Abraham Shalom Yahuda, the Intercultural Mediator in the Light of the Correspondence Between Max Nordau and Ignác Goldziher

Abstract

This study investigates the intertwined relationships and ideological visions of Max Nordau, Ignác Goldziher, and Abraham Shalom Yahuda, focusing on the evolution of modern Jewish scholarship, identity, and political affiliation around the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on a diverse range of primary sources—including Nordau’s correspondence to Goldziher, Goldziher’s diaries, and contemporary press materials—it analyzes the complex dynamics among these three figures, each representing distinct biographical trajectories and ideological commitments. Particular emphasis is placed on Yahuda’s career in Madrid, his engagement with Sephardism, and his dual identity that positioned him as a unique intermediary between Eastern and Western Jewry. The study further explores Yahuda’s involvement with the Zionist movement and his stance on the Arab-Jewish question, highlighting his role in fostering Jewish–Arab cultural dialogue amid Zionist and assimilationist tensions. Ultimately, this research aims to elucidate how Jewish self-narratives were negotiated and transformed within the intellectual and political landscapes of the era, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of Jewish modernity at the dawn of the twentieth century.

1. Introduction

Max Nordau (1849–1923), born in Pest (Hungary), was a writer, physician, and political thinker, while Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) emerged as one of the foremost figures in European Islamic studies. Their acquaintance dates back to their youth in the 1860s, when both attended the Calvinist Gymnasium in Pest. Although their career trajectories diverged significantly over time, their personal relationship never fully dissolved. Nordau integrated into the French intellectual milieu and became one of the most influential voices in contemporary Jewish self-understanding and social critique, whereas Goldziher shaped Eastern and Jewish studies within the Hungarian academic context. Despite their differing intellectual approaches and political convictions, a relationship marked by intellectual tension and mutual respect persisted for decades.

The extant correspondence between them is limited—only seven letters from Nordau to Goldziher are known—but it offers substantial historical and intellectual insight. The chronological spread of these letters, from the late 1870s to the early 1920s, spans nearly half a century of interaction. Particularly notable are two letters from 1920, written while Nordau resided in London and worked at the international center of the Zionist organization, during the final phase of his life, as he sought new directions for the transmission of Jewish intellectual heritage. These letters address not only Goldziher’s upcoming seventieth birthday but also existential and political issues, including the possibility of Goldziher settling in Palestine—a prospect he rejected due to his patriotic attachment to Hungary and his identification as an assimilated Hungarian-Jewish intellectual. This episode highlights the profound yet fundamentally opposed ideological positions that characterized their relationship: Nordau was a committed advocate of Jewish national self-determination, while Goldziher perceived Jewish existence as inextricably linked to the Hungarian and broader European intellectual sphere.

Within this intellectual tension, the figure of Abraham Shalom Yahuda assumes special significance. To both men, Yahuda represented different meanings; Nordau viewed him almost as Goldziher’s intellectual successor. Born in Palestine with Sephardic roots and originating from a Baghdadi family, Yahuda’s academic formation and cultural orientation developed within the German orientalist milieu. His erudition, multilingualism, and dual Jewish-Arab cultural affiliations secured him a unique position in contemporary scholarship. Yahuda was a pioneer not only in collecting Eastern manuscripts but also in reinterpreting Jewish-Arab cultural relations. His public and political role was contentious during his lifetime: he actively contributed to the founding of the Hebrew University and acted as an intermediary between the Jewish world and European policymakers.

Yahuda’s scholarly ambitions transcended traditional orientalism. He aimed to present Arab-Jewish cultural relations not merely as historical curiosities but as formative elements of modern Jewish identity and vision. This aspiration is exemplified by his efforts to establish academic programs in Spain, where he lectured on Jewish history and literature at the University of Madrid and was later appointed professor of Jewish culture. Sensitive to the narrow perspectives of German Arabists, Yahuda insisted that a profound understanding of Arabic language and culture was essential for a viable Jewish future in Palestine. In this regard, he critiqued the intellectual provincialism of contemporary German academia and sought to develop a comprehensive, East-centered scholarly paradigm.

However, Yahuda’s tenure in Spain was fraught with difficulties. Despite initial acclaim—he was the first Jewish professor at the University of Madrid and undertook an important cultural mission in redefining Sephardic heritage—he increasingly faced administrative obstacles and alienation, eventually withdrawing from his post in 1923. His career encapsulates not only the tension between personal ambition and scholarly mission but also the challenges faced by a Jewish orientalist engaged in both academic and public spheres in early twentieth-century Europe.

Yahuda thus became a latent axis in the correspondence between Goldziher and Nordau. For Nordau, he was a bridging figure oriented toward both Zionist ideals and Eastern scholarship, while comfortably navigating political diplomacy. Although Goldziher fundamentally disagreed with Zionism, he recognized Yahuda’s scholarly merits and supported his research. Each of the three—Nordau, Goldziher, and Yahuda—sought, in their own way, to respond to the question of Jewish identity within the framework of modernity. Their work operated at the intersection of scholarship, public life, and ideology, offering divergent pathways for envisioning the future of Jewish existence.

This research employs a source-critical methodology with a central focus on analyzing the Nordau–Goldziher correspondence, especially its ideological and social contexts. Contemporary German press materials, alongside Yahuda’s publications, also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the scientific and political discourses of the era. The study aims not only to reconstruct the life trajectories of these three figures but also to explore the shifting role, significance, and social position of Jewish scholarship within the intellectual landscapes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

“I Can Only Wholeheartedly Wish That Your Homeland May Prove Worthy of Your Faithful Love”

The First World War utterly devastated Max Nordau. Although he had lived continuously in Paris since 1880 and started a family there, he was not a French citizen; as a national of an enemy state, he was compelled to leave. Thanks to his favourable relations with the Spanish monarch, he and his family endured the war years in Spain. Nevertheless, the conflict left him financially ruined, as the French authorities confiscated all his property during his absence. Despite tireless diplomatic efforts, his attempts to recover these assets ultimately proved unsuccessful (Schulte 1997).

Following the war, Nordau relocated to London, a move closely connected to his role within the Zionist movement. After the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the movement’s leadership transferred its headquarters to London, from where diplomatic channels facilitated the acquisition of a visa for Nordau.

In this postwar context, Nordau issued a dramatic appeal to the Zionist Executive, calling for the immediate mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to Palestine. His open letter of 1919—often read as a desperate and late-stage ideological turn—should instead be understood as a political and humanitarian response to the catastrophic breakdown of civil society in the wake of the First World War. While the cessation of hostilities brought a formal end to imperial conflict, it also unleashed a period of profound instability across Eastern and Central Europe. In regions with large Jewish populations, such as Poland, Ukraine, and the former Habsburg territories, violence continued in the form of pogroms, civil wars, and territorial disputes, producing tens of thousands of casualties and a pervasive sense of fear among Jewish communities.

Nordau viewed these developments as clear evidence of the ultimate failure of Jewish emancipation within the framework of the European nation-state. The promise of liberal integration and socialist solidarity, which had animated much of his earlier political and philosophical writing, now appeared illusory. In their place, he witnessed ethnic scapegoating, the collapse of legal protections, and the weaponization of national identity against vulnerable minorities. The civil war in Russia, the resurgence of antisemitism in newly formed Eastern European states, and the spread of political extremism reinforced his conviction that Zionism had to be reimagined as a matter of collective survival rather than moral regeneration.

Events in Hungary further shaped this shift in emphasis. Nordau followed the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 with growing alarm. Although in exile, he understood the regime—and its violent aftermath—not only as a national tragedy but also as a paradigmatic case of how Jews could be politically instrumentalized and collectively punished. The fall of the communist government was accompanied by intensified antisemitic rhetoric and retribution, illustrating to Nordau the inherent volatility of Jewish existence within revolutionary or counterrevolutionary frameworks alike.

These experiences pushed him to adopt a tone of existential urgency. No longer concerned with gradualist visions of cultural evolution, he now advocated an emergency form of Zionism grounded in demographic realism and political necessity. The idea of transferring hundreds of thousands of Jews to Palestine was not a utopian fantasy but a historical imperative, aimed at preempting future waves of persecution and securing Jewish agency in an increasingly hostile world. His rhetoric shifted accordingly—from calls for spiritual renewal to appeals for immediate action. Zionism, in this formulation, was no longer a distant ideal but a strategy of rescue.

In retrospect, Nordau’s final political intervention can be seen as both a culmination and a transformation of his earlier work. It retained the ethical fervor of his critiques of European decadence but redirected that energy toward a concrete and time-sensitive goal. Rather than diagnosing cultural decline, he sought to mobilize institutional power for the preservation of Jewish life. It was, in many respects, a sobering conclusion to a long and complex intellectual journey—one in which the ideals of civilization gave way to the imperatives of survival (Schulte 1997, pp. 354–56).

It was from London, in 1920, that Nordau addressed a letter to Goldziher. In his initial correspondence, he remarked on recent developments in Hungary, which caused him considerable concern, especially given the few remaining friends he still counted in the country (Scheiber 1956, pp. 205–6). Due to wartime censorship, he refrained from elaborating but strongly urged Goldziher to contemplate relocating to Palestine:

“I wholeheartedly hope that you will come to the decision to establish your residence in Jerusalem. There, in a free Jewish state, you would receive the high esteem you so richly deserve. You would be the pride and glory of the university soon to be founded. Moreover, you could prove of inestimable value in fostering the necessary confidential relations between Jews and Arab Muslims (we have no connection with the Christian Syrians, nor do we seek one). This could mark the beautiful twilight of your life. You are, in your soul, an Eastern man […]. Reflect upon this, and when the opportunity arises, kindly let me know your thoughts on my suggestion”.

(Scheiber 1956, p. 205)

According to Scheiber, Goldziher replied to this proposal in a letter dated 30 May 1920,1 declining it on patriotic grounds. To abandon his homeland, he wrote, would constitute an oppressive sacrifice, one he was not prepared to make, even at that stage: “This was the reason I resisted, in my younger years, the opportunity to emigrate to universities in Germany and England” (Heller 2000, pp. 39–40).2

The remainder of Nordau’s letter conveys the voice of a deeply disillusioned and despairing man. The inclusion of a quotation from Spinoza suggests that Goldziher’s letter may likewise have carried a melancholic tone.3 Nordau explained that the war had left him existentially shattered: they had been forced to flee, leaving everything behind, and even after the war’s conclusion, his return to Paris remained uncertain. Given his age, the prospect of establishing a new medical practice elsewhere was slim—something Goldziher, of the same generation, would have understood well. The newspapers for which he had written had ceased publication.4 His sole remaining outlet was the opportunity to publish in North and South American periodicals.

A few weeks later, on 18 June 1920, Nordau penned his final letter to Goldziher. In it, he offered an extended and affectionate birthday greeting to his friend in Budapest on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Once again, he encouraged Goldziher to consider relocating to Palestine. It seems probable that Goldziher had already responded to this proposal in his previous letter, as Nordau now addressed, with understanding, the emotional barriers that stood in the way—his love for his homeland, the difficulty of starting anew—and expressed his hope that Goldziher’s fidelity might be rewarded with national recognition:

“Your kind letter did not surprise me. I understand your position. Your proper place would surely be in Jerusalem, yet I also perceive that your heart remains bound in every fibre to your native soil, and that the prospect of commencing a new life in a new environment, under unfamiliar conditions, gives you pause. This is, above all, an emotional matter, and I am old enough to know that it is futile to confront emotions with rational arguments. I can only wholeheartedly wish that your homeland may prove worthy of your faithful love”.

(Scheiber 1956, p. 206)

Nordau wrote these lines to Goldziher after having lived away from Budapest for nearly forty years. After a shared youth, their respective “years of wandering” might be viewed as parallel journeys—both were, in a sense, “in the field.” Nordau’s worldview took shape over the course of his European travels (Ujvári 2017), while Goldziher prepared for the life he envisaged—one which took a different path after the death of József Eötvös—during his time in Germany and the Middle East. The further evolution of their lives and careers was profoundly influenced by their respective attitudes toward assimilation, identity (both national and religious), and the contradictions of bourgeois modernity (Ujvári 2020a, 2020b, 2023, pp. 27–45).

2. The Relationship Between Nordau, Goldziher, and the Young Orientalist Abraham Shalom Yahuda

As Nordau and Goldziher reflected on their diverging paths and on the uncertain fate of Jewish life in Europe and Palestine, their correspondence turned repeatedly to a younger scholar whose trajectory they both sought to influence: Abraham Shalom Yahuda.

The orientalist and renowned manuscript collector Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951) was born in Jerusalem into a prosperous Jewish family. On his father’s side, his lineage traced back to Baghdad, from where the family had relocated to Palestine in the 1850s. According to Yahuda, both his grandfather and father were born in India and had acquired British citizenship (Gonzalez 2019, pp. 407–10). His maternal ancestry was Ashkenazi, of German origin. Yahuda’s intellectual development was significantly shaped by his older brother, Isaac Benjamin Ezekiel, thirteen years his senior.5 By the age of eighteen, Yahuda had already published two independent scholarly works.

In 1895, Yahuda commenced his university studies, attending leading institutions in several German cities, including Heidelberg and Strasbourg. His doctoral dissertation was supervised by the eminent Semitist Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930). During these formative years, Yahuda became acquainted with Ignác Goldziher6 and initiated a long-lasting relationship with Max Nordau7. It was also in this period that he became actively involved in the Zionist movement, attending the First Zionist Congress, where he emerged as a dedicated follower of Nordau.

From 1904, Yahuda spent a decade lecturing at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. Even during this period, his name had already been associated with plans to establish a chair in rabbinic language and literature at the Universidad Central de Madrid. This would have represented the first modern university professorship in Jewish studies in Spain—a remarkable prospect, considering that until then no Jewish scholar had ever held more than a nominal academic post in the country (Gonzalez 2019, p. 410).

In one of his early letters (12 May 1920), Yahuda conveyed Goldziher’s greetings to Nordau and reported on the grievances he had encountered at the University of Madrid, which had drawn Goldziher’s disapproval. Nordau, however, believed that his friend in Pest lacked a full understanding of the situation—otherwise, he would likely have judged it differently. Yahuda had initially relocated from Jerusalem to Madrid during World War I but had since moved on. Nordau found this wholly understandable, remarking that “Yahuda had rendered great service, but ingratitude had become his reward. In Spain, he had neither an academic nor a personal future ahead of him,” and, given his age, he had every right to seek new opportunities elsewhere (Scheiber 1956, pp. 205–6).

In a subsequent letter (18 June 1920), Nordau elaborated extensively on the injustices Yahuda had endured in Spain. He offered Goldziher a cultural explanation, attributing much of the problem to what he saw as the volatility of the Spanish temperament: an initial outpouring of enthusiasm quickly followed by apathy and abandonment. Nordau, who had closely followed Yahuda’s career in Spain over a five-year period, placed the blame not so much on individual academics as on the indifference of the state:

“As for our friend Yahuda, allow me to enlighten you briefly. I have been in the closest confidence with him in Spain for five years. I have witnessed firsthand his efforts, struggles, successes, hopes, and disappointments, and based on these experiences, I can assert with certainty that those whom you recommended warmly welcomed him upon his arrival in Madrid. However, they are Spanish. I am not sure if you fully grasp what that means. Upon first meeting, the Spaniard is all fire. His very language determines, even compels him to place himself at your disposal without reservation, offering his home, his property, almost his wife and children, and even himself. This overflow of brotherly love and passionate sacrifice lasts for two to four weeks. After that, the fire completely extinguishes, the flame dies down, and the one who was so deeply in love with you, or appeared to be, no longer knows you, unless there is a personal, material interest in maintaining the relationship.”

This was the case with Yahuda’s first acquaintances. Not the slightest thing was done for him. Some secretly wished him ill. Only when he triumphed without them—or even against them—did they return to his side, attempting to claim credit for his success and convince him that he owed it to their support. Those who truly championed the creation of the Yahuda Chair and brought about his invitation, who elected him to academic societies and organized seminars for him at the Centro de Estudios, were of a different sort. During his five years of work, Yahuda never disappointed them. They were the first to recognize and regret that the government would neither offer nor enable the conditions necessary for him to exercise not only his scholarly expertise but also his political and organizational talents. They remain grateful for what he achieved in—and for—Spain, despite adversity and great obstacles” (Scheiber 1956, pp. 206–7).

The initiative to establish this professorship emerged from both intellectual and political considerations. At the time, Spain was redefining its colonial ambitions through the creation of the Moroccan Protectorate8. This new geopolitical context necessitated the development of academic institutions, in collaboration with France9, whose own cultural influence in the region was growing. Scholarship thus became an important tool of colonial policy, particularly in efforts to gain the support of Moroccan Jews for Spain’s territorial and economic expansion. Within this framework, Yahuda emerged as an ideal candidate.

Spanish authorities sought someone capable of offering academic courses on Jewish life and medieval Iberian Jewry, conducting foundational research in these fields, and delivering public lectures on broader Jewish topics. The goal was to attract both Spanish students and Moroccan Jews to institutions within the Protectorate, home to an estimated 25,000 Sephardic Jews—where France had already begun establishing educational footholds (Gonzalez 2019, p. 412; Meyuhas Ginio 2015; Ojeda-Mata 2017).

Crucially, the ideal candidate had to possess a Spanish, and more specifically Sephardic, cultural background. These expectations aligned with the broader cultural-political phenomenon of philo-Sephardism in Spain. Advocates of this ideology saw a revived Jewish presence—especially in economic life—as a potential engine of national renewal. It was framed both as a symbolic atonement for the 1492 expulsion and as compensation for Spain’s territorial losses following the Spanish-American War of 1898 (Gonzalez 2019, p. 413).

Yahuda’s name was frequently invoked in conversations between Miguel Asín Palacios, professor at the University of Madrid,10 and Ignác Goldziher, the pioneering Islamicist, who publicly praised Yahuda’s scholarship. In his diary entry dated May 1913, Goldziher wrote the following:

“On the 11th, the Spanish Consul here delivered to me a letter dated the 3rd from Professor Miguel Asín Palacios of Madrid, forwarded by the Spanish Government, requesting me to: (1) recommend a qualified instructor to the University of Madrid for the newly proposed rabbinical course, and (2) inaugurate this emerging discipline with a series of lectures on Jewish literature in Spain, thereby dignifying the initiative”.

(Goldziher 1978, p. 276)

The next day, he continued as follows: “I deem Yahuda as the destined Sephardic candidate of Providence, and I approached him with the query of whether he would accept this position. Thus, the sin of 1492 finds redemption through scholarship in 1914” (Goldziher 1978, p. 276).

Goldziher was a vocal supporter of the new department and encouraged Yahuda to embrace the philo-Sephardic dimension of the initiative. He believed that the foundations of all Jewish religious culture were deeply rooted in Sephardic traditions, particularly through figures such as Judah Halevi and Maimonides. He urged Yahuda to assume a leading role in the Sephardic Renaissance. Years earlier, Goldziher had also encouraged Yahuda to participate in the founding of Cairo University. However, negotiations with the institution’s inaugural rector (later Sultan Fuad I) failed—primarily due to Yahuda’s insistence that Hebrew be included among the Semitic languages offered (Gonzalez 2019, p. 414).

3. Yahuda, the Intercultural Mediator

What, then, predestined Yahuda for this unique position? He occupied an exceptional place within German Oriental Studies, shaped by an unconventional identity: a native of Palestine with a Baghdadi background, strong Jerusalem ties, and deep roots in the Sephardic world. These elements permeated his writings and thinking on Jewish modernization, Zionism, and the Jewish-Arab question.

Although Yahuda’s academic training paralleled that of other German-Jewish Orientalists of his generation—he, too, studied in the major German centers where Oriental Studies bridged Islamic and Jewish scholarship—his intellectual profile was distinct. His research centered on the Jewish-Muslim world and on Hebrew-Arabic linguistic and cultural connections (Evri 2019).

Yahuda’s scholarly formation was influenced by a range of intellectual movements: the Jewish Haskalah, the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Arab al-Nahda (Arab Renaissance), Ottoman reformist efforts like the Tanzimat, and Sephardic intellectual networks. His academic work and political engagement were both rooted in a sustained reflection on Jewish cultural modernization and historical transformation, particularly as they affected Jewish life in Europe and Palestine. Central to his thought was the conviction that a revitalized Jewish culture in Palestine must draw on the long-standing Jewish-Muslim tradition. He emphasized the enduring value of Jewish-Arab cultural synthesis as a resource for renewing Hebrew and Jewish life (Evri 2019, pp. 337–38).

In Yahuda’s approach, academic inquiry and political discourse were inseparable. His insistence on the importance of Arabic and Islamic sources for understanding Jewish and Hebrew philosophy and poetry was not solely grounded in philological or historical arguments; it was also politically motivated. For him, recovering these traditions was vital to the broader Zionist project and to shaping the future of Jewish life in the Land of Israel (Evri 2019, p. 338).

The cultural legacy of Spanish Jewry had long served as fertile ground for imagining a modern Jewish identity. Nineteenth-century Jewish historians such as Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), Moritz Güdemann (1835–1918), and Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) idealized Muslim Spain as a golden age and a model for contemporary Jewish renewal. This admiration, central to the Jewish Enlightenment, also served to affirm Jews’ belonging within European culture. These thinkers assumed that Jewish modernization necessarily aligned with Western ideals and European civilization (Evri 2019, pp. 338–39).

Ismar Schorsch has shown how Islamic civilization—particularly as mediated by Sephardic culture—enriched Jewish thought with Hellenistic philosophy and a spirit of rational inquiry. This influence, he argues, was instrumental in the 19th-century Jewish assimilation into Western culture. Sephardic mysticism, moreover, offered both a source of pride for emancipated Jews and a vehicle for cultural resistance. It enabled Jewish intellectuals to rediscover a shared classical heritage with German culture, thus creating a paradoxical synthesis: the Jewish encounter with Islam ultimately served as a conduit for Jewish integration into the modern Western world (Schorsch 2012).

By the late 19th century, interest in Sephardic heritage among European-trained Jewish scholars intensified, especially with regard to its national and Hebrew dimensions. Yet, curiously, these scholars largely overlooked the Arabic language and its impact on Jewish authors in Spain. Judeo-Arabic texts received little scholarly attention; even foundational works by thinkers such as Yehuda Halevi and Maimonides—originally written in Arabic—circulated primarily in Hebrew translations. Historians have since noted that this neglect reflects a broader tendency within the Wissenschaft des Judentums to emphasize Judaism’s Western elements while minimizing its Eastern dimensions.11 This included downplaying the role of Arabic in shaping medieval Spanish Jewish culture (Evri 2019, pp. 339–40).12

Nevertheless, Andalusian influences continued to resonate in modern Jewish thought, particularly through their convergence with the Arab Nahda. In the late Ottoman period, figures like Yahuda and other Sephardic intellectuals engaged in multiple cultural movements simultaneously: the Hebrew revival, the Arab renaissance, and the reformist Tanzimat. At the time, these movements were not perceived as mutually exclusive. In the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Jewish modernization and the revival of Hebrew unfolded alongside broader Arab cultural renewal (Evri 2019, pp. 339–40).

Yahuda’s involvement in both the Hebrew and Arab renaissances is essential to understanding his views on Jewish-Arab relations. He envisioned a restoration of the Judeo-Muslim bond exemplified by Andalusia, seeing it as a foundation for modern Arab and Jewish renewal alike. Raised in Jerusalem—then a vibrant intellectual center—Yahuda was shaped by a complex confluence of influences: the emergent Ottoman elite, Nahda thinkers, Hebrew Haskalah circles, and European intellectuals who had settled in the city. Within this dynamic environment, Yahuda developed a distinctive approach that blended rigorous scholarship with active political engagement.13

Recent historiographical debates have further problematized the epistemic foundations of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, particularly its selective incorporation of Arabic–Jewish intellectual traditions. As Susannah Heschel (2012) has influentially argued, the process of “de-Orientalization” within the Wissenschaft was not merely a byproduct of disciplinary evolution but a strategic repositioning of Judaism as a Western, rational religion, distinct from its Oriental, mystical, or Arabic-inflected elements. This conceptual shift, rooted in Enlightenment paradigms of universal reason, served both apologetic and assimilationist aims—recasting Jewish identity in terms more compatible with German and European intellectual expectations.

Gil Anidjar (2008) extends this critique by arguing that the very distinction between “Judaism” and “Islam” is a product of modern Christian (and Orientalist) epistemology, which rendered Islam a theological other and Judaism a manageable, Westernized counterpart. David Moshfegh (2012), in turn, has shown how Orientalism within Jewish thought became internalized as a form of “scientific self-fashioning,” whereby scholars such as Goldziher negotiated their precarious position as Jewish intellectuals in Christian-majority academic settings by embracing the epistemic authority of historicist European philology. This strategy allowed them to participate in the emerging Islamwissenschaft as a “science of religion,” while simultaneously disavowing cultural or affective proximity to Islam. Moshfegh argues that this complex balancing act—affirming Islam’s historical development while distancing it from contemporary Jewish identity—was essential to the legitimation of Jewish scholarship within the broader framework of European Orientalism.

Lena Salaymeh and Yossef Schwartz both highlight the normative exclusions embedded in these scholarly traditions. Salaymeh argues that secular academic framings of Jewish and Islamic law are not neutral but reproduce modern European political and theological categories that marginalize indigenous forms of knowledge (Salaymeh 2016). Schwartz, similarly, shows how the institutional architecture of Jewish studies favored particular genealogies of reason and history, often at the expense of intercultural or multivocal traditions (Schwartz 2019).

Within this critical framework, Abraham Shalom Yahuda emerges as a counter-figure: an “Orientalized” Jewish scholar who resisted the de-Orientalizing tendencies of the German-Jewish canon. His engagement with Judeo-Arabic texts was not merely philological but programmatic—aimed at restoring the Andalusian model of convivencia as a viable foundation for Jewish cultural renewal in Palestine. In this sense, Yahuda’s position troubled the boundaries of the Wissenschaft by asserting the epistemic and political value of Arabic–Jewish hybridity. Irene Zwiep has noted that such figures were often rendered invisible within the modern disciplinary matrix, not because of scholarly insufficiency, but because their pluralistic visions conflicted with the teleological narrative of Jewish integration into the Western nation-state (Zwiep 2019).

These critical interventions collectively illuminate why Yahuda’s position remained institutionally marginal despite his extensive erudition. His multilingualism, Sephardic identity, and intercultural commitments made him ill-suited to a scholarly tradition that sought legitimacy by aligning Judaism with Western rationalism and distancing it from the East. In this light, Yahuda can be read not only as an outlier but as a diagnostic figure, whose trajectory reveals the limits and contradictions of modern Jewish intellectual history.

4. Yahuda and Zionism

Yahuda first encountered Zionism while studying in Germany, shortly after leaving Jerusalem to pursue his university education in Europe (Evri 2019, p. 347). He quickly became involved in the movement but soon raised concerns within Zionist circles about their attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture. His pivotal meeting with Theodor Herzl in London in 1896 marked a turning point: Yahuda advised Herzl to engage with the local Arab population in Palestine and to seek their support for the Zionist cause. He was among the first to recognize the crucial role that Arabs would play in the success—or failure—of the Jewish return to Palestine.

At the First Zionist Congress in Basel the following year, Yahuda reiterated the importance of negotiating with Arab leaders and urged Herzl to develop a strategy in that direction. However, Herzl dismissed the proposal, prioritizing immediate negotiations with the great powers and regarding talks with the Arabs as unnecessary. Yahuda later identified this rejection as a key contributing factor to the emergence of the Palestinian Arab question and the long-standing Zionist-Arab conflict. He saw it as symptomatic of the arrogant attitude of many European Jews toward Arabs—a mindset that, in his view, only deepened mistrust and laid the groundwork for future hostilities (Evri 2019, p. 348).14

5. Academic Career in Spain: Between Recognition and Disappointment

Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s academic engagement in Spain between 1914 and 1923 stands as a compelling case study in the paradoxes of symbolic inclusion and structural marginalization. His trajectory—from being received with unprecedented enthusiasm by Spain’s political and intellectual elites to resigning his professorship amid growing disillusionment—reveals the fragile foundations upon which intercultural initiatives rested in early twentieth-century Europe. For Yahuda, Spain offered not merely an academic post, but a symbolic stage where the long-severed ties between Sephardic Jewry and the Iberian Peninsula might be renewed. Yet the very forces that initially facilitated his success would eventually undermine it. Yahuda’s years in Madrid illuminate the limitations of cultural diplomacy in the absence of durable institutional consensus, and they underscore the volatility of Jewish intellectual authority in national settings marked by ambivalence toward religious and ethnic pluralism.

Yahuda arrived in Madrid in 1914, responding to an invitation by the Spanish government to deliver a series of lectures on Jewish history and literature.15 The visit was widely publicized in the Spanish and German press (Vossische Zeitung 1914b), and his scholarly presence was received as an emblematic moment in the evolving philosephardic discourse that had gained prominence since the late nineteenth century. Yahuda, fluent in Spanish and renowned internationally for his philological scholarship, embodied the possibility of cultural restitution: the idea that Spain might reconcile with its Jewish past not only by commemorating it, but by actively reintegrating Sephardic heritage into its academic and civic institutions.

The symbolic apex of this rapprochement was reached when Yahuda was unanimously elected as a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History—the first Jew to receive this honor in modern Spain. His public lectures, particularly the one addressing the legacy of Spanish Jewry and the contemporary conditions of Sephardic communities in Morocco and the Balkans,16 were attended by leading intellectuals and government figures. They resonated strongly with Spanish efforts to redefine national identity through selective historical inclusion, especially regarding the so-called “repatriation” of Sephardic Jews from North Africa, (Vossische Zeitung 1914b) a project that combined cultural nostalgia with geopolitical calculation (Friedman 2019, p. 438).

It was against this backdrop that a royal decree in December 1915 appointed Yahuda as full professor and founding chair of the newly established Department of Jewish History and Literature at the University of Madrid.17 The creation of the department was interpreted by contemporary commentators as an act of historical reparation—one that signaled Spain’s willingness to overcome the legacy of the Inquisition and to align itself with modern liberal values. Official speeches by the rector18 and dean19 emphasized that Yahuda’s appointment represented a return to the spirit of convivencia, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews had once contributed jointly to Iberian civilization. The Vossische Zeitung hailed the moment as “the most vivid expression of Spanish philosephardism in action,”20 while Spanish dailies described the appointment as a turning point in the nation’s cultural politics.

Yet beneath this ceremonial enthusiasm lay a more complex institutional and political terrain. While Yahuda’s appointment was endorsed by the Ministry of Education, the Faculty of Arts, and the Academy, segments of the university establishment remained ambivalent. Yahuda was perceived by some as an outsider—a non-naturalized, foreign-born Jew with a transnational profile, whose scholarly ambitions exceeded the scope of Spanish academic traditions. His Sephardic identity, celebrated publicly, became a source of internal suspicion; his fluency in Arabic and Hebrew, his engagement with Islamic sources, and his increasing travel abroad were interpreted by some colleagues as signs of detachment or even divided loyalties.

The tensions between symbolic recognition and institutional alienation would only grow during Yahuda’s tenure. His teaching drew on the Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition but adapted it to the Spanish context. He emphasized a comparative, philological approach that integrated Hebrew instruction into a broader framework of Semitic languages and literatures. He also advocated for interdisciplinary studies of the Jewish–Islamic–Christian triangle in medieval Spain, framing Jewish history not as a marginal field but as integral to Spanish national identity. Students responded enthusiastically to his courses on the Sephardic Golden Age and on the intellectual achievements of Jewish philosophers and poets in al-Andalus. In line with his progressive views, Yahuda also called for the admission of women to rabbinic training—an initiative that set him apart not only within Spanish academia but also within broader Jewish institutional life (Gonzalez 2019, pp. 416–22).

Beyond the university, Yahuda became an active agent in the renewal of Jewish communal life in Spain. He supported the founding of Madrid’s first modern synagogue, contributed to the establishment of Jewish organizations in Barcelona, and forged ties with Spanish intellectuals sympathetic to the project of Jewish cultural revival. His public writings and personal correspondences reveal a dual vision: Spain as both a repository of Jewish memory and a potential base for a renewed Sephardic presence in Europe and the Mediterranean.21 To this end, Yahuda also tried to enlist the support of British political figures, believing that Spain’s embrace of Jewish heritage could be aligned with broader Anglo-Spanish imperial interests in North Africa and the Middle East (Friedman 2019, pp. 439–40).22

Yet even as Yahuda’s influence extended across multiple arenas—academic, communal, diplomatic—his institutional position remained precarious. His frequent absences from Madrid, particularly after 1918, when he accepted a series of international lecture invitations, became a point of contention. Although the Ministry of Education and several liberal politicians continued to defend him, critics within the university increasingly framed his travels as evidence of neglect or opportunism.23 Yahuda, for his part, insisted that his international engagements were essential to his mission: to elevate Spanish Jewish studies onto the global stage and to foster intercultural dialogue across Europe and the Middle East (Gonzalez 2019, p. 447).

This tension culminated in Yahuda’s effective withdrawal from the university in 1920, although his formal resignation was delayed until 1923. The reasons for his departure were manifold: institutional resistance, anti-Jewish sentiment, bureaucratic inertia, and a broader political climate marked by growing instability. His departure marked not only the end of a remarkable academic experiment but also a missed opportunity for Spain to consolidate its symbolic gestures into lasting institutional reform.

Yahuda’s academic project, framed as a return to the spirit of convivencia, preceded—but retrospectively resonates with—the historiographical debates that unfolded in Francoist and post-Franco Spain, where convivencia and hispanidad emerged as rival narratives of cultural identity. While convivencia evoked a pluralist past of Jewish–Christian–Muslim cohabitation, hispanidad advanced a homogenizing vision of Spanishness rooted in imperial Catholic unity. In this light, Yahuda’s emphasis on the Judeo-Arabic intellectual heritage of al-Andalus and his intercultural pedagogy can be seen as a precursor to liberal historiographical currents that reasserted the value of pluralism against nationalist essentialism. His institutional marginalization, however, foreshadowed the limits of such inclusivist visions in national settings increasingly shaped by political polarization and the cultural instrumentalization of the past.

This ambivalence becomes more legible when situated within the long-standing debates over the meaning of convivencia and its relation to modern Spanish identity. In the decades following the Civil War, the idealized image of medieval religious coexistence was increasingly set against the ideology of hispanidad, a Catholic-imperial conception of cultural essence promoted by Francoist intellectuals. While convivencia was sometimes embraced by liberal historians as a model of tolerance, it often remained a contested trope—reduced to nostalgic rhetoric or appropriated for nation-building purposes. Yahuda’s appointment and his emphasis on the Jewish–Islamic–Christian triad prefigured this ideological fracture. His vision of Sephardic heritage as a living, integrative force—rather than a romanticized relic—challenged both conservative notions of Spanish singularity and the superficial philosephardism that had animated much of the state’s cultural diplomacy. In this sense, Yahuda’s project can be read not only as a pioneering academic intervention, but also as an early engagement in Spain’s struggle to reconcile its imperial legacy with a more inclusive understanding of historical memory (Schulze 2019).

In retrospect, Yahuda’s years in Madrid represent both the high point and the limits of philosephardism as a political and cultural project. While the Spanish state and public discourse briefly aligned around a rhetoric of Jewish inclusion, this consensus lacked the structural depth required for sustainable transformation. Yahuda’s experience thus mirrors broader dynamics in twentieth-century European history, where Jewish intellectuals were welcomed as symbolic figures of cosmopolitanism and reconciliation—only to be marginalized when the contradictions of national identity reasserted themselves.

Moreover, Yahuda’s Spanish career highlights the ambivalent space occupied by Sephardic Jews in modern Jewish and European history. His rejection of both strict Zionist nationalism and assimilationist universalism placed him at odds with dominant ideological currents. In contrast to Max Nordau’s biological determinism and Ignaz Goldziher’s liberal universalism, Yahuda articulated a vision grounded in linguistic plurality, cultural mediation, and historical continuity. His understanding of Sephardic identity was not nostalgic but projective: it looked to the past as a source of legitimacy for building pluralistic futures in both Jewish and non-Jewish contexts.

The symbolic intensity of Yahuda’s appointment—as the first Jew to hold a university chair in modern Spain, as a bridge figure between East and West, and as a herald of academic reconciliation—was not matched by structural guarantees. As such, his case exemplifies the fragility of institutional legitimacy for figures who operate at the interstices of national narratives and transnational affiliations. Yahuda’s efforts to embed Jewish scholarship within Spanish academia, to recast Jewish history as part of the nation’s patrimony, and to promote intercultural pedagogy all point to a visionary program. That this program faltered does not diminish its significance; rather, it underscores the costs borne by intellectuals who seek to inhabit multiple cultural worlds at once.

Yet Yahuda’s presence in Spain was not only a matter of symbolic restitution or political opportunity; it also activated deeper tensions in the intellectual genealogy of Jewish–Arab scholarly encounters. Yahuda’s intellectual agenda—and the mixed reception it garnered—must be situated within a broader genealogy of German-Jewish scholarship that had long struggled with the place of Islam and Arabic culture in the construction of Jewish identity. As Susannah Heschel (2012) has shown, many leading figures of the Wissenschaft des Judentums treated Islam not only as a comparative backdrop for Judaism but as a tool for delimiting what counted as authentic Jewish tradition. While scholars like Abraham Geiger viewed Islam as a rational, reformed monotheism that paralleled their vision of modern Judaism, the field as a whole largely marginalized mystical and non-canonical forms of Jewish–Muslim intellectual exchange.

Yahuda’s efforts to foreground the Arabic foundations of Sephardic intellectual history thus placed him at odds with the prevailing epistemic structures of Jewish scholarship in Central Europe. Unlike the historicist paradigms of Steinschneider and his followers, which aimed to catalog Jewish texts within philological taxonomies, Yahuda insisted on the dialogical and intercultural genesis of Jewish thought. His vision bore affinities to what Shalom Goldman (2009) has termed a “shared scriptural zone” between Jews and Muslims—an arena of overlapping textual traditions, hermeneutical strategies, and ethical discourses. In emphasizing this entanglement, Yahuda not only sought to rehabilitate the legacy of al-Andalus but to challenge the Eurocentric hierarchies embedded in Jewish historiography.

This dynamic has also been explored from a different angle by John Efron, whose Defenders of the Race (Efron 1994) examines the ambivalent stance of German-Jewish scholars toward Sephardic culture in the context of fin-de-siècle racial science. Efron demonstrates that, while Sephardic intellectual and aesthetic achievements were often admired, they were simultaneously treated as marginal to normative Jewish self-definition, reflecting anxieties about cultural hierarchy and racialized difference. His account thus offers a perspective distinct from Heschel’s focus on the de-Orientalization of Judaism and complements Schorsch’s diagnosis of selective internalization. By situating Sephardic engagement within the broader racial and cultural discourses of Central Europe, Efron provides an updated framework that sharpens our understanding of why Yahuda’s insistence on the Arabic foundations of Jewish thought appeared both radical and threatening to his contemporaries.

Ismar Schorsch’s (2012) critique of the Wissenschaft des Judentums as a project of “selective internalization” is especially relevant here. As he argues, the field privileged those aspects of Jewish tradition that could be harmonized with Protestant Enlightenment values, while repressing elements that appeared too “Eastern” or irrational. Yahuda’s insistence on the relevance of Arabic, both as a linguistic medium and as a civilizational framework, represented a rupture in this logic. His scholarly interventions thus anticipated later critiques of Eurocentric Jewish historiography and offered a model for integrating Jewish and Islamic intellectual histories without subsuming either under the other.

In this light, Yahuda’s Madrid period acquires a new significance. It was not merely a geographical detour or a professional compromise, but a deliberate positioning outside the institutional boundaries of German Jewish scholarship. His appointment in Spain—though symbolically fraught and structurally tenuous—enabled him to reimagine Jewish studies as an intercultural endeavor grounded in shared legacies and mutual recognition. That his vision was ultimately sidelined does not diminish its prescience. Rather, it reveals the enduring tensions between universalist aspirations and parochial gatekeeping within the academy.

These scholarly dynamics help clarify why Yahuda’s institutional vision remained vulnerable: his orientation toward Arabic–Jewish symbiosis, though steeped in Enlightenment ideals, ran counter to dominant Ashkenazi frameworks and to the narrower instrumentalism of early Zionist diplomacy.

In sum, Yahuda’s academic tenure in Spain can be read as both a pioneering moment in Jewish–Spanish relations and a cautionary tale about the limits of cultural idealism. His appointment symbolized Spain’s aspirations toward pluralism and historical restitution, while his resignation revealed the enduring barriers to such ambitions. The arc of his experience—from enthusiastic welcome to quiet departure—illuminates the ambivalence of national institutions toward pluralist reform and the challenges faced by mediators of historical trauma. Yahuda’s legacy thus lies not only in the lectures he delivered or the department he founded, but in the questions his trajectory continues to raise: about the role of scholars in shaping collective memory, the vulnerability of symbolic inclusion, and the tensions between cosmopolitan projects and national frameworks.

6. Summary and Conclusions

This article has traced a historical and conceptual arc from the fin-de-siècle correspondence between Max Nordau and Ignaz Goldziher to the interwar marginalization of Abraham Shalom Yahuda.

In contrast to Max Nordau’s programmatic nationalism and Ignác Goldziher’s assimilationist universalism, Yahuda articulated a position that was neither strictly Zionist nor fully integrationist. His vision for a Jewish cultural presence in Palestine emphasized coexistence and dialogue with the Arab population, rooted in his Sephardic background and personal multilingualism. This placed him ideologically between the two figures: committed to Jewish revitalization, but wary of exclusivist nationalism and keenly attuned to the complexities of intercultural negotiation.

At the heart of this trajectory lies a shared concern with cultural mediation and the contested roles assigned to Jewish intellectuals in the fraught interplay between European modernity, Orientalist knowledge production, and Zionist nationalism. Nordau’s and Goldziher’s letters revealed the ambivalences of Jewish identity under modern pressures, while Yahuda’s career—particularly his Madrid years—offers a case study in the structural vulnerabilities of mediating figures caught between multiple, often antagonistic discursive regimes.

Yahuda emerges not simply as a tragic or heroic figure, but as emblematic of the unstable positionality of cultural go-betweens in moments of geopolitical and ideological polarization. His trajectory—from Orientalist scholarship and Jewish-Arab reconciliation efforts to institutional exclusion and reputational erasure—highlights how cultural capital could become a liability when unaligned with dominant national or colonial agendas. Yahuda’s multilingual erudition, Sephardic lineage, and double critique of both Zionism and Western Orientalism rendered him simultaneously legible and threatening to competing ideological frameworks.

The Madrid appointment, far from being a minor academic episode, illuminates the entangled dynamics of diasporic loyalties, colonial power structures, and scholarly gatekeeping. Yahuda’s rejection was not a personal failure but a symptomatic moment of disciplinary boundary-setting in a politicized academic field. His efforts at intercultural dialogue—often misread or discredited—underscore the risks inherent in occupying a position between opposing camps.

Reinstating Yahuda’s voice is thus not merely a gesture of historiographical recovery. It constitutes a critical intervention in how we conceptualize mediation, identity, and authority under conditions of cultural asymmetry. As this study suggests, the figure of the mediator—especially when speaking across hegemonic divides—is inherently precarious: vulnerable to misrecognition, instrumentalization, and eventual silencing. Recognizing this precarity not only sharpens our historical understanding but also invites reflection on contemporary challenges of intercultural translation in an increasingly fragmented world.

Yahuda’s career ultimately reveals the structural ambivalences that define intercultural mediation in politically polarized contexts. Mediators like him operate at the juncture of competing loyalties, institutional expectations, and cultural imaginaries—yet rarely possess the power to stabilize these tensions. Their symbolic inclusion often masks underlying resistance, and their multilingual fluency or transnational vision can be reinterpreted as threats rather than assets. Yahuda’s example thus underscores a broader paradox: that the very attributes enabling dialogue across divides may also trigger exclusion within rigid national or disciplinary frameworks.