p. 167 | JEWISH STATISTICS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1879

JEWISH STATISTICS.

Until eighty years ago, the Jews were secluded from Jerusalem itself, when the Sultan, by a decree, permitted them to live there to the maximum number of three hundred at a time. Forty years ago the restriction as to number was taken off, but they were forced to live in a particular quarter of the city bearing their name. At last even this ban was removed, and the Jews have since bought all the purchasable real estate in the city, and have built entire streets of houses outside of the walls. Their synagogues and hospitals are multiplying; the German Israelites have no less than ten charitable societies; there are twenty-eight religious congregations, and two newspapers. Six thousand patients are annually cared for in the hospitals. A Venetian Jewess has given $12,000 for the establishment of an agricultural school. In consequence of Jewish immigration, the population of Palestine has doubled in ten years; the value of land has increased tenfold, and the construction of public works goes on night and day; and Baron Rothschild, loaning forty millions to Turkey, took a mortgage upon the whole of Palestine for security.—Selected.