they are able to take their defense into their own hands and form a Jewish state in part of Macedonia.

The problem with that is giving them enough arms to defend themselves.
 
Ethiopian empire falls hard and fragments badly, Beta Israel gets its own microstate?

Bruce
That's pretty interesting.
Could such a state get worldwide support from non-Ethiopian Jews, and eventually become a refuge, even if in a small-scale, for Jews from all over the world?
 
OK, wacky idea: Sabbati Zevi avoids falling into the hands of the Ottoman sultan, and attracting a great many followers, even managing to convert backcountry Kurds and other muslims lacking much in the way of a sophisticated grasp of their faith, manages to carve out a state in the uncertain borderlands of the east, perhaps supported by the Persians as a thumb in the eye of the cursed Sunni heretics...

Utter madness? What if he moved to India? (See, Sikhism) :)

Bruce
 
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

2. Surviving Khazar state

3. Phoenicians beat out the Greeks and give favorable treatment to the Jews, who eventually take advantage of the decline and carve out a trading outpost or two across the Mediterranean that is able to increase its autonomy to the levels necessary to become a successor state in that timelines dark age.

4. Israel doesn't hamstring its horses and becomes a bigger player in Middle Eastern affairs. Subsets of "Judaism" play a bigger role in history.
 

katchen

Banned
Just before the Islamic Conquest, the Jews dominated much of North Africa. They would have continued to do so, apparently, if Abd al Malik had not been able to divide the forces of the Jewish Berber ruler, the Kahena, playing upon fears of the Spanish Visigoths...

From Samuel Kurinsky:
The Jews wreaked revenge upon their oppressors in Cyrenaica. What had started as a race riot became a war. "The Jews of the three districts involved organized regular armies and took bloody revenge for all they observe to bear during the half century before. Trajan hurriedly sent Turbo, one of his generals, to restore order. Turbo’s soldiers were joined by the pagan population of the affected districts. They attacked the Jews, both the fighters and the peaceful population, more mercilessly than the Jews had attacked them. In the island of Cyprus every single Jew was killed, the total running into the thousands. A law was adopted never to permit a Jew to set foot on the island even if he were shipwrecked nearby. In Egypt and Cyrene the Jewish population was treated with almost equal ferocity. Thereafter the once flourishing Jewish community of Alexandria was definitely on the downgrade."5
The ignominy of having a rebellion almost succeed in destroying the Roman Empire led a Roman historian, Deo Cassius [LXVII, 32], 50 years after the event, to write a bitter, self-serving account of the Judaic victories. It was a rabid mixture of fact and fiction; intended to justify the atrocities wreaked upon the Jews for daring to challenge the rule of the Roman Emperor. The account included calumnies which lived on to haunt the Jews for centuries to come throughout Christendom.
"The Jews of the region of Cyrene," wrote Deo Cassius, "had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two from their heads downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators."
"In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt also they performed many similar deeds and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There likewise two hundred and forty thousand perished. For that reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon that island by force of the wind he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan."6
Thus, setting aside the obvious calumnies, we see that Cassius inadvertently documented the size of the Judaic community and the strength of the Judaic forces. The ferocity ascribed to the Jews was in fact practiced by the Romans, albeit cannibalism was not part of their extermination drive. In addition to the decimation of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Cyrenaica and Cyprus, the Jews of Egypt fell under the vindictive swords of the Romans.
"The aggadah, [Babylonian Talmud, Gittin, 57b] in its usual vivid fashion describes the greatness of the Egyptian Jewish community and the extent of the slaughter after the revolt: "[Hadrian, successor to Trajan] slaughtered in Egypt six hundred thousand and again six hundred thousand, twice as many as had gone forth from Egypt [at the time of the exodus]... so that the blood ran in the sea as far as Cyprus."7
Jews Move West

Blocked from escape to the east, many Jews found refuge to the west. The westward movement of the Jews from Egypt and Cyrenaica to the Barbary states was once again swelled by the expulsion of the Jews from Alexandria by Bishop Cyril in 414, and by recurrent Byzantine expulsions through the next few centuries.
The effect of each of the expulsions was short-lived. The Jews, uniquely the technologically advanced, literate, and commercially savvy element among the backward indigenous populations, remained crucial for the conduct of African industry and commerce. Economic difficulties resulting from successive expulsions led recurrently to liberalized policies and a new influx of Judaic artisans and traders. That the persecutions proved ineffective in obliterating Judaic presence is evidenced by the account of the subsequent conquering Arab general, ‘Amir ibn al-As, who reported that he found 40,000 tax-paying Jews resident in Alexandria alone, inferring the existence of a total Judaic population of several times that figure. The Arab general, stemming from a backward desert society, was likewise staggered to find 4000 "palaces," 4000 baths [!] and other visible evidence of a prosperous community within the city.8
Albeit the figures appear somewhat inflated, two facts are manifest from the Arab general’s report: The numbers of the Jewish community, and the high level of civilization encountered by the astonished Arab general. The confrontation of the primitive Arabs with the advanced science and technology of the Alexandrian Jews was repeated as the Arab armies crossed North Africa. Entering the arena as barbaric warriors, they eventually absorbed the attributes of an advanced civilization from the Jews.
Moroccan Muslim traditions relate that as the Arabs advanced, the Greeks evacuated the towns and cities. The Jews, however, stayed on, and their numbers were swelled by an influx of Jews from Syria and Egypt into the vacuum left by the Greeks.9
As a result of the Emperor Justinian’s intolerant policies in the sixth century, Jews were driven inland, and again found refuge among the hinterland Berber tribesmen. The Berbers not only welcomed the Jews, but eight of the tribes, impressed with the erudition and technological acumen of the Jews, disavowed their shamanistic, pagan concepts and adopted Judaism.
Judaic/Berber Alliance under Queen Kahena

Thus, in the year 694, when the rampaging Arab armies drove relentlessly westward along the Barbary Coast, the Jews found themselves allied with the Berbers against the invasion. The confederacy of Jewish Berber tribes rallied around the Jewish/Berber priestess Kahena. The Berbers crowned Kahena as queen, and accepted her as their military leader.
The story of Dehiyya al-Kahina malkat Afriqah (Queen of Africa) is told by Ibn Khaldun, in a literary biography in Hebrew by N. Sloushz. Khaldun’s rendition leans heavily on legendary sources, but Salo Baron notes that "Nevertheless this account is essentially confirmed and amplified in many significant details in the more recently published chronicle of an older Arab writer, ‘Ubaud ibn Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Halim."10
Khaldun’s chronicles about "this medieval version of the prophetess Deborah" hold that the priestess lived 127 years, and governed the tribe of Jeraua with the aid of her three sons for 65 years. Clearly an expansion of the truth, the historical kernel of the legends remains a classic of women’s participation in the resistance to tyranny, "as women sooth-sayers and tribal leaders in war and peace had long been known and poetically extolled even among the pre-Islamic Arabs."
Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson paid tribute to many noteworthy women warriors in their book, Wars of the Jews, and report about Kahena that "The Berbers of the Aures mountains retain legends of her bravery. She was said to have been born to a poor Jewish family of cave-dwellers. A chieftain of a Judeo-Berber tribe terrorized her Aures mountain settlement and demanded Kahena as a wife. When she rejected him he slaughtered people of her village. She then gave herself to him, but, like the Biblical heroine, slew him with a nail to the skull on the wedding night."11
The Arab armies enriched themselves as they rampaged across Persia, Afghanistan and northern India to the east, and then in Egypt and Libya to the west. "The march of Islam had barely missed a step when, in 694, the Arab forces drove into Africa Minor. Expecting an easy sweep, the Moslems met fierce resistance in Barbary."12
The Berbers rallied around their queen, the Jewess, Kahena, swearing to follow her into battle against the invaders. The Judeo/Berber army was swelled by soldiers of the pagan Berber tribes after their king Kocilla was killed by the Arabs. Queen Kahena became truly the queen and military commander of all the Berbers!
"Lions of Africa and Judah," the queen would shout to her Berber troops, "show these Arabs that we will never be enslaved by Islam. Our beloved Africa will remain free. Let our slogan be the cry of the Zealots of old: Freedom or death."
Under their valiant queen, Northwest Africa was cleansed of Arab mercenaries. Commander Ukba, who had at one point broken through all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, was killed in a Berber ambush. His armies were pushed back in retreat to Kairwan, the new Moslem base in central Tunisia. "The arrogant Ukba had tried to intimidate the proud Berbers with force instead of patiently trying to convert them to Islam with face-saving diplomacy." 13 Queen Kahena’s skills were again tested in the second, more massive Arab invasion. A new Arab general, Hassan, had driven across North Africa with a fresh army of 40,000 horseman, and had taken Carthage from the Byzantine Greeks. Queen Kahena did not confront this massive force, but outflanked it by taking the city of Bagia from its Byzantine garrison. She roused the Christian population to join her forces in resistance to the Islamic invaders. When the Arab army laid siege to liberated Bagia, Kahena and her army streamed out of the city by secret passageways. They circled around to assault the enemy from behind a rocky prominence at Wadmini. The queen’s cavalries spent the night in the saddle, forcing the Arab horsemen to do likewise. The relentless pressure through the night took a toll on the on the travel-weary Arabs, who were not in their native environment and were disadvantaged by an ignorance of the terrain.
With the break of dawn, "the Berber cavalry attacked - spurred on by their fiery queen. The townspeople of Bagia, Greeks, Copts and Phoenicians, united and inspired by Queen Kahena, simultaneously marched out on foot at the Arabs’ rear. The Berbers charged with their rugged mountain ponies, while the Moslems countered with their swifter but more nervous Arabian stallions. A thousand Berber lances clashed with slashing Arab scimitars, as the impassioned Judeo-Berbers threw themselves at the fanatic Moslem Ishmaelites. The Arabs were completely routed. The main body of the army retreated as far as Gabes, while stragglers were driven into the wilderness where they perished."14
Under their triumphant queen’s command, the Berber armies liberated Carthage, and swept on across North Africa to free it from both the Byzantines and the Arabs. The local Christians hailed the queen as liberator from the Arabs, and the Judaic communities, who had suffered dreadfully under heavy Roman and Byzantine taxation, hailed her as their deliverer. Kahena’s armies swelled with Jewish volunteers from the numerous hill communities that dotted the ridges of the mountains. The Bishop of Bula Regia had flowers strewn along her path.
For the next five years, the coalition of the diverse local elements held firm, and the region enjoyed a peaceful period of freedom from foreign domination.
The wily Arab commander, Hassan Ibn Numan, learned through bitter experience that the dedicated armies under queen Kahena’s command were a formidable force. He set out on a classic "divide and conquer" diplomatic maneuver in preparation for another invasion. Noting Christian antipathy toward the Jews, he sent emissaries to the Christians, offering a carrot of proposed tolerance while playing on the latent fear and hostility toward the Jews.
The North African Christians were fearful of Visigothan conquest. They were susceptible to Hassan’s deceptive promises of autonomy, and their latent anti-Semitism proved more powerful than the peace and freedom they enjoyed under Judeo/Berber hegemony.
At the time, the Spanish Jews were suffering under Visigothan rule in Spain. The Visigoth kings instituted a antisemitic regimen at a succession of ecclesiastical councils at Toledo. They decreed forcible baptism, forbade circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath, festivals and rites. "Jews were flogged, executed and their property confiscated, were subjected to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade, and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font."15
Hassan cunningly played upon the Judaic concern for their co-religionists suffering Visigothan oppression. He held out an olive branch to the Jews and proposed a joint Iberian invasion to rescue the Sephardic Jewish community from Visigothan tyranny. "Hassan’s seductive offer was actually first proposed by the Spanish Jews themselves. It was they who requested that the Arabs and the forces of Queen Kahena join to conquer the Iberian peninsula. The Spanish Jews were desperate for help in light of harsh new decrees that appropriated all their property, forbade them from all navigation and trade with Africa, prohibited all business with Christians, and required all converted Jews to eat non-kosher food in the presence of supervising clergy."16
The Judeo/Berbers were lulled into failing to mobilize for defense against the Arab army. Hassan ‘s new, fresh army of 60,000 troops, swept swiftly across the continent, this time unresisted and even sustained by the Christian communities in their path.
It soon became clear that Hassan had no intention of halting at Barbary’s borders. Unprepared, the Berber army was thrown into retreat. The queen, learning too late of the Arab perfidy, hastily mounted a counter-offensive. In desperation, the queen launched a scorched earth campaign in the path of the thundering Arab troops, burning fields, cutting down trees, and destroying dwellings to deny sustenance and booty to the invaders.
The queen’s plans were also frustrated by an enemy within her ranks. "Just as King Saul lost his kingdom upon sparing the Amelekite king, Queen Kahena lost hers when she spared the brave and handsome Khalid Ibn Yessid El Kaisi, a srikingly aristocratic youth among the captives."17
Khalid feigned to have become a loyal adopted member of Kahena’s own family. Secretly remaining a devoted Muslim, Khalid passed critical information to general Hassan about planned surprise attacks and ambushes. Thus armed, Hassan was able to prevail. Finally, probably concerned that his perfidy was about to be exposed, the trusted spy slipped out of the Berber camp, and was rewarded by Hassan with the position of deputy commander. Khalid’s intimate knowledge of Berber encampments, haunts and hideouts was a major factor in sealing the queen’s doom.
Unable to evade confrontation with the far more numerous forces under Hassan, "the two armies clashed head-on in a decisive battle at the ancient [Roman] amphitheater at Thysdrus, the modern town of El Jern. In the shadow of Rome’s former African glory, the fate of Barbary was decided. Arab historian Ibn Nuvairi records that the Berbers and the Jews fought like furies, and only the will of Allah allowed the Moslems to triumph. The remnants of the Berber force fled to the Aures mountains, with the queen’s guard at the rear. Her men begged her to flee to the safety of the Moroccan hinterlands, but Kahena preferred to remain with a handful of men holding a mountain pass against the onrushing Arabs. Like a true Zealot, she died with sword in hand.
The ignoble Hassan had her decapitated head sent back to the Arab Caliph, Abd el-Malik."18
 
Communist Jewish state could be possible if Soviets found Jewish Soviet Republic for example to Manchuria or somewhere else to Far East.

There was a proposal for a Jewish state in East Prussia (after expelling the ethnic Germans). Needless to say not much merit was found in the idea.
 
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

2. Surviving Khazar state

3. Phoenicians beat out the Greeks and give favorable treatment to the Jews, who eventually take advantage of the decline and carve out a trading outpost or two across the Mediterranean that is able to increase its autonomy to the levels necessary to become a successor state in that timelines dark age.

4. Israel doesn't hamstring its horses and becomes a bigger player in Middle Eastern affairs. Subsets of "Judaism" play a bigger role in history.

He said with a PoD of 1750 at the earliest.
 
How about a Jewish microstate?

Circa 1820, Nathan Mayer Rothschild acquires a small Micronesian island from a consortium of pirates. In a scheme which is widely regarded as fantastic, he arranges for a community of dispossessed Hasidim to settle on this island under the protection of a British garrison, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, but in actuality to mine the island's recently discovered guano reserves. In OTL this island became known as Nauru, but the Hasidim name it New Podolia.

On the eve of WWII the New Podolian Hasidim number five thousand, of whom a large number are Talmudic scholars supported by guano revenues. During the war the island is occupied by the Japanese, during which time the local religious authorities are severed from contact with the old country, giving rise to a new and independent Hasidic Dynasty, the so-called "Pasifitcher" branch. After the war, the Pasifitcher rebbe comes out strongly against political Zionism, and New Podolia becomes a minor alternative destination for ultra-orthodox refugees. Its population swells to ten thousand, sustained only by the guano boom and donations from abroad.

In 1964 the island obtains independence (from Australian trusteeship) as the Republic of New Podolia, a secular state which enjoys cordial relations with the Soviet Union. Its flag attests to this fact: a golden Chai on a red field. In 1968, the authorities demolish a portion of the coral reef in order to construct a seaport. Formerly the island was accessible only by air and by narrow channels through the reef.

In 1977 a coup by Halakhic hardliners deposes the secular authorities and establishes the Free Rabbinate of Yehuda, which forges close relations with Israel and the United States. Despite the new alliance, its people maintain a distinctive and very un-Israeli culture. They are highly religious, exclusively Yiddish-speaking, and have no military tradition.

Following the depletion of guano deposits in the 1980s, the Free Rabbinate becomes infamous as a tax shelter and hotbed of illegal banking. In 1997, with the death of the geriatric rebbe and the succession of his media-savvy successor, the island embarks on a major public relations campaign. It rebrands itself "the Ark of Yiddish Culture", a center of religious and cultural tourism. Ashkenazi Jews come from all over the world to visit its Yiddish language camps and sparkling beaches (newly sex-desegregated). In 2001, it adopts a bold new flag: a gold menorah on a sea-green field. In 2005, the rabbinate legalizes casino gambling.
 
How about a Jewish microstate?

Circa 1820, Nathan Mayer Rothschild acquires a small Micronesian island from a consortium of pirates. In a scheme which is widely regarded as fantastic, he arranges for a community of dispossessed Hasidim to settle on this island under the protection of a British garrison, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, but in actuality to mine the island's recently discovered guano reserves. In OTL this island became known as Nauru, but the Hasidim name it New Podolia.

On the eve of WWII the New Podolian Hasidim number five thousand, of whom a large number are Talmudic scholars supported by guano revenues. During the war the island is occupied by the Japanese, during which time the local religious authorities are severed from contact with the old country, giving rise to a new and independent Hasidic Dynasty, the so-called "Pasifitcher" branch. After the war, the Pasifitcher rebbe comes out strongly against political Zionism, and New Podolia becomes a minor alternative destination for ultra-orthodox refugees. Its population swells to ten thousand, sustained only by the guano boom and donations from abroad.

In 1964 the island obtains independence (from Australian trusteeship) as the Republic of New Podolia, a secular state which enjoys cordial relations with the Soviet Union. Its flag attests to this fact: a golden Chai on a red field. In 1968, the authorities demolish a portion of the coral reef in order to construct a seaport. Formerly the island was accessible only by air and by narrow channels through the reef.

In 1977 a coup by Halakhic hardliners deposes the secular authorities and establishes the Free Rabbinate of Yehuda, which forges close relations with Israel and the United States. Despite the new alliance, its people maintain a distinctive and very un-Israeli culture. They are highly religious, exclusively Yiddish-speaking, and have no military tradition.

Following the depletion of guano deposits in the 1980s, the Free Rabbinate becomes infamous as a tax shelter and hotbed of illegal banking. In 1997, with the death of the geriatric rebbe and the succession of his media-savvy successor, the island embarks on a major public relations campaign. It rebrands itself "the Ark of Yiddish Culture", a center of religious and cultural tourism. Ashkenazi Jews come from all over the world to visit its Yiddish language camps and sparkling beaches (newly sex-desegregated). In 2001, it adopts a bold new flag: a gold menorah on a sea-green field. In 2005, the rabbinate legalizes casino gambling.

Cool idea! You could carve quite a few interesting Jewish island nations like that!
 
OK, wacky idea: Sabbati Zevi avoids falling into the hands of the Ottoman sultan, and attracting a great many followers, even managing to convert backcountry Kurds and other muslims lacking much in the way of a sophisticated grasp of their faith, manages to carve out a state in the uncertain borderlands of the east, perhaps supported by the Persians as a thumb in the eye of the cursed Sunni heretics...

I was thinking of something similar, but a bit farther afield. In OTL, Judaism isn't an evangelical religion because missionizing Christians or Muslims has been a good way to get killed for most of the past sixteen centuries, but there's no religious prohibition against evangelism. So it's not impossible for a Jewish merchant-scholar to find himself someplace where those conditions don't apply - central or southern Africa, say, or among the hill tribes of southeast Asia - and decide to spread the message. If this happens early enough - that is, if they get there before the American and European Christian missionaries do - there might be several indigenous peoples who embrace Judaism, leading to several Jewish states emerging from the colonial period. An indigenous Jewish Buganda kingdom would be a nice counterpoint to all the Zionist Uganda timelines.
 
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