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population of Palestine— Ashkenazim and Sephardim— some whose
ancestors had resided in the holy Land for generations, others recent
immigrants who wished to study the torah and be buried in sacred
soil. these individuals lived in palestine because of the perceived ho-
liness of the place but lacked any Jewish nationalist motivations and
even forcefully opposed Zionism when it appeared. the new yishuv of
Ottoman palestine, on the other hand, was portrayed as composed of
mostly secular, ideological Jewish nationalists who had immigrated
to Palestine after 1881 in the course of the first two aliyot (waves of
Jewish nationalist immigration to palestine) out of the conviction that
the Jews should— without waiting for the advent of the messiah or
any other divine act— create a modern Jewish society in Palestine and
even a state of their own.
recent scholarship has challenged this conventional distinction be-
tween the old and new yeshuvim on two main fronts. First, scholars
have recognized that Jewish nationalist sympathies and tendencies
were exhibited by members of the so- called old yishuv, among both
Sephardim and ashkenazim. Second, historians have noted that many
of the eastern european Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1881
and 1914 chose to immigrate to palestine rather than the United States
not out of ideological commitment but because of more pragmatic con-
cerns, such as the price of a ticket. In addition, many of these new
immigrants were themselves religiously observant Jews.^72
Moreover, the traditional distinction between the First Aliyah and
the Second Aliyah, the Jewish immigration waves to palestine between
1881 and 1904 and between 1904 and 1914, respectively, has also
been compellingly problematized. the earlier view held that Second
Aliyah immigrants arrived with much more ideological zeal— Zionist,
socialist, agriculturalist— than their First Aliyah predecessors. Once
more, scholars have since demonstrated that this perception of the Sec-
ond aliyah is rooted in generalizations from the experiences of this im-
migration wave’s outspoken, prolific, and influential minority, which
ultimately came to dominate the politics of the yishuv and then, for
decades, those of the State of Israel. the majority, however, were, like
most immigrants at any time and place, motivated by the desire to
improve their socioeconomic position rather than to participate in any
ideological revolution.^73
(^72) an interesting popular, nonacademic work on the religious nature of early Zionist
immigration is Finkel, Rebels in the Holy Land.
(^73) See Bartal, “ ‘Old Yishuv’ and ‘New Yishuv’ ”; Kaniel, “The Terms ‘Old Yishuv’ and
‘New Yishuv.’ ” For a more recent revision, see Alroey, Imigrantim. See also alroey, “Jour-
ney to early- Twentieth- century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant experience.”