After the Romans brutally conquered all the Jews of Judea in the Land of Israel, starting from about 1,800 years ago, the Jews were no longer a fighting force and did not pose a military threat to the hegemony of Rome over its empire. The Jews that were exiled and sold as slaves all over the Roman Empire and beyond, as well as those still remaining in the Land of Israel, adapted to the new reality of not being free to achieve independence. Instead they became a pious nation, often deprived of basic rights, that valued Torah, Talmudic and Rabbinical scholarship over everything else.
The persecutions, pogroms and expulsions of Jews all over the world during the ensuing years put the lie to loyalty to host countries and peaceful scholarship being a means for Jewish survival, and the Holocaust made remaining that way close to a Final Solution. Not until the years preceding 1948 when the modern Jewish state of Israel was founded, were the Jews of Israel capable of organizing themselves militarily in their own land, eventually creating the Israel Defense Forces to protect themselves against the onslaughts and wars against them by aggressive, violent, cruel and hostile local Arabs and Islamic nations and armies. The Jews of Europe were not so lucky.
For a few short decades, prior to 1948, the Jews of Israel created self-defense militias that were either banned or hamstrung by the occupying British army from 1917 to 1948, such as the Haganah, Palmach, Irgun, and Lehi fighters who after 1948 were combined with mainly Jewish veterans of the British army to create the fledgling Israel Defense Forces. However, prior to the advent of the twentieth century Jews could not rely on the force of arms protect their settlement in the Land of Israel. This was the case from 1417 to 1917 when it was under Ottoman Turkish rule and occupation.
This life and movement of Jews in the areas of the Land of Israel from the times of the Roman conquest of the land until the British conquest of the land, spanning about 1,800 years was characterized by the determination of Jewish communities simply to cling to and live in their homeland of Judea in the Land of Israel and characterized by a deep Jewish religious piety and even saintliness. The Jews were humbled and humbly accepted the fact that they had to live in their own land under powerful overlords such as the Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, Muslims, Arabs and the British and in fact many times paid the ultimate price facing persecutions and death like their brethren did in Europe, North Africa and Asia.
Today, there are all sorts of bizarre and absurd accusations hurled at the Jewish state of Israel and the Jews that defy both logic and history. One of those charges that Israel has had to face in recent times is that it is guilty of "colonialism," ignoring the historical fact that the Jewish People have always had a strong presence in, and connection with the Land of Israel. This is the case since God told Abraham to leave his homeland in Ur of the Chaldees located in present-day Iraq and move to and settle in the Promised Land of Israel that was then known as the Land of Canaan, with God promising it to Abraham's descendants forever.
This unbroken chain of the Jewish connection to their own Land of Israel, or Judea as it was called before the Romans renamed it "Palestine", lasted continuously with there always being a Jewish presence in the Holy Land of small Jewish communities that managed to survive the vicissitudes of waves of foreign invasions and occupations. These communities were in touch with the larger exiled Jewish communities living in the areas of former Babylonia, now called Iraq, and Persia, North Africa, the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. There was a constant flow of individual Jews and groups from the outside who would make Aliyah moving to the Land of Israel, often led by famous and notable rabbis.
If you are either an atheist, sceptic, ignoramus or a disbeliever in the Bible then the Biblical accounts of the rights to Israel of the Children of Israel, today also known as the Jewish People, means nothing to you. However the facts of history cannot be denied whether you are are believer in the Bible or not, because the Jews are an ancient people who have existed as a known entity for about 3,300 years and inhabited the Land of Israel from 1,300 BCE when they lived in the land until most were expelled by the Romans approximately 1,800 to 2,000 years ago. The facts also prove that they kept alive their connection to their homeland, motherland and fatherland .
During all that time the Children of Israel, also known as the Jews or Jewish People, kept their personal and national connection with their land. The Children of Israel were renamed Jews because they had lived in the surviving Kingdom of Judah and then in Judea ruled in turn by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and finally the Romans who destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE and sent the Judeans, that is the Jews, into exile. Again, a sense and knowledge of history is required to appreciate all this.
The Jews and the world's encounter with the Arabs and their new religion only began after Islam started in about 600 CE, about five hundred years after the victory of the Romans over the Jews of Judea. The Romans had also renamed Judea as "Philistia" or "Palestine" recalling the ancient non-Jewish Philistines who had lived in that area in ancient times. The ancient Philistines were not Arabs and were definitely not Muslims (since there were none during their existence), actually originatingfrom the Greek islands in the Mediterranean.
Even after the Roman conquest of Judea and the exile of its Jews there were still communities of Jews that lived as subjects of Rome in their homeland of Israel/Judea/Palestine.
There were communities of religious Jews and rabbis that survived the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in 70 CE to create great works of Jewish Torah scholarship in Israel. That included the Jerusalem Talmud also known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel that was completed by the end of 400 CE in the Land of Israel, about two hundred years before Mohammed invented Islam in Mecca and Medina in (Saudi) Arabia. Small yet significant communities of Jews would always live in the Land of Israel and there were those who continuously moved there from other countries in spite of the challenges and hardships. A Jewish community flourished in Tsfat after the Spanish Expulsion of 1492.
Examples of famous Jews, in fact great rabbis, who moved to Israel from Europe, North Africa and other places during the Middle Ages and onwards were Rabbi Judah Halevi (1075–1141), Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides) (1194–1270), Rabbi Joseph Karo (Mechaber) (1488–1575), Rabbi Yehuda HeHasid (1660–1700), Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Ramchal) (1707–1746), many disciples of the Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (Vilna Gaon) (1720–1797), known as "Perushim", and Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer (Baal Shem Tov) (1698–1760), known as "Hasidim", as well as followers of Rabbi Moses Schreiber (Chasam Sofer) (1762–1839).
These great rabbis and the Jews like them who moved to the Holy Land over many centuries were not military conquerors and they were definitely not "occupiers" of the land. They were Jews joining other Jews living in their own Land of Israel. They were peaceful and pious, motivated by Godly spiritual and religious ideals, and they eventually formed what is known as the Old Yishuv (old settlement) in their beloved Land of Israel. It was the Promised Land that God had vouchsafed for the Jewish People from the times of Abraham and to no one else.
Origins of the pious Jewish Old Yishuv in the Land of Israel
Sourced and condensed from the Wikipedia article "Old Yishuv":
The Old Yishuv is the name given the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period (1417–1917), up to the onset of modern 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 stringently observant 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. Lastly, a third wave of Yishuv members arrived in the late 19th century, 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.
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, nevertheless 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 establishment of Rishon LeZion, the first moshav founded by Hovevei Zion in 1882, could be considered the true beginning of the "New Yishuv".
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 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 the early Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of southern Syria living under Muslim protection status were dispersed with a number of poor Jewish villages existing in the Galilee and Judea. 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. Following the Crusaders' defeat and the conquest of Jerusalem, Maimonides 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 Eretz Yisrael (the Hebrew name for the Land of Israel), as they had no financial support and no prospect of making a living. The vast majority of the settlers were wiped out by the Crusaders, who 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).
The Mamluk period (1260–1517) saw an increase in the Jewish population, especially in the Galilee. In 1260, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris arrived in Eretz Yisrael, at the time part of Mamluk Empire, along with his son and a large group of followers, settling in Acre. 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 Rabbi Obadiah of Bartinura 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. In the 18th century, groups of Hasidim and Perushim settled in Eretz Yisrael, Ottoman Southern Syria at the time. 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 1492 and again in 1498, when the Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal respectively, some took it as a call from heaven to migrate to the Land of Israel, which changed hands from Mamluks to Ottomans. 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 who had been forced by the Inquisition to become Christians but secretly still kept up some form of Judaism).
By the late 16th century, Safed had become a center of Kabbalah, 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.
The Galilee, which had become the most important Jewish center, didn't last. By the early 17th century, the Druzes initiated a power struggle, which led to serious 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 1700, Rabbi Judah HeHasid (1660–1700), a maggid of Shedlitz, from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth made aliyah and settled in Jerusalem. A group of over 1500 Ashkenazi Jews came with him, although some sources claim only 300 actually made it. At that time, the Jewish population of the Old City of Jerusalem was primarily Sephardic: 200 Ashkenazi Jews compared with a Sephardi community of 1000. The Ashkenazi immigrants heeded the call of Judah 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, Judah HeHasid died. The survivors borrowed money from local Arabs for the construction of a 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 Rabbi Abraham Gershon of Kitov (1701–1761) the brother-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov.
In 1777, the Hasidic leaders Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Avraham of Kaliski, disciples of the maggid Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, settled in the area. Misnagdim, followers of the Vilna Gaon, 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 Rabbi Judah HeHasid. Starting in 1830, about twenty disciples of Rabbi Moses Sofer settled in Southern Syria, almost all of them in Jerusalem.
The 1834 Syrian Peasant revolts and the 1838 Druze Revolt caused a great impact upon 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. With the restoration of the Ottoman rule in 1840 with British and French intervention, the region began experiencing a serious rise in the population, rising from just 250,000 in 1840 to 600,000 by the end of the 19th century. The Jewish community also gradually rose in numbers.
By the mid 1800s, Jews had become the majority in Jerusalem.
A number of new Jewish communities were established in the late 19th century, including Mishkenot Sha'ananim, which was built by British Jewish banker and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore in 1860 as an almshouse, paid for by the estate of an American Jewish businessman from New Orleans, Judah Touro; and Petah Tikva, established in 1878.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudominwas born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988–1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994 1994–1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995–2015. He is also a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.
Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at [email protected]
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