Old Yishuv

For the entire Jewish Yishuv, see Yishuv.
Old Yishuv
A sepia photograph shows three elderly Jewish men sporting beards and holding open books, posing for the camera. Against a backdrop of leafy vegetation, the man in the centre sits, wearing a black hat and caftan, while the two others stand, wearing lighter clothes and turbans.
Jewish community in the Land of Israel under Ottoman rule
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The Old Yishuv (Hebrew: היישוב הישן, haYishuv haYashan) were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period,[1] up to the onset of Zionist aliyah waves, and the consolidation of the new Yishuv by the end of World War I. Unlike the new Yishuv, characterized by secular and Zionist ideologies promoting labor and self-sufficiency, the Old Yishuv primarily consisted of religious Jews who relied on external donations (halukka) for support.

The Old Yishuv evolved following a significant decline in Jewish communities across the Land of Israel during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and was composed of three clusters. Firstly, Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities settled in the region during the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, alongside Arabic-speaking Musta'arabi communities, who had already been living there since before the coming of Islam and had been culturally and linguistically Arabized. Secondly, Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries, forming another group. A third wave of Yishuv members arrived in the late 19th century,[2] hailing from Europe, North Africa, Yemen, Persia, and the Caucasus.[3] These migrations gave rise to two distinct communities within the Old Yishuv—the Sephardim (including Musta'arabim) and the Askhenazim.[4]

Apart from the Old Yishuv centres in the Four Holy Cities—namely Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed—smaller communities also existed in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus and Shfaram. Petah Tikva, although established in 1878 by the Old Yishuv, was also supported by the arriving Zionists.

The "Old Yishuv" term was coined by members of the "New Yishuv" in the late 19th century. Today, scholars generally concur that the term "Old Yishuv" does not strictly denote chronology or demographics, as many communities classified under this term arrived in the latter half of the 19th century. By the late Ottoman period, distinctions between the Old Yishuv and New Yishuv became blurred, particularly in urban neighborhoods and agricultural settlements.[2] In the late 19th century, the Old Yishuv comprised 0.3% of the world's Jews, representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region.[5][6] The establishment of Rishon LeZion, the first moshava founded by Hovevei Zion in 1882, could be considered the true beginning of the "New Yishuv".

  1. ^ Destruction and Reconstruction – the Jewish Quarter. For the 400 years of Ottoman rule in Jerusalem there was a Jewish community living inside the walls of the Old City. The community, which we call the “Old Yishuv,” was not a single, cohesive unit. Until the early 19th century the community consisted mainly of Sephardic Jews, descendants of the exiles from Spain with Ashkenazi (Hassidic and Mitnagdim) and Mizrahi Jews in the minority. Beginning in the mid-18th century Ashkenazi Jews begin to settle in the city, but not for extended periods. [1] Archived 2013-04-01 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ a b Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, Princeton University Press, 2008 p.104
  3. ^ ברטל, ישראל. "הארץ ויהודיה". In בן-נאה, ירון; הלד דילהרוזה, מיכל (eds.). הישוב הישן הספרדי בארץ ישראל (in Hebrew). מכון בן-צבי לחקר קהילות ישראל במזרח של יד בן-צבי והאוניברסיטה העברית. p. 16. ISSN 1565-0774.
  4. ^ Abraham P. Bloch, One a day: an anthology of Jewish historical anniversaries for every day of the year, KTAV Publishing House, 1987, ISBN 978-0-88125-108-1, M1 Google Print, p. 278.
  5. ^ The estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine in 1882 represented just 0.3% of the world's Jewish population: see On, Raphael R. Bar. "ISRAEL'S NEXT CENSUS OF POPULATION AS A SOURCE OF DATA ON JEWS." Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות ה (1969): 31*-41*. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23524099.
  6. ^ Mendel, Yonatan (5 October 2014). The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-137-33737-5. Note 28: The exact percentage of Jews in Palestine prior to the rise of Zionism is unknown. However, it probably ranged from 2 to 5 per cent. According to Ottoman records, a total population of 462,465 resided in 1878 in what is today Israel/Palestine. Of this number, 403,795 (87 per cent) were Muslim, 43,659 (10 per cent) were Christian and 15,011 (3 per cent) were Jewish (quoted in Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, Cambridge: Polity, 2008, p. 13). See also Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 43 and 124.