Centuries of Change
The Old Yishuv describes Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine before the Zionist aliyah waves and the consolidation of the New Yishuv. The term was coined by members of the New Yishuv in the late 19th century, but it does not neatly distinguish communities by age: some groups classified as “old” had arrived only in that century. By the late Ottoman period, the two communities increasingly overlapped in cities and agricultural settlements.
Jewish population centers had suffered a long decline from late antiquity through the Crusader era. Mamluk rule brought renewed settlement, and Sephardic refugees from Spain and Portugal arrived after their expulsions. In the 16th century, Safed became a major center of Jewish scholarship and mysticism. Later conflict devastated Safed and Tiberias, while Jerusalem emerged as a central community. Ashkenazi arrivals included Judah HeHasid’s group in 1700, followed by Hasidim and Perushim in the 18th century.
The Four Holy Cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed—were the main centers, alongside smaller communities in places such as Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, and Nablus. Revolts, Ottoman-Druze conflict, and the 1837 Galilee earthquake caused severe losses. After Ottoman rule was restored in 1840, the region’s population grew, and new institutions and settlements appeared, including Mishkenot Sha'ananim and Petah Tikva.
How Communities Lived
Many residents devoted themselves to prayer and religious study and depended on halukka, a system that gathered donations from Jewish communities abroad and distributed them through networks of kollels. Etrog exports and other limited economic activity also supported residents. Daily life involved home-baked bread, preserved foods for winter, and meat that was often reserved for Sabbaths and festivals.
The New Yishuv increasingly emphasized labor, farming, and self-sufficiency. Its emergence transformed the meaning of “old” and “new”: rather than a simple division between generations, the terms came to represent competing approaches to Jewish life and settlement.
