The Jewish community in Palestine from the Ottoman period through the British Mandate.
Yishuv refers to the Jewish population - including the pre-Zionist Jewish community known as the Old Yishuv - living in Palestine before the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. The Old Yishuv had its roots in a religious revival among Jews in Eastern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, which inspired increasing numbers to journey to Ottoman Palestine and settle in what they deemed the holy cities of Tiberias, Safed, Hebron, and Jerusalem. Motivated by a desire to observe Jewish religious commandments, scholars and pious men came to pray and study as preconditions to salvation. Pales-tine's Jewish population steadily increased from approximately 4,200 in 1806 to 26,000 on the eve of the first Zionist-sponsored immigration in 1882.
The Old and the New Yishuv
Concerned Jews in Europe sent financial aid to these pious communities as a way of sharing in the holiness of living and studying in the land of Israel. The collection and distribution of this aid (in Hebrew, halukkah) to support pious Jews and their religious institutions in Palestine was institutionalized in 1810 by a wealthy Dutch Jew, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Lehren, who founded the Pekidim and Amarkalim of Eretz Yisrael (Officials of the Land of Israel) in Amsterdam.
Even with a sophisticated system of external funding, as the numbers of Jews in the Old Yishuv increased, their economic lot deteriorated. A few enjoyed economic security, but most lived in poverty. The religious schools (kollelim) provided their own subsidies, sometimes offering rent, health care, and support for widows and orphans, but all charitable services depended on budgetary circumstances and on the intellectual status of the scholars, with those from the wealthiest diaspora communities receiving the highest payments.
By 1882, Zionism had emerged in Europe, and Zionists began to sponsor immigration into Ottoman Palestine. Their goal was a self-supporting secular, egalitarian society based on productive labor and a Hebrew cultural renaissance; they named their community the New Yishuv. Proclaiming the need for social change, economic transformation, and political reform, Zionist activities ruptured traditional patterns of pious Jewish life in Palestine and triggered intense competition for diaspora charity.
In Zionist historiography, the differences between Old and New Yishuv have been described as immense. In fact, there was some overlap. A generation of Jews who matured in Jerusalem during the Ottoman reform era of the 1860s responded to the challenge of meeting daily needs as well as to the spirit of the age by calling for the creation of a productive Jewish economy. Yosef Rivlin, Yoel Moshe Salomon, and Israel Dov Frumkin, prominent cultural and religious figures, became builders of new neighborhoods and founders of a new Jewish infrastructure. Among the housing projects outside the Old City that they developed or supported were Nahalat Shiva, Mea Sheʿarim, Mishkenot Israel, Kiryah Ne'emana, and Bet Yaʿakov. By 1880, 2,000 Jews lived outside the Old City and 16,000 lived within the walls. A similar impulse drove Jaffa's Jewish leaders to establish the new suburbs of Neve Shalom, Yefe Nof, and Ahva. Some also advocated educational reform and contributed to the revival of Hebrew.
As for the Zionists, some came from traditional backgrounds and never gave up their faith or observance of religious ritual. Permanent alliances across the two communities were generally short lived, however; they often split over religious stipulations constraining the establishment of a modern Jewish society.
Zionism
Although immigrants driven by piety continued to arrive alongside Zionists, it was the Zionist vision that created Palestine's new institutions. Between 1882 and 1948, the Zionist movement established about 250 towns, villages, and cities designed by a corps of planners and officials pursuing national political goals. Schools, libraries, newspapers, workshops, and cultural and commercial enterprises were established - even in Jerusalem, the heart of the Old Yishuv.
After World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the British, under a mandate from the League of Nations, ruled Palestine. British doctrine recognized the Yishuv as one of Palestine's religious communities but in practice provided it with the opportunity to operate national-style institutions. Zionists brought their political parties with them to Palestine. From the early years of the twentieth century, a number of Zionist-Socialist parties (Poʿalei Zion, ha-Poʿel ha-Poʿel, Left Poʿalei Zion) as well as Mizrahi, the religious Zionist movement, had adherents and activists in Palestine. Political parties opened employment offices and founded agricultural collectives, soup kitchens, loan funds, newspapers, and schools. They provided recreational and cultural activities for members. Many of these activities were absorbed in 1920 by the Histadrut, which became one of the central vehicles of state-building for the Yishuv. Histadrut operations - labor exchanges, construction companies, and an underground army - were crucial in helping Jewish immigrants find work and community in their new homeland. The Histadrut became the base of power for David Ben-Gurion, who used his position as secretary-general to bring together several of labor's political parties in 1930 to form MAPAI, dominant in Yishuv politics and eventually in the World Zionist Organization. With backing from both the Histadrut and MAPAI, Ben-Gurion was able to outmaneuver political rivals such as Vladimir Zeʾev Jabotinsky and Chaim Weizmann.
Palestine's Jewish community organized itself in explicitly political structures, beginning with an assembly (Knesset Yisrael) elected by people who were more than twenty years old and had at least three months' residence in the region. Between sessions, the assembly delegated its powers to the Vaʿad Leʾumi (National Council), appointed from its ranks. The council nominated from among its members an executive charged with the actual administration of the community. Policies generated by the self-governing institutions of the Yishuv covered matters of health, social welfare, defense, and education. Without the authority to tax, however, Knesset Israel and its constituent institutions had limited power. Its funding depended on allocations from the World Zionist Organization. Some of Palestine's Orthodox Jewish residents remained aloof from the organization and did not participate in elections, since they objected to female suffrage and to the secular aims of Zionism. They insisted on their organizational separateness and retained an allegiance to the principles of the Old Yishuv.
Palestine was governed as a colony, but significant policies were often formulated by England's highest elected officials, including the prime minister and parliament. Yishuv politicians such as Ben-Gurion understood the pressing need to influence policymakers in London as well as those implementing regulations in Palestine. Hence, much power was assigned to international Zionist agencies and to their leaders, who attained global stature (e.g., Weizmann).
Until the creation of an expanded Jewish Agency in 1929, the Zionist executive's political department was also the central mechanism for creating contacts with Arab leaders within and outside of Palestine. Founded and directed by Chaim Kalvaryski, this department initiated contacts with Palestinian personalities willing to sit with Jews in institutions established on the basis of the Mandate's political framework. The department extended funds to village shaykhs, municipal leaders, newspapers, and movements deemed moderate on the issue of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In 1929, the Jewish Agency and the National Council set up the Joint Bureau to handle relations with the League of Nations and with Britain in both London and Palestine.
Two developments in the 1930s augmented the authority of Yishuv institutions. The first was an increase in the number of Jewish immigrants, who were now fleeing fascist Europe. This increased the number of people who participated in elections and other voluntary political activities. The second was the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936 and the need for a larger Yishuv defense force. The Yishuv assumed responsibility for helping fund such a force through a voluntary tax levy. Yishuv institutions still drew their authority primarily from the networks created with various political movements and the leadership of the Jewish Agency, but as the legitimacy of these institutions strengthened they also began to function more effectively on their own.
When British rule began in Palestine, there were 56,000 Jews in a total population of 640,000. By the end of Britain's political tenure, the Jewish population had increased to 650,000, with substantial immigration occurring in the Mandate's last decade. Undoubtedly, the rise of Nazism and the threat of war expanded both interest in immigration and the actual numbers of Jewish immigrants, despite Britain's attempts to control the number of Jews entering Palestine.
The outbreak of the war in 1939 and the genocidal policies of the Nazis created enormous difficulty for the Yishuv. On the one hand, these policies substantiated the Zionist claim that diaspora Jewry lived in fragile, untenable conditions; on the other hand, by slaughtering the movement's potential population, they threatened the possibility of achieving the Zionist dream of sovereignty. However, World War II ended with the beginning of the Cold War, and the dramatic shift in the balance of world power helped the Yishuv win the international support necessary for Jewish statehood, especially from those interested in the dismantling of Great Britain's empire.
Bibliography
Caplan, Neil. Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question, 1917 - 1925. Totowa, NJ; London: Frank Cass, 1978.
Halper, Jeff. Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv ofJerusalem in the Nineteenth Century. Boulder, CO: West-view Press, 1991.
Halpern, Ben, and Reinharz, Jehuda. Zionism and the Creation of a New Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Horowitz, Dan, and Lissak, Moshe. Origins of the IsraeliPolity: Palestine under the Mandate, translated by Charles Hoffman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Hurewitz, J. C. The Struggle for Palestine. New York: Norton, 1950.
McCarthy, Justin. The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Parfitt, Tudor. The Jews in Palestine: 1800-1882. Wolfeboro, NH; Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press; London: Royal Historical Society, 1987.
Troen, S. Ilan. Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in aCentury of Jewish Settlement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
— DONNA ROBINSON DIVINE
