A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe. Aron Rodrigue
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the beginning, Zionism made serious inroads within Bulgarian Jewry, and the community as a whole was largely Zionist by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. The Alliance schools were taken over by Zionist school committees, which, in conformity with Bulgarian law, were elected by the communities. Practically all the Alliance schools were closed during the years that preceded the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The conflict ended with a complete rout of the organization.19
Even during his absence, Arié remained abreast of the developments taking place in his native land, and he regretted the turn taken by the events. There was little doubt that, given his ideological options—shaped by the ideology of the Alliance and the course of his own career—and the intimacy of his relations with the leaders of the society, Arié would be anti-Zionist. In his letters to the Alliance, he gave an immediate account of any activity that smelled of Zionism, even when it took the form of societies working for the rebirth of Hebrew, such as Dorshei Leshon Ever (Friends of the Hebrew language), which was founded in Izmir in 1895 (see letter of 20 May 1895). He was full of consternation when an emigration movement to Palestine manifested itself within Bulgarian Jewry the same year, and he wrote frankly that the Jews of Bulgaria already had a nation and had no reason to leave (see letter of 28 November 1895).
His return to Bulgaria coincided with the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and the fall of large Ottoman Jewish communities such as Salonika into the hands of new masters. The reports between Arié and the Alliance at that time expressed a faith in maintaining these communities under Bulgarian domination, a hope that vanished with the Bulgarian defeats of the Second Balkan War in 1913. It is nevertheless interesting to note that Arié was overflowing with plans regarding the policies the Alliance ought to pursue in the face of these new developments. His conservatism and his alliance with the notables are particularly obvious in this correspondence. In his eyes, it was the Jewish bourgeoisie that counted. According to his analysis, although the majority of Bulgarian Jews were Zionists, the notables remained close to the Alliance and sent their children to foreign schools rather than the community institutions managed by the Zionists. He suggested the Alliance return and create strictly private schools beyond community control, in order to attract this bourgeois clientele (see letter of 22 May 1913).
All these plans came to nothing when World War I broke out. Arié lived through the war in Bulgaria. The defeat of that country began a period of great instability, particularly with the exacerbation of antisemitism, which was linked to Bulgaria’s irredentist claims on Macedonia. As usual, Arié was careful to give an account of all antisemitic incidents (see letters of 7 August 1919 and 2 February 1924). This unrest decreased quickly, however, and only began again in the 1930s.20
In the meantime, Arié’s social position as a notable—a position he had acquired through the Alliance, by virtue not only of his education but also of his status as representative of the organization in Bulgaria—was confirmed and reinforced by the growing prosperity he enjoyed in his business affairs. To a great extent, however, he was an outsider in the Jewish political life of Bulgaria, given the preponderant place of the Zionists in all community life (see letters of 17 September 1920 and 3 May 1924). His accounts affect the lofty attitude of an Olympian, and his interpretation of the Zionist activism of his fellow Jews adopts the paternalist language of an adult recounting the foolishness of spoiled children.
Nevertheless, despite the criticism addressed to Zionists and the exhortations directed at his coreligionists, whom he called upon to become good Bulgarians, we find no fire in Arié’s writings on Bulgaria, no patriotic passion, no expression of regret when children or members of the family increasingly sought their livelihoods elsewhere. Although sensitive to Bulgarian antisemitism, he could not claim the situation in that regard was worse there than elsewhere. On the contrary, the Bulgarian balance sheet on this point was relatively positive, and Bulgarian Jewry did not have to suffer major persecutions until the Holocaust. And yet, in direct continuity with the Ottoman period, nothing indicates that the Jews were ever considered true Bulgarians or that they considered themselves as such.
Notwithstanding his official attitude and his ideological assumptions, Arié’s true identity remained that of a Levantine Sephardi Jew, considerably Westernized, born in Bulgaria, from Bulgaria perhaps, but nevertheless not a Bulgarian. In fact, in keeping with the tradition whereby Jews of the Middle East became foreign subjects, Arié acquired Spanish nationality in his old age,21 most likely without renouncing his Bulgarian nationality. This acquisition of a new passport was the effect of a policy adopted by Spain in the interwar period attempting to redraw Sephardim into the Spanish orbit. Arié also became a chevalier in the order of Isabella the Catholic,22 a distinction that was at the very least ironic and paradoxical for someone whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain in 1492! In Arié, this rather dissonant configuration of identities, nationalities, and allegiances, characteristic of the Jews of the Levant in the modern period, coexisted with ideological views that were difficult to reconcile with it.
Like the Alliance, Arié was fundamentally convinced of the need to reform and “regenerate” the “fallen” Jewish communities of the East. And help could only come from the West, which was showing the path to the future, leading the progress of civilization on a global scale. Arié’s attitude toward the West and the East exhibits signs characteristic of the first generation of Westernization. Europe represented progress and absolute good. The East was the quintessence of negativity and backwardness. Orientalist discourse, so common in the correspondence of Alliance teachers, also recurs in Arié’s account. His descriptions of the various communities he visited were largely influenced by a binary perception of the opposition between East and West. In fact, he often expressed himself explicitly in these terms, as in his letter of 23 April 1894, where he recounted his visit to Asia Minor and compared that region and the Jewish communities it sheltered to the zones of Africa where the rays of European civilization had not yet penetrated. He had only scorn for many aspects of the Eastern world, which he accused of being exclusively concerned with appearances (see letter of 25 March 1898). And when he was disappointed by the ICA’s refusal of his request to oversee the affairs of the school farm of Or Yehudah, which he had worked so hard to create, the best method he found to express his discontent was to once more apply the binary opposition he was in the habit of using. He expected hypocritical behavior from the Middle East, where it was “natural,” but he was disappointed to see it manifested in the West.
As it has done on so many Westernized non-Westerners, the idealized West never ceased to exert a seductive influence on Arié. It was identified with the enlightenment of civilization; and of course, in his case, it later represented a hope for a cure for his tuberculosis. Thus, for Arié, the Westernization of Eastern Judaism was an ultimate good. Salvation had come in the form of the Alliance. As he notes in a letter to Isidore Loeb in 1890, in which he asks for recommendations of books that would allow him to learn more about the history of Jews in Spain, the Alliance had “repair[ed] the effects of 1492,” which, in the long term, had led to the decay of Sephardi Jewry. Emancipation was of capital importance. The Jews had to be transformed into good citizens. That is why he continually recommended that the Jews of the Ottoman Empire be encouraged to learn Turkish and to attend government schools (see letter of 24 July 1894). He launched a similar appeal in Bulgaria, forcefully criticizing the Jewish community for not having become better integrated and for not yet speaking Bulgarian after thirty-two years of Bulgarian independence. It was important that the Jews be represented at all levels of public life in the country, that they even become deputies in the Bulgarian Chamber (see letter of 11 June 1911).
Like the Alliance, Arié was vigilant when faced with any manifestation of antisemitism. In the famous affair involving an accusation of ritual murder in Vratsa,23 the accused Jews were acquitted owing to his efforts and to the financial aid for their defense that he succeeded in obtaining from the Alliance. Like other Alliance instructors, Arié gave a meticulous account of any antisemitic incident to the Central Committee.
Always in the spirit of Alliance ideology, which echoed Enlightenment discourse on the Jews, Arié was also firmly convinced of the need for Jews to show they “deserved” emancipation and to earn the “esteem” of their compatriots. Although antisemitism was an absolute evil, Arié was persuaded it was often exacerbated by the behavior of Eastern Jewry itself,