Haluka - Origin

Origin

The history of the halukka may perhaps be said to date back to the earliest rabbinical period, when the Jewish academies in Palestine were supported mainly by voluntary contributions from congregations elsewhere, and by the fees received for decisions in Jewish civil suits and for the performance of religious offices.

In the Middle Ages Rabbi Yechiel of Paris (1257) transferred his yeshiva from Paris to Jerusalem. He was accompanied by his three hundred disciples, consisting of French and English Jews who had been maltreated in their native countries. But Yehiel and his pupils soon found themselves without means of support. Consequently he sent Rabbi Jacob of Paris as a representative meshullah (messenger) to solicit relief in Palestine and Turkey. Rabbi Jacob appears to have been the first Palestinian meshullah recorded, although the term "messenger of Zion" ("sheliah Tziyyon") was applied in the period of the Amoraim (4th cent.) to Rabbi Hama ben Ada, who traveled between Babylon and Palestine delivering decisions and messages, and probably soliciting relief.

Another early feature throwing light on the halukkah is the charity-box, the introduction of which, though attributed to Rabbi Meir Ba'al ha-Nes ("the miracle-worker"), was due to meshullahim, who toward the end of the seventeenth century used it for the collection of the halukkah fund; such boxes are placed in Orthodox Jewish dwellings and synagogues all the world over. Some opinions hold that this Rabbi Meir, contrary to the popular notion, may not be Rabbi Meir the Tanna, but Rabbi Meir ha-Qatzin ("the chief"), whom Rabbi Jacob of Paris, in describing his tomb at Tiberias, called "Ba'al ha-Neis."

Under Egyptian rule the Jews of Palestine increased both in number and in prosperity. The halukkah contributions until the fifteenth century came mostly from Turkey, Egypt, and other countries in Asia and Africa.

In the famine of 1441 the Jewish community of Jerusalem, probably for the first time, sent a meshullah to European countries; the meshullah's name was 'Esrim we-Arba'ah ("twenty-four")—a surname; not, as Heinrich Graetz supposes, a title of honor indicating his knowledge of the twenty-four books of the Bible. The meshullah was directed to go first to Constantinople, to obtain there the necessary credentials from the central committee headed by Moses Capsali, who, however, had to withhold his sanction, the war between Turkey and the Egyptian Mamelukes, who ruled Palestine, making the latter a belligerent state, the exportation of money to which was prohibited.