Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Poor Israelis wait to receive food aid from the private Pithon Lev charity just before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish
New Year, in Rishon LeZion, September 2005. (Getty Images / Image Bank.)
THE ECONOMY OF THE YISHUV
The mainstay of economic life for the mostly Arab population of Ottoman-ruled Palestine in
the last quarter of the nineteenth century was subsistence agriculture. Much of the land had
been abandoned over the centuries to swamps and desert. The few Jews already living there
depended on fi nancial assistance from abroad ( haluka ).
Jewish immigrants from central and Eastern Europe, who constituted the great majority
of immigrants before Israel was created in 1948, were ill suited for the tasks of developing the
country. Most had been legally barred from engaging in agriculture in their home countries
and had no knowledge of the climate and the other conditions they were facing. They pos-
sessed little or no capital.
Nevertheless, they had good reasons for emigrating. Apart from growing antisemitism in
the Russian Empire, the Pale of Settlement, where the majority of Russian Jews were confi ned,
was under immense economic pressure. Industrialization and urbanization had reached East-
ern Europe in the last quarter of the century, pushing small-time Jewish craftsmen and service
providers out of business even as the Jewish population grew rapidly. In the 100 years before
the outbreak of World War II, some four million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe. Given
the poor prospects in Palestine, only about 4 percent chose to go there.
The agricultural communities of this First Aliya (wave of Jewish immigration) faced fi nan-
cial collapse not long after the fi rst of them was established in Israel in 1882. Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, a scion of the great European banking family, agreed to supply fi nancial and man-
agerial aid. He saved the settlements, but at a price. By the time the next wave of immigrants
began to arrive in 1904, in the Second Aliya, the settlements had all but abandoned the goal of
Search WWH ::




Custom Search