Period of Jewish immigration to Palestine (1904?1914)
The
Second Aliyah
(
Hebrew
:
?????? ??????
,
romanized
:
HaAliyah HaShniya
) was an
aliyah
(Jewish
immigration
to the
Land of Israel
) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from
Russia
,
[1]
with some from
Yemen
,
[2]
immigrated into
Ottoman
Palestine
.
The Second Aliyah was a small part of the greater
emigration
of Jews from
Eastern Europe
which lasted from the 1870s until the 1920s. During this time, over two million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe.
[3]
The majority of these emigrants settled in the
United States
where there was the greatest economic opportunity.
[3]
Others settled in
South America
,
Australia
, and
South Africa
.
[4]
There are multiple reasons for this mass emigration from Eastern Europe, including the growing
antisemitism in Tzarist Russia
and the
Pale of Settlement
. The manifestations of this antisemitism were various
pogroms
, notably the
Kishinev pogrom
and the pogroms that attended the
1905 Russian Revolution
.
[5]
The other major factor for emigration was economic hardship. The majority of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe was poor and they left in search of a better life.
[6]
Jews left Eastern Europe in search of a better economic situation which the majority
[6]
found in the United States.
[7]
The
Palestine region
on the other hand offered very limited economic incentives for new immigrants, because there was very little industry in the region. Thus, the majority of the Jewish immigrants found a livelihood through working the land.
[8]
Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.
[9]
David Ben-Gurion
estimated that 90% of the Second Aliyah “despaired of the country and left”.
[10]
Settlement
[
edit
]
Many of the Second Aliyah immigrants were idealists inspired by the revolutionary ideals then sweeping the
Russian Empire
and sought to establish
agricultural settlements
; others were evading
conscription
into the
Tzarist Russian
army.
[11]
In 1906 there were 13 Jewish agricultural settlements established with financial support from the
Jewish Colonisation Association
,
[
citation needed
]
a philanthropic organization founded by Baron
Maurice de Hirsch
in 1891.
[12]
[13]
In 1907 it is estimated there were 550 active pioneers.
[14]
The first
kibbutz
,
Degania
, was founded in 1909.
[
citation needed
]
Most of those arriving were married, many with children; 40% were women. Few had any resources and many remained destitute.
[15]
Some of the immigrants, such as
Akiva Aryeh Weiss
, who preferred to settle in the new district created
Ahuzat Bayit
near
Jaffa
, which was later re named as
Tel Aviv
. In 1914 it had a Jewish population of 2,000.
[16]
Wider immigration and Zionism
[
edit
]
There is a large misconception that
Zionism
played a major role in the immigration of Jews to Ottoman Syria (later British Palestine) during The Second Aliyah.
[
citation needed
]
While Zionism may have had some influence, it cannot be viewed as a substantial factor of influencing emigration to Ottoman Syria when looking at the greater context of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. The two major reasons for Jewish emigration were poverty and persecution, and Ottoman Syria did not offer a respite from either. Jews emigrating from Eastern Europe often experienced much hardship on their way to their destinations, especially those going to the Palestine region.
[17]
Ottoman government had been negative to the migration of Jews ("
Yishuv
") to Palestine from late 19th century till the end of World War I.
[
citation needed
]
One of the reasons was that most of the Jews had foreign citizenship, which curtailed the Empire's ability to deal with them and enforce Ottoman law.
[
citation needed
]
Expulsions, deportations, arrests, denial of Ottoman nationality were some of the measures used to contain the Jewish immigration. Among the deportees were
David Ben-Gurion
and
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
.
[18]
The idea that the Second Aliyah was a realization of the zionist movement does not take all the hardships endured by the immigrants into account. Because of this, the majority of Jewish emigrants went to the United States where there was much more economic opportunity. Between the years 1907-1914 almost 1.5 million Jews went through
Ellis Island
, while only about 20,000 immigrated to Palestine.
[19]
One of
Ben Gurion's
biographers states that there were only a few hundred idealists like Ben Gurion, totaling fewer than half the number of
Templers
living in
Palestine
at the time.
[20]
Culture
[
edit
]
The Second Aliyah is largely credited with the
revival of the Hebrew language
and establishing it as the standard language for Jews in Israel.
[
citation needed
]
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
contributed to the creation of the first
modern Hebrew
dictionary. Although he was an immigrant of the
First Aliyah
, his work mostly bore fruit during the second.
[
citation needed
]
Ya'acov Ben-Dov
became the first filmmaker to work in Hebrew.
The Second Aliyah also established the first Hebrew high school in Israel, the
Herzliya Hebrew High School
in
Tel Aviv
.
Prior to the
First World War
it is estimated that more than 40,000 of the Jews in Palestine held
Russian
citizenship.
[21]
Defense
[
edit
]
The Second Aliyah created the security organization,
HaShomer
, which became the precedent for future Jewish defense organizations such as the
Haganah
.
[
citation needed
]
Education
[
edit
]
The new Jewish settlement embarked on linguistic and cultural independence. The expansion of the Jewish settlement led to the development of the education system and changes in the curricula. New educational institutions were established, from
kindergartens
to a
teachers
' seminary, the
David Yellin Teachers' College
, a Hebrew school for girls established by the
Hovevei Zion
in
Jaffa
in 1909, and the Reali School in
Haifa
. Some of the new institutions received support from the "
Kol Yisrael Chaverim
" and "Ezra" societies.
Hebrew
education and education for national values also developed under the influence of
Ahad Ha'Am
and the Hovevei Zion. At the end of the "Language War" ? the debate over the language of instruction following the decision to teach in German at the
Technion
? Hebrew emerged victorious as the everyday spoken language, as well as the language of academia. As a result, a network of Hebrew education developed under the auspices of a public committee with national-Zionist values. In the struggle for the Hebrew language, the "Hebrew Union" was established, whose founders championed the principle of the "naturalness" of Hebrew in the Land of Israel and the imperative of its "revival".
[22]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Israeli government site on the Second Aliyah
- ^
??????, ???.
"????? ???????? ?? '????? ??????' [The Demographic Make-Up of the Second Aliya]"
(PDF)
.
?????: ??? ?? ???? ??????? ?????? ????? ????????, ?????, ????
.
2
: 33?55.
ISSN
2415-5756
. Retrieved
2023-02-03
.
- ^
a
b
Alroey, G. (2011). Information, decision, and migration: Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century.
Immigrants & Minorities
,
29
(01), 33-63.
- ^
[Gur Alroey, Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century,
American Jewish Archives Journal
56 (2004): 129]
- ^
Goldin, Semion (October 2014).
"Antisemitism and Pogroms in the Military (Russian Empire)"
.
1914-1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War
.
- ^
a
b
Howe, I. (2017).
World of our fathers: The journey of the East European Jews to America and the life they found and made
. Open Road Media.
- ^
[Gur Alroey, Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience,
Jewish Social Studies,
9 (2003) 28]
- ^
"22. ????? ??????"
.
?? ??????? ?? ??? ?????
(in Hebrew)
. Retrieved
2024-05-05
.
- ^
Joel Brinkley,
As Jerusalem Labors to Settle Soviet Jews, Native Israelis Slip Quietly Away
, The New York Times, 11 February 1990. Quote: "In the late 19th and early 20th century many of the European Jews who set up religious settlements in Palestine gave up after a few months and returned home, often hungry and diseased.". Accessed 4 May 2020.
- ^
Teveth, Shabtai
(1987)
Ben-Gurion. The Burning Ground. 1886-1948.
Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN
0-395-35409-9
p.42
- ^
Teveth, Shabtai
(1987)
Ben-Gurion. The Burning Ground. 1886-1948.
Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN
0-395-35409-9
. p. 36
- ^
"Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) | Encyclopedia.com"
.
www.encyclopedia.com
. Retrieved
2023-11-15
.
- ^
"Jewish Colonization Association (ICA)"
.
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
. Retrieved
2023-11-15
.
- ^
Teveth (1987). pp. JCA 41, pioneers 48
- ^
Segev, Tom
(2018 - 2019 translation
Haim Watzman
)
A State at Any Cost. The Life of David Ben-Gurion.
Apollo.
ISBN
9-781789-544633
. p.61
- ^
Israel Pocket Library (1973)
History from 1880.
Keter Books
.
ISBN
0-7065-1322-3
. p.17
- ^
[Gur Alroey, Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience,
Jewish Social Studies,
9 (2003) 59-60]
- ^
Yuval Ben-Bassat, Enciphered Ottoman telegrams from the First World War concerning the
Yishuv
in Palestine, Turcica, 46, 2015, p. 282- 285.
- ^
[Gur Alroey, Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century,
American Jewish Archives Journal
56 (2004): 139]
- ^
Segev p.61
- ^
Teveth, Shabtai
(1985)
Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War.
Oxford University Press.
ISBN
0-19-503562-3
. p.21
- ^
Yehoshua Kniel (ed.), Book of the Second Ascension, III, pp. 300-299.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Ben-Gurion, David
,
From Class to Nation: Reflections on the Vocation and Mission of the Labor Movement
(Hebrew), Am Oved (1976)