Yishuv

Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv HaYishuv Hayehudi b'Eretz Yisrael ("The Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel") is the term used in Hebrew referring to the body of Jewish residents in the Holy Land before the establishment of the State of Israel. The residents and new settlers were referred to collectively as "the Yishuv" or "Ha-Yishuv." The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living in Eretz Yisrael, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were about 700,000 Jews there, and is used in Hebrew even nowadays to denote the Pre-State Jewish residents in the Holy Land.

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv.

The Old Yishuv refers to all the Jews living there before the aliyah of 1882 by the Zionist movement. The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Smaller communities were in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram and until 1779 also in Gaza. A large part of the Old Yishuv concentrated their time in Torah studies and lived off Ma'amodot (stipends), received by donations from the Jews in the Diaspora.

The New Yishuv refers to those who built homes outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem in the 1860s, and to the establishment of Petah Tikva and the First Aliyah of 1882, followed by the founding of settlements until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.



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