Zionist memory erased the major sixteenth-century Jewish community of Safed

Evidence

This aspect is clearly exemplified in the way that Zionism overlooked or even erased the sixteenth-century Jewish community in Safed from its conscious awareness. Safed of the sixteenth century, particularly after its conquest by the Ottomans, had been a center that gathered some of the most prominent personalities in Jewish history, figures who manifestly reshaped the Jewish world. Among them one should mention R. Yosef Karo, the author of the canonical Set Table (Shulchan Arukh), which became the standard book of codification, a composition that systematically organizes all the 614 commandments, and has remained so until the present; kabbalist writings, mainly of R. Issac Luria Ashkenazi, Ha-Ari, had a dramatic impact on Jewish thoughts and liturgy. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 361

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the book’s thread about how movements select which past counts — gives concrete content to the erasure claim in para 360. Cross-domain parallel to how colonizers erase prior populations they ‘replaced’. — connects to: Zionist scholarship reduced oriental Jews to objects then erased them
• DEFINE: Clarifies Safed’s actual religious-historical importance (Karo, Luria) that Zionism then dismissed.

Broader Connections

• Zionist scholarship reduced oriental Jews to objects then erased them #corroborates (0.80)