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Immigration among their numbers were many donors from Italy, Turkey, and Eretz-Israel. Other captives from the ship were ransomed as well. [Shalshe1et ha-Qabbalah, MS. Giinzburg 652, fol. 214r-v]63 17 It is not known whether this group ultimately succeeded in reaching its destination. A similar incident is recounted in an undated anonymous letter. Its writer urged Jewish communal leaders to take the initiative in meeting the pressing need to ransom captives intercepted en route to Eretz-Israel. "For the assailants on Maltese ships came upon them as they left Rhodes for Eretz-Israel. They were stripped to the skin and paraded naked. They were taken into captivity before their enemies. Eight Jews, including two women, a mother and daughter, were exiled to Malta ... and with them the venerable wise old man, Rabbi Jacob Marcus of Salonika" [MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Opp. Add. 8° 26 (2417) (IMHM, no. 21697), fols. 2v-3r].64 Against the background of the late-sixteenth-century empire-wide economic crisis, we find reference to a large group of Safed-bound Jews from Salonika in an official Turkish document.65 As a means of stimulating the Cypriot economy, its governor had sought to import Jews to the island. Following the cancellation of a firman issued in 1575 that had authorized such a transfer of Jews from Safed to Cyprus, the Cypriot governor then turned to the sultan with a request to now appropriate a group of one hundred Salonikan Jews in transit to Safed who had made port at Famagusta.66 A firman issued in 1579 approved this request. But Salonika did not harbor Jews alone. There is a strong likelihood that a group of former conversos from Portugal, known to have arrived in Eretz-Israel in the late 1530s, passed through this city. With the institution of the Portuguese Royal Inquisition in the 1530s, these conversos , whose numbers included Spanish Jews exiled to Portugal where they had been forcibly baptized, elected to leave Portugal. Although we cannot entirely discount the possibility that these former Spaniards traveled directly to Eretz-Israel, because of the large numbers of conversos absorbed by Turkish and Greek Jewish communities it appears likely that this group made brief stops en route.67 Solomon Alkabetz's prayer for redemption, composed upon his arrival in Safed from Salonika (1536), insightfully portrays the trials of these temporary converts to Christianity, the spirit that now moved them to come to the Land. If there be among them those who abandoned their honor [converted ] on a bitter day and prayed to a strange god, You alone know the heart of man, You know his hurt and the pain of his heart.... In distress they called upon You and some sanctified Your name in 18 Immigration auto-da-{es. ... Nonetheless they kept Your Torah, neither leaving nor abandoning it.... Now their spirit moves them to go up to Mt. Zion, the Lord's mountain, to delight in its stones and to rebuild the dust of its ruins. All assemble to come to You; they take their lives in their hands and set forth by sea ... for the Land. [Werblowsky , "Solomon Alkabets," 152-53J68 B. Italy The scant evidence available for organized group aliyah from Italy in the sixteenth century is primarily from Hebrew sources. As the major Mediterranean port at that time, Venice naturally served as the starting point for Italian Jews journeying to Eretz-Israel.69 Conditions for Jews in Italy during this period were unsettled, with anti-Jewish edicts and even expulsions making aliyah an attractive option . A Christian source indicates that, following their expulsion from Naples in 1541,70 some Jews chose to immigrate to Eretz-Israel. Interestingly , the evidence for this turn of events comes from none other than a papal bull. On 24 February 1543 Pope Paul III ordered Italian Jews to assist their coreligionists from southern Italy and elsewhere as they advanced through their communities en route to Eretz-Israel.71 Perhaps Isaac de Lattes was alluding to these circumstances when he stated, "God has remembered His people, and His land, and there the Israelites go from strength to strength in wealth and honor," in a responsum written in that year.72 In the mid-1560s rumors of the impending reconstruction of Tiberias by Dona Gracia and her son-in-law Don Joseph Nasi struck a responsive chord throughout Italy. Publicized and supported by Don Joseph Nasi, the Tiberian experiment made waves. The Jews of the Italian town of...

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