Joseph Salvador (1796–1873) was a scholar from a Sephardi Jewish family in the south of France. Salvador was born in Montpellier. His family had fled to Southern France from Spain in the 15th century in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition where they acculturated to life in France. Salvador's mother was a Roman Catholic. At his personal request, he was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Le Vigan, near Montpellier.Restoring the Jews to their Homeland, Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion, by Joseph Adler, Jason Aronson Inc, Northvale, New Jersey, 1997, pg. 129
Biography Salvador abandoned his medical studies when he read about the anti-Jewish riots in Germany in 1819, describing the impact of reading about the persecution of Jews in his later book, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siecle.Joseph Salvador, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siecle
The book was condemned by the Catholic Church. Salvador's thesis "was his attempt to outline a universal religion based on a fusion of Judaism and Christianity- Reforming Judaism. The author believed that the natural center for this syncretistic religion was Jerusalem, and visualized the evolution of this universal faith as a lineal outgrowth of what he imagined classical Judaism to have been. To achieve this fusion of religions, Salvador advocated the establishment of a new state, a bridge between the Orient and the Occident, encompassing the borders of ancient Israel."Restoring the Jews to their Homeland, Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion, by Joseph Adler, Jason Aronson Inc, Northvale, New Jersey, 1997, pg. 130
Salvador, regarded by some as a proto-Zionist, viewed Jerusalem and the future State of the restored Jews as a spiritual condition, not a political one. His thesis was modified and echoed by later Zionist thinkers such as Theodor Herzl and Ahad Ha'am.
Famous in his day, Salvador wrote several books.Joseph Salvador, Loi de Moise, 1822Joseph Salvador, Histoire des institutions de Moise et du peuple hebreu, 1828Joseph Salvador, Jesus-Christ et sa doctrine, 1838Joseph Salvador, Histoire de la domination romaine en Judee, et de la ruine de Jerusalem, 1847Joseph Salvador, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siecle
French biographers and critics of the late nineteenth century regarded him as an assimilated French Jew whose work dealt with the nature of the Jewish religion.
However, subsequent Zionist writers have regarded him as a proto-Zionist who was really a Roman Catholic.Paula E. Hyman, Joseph Salvador: Proto-Zionist or Apologist for Assimilation?, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 1-22Moses Lilienblum, The Early Nationalists of the Last CenturyNahum Sokolow, History of Zionism 1600-1918, 1919Hanoch Reinhold, Joseph Salvador, Zion, vol. ix, 1944
Books Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siecle Loi de Moise, 1822 Histoire des institutions de Moise et du peuple hebreu, 1828 Jesus-Christ et sa doctrine, 1838 Histoire de la domination romaine en Judee, et de la ruine de Jerusalem, 1847
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