The First Aliyah (1881-1903)
A budding agricultural community in pre-state Israel.
By 1881, the Jewish population living in the Promised Land was still relatively small. Jews numbered between 20-30,000, almost all of whom were religious Jews from Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities (including disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hassidic Judaism in Poland a century before). The “Old Yishuv” or previous Jewish inhabitants of the Land, were centered primarily in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa on the Mediterranean, and Tiberias in the Galilee. They established Jewish libraries and administered “yeshivot,” or places of Jewish study, depending largely on the charity of wealthier Jews in the Diaspora for their work and welfare. Many had emigrated in their old age, believing it to be a blessing to die in Eretz Yisrael. But it was hardly a land flowing with milk and honey anymore. Largely deforested and desolate, the Inheritance of Jacob was an impoverished backwater of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Besides some Muslim and Christian businessmen in the cities, the Land’s 120,000 Arab inhabitants were largely agricultural serfs, farming with primitive tools in meager conditions for wealthy Arab landowners who lived elsewhere. Then in 1882, everything began to change.
On March 13, 1881, the Tsar of Russia, Alexander II, was assassinated by Russian revolutionaries while returning to his palace in St. Petersburg. Although the wider circle of conspirators included only one Jew, and although there was no evidence of involvement by the wider Jewish community, a rumor spread throughout the Russian empire that the assassination was a Jewish plot against the crown. As was most often the case in a pogrom, such rumors became convenient pretexts for attacking and marginalizing successful Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement. Terrible riots broke out in over 200 cities across the Pale. From Warsaw in Poland to Odessa and Kiev in Ukraine, mobs descended on Jewish businesses and neighborhoods In most cases, the Russian authorities did not intervene, and some officials were even complicit in the violence.
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The wave of pogroms in 1881 convinced many Jewish families and communities that there was no viable future for them in the Russian Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to the United States before the turn of the twentieth century. But some looked instead to their ancestral homeland. Inspired by a mix of ancient Biblical connection to the Land and modern Marxist ideals of collectivism, two Jewish organizations formed, named “Hovevei Zion,” or Lovers of Zion, and BILU, an acronymous name taken from the Hebrew of Isaiah 2:5: “Beit Ya'akov Lekhu Ve-nelkha” (translated “Let the House of Jacob go”). The first expedition of 14 “Bilu’im,” as they were called, arrived in the Land in July, 1882. Thousands more followed. Some learned a trade and settled in the established cities of Jerusalem and Jaffa. Others attended the agricultural academy at Mikve Israel near the central coast land and founded a “moshava”, or rural farming community. Rishon L’Zion, or “First in Zion,” was the first settlement established by Jewish migrants in the Promised Land, growing to over 100 inhabitants in its first year.
By 1883, however, the New Yishuv of Hovevei Zion and BILU were in dire straits. The cost of cultivating their arid and barren farmland was greater than they had anticipated. They were in particular need of water, which had to be carried on camel-back from other settlements. Compounding the threat of starvation was that of Arab marauders, who regularly raided frontier settlements such as G’dera, dispossessing the Jewish residents there. Thousands returned to Europe, and the movement was on the verge of collapse. In a desperate effort, Rishon L’Zion sent a representative to Europe, seeking patronage from Jewish financiers. They found a particularly exuberant and steadfast ally in Baron Edmond De Rothschild, head of the Paris branch of the incredibly wealthy Jewish banking family. Rothschild was already an active philanthropist, and the vision of the migrants sparked his imagination. He financed the drilling of a deep well in Rishon L’Zion as the first of thousands of initiatives in the Land to support the New Yishuv, including farms, Hebrew-language schools, almond orchards, vineyards, wineries, synagogues and medical clinics. The Baron even financed the draining of swamps to eradicate malaria. These projects paved the way for a second wave of Jewish migration in 1890, almost 10 years after the first Bilu’im arrived. Additional moshavot sprung up across the Land, some of which were named after members of the Rothschild family. Rishon L’Zion continued to grow in the following decades into a thriving town, and is today the fourth largest city in Israel. Twenty years after his death, in 1954, the Baron Edmond De Rothschild was disinterred and reburied in the nascent Jewish State near an old moshava settlement that bore his name. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of modern Israel, eulogized Rothschild, saying, “I doubt that in the entire history of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, a period of 2,000 years, one could ever find a man comparable in stature to the incredible figure that was the Baron Edmond de Rothschild – the build of the Jewish Yishuv in our renewed homeland.”
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The first waves of Jewish immigration into the Promised Land in the 1880’s and 90’s eventually came to be known as the First Aliyah. The act of aliyah, as ancient as the Hebrew Scriptures, was the act of “going up” to Jerusalem to worship God during the festivals. It was not only a physical ascent through the rugged Judean hills, but also a spiritual one, as the travelers sang the ancient liturgy of the psalmists to prepare their hearts for worship. At the end of the nineteenth century, the aliyah had come to represent a “going up” that differed from those who came before. Instead of cloistering in study or awaiting a blessed death, the New Yishuv built a movement around growing and vibrant communities, diverse in vocation and skill, and connected to the entire Land. By the turn of the twentieth century, almost 25,000 had arrived in Eretz Yisrael from Eastern Europe and Yemen, nearly doubling its Jewish population. Having acquired over 350,000 dunams (86,000 acres or 35,000 hectares) of land, they formed almost 30 settlements, and began to build, plant and multiply. It was only the beginning.
