The Old Yishuv (, lit. "Old Settlement") were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period,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 (Hasidic and Misnagdim) 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. 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 (, often translated as 'Charity') for support.
The Old Yishuv evolved following a significant decline in Jewish communities across the region 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 were Jews who had already been living there since before the coming of Islam and had been culturally and linguistically Arabized. Secondly, Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries, forming another group. A third wave of Yishuv members arrived in the late 19th century,Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, Princeton University Press, 2008 p.104 hailing from Europe, North Africa, Yemen, Persia, and the Caucasus. These migrations gave rise to two distinct communities within the Old Yishuv—the Sephardim (including Musta'arabim) and the Askhenazim.Abraham P. Bloch, One a day: an anthology of Jewish historical anniversaries for every day of the year, KTAV Publishing House, 1987, , M1 Google Print, p. 278.
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. 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.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. The establishment of Rishon LeZion, the first moshava founded by Hovevei Zion in 1882, could be considered the true beginning of the "New Yishuv".
Background While a vibrant Jewish center had continued to exist in the Galilee following the Jewish–Roman wars, its importance was reduced with increased Byzantine persecutions and the abolition of the Sanhedrin in the early 5th century. Jewish communities of the southern Levant under Byzantine rule fell into a final decline in the early 7th century, and with the Jewish revolt against Heraclius and Muslim conquest of Syria, the Jewish population had greatly reduced in numbers.
In early Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of southern Bilad al-Sham (southern Syria), living as dhimmis under Muslim rule, were dispersed among the key cities of the military districts of Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdunn, with a number of poor Jewish villages existing in the Galilee and Judea. Despite temporary revival, the Third and Fourth Fitnas (Arab Muslim civil wars) drove many non-Muslims out of the country, with no evidence of mass conversions, except for Samaritans.
The Crusader period marked the most serious decline, lasting through the 12th century. Maimonides traveled from Spain to Morocco and Egypt, and stayed in the Holy Land, probably sometime between 1165 and 1167, before settling in Egypt.Herbert Alan Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, Oxford University Press, 2005 pp. 28–30. He had then become a personal physician of Saladin, escorting him throughout his war campaigns against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following the Crusaders' defeat and the conquest of Jerusalem, he urged Saladin to allow the resettlement of the Jews in the city, and several hundred of the long-existing Jewish community of Ashkelon resettled Jerusalem. Small Jewish communities were also existent at the time in Gaza and in desolate villages throughout upper and lower Galilee.
The immigration of a group of 300 Jews headed by the Tosafists from England and France in 1211 struggled very hard upon arrival in the region, as they had no financial support and no prospect of making a living. The vast majority of the settlers were wiped out during the Fourth Crusade; they arrived in 1219, and the few survivors were allowed to live only in Acre. Their descendants blended with the original Jewish residents, called Mustarabim or Maghrebim, but more precisely Mashriqes (Murishkes).A description of the Murishkes is cited in וזה שער השמים from שאלי שלום ירושלים, whose author participated in the "Hasid's" Aliyah. Rabbi Shlomo Suzen, from the times of the Beth Yoseph, was known as a descendant of the Murishkes.
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.
In 1260, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris arrived in the Land of Israel, at the time part of Mamluk Empire, along with his son and a large group of followers, settling in Acre.Jafi education There he established the Talmudic academy Midrash haGadol d'Paris. He is believed to have died there between 1265 and 1268 and is buried near Haifa, at Mount Carmel. Nahmanides arrived in 1267 and settled in Acre as well. In 1488, when Obadiah of Bertinoro arrived in the Mamluk domain of Syria and sent back letters regularly to his father in Italy, many in the diaspora came to regard living in Mamluk Syria as feasible.
History
Revival
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 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.
From the mid-16th century, Safed had become the most influential center of Jewish mysticism and traditional halakha, inhabited by important rabbis and scholars. Among them were Rabbis Yakov bi Rav, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, Yosef Karo, Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi and Isaac Luria. At this time there was a small community in Jerusalem headed by Rabbi Levi ibn Haviv also known as the Mahralbach. In 1620 Rabbi Yeshaye Horowitz, the Shelah Hakadosh, arrived from Prague.
By the early 17th century, the Ma'an Druzes initiated a power struggle, which led to instability in Mount Lebanon and the Galilee, eroding the Jewish communities. Economic shifts also led to negative demographic movement, and the Galilean Jewish population greatly declined. In 1660 Tiberias and Safed were laid in ruins by Ottoman-aligned Druze warlords during the Druze power struggle of 1658–1667, and the remaining Jews fled as far as Jerusalem. Though Jews returned to Safed in 1662, it became a majority-Muslim center of the Ottoman Safed Sanjak.
Judah HeHasid In 1700, Judah HeHasid, a maggid of Shedlitz, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth made and settled in Jerusalem. A group of over 1,500 Ashkenazi Jews came with him, although some sources claim only 300 actually arrived. At that time, the Jewish population of the Old City of Jerusalem was primarily Sephardic: 200 Ashkenazi Jews compared with a Sephardi community of 1,000. The Ashkenazi immigrants heeded the call of HeHasid, who went from town to town advocating a return to the Land of Israel to redeem its soil. Almost a third of the group died of hardship and illness during the long journey. Upon their arrival in the Holy Land, they immediately went to Jerusalem.
Within days, HeHasid died. The survivors borrowed money from local Arabs for the rebuilding of the Hurva Synagogue but soon ran out of funds and borrowed more money at very high rates of interest. In 1720, when they were unable to repay their debts, Arab creditors broke into the synagogue, set it on fire, and destroyed their homes. The Jews fled the city and over the next century, any Jew dressed in Ashkenazi garb was a target of attack. Some of the Ashkenazi Jews who remained began to dress like Sephardic Jews. One known example is Abraham Gershon of Kitov.
Hasidim and Perushim In the 18th century, groups of Hasidim and Perushim settled in the Land of Israel (Ottoman Southern Syria). In 1764 Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, a disciple and father-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov settled in Tiberias. According to "Aliyos to Eretz Yisrael," he was already in Southern Syria in 1750.
In 1777, the Hasidic leaders Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Abraham Kalisker, disciples of the maggid Dov Ber of Mezeritch, settled in the area along with 300 hasidim. Misnagdim began arriving in 1780. Most of them settled in Safed or Tiberias, but a few established an Ashkenazi Jewish community in Jerusalem, rebuilding the ruins of the Hurva Synagogue, the destroyed synagogue of Judah HeHasid. Starting in 1830, about twenty disciples of Moses Sofer settled in Southern Syria, almost all of them in Jerusalem.Talmidei Chatham Sofer beEretz Hakodesh, Jerusalem, 1945
Egyptian rule
From 1831 to 1840, Syria fell under the rule of the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali of Egypt and his son Ibrahim Pasha, who effectively extended the Egyptian domination to Damascus, driving the Ottomans north. Throughout the period a series of events greatly disturbed the demographic composition of the country, setting the stage for the 1834 Syrian Peasant revolts and the 1838 Druze Revolt, which greatly impacted the community of the Old Yishuv.
The greatest damage in lives and property was extended upon the Jewish communities of Safed and Hebron. In addition, the Galilee earthquake of 1837 destroyed Safed, killed thousands of its residents, and contributed to the reconstitution of Jerusalem as the main center of the Old Yishuv.
Generally tolerant to the minorities, Ibrahim Pasha promoted the Jewish and Christian communities of Southern Syria, but overall his turbulent period of rule is considered probably the worst stage for the development of the Old Yishuv.
Restored Ottoman rule