History of the Jewish community in Palestine

This article deals with the Jewish community that lived in Palestine before 1920. Some Jews immigrated during the Middle Ages and others arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Before 1492

Indigenous population

The Jewish population returned from Spain and other places in the diaspora. This group since then, have lived in the Holy Land, together with the Christians and the Arabs who came to Palestine.

Maimonides

Maimonides traveled from Spain to Morocco and from there to Egypt.^{[citation needed]} He lived briefly in Palestine (after 1178), then returned and settled again in Egypt.^{[citation needed]}

Askenazim

A group of 300 Jews Askenazitas led by Britain and France in 1211 spent many hardships they reached the Holy Land, and they did not have enough financial support and also had their own businesses to earn a living there.^{[citation needed]} The vast majority of people were exterminated by the Crusaders arrived in 1219, and a few survivors were allowed to live only in Acre.^{[citation needed]} His descendants intermarried with the Jews in Palestine and some Jews of Moroccan origin, also called Magrebim.^{[citation needed]}

Midrash Gadol

In 1260 Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, came to the wonderful and beautiful country called Palestine with his son and a large group of followers and settled in Acre. There he is said established the academy Talmudic Midrash Gadol of Acre. It is believed that he died in 1265 and is buried near Haifa, Mount Carmel.^{[needs update]}

Nachmanides

Nachmanides arrived in 1267 and settled in Acre.^{[citation needed]} In 1488, when Rabbi Ovadia arrived from Palestine and regularly sent letters to his parents in Italy, many Jews who lived in the Diaspora wanted, as well, to emigrate to the Holy Land.^{[citation needed]}

From 1492

Exile from Spain

In 1492 and again in 1498, when Sephardim Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, respectively, some took it as a call from heaven to return to their homeland, Palestine. Don Joseph Nasi was successful in Tiberias and Safed, in the resettlement in 1561 of Sephardim Jews, many of them former Marranos.^{[citation needed]} In the sixteenth century Safed had become a center of Kabbalah, and was inhabited by important rabbis and scholars. Among them were the Rabbi Joseph Caro. At that time it was a very large community in Jerusalem headed by Rabbi Levi ben Haviv in 1620.

Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid

In 1700, a group of more than 1,500 Jews was established by Askenazim to go to the Holy Land and to settle in Jerusalem, at that time, the Jewish population of the old town was largely Sephardim. Ashkenazi Jews were 200 against a Sephardim community of 1000.^{[citation needed]} These new Ashkenazim immigrants, had responded to the request of Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid, a scholar from Poland who went from town to town advocating the return to Palestine to redeem his people.^{[citation needed]} Almost a third of the group died of misery and disease during the long journey. On reaching the Holy Land, went immediately to Jerusalem. Within days, their leader, Rabbi Yehuda the Hassid, died. They borrowed money from local Arabs to build a synagogue, but soon ran out of funds and borrowed money with very high interest rates.^{[citation needed]} In 1720, when they were unable to pay its debts, the creditors broke into the synagogue, set fire to and destroyed their homes. The Jews fled the city during the next century, any Jew dressed in the garb of an Ashkenazim was under attack. Some of the Jews who remained there and were Askenazim started dressing as Sephardim.^{[citation needed]}

Hasidim and Perushim

In the 18th century, groups of Hasidim and Perushim settled in Palestine. In 1764, Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, settled in Tiberias. In 1777, the Hasidic leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Abraham Kaliski, along with his disciples settled there. Some of them began arriving in 1780. Most settled in Safed and Tiberias, but a few had already established an Askenazim community in Jerusalem and they had built the synagogue of Judah there. Since 1830, dozens of Hasidic students settled in Palestine, most of them in Jerusalem.

Earthquake in Safed

Finally, the earthquake of 1837 destroyed Safed in Galilee, killed thousands of its residents, and the survivors of the slaughter later found refuge in the city of Jerusalem, which since then will be the main center of the Old Yishuv.

Economy

Halukka

Many of the Jews who came in this time were elderly and came with their own savings.^{[citation needed]} Others participating in the study of Torah and had no source of income.^{[citation needed]} To ease this financial difficulties, was created a support system called the halukka. Many of the newcomers were Torah scholars, whose communities felt honored to be represented in Palestine and sent them money on a regular basis.^{[citation needed]} A network was established to allow the Jews to sit and learn without having to work for a living. The money for this purpose was raised in the Jewish communities around the world for distribution among students. Halukka system that promotes dependence on charity, was severely criticized for some years.^{[citation needed]}

Export of lemons

The export of lemons grown in Palestine was also a source of renovation for the Old Yishuv. This takes the idea of the new Yishuv to return to the Jewish land and agriculture, the lemons that were grown before the festival of Sukkot were grown exclusively by Arab farmers who then sold the lemons to the Jews. The business of lemons was monopolized by the Sephardim even before 1835. They had signed a contract with Arab producers of Umm al-Fahm to plant lemons in the country. In the 1840s were also instrumental in introducing Greek lemons on farms owned by Jews. In the 1870s the Sephardim changed to the Greek variety, and its partners Askenazim took over the business of lemons in the country.^{[citation needed]} After a while, controversy erupted over whether they were kosher or not. Rabbi Chaim Elozor was instrumental in the cultivation of lemons in Palestine and trade among communities of askenazim in Europe. He planted thousands of trees in a plantation near Tiberias, and its production was exported to places like Warsaw.

The agricultural settlements

The objectives of the new Yishuv society were similar to those of the old Yishuv society, the return to Palestine, and live in holiness in the Holy Land, but with the additional purpose of farming.^{[citation needed]} To this end, areas of land were purchased to the Turkish government representatives and land owners.

Food

In Jewish communities of the old Yishuv, the bread was baked at home. People would buy flour or to take their own flour to bake bread in the brick made ovens . Small bakeries were established in the mid-nineteenth century. Wheat flour is used for making challah and cookies, bread and common kitchen. Because of its scarcity, the bread was dried to make pudding and also bread muffins. Milk is usually reserved for pregnant women or the sick. Almond milk is often used as a substitute. Leben or sour milk was purchased from Arab peasants times. The Sephardim kept the soft cheese in cans with salt water to keep it. In the 1870s, the meat was rare and was eat on Saturday and holidays, but became more available in the late nineteenth century, however, the turkey was still a luxury item. The meat was mostly chicken, but beef, goat and lamb was eaten, especially in spring. Almost all the animal parts were used. Fresh fish was a rare and expensive food in Jerusalem, especially in winter. The dried salt cod and then prepared for the days of the week and Sabbath meals. The Sephardim also had a preference for kosher sardines and other fish that were available even to the end of the nineteenth century, both in Jerusalem Sephardim and askenazim as large quantities of food stored for winter. In Sephardic households had rice, flour, lentils, beans, olives and cheese. The wine was stored by askenazim they also drank alcoholic drinks, ate olives and cooked with sesame oil and stored wheat. In late summer, large numbers of eggs were packaged for winter. The Sephardim families could get to buy large quantities of grapes to make wine.

Sources

Doumani, Beshara (1995) Rediscovering Palestine: merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-20370-4

Farsoun, Samih K. & Naseer Aruri (2006) Palestine and the Palestinians; Westview Press ISBN 0-8133-4336-4

Karpat, Kemal H. (2002) Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History. Leiden: Brill ISBN 90-04-12101-3

McCarthy, Justin (1990) The Population of Palestine. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-07110-8.

Maniscalco, Fabio (2005) Protection, conservation and valorisation of Palestinian Cultural Patrimony Massa Publisher. ISBN 88-87835-62-4.

Rogan, Eugene L. (2002) Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-89223-6.

Sicker, Martin (1999) Reshaping Palestine: from Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. New York: Praeger/Greenwood ISBN 0-275-96639-9

Le Strange, Guy (1890) Palestine under the Moslems: a description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500; Reprinted by Khayats, Beirut, 1965, ISBN 0-404-56288-4