Renew Ottoman Judaism through Zionism

David Florentin

1909

Our first duty as Jews and as Ottomans is to conduct a frontal attack on the inertia and indifference that impedes all progress. If we hope to be worthy of our race and our fatherland—of Judaism and of Turkey— this is how we must begin.

In order to awaken from our centuries-long slumber, and to reestablish our sense of national obligation, we must…

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David Isaac Florentin was a multilingual Ottoman Jewish journalist devoted to modernizing Jewish life in the declining empire. Florentin was loyal to Ottoman ideals but viewed Zionism as compatible with them. In a 1909 essay, he argued that Zionism could strengthen the empire intellectually and economically. Figures like Florentin shaped a distinctive “Ottoman Zionism,” rejecting separatism while affirming civic equality. When his native Salonica became part of Greece in 1912, Florentin remained a key voice in Greek Zionism until his immigration to Palestine in 1933.

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Creator Bio

David Florentin

1874–1941

Born in Salonika in the Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki, Greece), David Florentin first attended a traditional Jewish primary school before attending and graduating from an Alliance Israélite Universelle school in his native city. In 1897, in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, he founded L’Avenir, a major Ladino newspaper (first a weekly and then a daily) that declared allegiance to the Ottoman Empire while also promoting pro-Zionist ideas and opposing assimilation. In 1898, Florentin was instrumental in establishing the Salonikan pro-Zionist association Kadima, which later became an influential political club. Florentin produced numerous rewritings of European novels and translated works of nonfiction, including the Communist Manifesto (1914). He also served on the executive committee of the World Zionist Organization and, from 1918 to 1933, led the Greek Zionist Federation. In 1920, Florentin purchased a plot of land from Palestinian Arabs to develop the Tel Aviv neighborhood that now bears his name. He immigrated to Palestine in 1937.