The Jews in Jerusalem

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 7, 1904

The Jews in Jerusalem

Not much encouragement for the “Zionist” idea is to be obtained from the condition of the Jews already in Jerusalem, according to the following from Miss Landau, published in the Jewish Chronicle:—

Briefly, the state of things among the Jews may be summed up in the single word “distressing.” There are some 60,000 inhabitants in all—40,000 Jews, 14,000 Mohammedans, and 6,000 Christians. Of the 40,000 Jews, 30,000 live on charity. Twenty thousand of those in receipt of assistance depend in the main upon that huge system of outdoor relief known as the Chalukah, by virtue of which the doles which are piously sent from various places on the Continent are distributed among those of the Jerusalem Jews who originally came from those parts. Thus, the Jews in Jerusalem who hail from Pinsk would receive the money from Pinsk; the Jews from Minsk would obtain the money sent by the good people of Minsk, and so forth. What it comes to, in fact, is that the holy city is really a great pauper colony quartered on the rest of the Jewish race—a vast workshop, for which the Jews of the Continent assess themselves in a voluntary poor rate.