Since October 7th, the apocalyptic sense that has accompanied the Israeli experience since its inception has turned into a painful routine—an ache in the gut—accompanied by a Kafkaesque wait for a decision. In recent months, amid wars that collapse into themselves, we are witnessing a troubling surge in discourse around doomsday weapons. Calls to use them are voiced casually by political leaders threatening to flatten entire cities—from our seat in the Middle East to Western Asia. The frequent appearance of ballistic missiles and fighter jets in the skies no longer allows us to repress the urgent need for new frameworks for discussing a nuclear Middle East.
In Israeli discourse, the origin of the weapon of mass destruction has become the “Holy of Holies.” It is linked to the apocalyptic dimension and sense of catastrophe that accompany—and even define—the Israeli condition.[1] In this sense, the reactor stands as a “Temple,” about which people avoid speaking, instead fully submitting to the authority of the “priests of security”—the political and military leaders who hold the “knowledge of doomsday.” A collective silence unites all those who do not hold the key to the secret that, for reasons obvious to the initiated, must remain hidden.
Like Janus, the reactor contains two opposing forces: both the potential for protection and security it provides the inhabitants against external threats of annihilation, and the potential for mass internal destruction. This is Israeli limbo at its fullest—the mythological duet between security and peace, between medicine and poison.
The ecosystem of the Temple did not only include the sacred officiants—the priests and Levites known to us from the Mishnah, who were responsible for purity, sacrifices, and lighting the menorah. For it to function long-term and beneficially, the system had to also include the secular workers: the guards, bakers, cooks, and carpenters. Without their proximity to the Holy of Holies, we might not have remembered their existence.
Dimona itself, as a multilingual military temple-city, embodies the perpetual tension between sacred and profane—a nuclear and social melting pot at once. Its atomic essence rages within its history and its representations in discourse, between the balconies deep underground facing the “temple,” and the balconies of the development town above—overlooking the desert sands. When Dimona is mentioned in Israeli discourse, its people and social history are consistently stripped away—there is not one Dimona but two: eye-level Dimona, and subterranean Dimona.
“Welcome to the Desert of the Real”
A few words on “Upper” Dimona, the surface-level Dimona, to which Arabic-speaking North African immigrants were deliberately directed in the 1950s. They constituted the main population until the waves of immigration following the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990s. In its early decades, it was a Moroccan—or perhaps Algerian—immigrant city. Its residents spoke Arabic in various dialects: Teshelhit, Tamazight, and eventually Hebrew. They practiced their traditions as they had in cities and villages in Morocco,[2] Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
There were Berbers and urbanites, from the west to the east of White Africa. They spread across the Negev, built homes and synagogues. Among them were scientists, philosophers, rabbis, healers, intellectuals, and poets. That’s not how our history books taught us—the history of southern Jews, as told in Israel, begins with amulets, continues with mufleta, and ends in prostration on saints’ graves. On the way to their desert inheritance, the southerners fell prey to a national mirage—a predetermined optical illusion—and became a people without history. Thus, for instance, the writings of Makhlouf Avitan, a 20th-century Moroccan-Jewish philosopher from Casablanca—the white city—whose utopian vision for a just and peaceful society was only recently published, vanished from historical consciousness and seemed to be suspended from his own awareness after immigrating south, forced to engage in agriculture due to economic collapse.[3]
The broad spectrum of North African Jewish intellectuals remains absent from contemporary historiography. This does not diminish the importance of the stories of the Abuhatzeira family, the piyyutim of Rabbi David ben Hassin, the philosophical writings of Yaakov Dery (better known as Jacques Derrida), or the halakhic rulings of Rabbi Mashash and Ibn Attar. But for that very reason, we must ask anew: who are the influential intellectuals who fell between the cracks of Western historiography?
Let us return to Dimona. With the paving of the road to Sodom in 1953, it was decided to establish a settlement to house workers of the Dead Sea Works and the Negev phosphate plant. By early 1959, Dimona’s population reached about 5,000, and there was an urgent need to provide employment for the new immigrants. Thus, the first factory was established—a textile plant. Government documents leave no doubt: by the mid-1970s, the textile industry was the city’s leading employer, employing about 1,500 men and women.[4]
Thus Dimona became a mirror of the local historical narrative—a true microcosm. At its center—out of sight and underground—worked the men of tomorrow: the priests of modern research from Christian lands. On the periphery, in roles of maintenance, portering, secretarial work, and cleaning, were Jews from Islamic countries—the men of yesterday. And beyond them, the Arab nomads—the “culturally delayed,” the men of the day before yesterday—wandering between their unrecognized villages in the desert’s heart, a true jungle. As in any melting pot, those pushed to the margins were also pushed to the margins of history itself.
When Weizmann Met Amsallem
The aspiration to establish a nuclear reactor in Palestine is often attributed to the legacy of Israel’s first president, Dr. Chaim Weizmann—the prominent chemist and one of the ideological architects of scientific Zionism. In the early 20th century, the “Herzl” of nuclear Palestine saw a close link between scientific achievements and Zionist goals, as he wrote in his autobiography:
“You must have already realized how organically my Zionist and scientific inclinations intertwined at the start of my life. I believe this is not just a personal phenomenon. It seems to me that it reflects an objective historical situation… I always believed that the Land of Israel could become a center of scientific development, one that would help the world overcome the conflict stemming from oil monopolies.” [5]
The decisive contribution of Jewish scientists to nuclear research during the 20th century—particularly to the Manhattan Project, which led to the production of the first atomic bombs and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6–9, 1945)—was of great concern to Weizmann, who maintained ties with Einstein and Oppenheimer. Weizmann’s scientific vision for establishing a reactor in Palestine was realized posthumously by other scientists, including his protégé Ernst David Bergmann, Ben-Gurion’s chief science advisor and head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission when the reactor was built beneath the desert development town.[6]
In a draft of his biography, Weizmann describes how he tried to persuade the top Jewish scientists in the world to channel their skills “for the sake of Palestine,” calling it “a great accumulation of moral power and a vital source of technical knowledge.” One of Weizmann’s meetings with scientists of the time reshuffled the deck of history and raised a question increasingly critical in our day: What kind of “scientific development center” might have arisen in Dimona had those relegated to the reactor’s periphery stood at its center? Could the scientific heritage of immigrants from Islamic countries offer an alternative model to what Weizmann called “moral power”?
The answer may lie in Weizmann’s obscure meeting with the last known Jewish alchemist: Rabbi Makhlouf Amsallem (1844–1929), one of the leading intellectuals of Moroccan Jewry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He spent most of his life in Fes and eventually immigrated to the Holy City with his family. A physician, alchemist, and renowned Kabbalist across the Middle East and North Africa, he is considered the last documented Jewish alchemist in history.[7]
The Last Jewish Alchemist
The scope of Amsallem’s prolific life work cannot be fully detailed here, but a few anecdotes: During his life, Amsallem published four books,[8] dealing with traditional medicine, Arabic alchemy, and Kabbalah. His Kabbalistic writings offer a binary synthesis between the alchemical symbolic system and Jewish mystical literature.[9] He was also well-versed in Islamic esoteric texts, maintained contact with Sufi sheikhs across North Africa, taught both Muslim and Jewish disciples, hosted delegations of French scientists, and healed hundreds of people in the Fes community.[10]
In the latter half of the 19th century, Amsallem was appointed by Sultan Moulay Hassan I (1836–1894) to head an alchemical research laboratory in his new palace, Bou Jeloud, in Fes, alongside the alchemist Sidi Muhammad Mazur. As European colonial powers deepened their economic penetration into Morocco, the Sultan believed the craft of alchemy could aid Morocco in wartime and even defeat its European enemies.
Amsallem’s Letter to Weizmann (from the Family Archive)
In 1921, Amsallem wrote to Weizmann in ornate Hebrew, opening with praise for his scientific endeavors and emphasizing their shared pursuits:
“Glory and honor to the esteemed man of knowledge, full of wisdom and understanding, the Tree of Life, the Honorable Rabbi Chaim Weizmann, president of the cherished society ‘World Zionist Organization’… It is a great mitzvah to praise and glorify, and good to acknowledge a man’s work, who is perfect in thought and action… and to declare his deeds in Israel, for we have heard of him that ‘all his days he walked in the light of life, the light of wisdom and the light of science in the ways of nature.’ And now I shall begin my praise to the esteemed sage.” [11]
Amsallem continues with poetic praise using acrostics on Weizmann’s name, a common form in Judeo-Arabic poetry. Later in the letter, he describes the books he wrote, his experience in the Sultan’s alchemy lab, and his view on the field of alchemy:
“I sought the wisdom of heavenly craft, I studied the writing of the Ishmaelites, and many of their texts on the craft of alchemy—called Divine Wisdom—fell into my hands. I thought to myself: surely the ancients did not write in vain. My heart was filled with longing… Yet this wisdom became bereaved and barren / desolate and abandoned. It lies in a corner. No one seeks it, no one inquires, no voice responds. Each turns to his gold and silver / with wicked heart. They walk in darkness, with no light to guide them.”
He describes alchemy as divine knowledge transmitted orally from Adam to Seth and down through generations. But now, no one in this generation knows the craft. After inquiring about Weizmann’s wellbeing, Amsallem concludes by requesting the tools needed for the craft and warns of the danger to the Jewish people from its improper use:
“Now there is no one in this generation who knows this wisdom. If my lord desires to see it, though it is very hidden, let him summon me to the Land of Israel. I am ready to come to his honored self, and rescue you from the blaze—better an hour earlier. This craft must be done—its instruments and proper place are needed in Jerusalem, with God’s help. From this wisdom, Israel shall rise from the deep well / from the darkness, and will gain great freedom among the nations and draw near redemption.”
In the autobiographical chapter of his book Menorat HaMaor, written in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, Amsallem lists the specific tools he needed from Weizmann for his project: “sealed crucibles for fusion,” “atomic crucibles,” “porcelain pots,” “a distiller,” and other devices illustrated in his book, which he could not obtain from the factories in Fes.[12] Evidently, through his exposure to European scientific delegations in the early 20th century, Amsallem was aware of major developments in physics and chemistry regarding the nature of the atom.
In 1923, Amsallem decided to immigrate to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem, which had become a vibrant center of Kabbalistic activity.[13] After his arrival, Weizmann would visit him in his home near Mahane Yehuda Market. The two, it seems, even conducted chemical experiments together. Amsallem’s son, Avraham “Albert” Amsallem, later shared the following oral testimony with historian Joseph Paul Fenton in the 1990s:
“At the end of his life, R. Makhlouf met Chaim Weizmann. The latter even visited the elderly sage’s home in Mahane Yehuda on several occasions. One day, in 1924, he accompanied his father with Weizmann and an American man to an empty lot outside the city to conduct a scientific experiment. As noted, Amsallem was interested in explosives. He launched a metal container about 100 meters into the air using a special substance.” [14]
This crossroads—this prism shift from East to West—occurred in a single encounter, at the margins of the Holy City, Jerusalem. It was a transition from the scientific past—alchemy—to the scientific future—chemistry. It seems the social hierarchy, which later became a historical hierarchy, was already forming in the 1920s, decades before Dimona—the “Maghrebi city of the reactor”—was established. If the reactor was symbolic, then its centrifuges did not only separate uranium isotopes but also East from West. Orientalist spin—as a cultural-political force—expelled the heavy Muslim-Jewish heritage, casting it to the margins of history. At the same time, Judeo-Christian heritage stood firm at the center.
It could have been a moment of deep partnership between East and West. But in Weizmann’s time, few Western scientists recognized the foundational contribution of Arabic alchemy to the development of chemistry. Today, however, it is widely accepted that Arabic alchemy served as the mother-matrix from which the building blocks of its younger sister—modern chemistry—were formed.[15] The word “chemistry” itself is derived from the Arabic al-kīmiyāʾ (الكيمياء). Some have even suggested a Hebrew etymology: “ki mi-Yah”—“because from God.”[16]
The historical oblivion swallowed up, like a black hole, the depth and breadth of the philosophical and rabbinic traditions of the “Upper Dimona” figures. Hundreds and thousands of manuscripts revealing the scope of that tradition are now sold on the black market or displayed behind glass in museums and synagogues in North America and England. Magical, mystical, halakhic, or philosophical knowledge systems that slipped from collective memory have distanced us not only from live contact with familial memories but also from real possibilities of reimagining the relationships between “Lower Dimona” and the people of tomorrow, yesterday, and the day before—those living above.
***
[1] Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The House of ‘Brit Shalom’ and the Temple: The Dialectic of Redemption and Messianism Following Gershom Scholem,” in Christoph Schmidt and Eli Sheinfeld (eds.), God Will Not Remain Silent: Jewish Modernity and Political Theology (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2009), p. 104.
[2] See the award-winning documentary by Moroccan-Muslim director Kamal Hachkar, Tinghir–Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah, in which he travels to Israel to find the Amazigh-Jewish residents who left his hometown.
[3] See Makhlouf Avitan, Utopia from Casablanca: The Writings of Makhlouf Avitan (Be’er Sheva: Ra’av Publishing, 2016), edited by Yael Dekel and David Guedj.
[4] From a 1975 government report archived in the Negev Archive, file no. 0303.12.004. Description preserved as in the original.
[5] Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1962), p. 431.
[6] Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2000), pp. 33–36.
[7] Yosef Yinnon (Fenton), “Rabbi Makhlouf Amsallem: Alchemist and Kabbalist from Morocco,” Pe’amim, vol. 55 (1993), p. 95.
[8] Including Golden Apples in Silver Caskets (Jerusalem: R. Chaim HaCohen Press, 1827) and Menorat HaMaor, as well as the manuscripts Sefer Refu’ot (Book of Remedies) and Sefer Te’udot (Book of Testimonies).
[9] From its inception, Kabbalah was characterized by processes of marginalization of various knowledge structures. According to Pedaya, since the Middle Ages and the movement of Kabbalah from Eastern centers to Europe, one can distinguish two types of Kabbalists: those who continue their traditions without deep analytical awareness, and those who attempt to create new syntheses. The latter can be divided further into binary synthesizers and polyphonic system builders. The latter formed the canon, while the former were excluded. See: Haviva Pedaya, Journeys of Wisdom: The Roots of Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem, Berlin: Blima, 2025), p. 24.
[10] Evidence appears in Sefer Te’udot (1893), written and signed by the rabbis of the Fes Rabbinical Court, compiling testimonies from over 200 community members healed by Amsallem. This rare document—serving as a traditional-modern medical certification and ethnographic map of the Fes Jewish community—was the subject of my M.A. thesis. See: Ben Ben-Ami, “Amsallem’s Pharmacy: Introductions to the Monograph and a Discussion on the Philosophy of Rabbi-Physician-Alchemist R. Makhlouf Amsallem (1844–1929).”
[11] From the family archive, kindly provided by Irene and Martin Amsallem.
[12] Makhlouf Amsallem, Menorat HaMaor, F 49227, National Library of Israel collection.
[13] On the flourishing Kabbalistic center in Jerusalem in the early 20th century—attracting thinkers from East and West—and the academic neglect of contemporary Kabbalists, see: Jonathan Meir, The Riverbanks: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Jerusalem (1896–1948) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2011), p. 7.
[14] Yosef Yinnon (Fenton), “Rabbi Makhlouf Amsallem: Alchemist and Kabbalist from Morocco,” Pe’amim, vol. 55 (1993), p. 105.
[15] John Hudson, The History of Chemistry (Boston: Springer, 1992), pp. 16–25.
[16] Gershom Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. Lina Baruch (Jerusalem and Berlin: Blima, 2023), p. 26.
