Lyn Julius
Jews in Israel Before Zionism: The Old Yishuv

Lyn Julius | Jews in Israel Before Zionism: The Old Yishuv | 05.23.24

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

- Well, good afternoon from London, and it’s a pleasure to be back on Lockdown University, and thank you all for joining me. Well, my talk today is on Jews in Israel before Zionism: The Old Yishuv. There is a myth that the aspiration to create a Jewish state only arose with the modern Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century and the five aliyot or immigrations to the Land of Israel from Europe between 1882 and 1920. It is also assumed that Sephardim from Spain and Mizrahim from the Middle East and North Africa only arrived in Israel after 1948 after the establishment of the state. They did indeed flee to Israel in large numbers, some 650,000 left Arab countries for Israel, yet Sephardim or Mizrahim, what we now call the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa had been the core of the pre-Zionist Jewish community, also known as the Old Yishuv, under the Ottoman Empire.

The Old Yishuv term was coined by members of the New Yishuv in the late 19th century. They wanted to distinguish themselves from the economically-dependent earlier communities who mainly resided in the four holy cities of Judaism, Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. These were religious Jews. They depended on external donations, the word was halukka for financial support. They would send out shelihim or emissaries to the diaspora to raise money for the community in Palestine. Some emissaries actually stayed on in the diaspora communities. But at any rate, there was a great deal of back and forth between Palestine and the diaspora. Jews in the diaspora have always had a mystical longing to return to the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. And as you know, every Passover, we recite the verse next year in Jerusalem. Observant Jews have always yearned to return, to die, and be buried in Eretz Yisrael.

That’s because one of the fundamental tenets of the Jewish faith is that the dead will come to life once again in the era of the Messiah. Some believed that resettlement of the land could only occur by divine intervention. But others put forward practical proposals for the return of the Jewish people to its land. And these foreshadowed future developments in Zionism. Since their dispersal to the four corners of the earth by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Romans, Jews have lived continuously in Eretz Yisrael. However they lived there in much reduced numbers. Why? The three Ps conspired to keep their numbers small. Prohibitions, plagues, and prejudice. When the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, they banned Jews from the city. Thus, Jews moved their intellectual centre to the Galilee. It was here that they compiled the Palestinian Talmud. They built synagogues in Galilee.

For instance, the fourth century synagogue in Kfar Nahum, Capernaum. The village of Peki'in was inhabited continuously by Jews, and here is the synagogue. Palestine was then considered part of Southern Syria, and the original Jewish residents were called Shami or Musta'arabim. Until the end of the 19th century, there was a Sephardi or Mizrahi majority. Mizrahi, meaning Eastern or Oriental Jews. Ladino speaking Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain after the Inquisition, settled in Ottoman Palestine in the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Ashkenazi Jews from Europe were relative late comers. They only arrived in any numbers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The first aliyah of Jews from Russia occurred in 1882. They were known as the Bilu'im. This aliyah heralded the era of modern political Zionism.

These Russian Jews were very different from the religious Jews who proceeded them. They tended to be secular socialists. They founded the kibbutzim, emphasising labour and self-sufficiency. In the Middle Ages, Jews from Spain aspired to settle in the Land of Israel. “I am in the west, but my heart is in the east.” These were the words of the great mediaeval poet, Yehuda Halevi, who lived in Spain under Muslim rule from 1100 to 1148. He was writing at a time when Jews were caught up in a great power struggle between the crescent and the cross. Halevi dreamt of the resurrection of the Jewish nation. Age 60, he left Spain for Eretz Yisrael, but only got as far as Egypt where he was reputedly assassinated. The Crusader period marked a serious decline through the 12th century. The Black Death also took its toll on the population. Palestine was under Muslim rule from the 13th century onwards.

Although Jews were permitted to reenter Jerusalem, they were dhimmis. This is the prejudice I was referring to. They were an impoverished and subjugated minority subject to daily humiliation. The 15th Franciscan, sorry. The 15th century Franciscan monk, Francesco Suriano, observed, “In Jerusalem. God punishes them as in nowhere else in the world. They are mired in self-hatred, while Muslims call them dogs. These dogs deserve to be trampled on, beaten, and tormented.” He would say that as this monk obviously brought with him his own Christian prejudices, but even Ashkenazi followers of the false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, were shocked at the way Sephardim were treated. The Arabs act as proper thugs towards the Jews, they observed. During the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, the great rabbis Maimonides, Nachmanides, and Ishtori Haparchi attempted to return to Eretz Yisrael. Maimonides was forced to flee his native Spain for Morocco.

He then moved to Palestine with his father and brother before settling in Old Cairo in Egypt. He did not live in the Land of Israel for any length of time, but is buried in Tiberias. Nachmanides fled from Spain to the Land of Israel after his disputation with the converted Jew, Pablo Christiani. At the age of 70, in 1267, Nachmanides was settled in Israel. He founded the Ramban synagogue in Jerusalem, helping to reestablish the Jewish community following its destruction by the Crusaders. He settled in Akko, the only city where Jews were allowed to live. He continued to write prolifically. He is buried in Hebron. Ishtori Haparchi was born in Provence. And here is a page from a book he wrote on the geography of Palestine. When the Jews were expelled from France in 1306, he travelled to Spain and Egypt, and then settled in Palestine under the Mamluks. He searched out land for settlement and worked as a physician in Beit She'an, where he died in 1355.

Ishtori Haparchi’s descendants established themselves in Damascus and became very wealthy and influential. One, Haim Farhi, who you see kneeling before the local governor became advisor on financial affairs. But he fell victim to political intrigue, and the governor ended up executing him in 1824. Back to the 16th century, by 1517, the Ottomans had conquered Palestine. It experienced a revival, largely thanks to Gracia Mendes Nasi, or Dona Gracia, a wealthy businesswoman and a new Christian who had reverted to Judaism, and her nephew Don Joseph Nasi. Some of you will have heard Trudy lecture on this remarkable woman and philanthropist, Dona Gracia and Joseph, her nephew. Dona Gracia and Joseph leased an enclave in Tiberias and encouraged Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition to settle there. And in Safed, they planted mulberry trees so that these Jews could establish a silk industry.

The sultan was so enamoured with Joseph that he conferred on him the title Duke of Naxos. He told the local governors, “Everything this man asks you to do, do it.” Another prominent Ottoman Jew was the Master of the Mint. He was Abraham de Castro, and he rebuilt the Walls of Jerusalem in the 16th century. Another figure who developed Tiberias was Rabbi Hayyim Abulafia. He was from a family of rabbis. His grandfather was born in Tiberias in 1640, and he himself was born in Hebron. He then spent time in Izmir to raise funds, so impressed where the local Jews that he became chief rabbi of Izmir. This was an era of messianic fervour. And he returned to Palestine. He was invited by the governor, Dahir al-Umar, to build the Jewish quarter of Tiberias. He built homes, courtyards, a bathhouse, a fine synagogue, and even planted vineyards.

Out of gratitude to Dahir al-Umar, he even built a mosque. By the late 16th century, Safed had become a centre of Kabbalah. This was an important mystical movement that had emerged in Spain. Safed was inhabited by important rabbis such as Moses Cordovero, Joseph Karo, and Isaac Luria, known as the Ha'ari. This is, on the left, the Ha'ari Hakadosh synagogue in Safed. And you can see the graves of the great hakhamim or rabbis on the right-hand side. The Jewish community of Safed, one of the largest in the country, long had a Jewish majority. In 1625, the Italian Orientalist Franciscus Quaresmius, wrote of Safed that it is inhabited mainly by the Hebrews, where they have their synagogues and their schools. However, both Safed and Tiberias were laid waste in 1660 during a power struggle between the Druze and the Ottoman sultan. The Jews moved temporarily to Jerusalem and Herbon.

The Egyptians conquered Palestine from the Mamluks in the mid-19th century. This ushered in a more secure era for the Jews. But the Jewish quarter of Safed was plundered by the Druze. And a year later in 1834, the Jews who were resented for collaborating with the Egyptians were victims of a three-day pogrom. A steady stream of rabbis came to settle in Eretz Yisrael between the 16th and the 19th Centuries. Among them was Ḥayyim ibn Attar, known as the Or ha-Hayyim, born in Sale, Morocco in 1696, Ḥayyim ran a yeshiva in Sale. When a famine hit Morocco, he decided to settle in the Land of Israel. And this is his synagogue on the right in Jerusalem. Great yeshivot were established, and by the 18th century, there were some 10,000 Jews living in Palestine, some were quite wealthy, others were impoverished. And there were tensions between Jews who could not pay the rent and their Arab landlords.

The majority of the community was Sephardi. They governed themselves according to the Ottoman millet system, Ashkenazim only comprised 20 families and were outside the official community. The Ashkenazim began to arrive in great numbers towards the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century. By 1910, they would overtake the Sephardim and number 25,000. Their beginnings were not auspicious. Some 300 Jews from England and France arrived in 1211. They were the Tosafists. Most were wiped out by the Crusaders. At the end of the 1600s, group led by the Polish Jew, Judah HeHasid, Judah the Pious, set out to establish a community in Jerusalem. It, too, was a failure. Arriving in 1700, the community was soon unable to support itself, nor pay off its growing debts.

Ashkenazi Jews were banned from living in the Holy City. Those already there either moved out or lived in disguise, dressing like their Sephardi brethren. The local authorities held all Ashkenazi accountable for the debts owed. The failure of the last major group of Ashkenazi Jews that tried to establish itself in the Land of Israel was the main reason why this group had to settle for the slightly less Holy City of Safed instead of Jerusalem. 300 students of the Hasidic movement followed Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk to the Land of Israel in 1777. They were followed in 1808 by 500 Mitnagdim, disciples of the Gra, the Vilna Gaon. The Mitnagdim, were, of course, the movement that established themselves in opposition to the Hasidim. And they were from Lithuania and Belarus. It would take the bubonic plague to get Ashkenazim back into Jerusalem in 1815. Some 80% of Safed’s Jews had died in the plague.

The leaders of the Mitnagdim were Menahem Mendel of Shklov and Hillel Rivlin. Rivlin was the ancestor of Reuven Rivlin, who served as Israel’s 10th president. To Sephardim who encouraged settlement in the Land of Israel without ever having lived there were Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux. In his capacity as president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Adolphe Cremieux established the Agricultural College of Mikveh Israel, which is just outside Holon. And if you ever get a chance to visit it, it is absolutely idyllic and is still a school today. Montefiore made seven visits to Eretz Yisrael. He and his wife travelled to Palestine after the region was devastated by an earthquake in 1836. The towns of Safed and Tiberias were particularly badly damaged. Moses and Judith launched an ambitious programme of relief for the survivors of the earthquake in 1837. Montefiore’s American friend, Judah Touro, also a Sephardi Jew, had bequeathed money to fund Jewish settlement in Palestine. Montefiore used the funds to encourage the Jews to engage in productive labour.

In 1855, he purchased an orchard on the outskirts of Jaffa that offered agricultural training to the Jews. In 1860, he built the first Jewish residential settlement, an arms house outside the old walled city of Jerusalem, and you see it here. Today, it is known as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. Living outside the city walls was dangerous at the time due to lawlessness and bandits. Montefiore offered financial inducement to encourage poor families to move there. Montefiore intended Mishkenot Sha'ananim to be a new type of clean, self-sufficient settlement where Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews lived together. He donated large sums of money to promote industry, education, and health. The builders were brought over from England, apparently. He built the Montefiore Windmill, which you can just see in the Yemin Moshe neighbourhood to provide cheap flour for poor Jews. He also established a printing press and textile factory. He later helped to finance several Bilu, that’s the first aliyah, Bilu agricultural colonies of the New Yishuv.

The Jews of the Old Yishuv referred to their patron as HaSar Montefiore, the prince. The another character who helped developed neighbourhoods outside the city walls was Rabbi David ben Shimon. He came to Israel in 1854 and found a community of desperately poor Maghrebi or Moroccan Jews living within the city walls. Rabbi David ben Shimon established the Maghreb communities institutions. In 1860, he also helped develop the Mishkenot Shaananim quarter outside the old city walls. He founded the Mahane Israel quarter in Jerusalem in 1886. Built initially for the Maghrebi or North African community, it housed members of other communities as well. There were Kurdish Jews, Georgians, and Bukharans. Like Montefiore, ben Shimon tried to wean poor Jews off charity and encourage them to become productive citizens. He also set them up in agricultural areas in Motza near Jerusalem and near Jaffa.

The 19th century saw the Ottoman Empire in terminal decline. It was soon destined to break up under pressure from nationalist movements. In 1830, the Greeks rose up in rebellion demanding independence. The same happened in the Balkans. Jews could not fail to have been swept up by the Serbian war of independence. Only it fueled a sense of Jewish nationalism amongst Jews living in these parts, one no less legitimate than Bulgarian, Greek, or Armenian nationalism. Hence, some of the earliest advocates of Zionism were Jews in the Ottoman Empire. And they were foreshadowing Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, by several decades. One was Yehuda Alkalai, who was born in Sarajevo in 1798. He studied in Jerusalem. And in 1852, he established the society of the settlement of Eretz Yisrael in London. In 1874, at the age of 76, he moved to Jerusalem with his wife. He died four years later and is buried on the Mount of Olives.

Theodor Herzl’s paternal grandfather, Simon Loeb Herzl, reportedly attended Alkalai synagogue in Semlin, and the two frequently visited each other. Grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl got hold of a copy of a Alkalai’s book, prescribing the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and renewed glory of Jerusalem. Herzl’s concept of modern Zionism was undoubtedly influenced by that relationship. Theodor Herzl’s father was also said to have been influenced by the sermons of Yehuda Bibas in the Balkans. Bibas was Yehuda Alkalai’s mentor and was one of the first rabbis to call on Jews to make aliyah or immigrate to Palestine. And Marco Yosef Baruch of Istanbul was also known as the Sephardi Herzl. He settled in Bulgaria where he founded a Zionist student union. He was a charismatic and eccentric leader who favoured revolution against Ottoman rule to create a Jewish state and advocated Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel.

He was thought to have influenced Theodor Herzl himself. So the 19th century was what I call the era of the North African Jews in Palestine. These individuals are almost unknown, yet they contributed considerably to urban and coastal development. They were neither members of the traditional Sephardi community in the Ottoman Empire, nor Zionist nationalist activists who immigrated during the first aliyah or later. While they could not called Zionists, they could be called unconscious forerunners of Zionism. All this was possible because they belonged to a privileged class, an elite of upper middle class Ottoman families, most Christian, but some Jewish. Members of this milieu were protected by the European consuls, or themselves, served as representatives of foreign states and fully reaped the benefits of the capitulation system. And this was a system which helped them escape the dhimmi status, which was an inferior status under Islam, which gave them very few rights.

But under the capitulation system, they really did have full rights, and they were protected by foreign powers. So they took advantage of their foreign protection, often it was by France, and they developed important ties with the Ottoman authorities. Some became wealthy businessmen and entrepreneurs, vice consuls and communal leaders of the Yishuv. We see Algerian and Moroccan Jews gain prominence in the Land of Israel, and they played a crucial role in the development of Jaffa and later, Tel Aviv. However, they have been largely ignored or overlooked in the historiography. At the start of the 19th century, Algeria was in turmoil. The French founded pretext to invade in 1830, and most Jews were happy about this. But not all Jews sided with the French.

Take the case of Rabbi Shmuel Abbo, who aided the Algerian rebel leader, Abdel Kader, both were banished to the Levant. Rabbi Shmuel Abbo arrived in the Galilee in 1817 and settled in Safed. Nearby was the tomb of Shimon bar Yochai, who was a popular figure with North African Jews. Abbo found the tomb was desolate, and the site used by Arab shepherds for grazing sheep. He bought the rabbi’s tomb on Mount Meron and built a proper shrine. Soon the tradition developed on Lag Ba'Omer to have a procession from Abbo’s house in Safed to Mount Meron. And this procession usually happens every year, and it should really happen this weekend. But I think it’s been cancelled for security reasons. Abbo became French consul in Safed. This meant that he came under French law and not Ottoman law. And it also meant that he had a right to buy land. This he did on behalf of the foreign Jews who came to Palestine, who were not allowed to buy land.

And here you see him on the right-hand side, you see the tomb of Shimon bar Yochai in the centre. And these were the kawassi guards, who were assigned to protect the foreign consuls in Palestine. And very splendid, they look too. Abbo, sorry, he became the French consul in Safed. It is assumed that the first agricultural settlements were founded by the Ashkenazim of the first aliyah. In fact, Abbo established the very first agricultural settlement in Meron, 39 years before the founding of the kibbutzim, Degania and Kinneret. There, he settled Kurdish Jews. They worked the land by day and studied Kabbalah by night. Abbo accompanied Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux on their mission to save the Jews arrested as a result of the Damascus blood libel in 1840. An Arabic speaker, he was useful as an interpreter. Later, he wrote to Montefiore to suggest that the philanthropist encourage land settlement by Arabic-speaking Jews.

Abbo’s son bought land for agricultural use in Rosh Pinna in Yesud HaMa'ala and Mishmar HaYarden in the Galil. Again, decades before the first kibbutzim were established, it is estimated that a few hundred Maghrebi Jews settled in the port city of Jaffa from the mid to the late 19th century. Immigrants were arriving by steamship. The city was booming, but was becoming very crowded. Yosef Moyal Bey acquired tremendous wealth and wielded considerable influence. He had delicate ties with the Ottoman authorities, which he used to both promote his own interests as well as those of the Jewish population of Jaffa and the Yishuv in general. The Moyals, I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find a picture of Yosef Moyal, but the Moyals conducted most of their economic activity in Jaffa and Jerusalem.

When needed, they could tap into their extensive network of Ottoman and European contacts such as Baron de Rothschild, and the Alliance Israel, sorry, the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools network. Yosef Moyal’s father came to Palestine from Rabat in Morocco. The family were already reasonably well-off. They were believed to be French proteges. Yosef was described as the richest man in the country. He bought land in Jaffa and Jerusalem, either on his own or in partnership with other entrepreneurs, we will talk about in a minute, Chelouche and Amzallak. He helped fund the Jaffa Clock Tower and the adjoining plaza. Yosef’s brother Abraham was a Zionist nationalist and represented the Hovevei Zion or Lovers of Zion Society, which was set up in the 1880s by Ukrainian Jews.

Abraham was considered the first Mizrahi leader of the community, but died at the tragically early age of 35. Yosef Moyal helped the Zionists arriving after 1882 with food and money. He got permits for the Ashkenazim of the first aliyah to enter Palestine when they were forbidden from disembarking in Jaffa. The title bey was conferred on Yosef by the Ottoman sultan for services rendered to the empire. Yosef became an Ottoman subject and was thought to have donated to the Ottoman war effort. As you know, the Ottomans fought several wars against Russia, Italy, Austria, Britain, and France. Yosef Moyal made a specialty of sending telegraphed petitions to the Ottoman sultan if he found himself in dispute with local notables or officials. Rather than write grovelling letters, he would complain vociferously and sometimes, rudely. He usually got his way.

Yosef Navon Bey, yes, the name might sound familiar to you because he was an ancestor of Yitzhak Navon, who was Israel’s fifth president. This man was principally responsible for constructing the railway between Jaffa and Jerusalem. He was a Jewish entrepreneur from Jerusalem, and he began to investigate the possibility of constructing a railway in 1885. His advantage was that he was an Ottoman subject. His chief partners were his cousin, Joseph Amzallak, a Greek engineer, and a Swiss Protestant banker. Navon spent three years in Constantinople to promote the project and obtain a permit from the Ottoman Empire. In 1888, he received a concession or firman from the Ottoman authorities that also gave him permission to extend the line to Gaza and Nablus.

So this gentleman here was also an important entrepreneur, Haim Amzallak. His father was Joseph Haim Amzallak, and he was born in 1779 in the British colony of Gibraltar. Joseph settled in Jerusalem in 1816. His son, Haim and his family resided in a large three-story house near the Port of Jaffa. The atmosphere in Haim Amzallak’s house was described by some Moses Montefiore, an old friend of the family, on one of his seven visits. “It must have been about seven o'clock in the evening when we arrived. The lady of the house, surrounded by the most amiable young family and some friends of the house, gave us a friendly welcome. A refreshing beverage consisting of almond and rosewater was handed round. And 10 minutes afterwards, a dinner was served in the best European style. And almost endless variety of dishes, partly Syrian, partly French were handed round by waiters dressed in the French style, who spoke French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Arabic.

All this might have made us forget that we were in the Holy Land had we not been reminded of it every now and again, either by the overpowering heat or the bite of an intruding mosquito.” Haim Amzallak was a religious man. He was also a mohel and apparently circumcised 19 babies, including one Muslim. Like his father, Haim Amzallak was involved in the banking business where he operated in collaboration with Yakov Valero, a member of another prominent Sephardi family. But it was in the land business that he invested his main fortune. He owned land in Jerusalem. Some of it, he sold, and some, he retained to provide rental income. He was one of the first Jews to buy land around Jaffa, both in anticipation of its development for residential use and for the planting of orange groves.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild would take over from Amzallak in the 1880s. Amzallak’s wife Esther also bought land, which was planted mainly with orange trees. And the family kept that land as their summer residence. In 1875, he was appointed the representative of Lloyd’s of London in Jaffa. And the agency prospered during those years, owing to the growth of Jaffa as a centre of trade and industry. Haim Amzallak as appointed by Portugal as vice consul and as British vice consul. And here you see him wearing his full regalia as the British vice consul. And he was also escorted by Turkish guards or kawasses. Montefiore on his visit to Jaffa in 1875 was very impressed.

“At four o'clock PM,” he wrote, “Her Majesty’s vice consul, Senior Amzallak, accompanied by his son, two kawasses with their official batons and several attendants approached our ship. It was a source of high gratification to me to see one of my brethren, a native of the Holy Land feeling so high and honourable an office. I knew his father well. He was one of the most worthy and charitable of our brethren in Jerusalem. And I was now much pleased to have the opportunity of evincing my regard for his son, whose abilities and high character had been so honourably acknowledged by the consular functions entrusted him.” And this is Amzallak Street in Neve Tzedek, where he had his home. And you can still see it today.

The Valero family, just a minute, sorry, I just find him. Yes, Haim Valero. They traced their origins back to Spain. For four generations, they were key players in the economy of Jerusalem. Yakov Valero was thought to have come from Istanbul around 1835, a humble ritual slaughterer or shochet. He established the first private bank in Palestine, and this was inside the Old City. Whereas other banks moved outside the Old City walls, Valero’s bank remained within. Valero issued their own paper bank notes. They also bought much property. And Jerusalemites refer to them as the Rothchilds of the East. They owned property in the Mahane Yehuda Market along King George Street, near Damascus Gate. As Ottoman citizens, they were able to do this without hindrance.

Haim Aharon Valero owned property in the village of Ein Karem outside Jerusalem, as well as in Bethlehem, Jaffa, and Hebron. And he had business dealings with Arabs as well as Jews. In 1876, the Arabs rioted against the Jews in Jerusalem. Valero interceded with the Ottoman army commander and the Mufti asking them to protect the Jews in the city. But by and large, relations were good. Arabic speaking Sephardim are thought to have had the greatest affinity with the Arabs. Some even think that if the leadership of the Jewish community had been Sephardi, conflict with the Arabs in Palestine might have been avoided. Families like the Valeros had good ties with Arab elite families and business associates. Another Arabic speaker with excellent ties to the Arabs was Aharon Chelouche. The Chelouche family were among 300 Jewish families to leave Algiers for Eretz Yisrael in 1840.

But tragedy struck and the ship capsized. Two of Aharon Chelouche’s brothers drowned. The family eventually settled in Jaffa. Aharon became a goldsmith, and then a successful money changer. He went into property development. He built the first Jewish settlement outside Jaffa, Neve Tzedek in 1887. This neighbourhood preceded the founding of Tel Aviv in 1909. And in Neve Tzedek, he built two identical sons, sorry, two identical houses for his sons. They’re absolutely identical, and they’re side by side. He bought a vineyard, which he sold to Yemenite Jews, and it is today known as the Tel Aviv neighbourhood of Kerem HaTeimanim. You can still see the Chelouche synagogue. It was the family’s own private chapel next to their grand villa. And this is it.

The story is told that a young man called Yosef Czaczkes rented a room opposite the Chelouche mansion. He made eye contact with Chelouche’s granddaughter Margalit, who would stand at her window. The young man was invited to dinner. Chelouche wanted to know if the young man could support Margalit if they got married. “What you do for a living?” he asked. I am a poet, the young man answered. That was the last time that he saw Margalit. He moved to Jerusalem, changed his name to S.Y. Agnon, and became Israel’s national poet. Agnon wrote a great deal about Neve Tzedek, but never mentioned Margalit or the Chelouche family. Aharon Chelouche’s son, Yosef Eliyahu, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a founder of Ahuzat Bayit, the association which pioneered the building of Tel Aviv. He was responsible for 32 buildings. As a 10-year-old, Yosef Eliyahu was the victim of an attempted kidnapping by an Arab acquaintance of his father’s.

All his life, he became known as the abducted child. Ironically, however, he was a tireless campaign for coexistence. In 1913, to counter already rife Judeophobia and agitation in the Arab press, Yosef Eliyahu, along with other Arabic speaking Tel Avians founded Hamagen, the Shield, an organisation dedicated to persuading Arabs that they and Jews share economic and cultural interests and can only improve each other’s lot. But he was powerless to stem the rising tide of violence and Jew hatred. Jews were effectively forced out of Jaffa by the 1920 riots. So that’s the synagogue, the houses for his sons. This was built by Chelouche. This was the school for girls, the Alliance Israelite Universelle. Now the Suzanne Dellal Centre of Modern Dance. And this is a mural you might have seen opposite the Suzanne Dellal Centre. It shows some of the great figures of Neve Tzedek.

You’ve got Chelouche here on the left, and you’ve got Amzallak just behind the young man there. And the young man is Tomer, who is the great-great-great-grandson of Aharon Chelouche. And you can see the orange trees in the background. Just a word about Gaza, since it’s in the news. Jews have always lived in Gaza. In fact, during the Middle Ages, Gaza was home to a thriving Jewish community, including in the city of Rafah, where Jews flourished for nearly 300 years until the arrival of the Crusaders in the 12th century. And the Crusaders brutally destroyed the city and left it in ruins. But evidence of the community remains in the Cairo Geniza. Gaza also boasted its share of prominent rabbis who left a lasting imprint on Judaism.

By 1906, there were 50 families in Gaza, augmented by Sephardim from Jaffa and Jerusalem, as well as Ashkenazim. And relations were apparently excellent with the local Arabs. Barley was exported from Gaza to the breweries of the West. There was a prominent rabbi called Haham Nissim Benjamin Ohana. He made history when he opened the first Talmud Torah teaching in Hebrew. The pioneer of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, paid him a visit. And he’s also famous for writing a pamphlet, together with an Arab, Sheikh Abdallah al-‘Almi, criticising the Christian reading of the Bible. This was an interfaith initiative designed to offset pressure from Western missionaries, attempting to convert Jews and Arabs to Christianity.

So the first aliyah of the Zionist Bilu from Europe was in 1882, and there were about a dozen of them. But a year earlier came 200 Yemenite Jews, a fact mostly ignored by much Zionist history. The Yemenite aliyah was known as E'eleh BeTamar, I will climb up into the palm tree. That’s a verse from the “Song of Songs.” The Yemenite Jews were destitute and not well-received. At first, they lived in caves in the hills above Jerusalem, which made them easy prey for attack. Then they moved into Shiloah, also known as Silwan. The village was built for them by a Christian organisation. Due to Arab violence, they were evacuated, excuse me, from the area by the British in the 1930s.

There are still ownership disputes today over property, they have tried to recover. How did they get to Palestine? Well, they travelled by way of India, Iraq, and Egypt to Jaffa, travelling by donkey, by foot, and by boat, depleting all their savings on the way. Immigration from Palestine, sorry, from Yemen to Palestine, continued almost without interruption until 1914 with 10% of the Yemenite Jews arriving during this period. Yemenite Jews also settled in Jaffa, and they were among the first to move from the overcrowded port city. In trendy Neve Tzedek today, there are, in fact, 14 Yemenite and Adnanites synagogues and streets are named after famous Yemenite rabbis.

To conclude, too often, the starting point in the historiography of the Land of Israel is the first aliyah. Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress, this leads to the misleading impression that Jews came as European colonial settlers. We need to acknowledge the earlier contributions of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews to the Land of Israel. We also need to recognise that Ashkenazim were settled in Palestine two centuries before Zionism. Pious Jews immigrated to Israel, but they often did not just come for spiritual reasons. They tried to establish communal institutions and contributed to building the physical landscape. Then there were philanthropists who developed the cities and tried to wean the inhabitants of charity by providing them with independent sources of income. We need to reinsert the neglected Old Yishuv into the history of Israel.

So thank you very much for listening. Very happy to answer any questions.

Q&A and Comments

Right, so no, I called the area Palestine, really, for convenience. Of course, it was the name given by the Romans to the area, really, as a snub to the Jews. But you know, you can also use the word Eretz Yisrael the Land of Israel. That might be preferable. Monte Goldin asks, “I read about a writer’s family moved to what is now Israel when the Jews were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. Still a colonist?” Well, of course, a lot of Jews came after the Spanish Inquisition. I wouldn’t say they were colonists at all. Any more than any Jews are colonists to their ancestral homeland.

“It is interesting that Hodgkin,” Philip says, “It is interesting that Hodgkin of Hodgkin disease fame was a friend of the Montefiores and travelled with the Montefiores from England to Palestine. Hodgkin died of typhoid fever in Palestine and is buried in Jaffa.” Well, thank you for that interesting factoid, Philip. “This long period that you’re discussing is of great interest because my paternal family left Spain and settled in Amsterdam. Some of my great-grandfather’s brothers and a sister moved to Antwerp for reasons of the family, business, art, and antiques in Amsterdam. An art gallery was opened in Antwerp. I discovered all this when looking up our Dutch ancestry in the programme Ancestry. We visited the Capernaum synagogue ruins and there, getting the chance, saw many sites.” Yeah, well, that’s very interesting. Of course, there was a big Jewish community in Amsterdam, you know, exiles from Spain and Portugal settled there. And, of course, some of them moved over to England and were admitted in 1666 by Oliver Cromwell. So let me just see what else was there.

John Maxim, “I’m very keen to know what relations between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews were like, as Ashkenazi Jews arrived in Israel, especially the first half of the 20th century.” Well, of course, there was a great deal of tension between some of the traditional religious Jews who’d been there for generations and the newcomers who were basically socialists, and a lot of them were secular, the Ashkenazi halutzim. So who did they buy the land from? Well, as I’ve explained, some of these Sephardi philanthropists have helped the Ashkenazi buy land for kibbutzim. Of course, people like Edmond de Rothschild did a great deal to help them buy land. Thank you, Joel, for your very kind words.

Q: David Sefton says, “In the TV series, 'Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,’ the Sephardim Jerusalem, sorry, the Sephardim of Jerusalem would’ve nothing to do with Ashkenazi Jews. Was that depiction true?” A: I don’t think that is a actually true because if you take somebody like Rabbi Shmuel Abbo, who was a Sephardi from Algeria, so the subsequent generations of that family actually married Ashkenazim and integrated with them, or rather they integrated with the Sephardim So there was a great deal of intermarriage.

Alice says, “My husband’s grandfather lived in Jerusalem where it was part of the Ottoman Empire, sorry, lived in Palestine, was part of the Ottoman, but left with his children, including my late father-in-law when they tried to get him to join the Turkish Army. He immigrated to Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.” Oh, that was a very wise move. Yes, there were a lot of people who tried to escape conscription in the early, wait a minute.

• [Moderator] Hold this presentation, that’s the next one.

• Conscription to the Ottoman army.

Q: Why do you think this history was lost? Did the Ashkenazi Zionists suppress it for political reasons? A: I think that was one reason, yes. I think they wanted to emphasise the history of the modern Zionist movement, and Herzl’s contribution. And also I think they wanted to show that they were, in a way, superior to the Old Yishuv. You know, and they were not living off charity. They were actually productive citizens who worked the land, who’d returned to the land. And this is the way they wanted to portray the return to Israel. Well, as I explained Esme, when people bought land, it was easier if they were actually foreign nationals. Sorry, if they were foreign consuls. So those Jews who represented France or Britain were allowed to buy land. And also those Jews who were Ottoman subjects were also allowed to buy land. And this was a problem for the Russian Jews arriving in the late 19th century ‘cause they were not permitted to buy land.

Q: “Do you agree that Sephardim and Mizrahim became only political Zionists after the Hebron massacre?” Rosemary asks. A: I think that’s a very good question. I think it’s not entirely true because you’ve got people like Haim Amzallak who was helping the the Russian aliyah, helping them settle. And his brother was, you know, a Zionist nationalist and was reckoned to be the first Mizrahi leader of the Zionist community. So I don’t think that’s altogether true. But I think those people like Chelouche who really thought that they could build bridges with the Muslims, they got a rude awakening in 1929 with the Hebron massacre, and they realised it was not going to be possible. And wait a minute.

Q: “Was modern Hebrew by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda immediately accepted?” A: No, it was quite a struggle. And I think at one point, German was considered by the World Zionist Congress as the language that the Yishuv would adopt in Palestine. And it was a struggle for Eliezer Ben-Yehuda to even get his own family to speak Hebrew. But he did it through amazing determination. So thank you, Lorna, for your kind words.

Q: And Len asks, “What are a few of the best easy-to-read publications telling the history of the Jews in Israel?” A: Well, I have to tell you, Len, I found it very hard to find the information. I think there is a book published in Israel whose title I actually can’t remember at the moment about some of the main families, philanthropic families I’ve been talking about, but actually, is very piecemeal, the information. You know, I found it really on the internet. I found it in books like Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book on Jerusalem. And I found it just by wandering around Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv.

So thank you, Monica. And I think there’s one, wait a minute. What’s this one? Thank you. Sorry, I think that was it. Okay, so I think I’ve come to the end. Hello?

• [Hannah] Yes, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for joining today.

• Thank you very much, everybody. And thank you, Hannah.

• [Hannah] Thank you, bye bye.

• [Lyn] Bye.