Jews Living in Palestine During Ottoman Period Before 1948

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                       

       Jerusalem Under Attack By Romans in 70 CE  (First Jewish-Roman War (66-70CE) a major revolt against Roman rule that culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. 

Captured Jews from Jerusalem forced to carry items from Temple, as shown to be remembered through the ages on Arch of Titus in Rome in order to shame the Jews

First of all, and we tend to forget, 70 CE was the big attack on Judah by the Romans who also caught our ancestors in a surprise attack in  part of the Jewish Independence War and  they were starved to death, then burned Jerusalem down after robbing all the wealth in it.  Men were forced to carry the loot all the way to Rome.  They were told they could never enter Jerusalem again or suffer the pain of death. 

• The expulsion decree: The Alhambra Decree was a royal edict issued by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain on March 31, 1492. It gave Jews living in their kingdoms until July 31, 1492, to either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. Constantine had started the attacks on Jews in his meetings in the 300's, setting the stage for such expulsions.

 They issued the decree in 1492 that caused Jews to leave their countries, so that Spain, then Portugal obeyed.  Jews set out on boats that were fragile in the seas, lucky to land anywhere. However, it was the Spanish monarchs, and not the Pope, who signed the final decree to expel all Jews from their territories.  

From 1360, when Louis I of Hungary had issued a decree of expulsion, Jewish people had sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. In 1492 and again in 1498, when the Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal respectively, refugees migrated to the Land of Israel, which changed hands from Mamluks to Ottomans after the second Ottoman–Mamluk war, and Muslim Ottoman tolerance was seen as an alternative to Christian persecution. Joseph Nasi, with the financial backing and influence of his aunt, Gracia Mendes Nasi, succeeded in resettling Tiberias and Safed in 1561 with Sephardic Jews, many of them former Anusim (Jews that kept their religion a secret and had to pretend to be a Christian).  The Mamluk period (1260–1517) saw an increase in the Jewish population, especially in the Galilee, but the Black Death epidemics had cut the country's demographics by at least one-third. Safed and Jerusalem were the major populated Jewish urban areas, replacing Tiberias, Acre and Tyre.                   

 Those Jews who left Jerusalem in 70 CE and went to Spain, called Sephardim;  Photograph of Sephardi Jews in 19th century taken from 1899 book Views from Palestine and its Jewish colonies. They spoke Ladino at this time, which was part Spanish and part Hebrew.  They had managed to keep in touch with their Yiddish speaking cousins, the Ashkenazi Jews who had settled after 70 CE in Rome and then Germany.  Yiddish is part German and Hebrew.  I've read that most could speak German but the Germans couldn't speak Yiddish. 

The book, The Settlers, is a historic novel and tell all about this era.It is so interesting with actual facts interwound in the story.  The Settlers, by Meyer Levin, covers the period in Palestine from the turn of the 20th century to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. The novel follows a Russian Jewish immigrant family as they face hardships while trying to build a new life in their ancient homeland, Eretz Yisroel.   

                                   

                  From the  Jewish community in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem under Ottoman rule, 1895

Jews never left Israel like the Romans wanted.  The land was not flat but full of hills and valleys, so they could be overlooked, hidden away from the Romans who were only interested in Jerusalem, anyway.

So there were Jews living in Palestine, renamed as such by the Romans for the Philistines, the great enemy of the Jews.  Romans were contemptuous of Jews. 

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv.                   

      Jews at the Kotel (wall) in 1870, praying

The Old Yishuv refers to all the Jews living in Palestine before the first Zionist immigration wave (aliyah) of 1882, and to their descendants until 1948.  The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews, living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. There were smaller communities in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram, and until 1799 in Gaza. In the final centuries before modern Zionism, a large part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off charity (halukka), donated by Jews in the Diaspora. The Ottoman government was not supportive of the new settlers from the First and Second Aliyah, as the Ottoman government officially restricted Jewish immigration. The Yishuv relied on money from abroad to support their settlements.

The term New Yishuv refers to those who adopted a new approach, based on economic independence and various national ideologies, rather than strictly religious reasons for settling in the "Holy Land". The consolidation of the new Yishuv took place by the end of World War I. The new Yishuv, characterized by secular and Zionist ideologies promoted labor and self-sufficiency. 

The precursors began building homes outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem in the 1860s, followed soon after by the founders of the moshava of Petah Tikva, with growth in full swing during the First Aliyah of 1882, followed by the founding of neighbourhoods and villages until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The First Aliyah was the very beginning of the creation of the New Yishuv. More than 25,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. The immigrants were inspired by the notion of creating a national home for Jews.                             

      Palmah Unit (striking  arm of the Haganah) in training December 31, 1942, numbered a few hundred in  1942, 2,500 in 1945 and 5,500 in 1948.  British wouldn't defend Jews against attacks, so that's why they developed their own defenders.  

The Haganah was the primary paramilitary organization that defended the Yishuv (Jewish community) in Mandate Palestine from 1920 to 1948. Other groups like the Irgun and Lehi also engaged in defense, sometimes through more militant actions, though the Haganah was the main defense force. 

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishuv

The Story of Yiddish by Neal Karlen