Jerusalem in Judah's Judean Hills of Judea, Plains and It's History

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Judea and Samaria;  the so called West Bank.  The tribe of Judah lived in the southern part of Israel, and broke off from it after King Solomon died as the state of Judah.  Romans called it Judea.  Through Israel and Judah one can see the Judean Hills.  This is the mountainous region of the central part of the land.  They were fertile and held many people in biblical days.  One can understand this, since the higher up one goes, the cooler the temperature is, and Israel is in a hot climate. During the 2nd Temple days, rabbinic studies were pursued in the Academy, another term for the University, a school of higher Jewish learning.  After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, they became the central authority of the Jewish people who remained.
                                                                         

The hills  were neglected and suffered severely from soil erosion after the Jews were taken away forcefully or scattered after 70 CE.  However, the 1st Academy founded after 70 CE was that set up by Johanan ben Zakkai at Jabneh (Jabneel) in Judah south of Jaffa.  It had been used as a barrier against Philistine expansion earlier.  . Zakkai  set the Academy up with a group of scholars and reestablished the  Great Sanhedrin which  sat in Jabneh until the Bar Kokhba revolt.  .  Later, others sprang up under the leadership of great scholars, such as that at Lydda which had been built by the tribe of Benjamin and became part of Judah in 145 BCE,  under Eliezer Ben Hyycanus, and that at Pekiin in Upper Galilee (Baka)  under Joshua Ben Hananiah.

 Pekiin was where Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and his son Eleazar hid from the Romans in a cave for 13 years.  According to local tradition, the Jews of Pekiin never left their village and continued to live there from the times of the 2nd Temple; unbroken residence certain from the 16th century.  Population in 1990 was 3,400 mostly Druze and some Arab Christian and only one Jewish family left.  After Bar Kokhba's rebellion in 132-135 CE and the catastrophic decline in the population of Judea, the center of Jewish learning had moved north, to the Galilee. Again, they may have enjoyed the cool breezes there as the elevation was higher.

 The central school of authority was moved to Usha, where the pupils of Rabbi Akiva were the majority. It was near Haifa.  A synod was held here where far-reaching legislation was enacted.  It was also for a time the seat of the Sanhedrin.  It's Academy was led by distinguished scholars including Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yose ha-Gelili.  A modern settlement was founded in 1937 by Zionist youth.  By 1990 the population was 393.   Later it moved to Shepharam,  in Lower Galilee where Druze and Christian Arabs live today.  In the 2nd century CE it was the seat of the Sanhedrin under Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi.
                                                               

The Crusaders fortified the town with a fortress, and later it was Saladin's base in his siege of Acre. Then the Sanhedrin moved to Bet Shearim which was a spiritual center in 170 CE when Judah Ha-Nasi transferred his academy and Sanhedrin there from Shepharam.  He was buried there which was a central burial -place for Jews from the Diaspora as well as from Palestine. The new building there is 3 miles from the ancient site now in the western valley of Jeezreel, founded in 1936 with a population in 1990 of 383,  and finally moved to Sepphoris in the Galilee, capital in late 2nd Temple times.  Sepphoris's population favored peace with the Romans and surrendered in 67 CE.  It was the seat of the patriarchate from Ha-Nasi until its removal to Tiberias in the 3rd century.    It was here that Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi compiled  the Mishnah.  After he died, the center moved to Tiberias which remained the chief school of Jewish learning for centuries.  It was here that the Jerusalem Talmud and later, the Masorah were compiled.  It was renamed Diocaesarea from the 2nd century but remained a Jewish city in Byzantine times, and was the center of revolt in 315.Finally, Jews were expelled after the 6th century.  Population in 1990 was 329.

Jews returned 2000 years later starting in 1892 and brought in 25,000 to 35,000 Jews.  In 1894  the First Aliyah of Jewish returnees from Yemen and then 7 months later, Eastern Europe   made up the foundation group of Motza.  This was a rural settlement near Jerusalem.  "While all throughout history Jews immigrated to Israel (such as the Vilna Gaon's group), these were generally smaller groups with more religious motives, and did not have a purely secular political goal in mind."  

These Europeans, a lot from Russia, were escaping political persecution being anti-Semitism.  "Russian persecution of Jews was also a factor. In 1881, the czar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and the ruling bodies blamed the Jews for the assassination.  They were being raided by Cossacks on horses periodically and attacked and injured or killed.  My own grandmother in Poland suffered from such an ordeal as a young girl and had both legs broken.  Golda Meier suffered from a pogrom like this and she came to the USA first.  "Anti-Semitic attacks affected Jewish societies in the Pale of Settlement, Galicia, and Romania."

Motza was a biblical town near Jerusalem and belonged to the tribe of Benjamin.  It still existed in 2nd Temple times.  After the destruction of the 2nd Temple, Vespasian ordered 800 Roman legionaires to settle at Motza, which was now known in Latin as Colonia Amasa.  The modern settlement was erected nearby.  In 1990, the population was 708.

The first king of Israel was from the tribe of Benjamin and was Saul, the son of Kish. The tribe of Benjamin occupied territory between Ephraim and Judah which included Jerusalem.     They were being threatened militarily by the Philistines and the Ammonites.  It was the prophet, Samuel (11th cent. BCE), a Levite, from the tribe of Levi, the same as Moses and Aaron, who selected Saul as king.   Saul immediately organized a trained army and started to defeat the enemy.   They also had to fight against the Moabites, Ammonites and Arameans.  Saul also worked on their religion brought to them by Moses.  He eliminated witchcraft.  Friction occurred and Samuel replaced Saul with David.

The second king, King David, was king from about 1,000 BCE to 960 BCE and was the youngest son of Jesse, who was the grandson of Ruth and Boaz., born in Bethlehem.  He had married Saul's daughter,  Michal.  He chose Hebron as his first capital as the king of Judah.  He later captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites and made it his capital.  It was there that he moved the Ark of the Covenant.

The territory belonging to the tribe of Benjamin was a bone of contention between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah after the division of the kingdom when King Solomon died.Eventually, it was partitioned between the two tribes.
                                                                         

1898 Kindergarten in 1st Aliyah 
These 5 year-olds would have been 50 years old on May 14, 1948 if they all lived. They were from Rishon LeZion on the Judean coastal plain.  

 Rosh Pinna in the upper Galilee as the 1st Jewish agricultural settlement in the modern period, Zikhron Ya'akov on Mt. Carmel (with height of 1,742, not a part of the Judean hills) but great for grapes for wine, and Gedera in the southern Judean plain etc were started in the 1st Aliyah as farming sites.  

From 1948 to 1967, only a small area of the Judean Hills, otherwise called the Jerusalem Corridor, and some of the foothills was incorporated into Israel at the time of its rebirth on May 14, 1948.  The rest of the hills were in the kingdom of Jordan.  This is because Israel lost 80% of their promised land that had been thee ancient  site of Israel to King Abdullah who was a king in need of a kingdom, and the Brits with the mandate went ahead and allowed him to take this from the Jews.
                                                                       

Jerusalem's Wall at night

After the 1967 Six Day War when Israel was attacked by her many neighbors  pulled a miracle and won the war,  the entire area has been under Israeli rule.  This happens when one wins a war that one does not start or want.  It turned out that she got her original land back, however.

This mountain range is crucial because this is where Jerusalem lies.   Jerusalem is situated roughly in the center of the Judean Mountains.  The original city was slightly east of the watershed between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.  The New City of Jerusalem has spread across the watershed into a series of ridges and valleys facing west.   The hills reach 1,000 meters or 3,280 feet high.  Jerusalem can have snow in the winter.  Safed is about as high as Jerusalem.
                                                                 

"An Israel Railways line runs from Beit Shemesh along the Brook of Sorek and Valley of Rephaim into Jerusalem Malha Train Station."  The old joke was telling people not to put their arm outside the window or it would be in Jordan.  Truly, 9 miles width for Israel is not much at that point.  There's truth to this joke.  

Judea's history is the most integral part of the history of the Jews.  From Israel's southern end  to Judah,   the burning of Jerusalem in 70 CE and onward, the history has extended to today.   

Resource:  The New Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.geographic.org/geographic_names/name.php?uni=-1120086&fid=3081&c=israel
https://www.google.com/search?q=Judean+Hills,+pictures&biw=984&bih=636&tbm=isch&imgil=SpPr4Rlo0JNpiM%253A%253BeTEsdYpoA-vdxM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.flickr.com%25252Fphotos%25252Fder_rosenkavalier%25252F3049937411%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=SpPr4Rlo0JNpiM%253A%252CeTEsdYpoA-vdxM%252C_&usg=__P5B6rTzvgokeZwpmPN4CTLpVUcQ%3D&dpr=1&ved=0CDEQyjc&ei=04QyVYPxLc71oASixYCICw#imgrc=SpPr4Rlo0JNpiM%253A%3BeTEsdYpoA-vdxM%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fc2.staticflickr.com%252F4%252F3248%252F3049937411_a38a2f0fb2.jpg%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.flickr.com%252Fphotos%252Fder_rosenkavalier%252F3049937411%252F%3B500%3B333  pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaean_Mountains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah

Largest Jewish Ghetto in the World: Pale of Settlement

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

                                                      Tevia in "Fiddler on the Roof"

 Poland went through its 3rd partition in 1795 and added Vilna and Grodno Provinces to the Russian Empire.  This completed the formation of the Pale of Settlement, the largest Jewish ghetto in the world which existed for more than a century.

Jews had lived in Poland since the 9th century.  It's not certain if the first Jewish settler came from               Germany or Bohemia from the west or from the south where the Kingdom of Kiev and the Byzantine Empire lay.  It is thought that they were reinforced by Jews from Khazaria.  We know that they were traders. Traders had opened up areas in the Dark Ages to civilizing influences.  By the year 905, Poland had its first charter for Jews.  Polish coins of the 12th and 13th centuries were minted by Jews and bear Hebrew inscriptions.  The Tartars invaded in 1240 and utterly devastated Poland. "Mongol-Tartar Golden Horde forces led by Batu Khan, (a grandson of Genghis Khan), began attacking Europe in 1223, starting with Cumans, Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus."Actually, Tartars were a Turkic people who were also conquered by the Mongols and they were mostly the Kipchaks.  They had joined the Mongol forces.  

Catherine II didn't want Jews living in Russia so she allowed them to live in the Pale, which was Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.  She established the Pale in 1791.  This was done under pressure to rid Moscow of Jewish business competition and  the supposed "evil" influence on the Russian masses.  More than 90% of Russian Jews were forced to live in the Pale, which was only 4% of imperial Russia.  The Jewish population went from 1.6 million in 1820 to 5.6 million in 1910.  Even inside the Pale, Jews found that they were being discriminated against.  This was through paying double taxes and rules like they were forbidden to lease land, run taverns or receive higher education.

In 1860, a liberalization period started which granted Jews some privileges, but this came to an end with the May Laws of 1882. this coincides with the year of Jews who left and went to Palestine in the 1st Aliyah.   This group left from 1882 to 1903 and was led by the Bilu (1st modern Zionist pioneering movement founded in 1882 at Kharkov by Jewish students reacting against the wave of Russian pogroms.) They were first to immigrate to Palestine in 1882 and consisted of 15 young  men and women who reached Jaffa in the summer.  They were like the people on the Mayflower sailing to America.  Others followed later that year.    In 1882, 300 families and other smaller groups went to Palestine from Russia (Pale).

 These May  Laws restricted Jews in the Pale and forced them to to move to urban areas of other towns and shtetls in the Pale, which were  overcrowded and offered limited jobs.  Jews living in rural areas in 1882 of the Pale were forced to leave their homes.  250,000 Jews living along the western frontier of Russia were also moved into the Pale.  700,000 Jews living east of the Pale were driven into the Pale by 1891.  This must be the time that Tevia and his family in "Fiddler on the Roof" had to leave their little shtetl and cow in which he had milk to sell, which caused them and their neighbors to all immigrate as they found they were excluded from rural areas inside the Pale.   By 1870 and on to 1880, thousands of Jews became victims in pogroms.  They suffered form such pogroms, boycotts and other anti-Semitic depredations. In 1880, the Jews of Brody, which was just outside the Pale and actually situated in Austria-Hungary,  began the exodus of over 2 million Jews from the Pale to the USA, Britain, Europe, South America and Palestine.  There were over 4 million Jews living in the Pale by 1885.

 By 1890 all the persecutions going on sent thousands of Russian Jews to Palestine, and many Jews also chose to immigrate to the USA then as well. That was good for them, because in 1891, 2,000 Jews were deported out of Vitebsk, many of them were in chains as they left.  In that same year, 20,000 Jews were expelled from Chernigov.   This is about the time my grandfather left Lithuania for England, which led him to go to Ireland, and then finally to the USA.  All this led to mass immigration to the USA (2 million Jews between 1881 to 1914) A 2nd Aliyah to Palestine took place from 1904 to 1914.  During this period, the Kishinev and Homel pogroms and the failure of the 1905 revolution took place.  Only after the overthrow of the Czarist regime in 1917 was the Pale of Settlement ended in August 1915 and legally in March 1917.

Kovno was a Lithuanian city in Kaunas.  It was on the border of the Pale right across from the Baltic Sea and Germany.  Jews had lived there since the 15th century and were then expelled in 1495, right after the 1492 Spanish Inquisition.  They were able to return in 1501.  Again, they faced expulsion in 1753 but they survived.  Finally they received equal rights in 1858 and by the early 20th century numbered 50% of the total population.  It was a distinguished center of Jewish learning, which was most important to Jews, like other people needed amphitheaters to watch events.  Lithuania had their independence from 1918 to 1940.  Before WWII, there were 25,000 Jews in Kovno which was then 25% of the total population.  Then in 1941, all the Jews were herded into a ghetto by the Nazis and 10,000 were killed in a single day on October 28, 1941. The survivors were joined by 7,000 deportees from Germany and Lithuania but nearly all were exterminated by 1944.   Surprisingly, some must have returned, for there were 5,500 Jews in Kovno in 1988.

Vilna was a town in Lithuania and Jews had lived there since the end of the 15th century.  They were then banished in 1527 by Sigismund I because his burghers requested it.  Some were able to return only to become victims of a riot in 1592.  The next year they were allowed to settle, have homes and lend money.  In 1633 they were given permission to trade in precious stones, meat and livestock and to be craftsmen.  Then along came anti-Semitism in the form of a riot against them in 1635.  By 1655, those Jews left were massacred by the Cossack army.  4,000 Jews were among the victims of a famine in Vilna in 1709-10.

From the 18th century, the city became a center of rabbinical study, being dubbed the "Lithuanian Jerusalem.  The Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the best known scholar,  came from here.  Vilna became a Zionist center and the birthplace of the Bund.

Jews from Vilna suffered from famine under German rule in WWI and from a pogrom at the hands of the  Polish troops in 1919.  Jews numbered 140,000 at the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 were only 65,000 including 15,000 refugees from Poland.  The Germans made 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  12,000 remaining Jews were increased by Jews from White Russian rural districts who were shipped in by transports in 1943.   By August 1943, Jews were deported to extermination camps.  The Russians entered the city in 1944 and found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  By 1988 the Jewish population rose to 13,000.

Suwalki, where my paternal grandmother, Zlata came from, was right next door to Kovno with its west side bordering Germany. Originally it was a part of Lithuania and then went to Poland.  My grandmother said she was a Litvak.

In 1911 in Zhitomir, Russia, a person's given name and its spelling sometimes was a matter of life or death.  In civil and legal situations of many Jews the fact of the military draft caused young people worry and sometimes financial destruction.  An example of the spelling of a name in one small shtetl in one year is shocking.  The names of all draftees had died before the draft.  It didn't matter, the deceased were considered to be draft dodgers and their families were fined.  For example, the name from the Draft List was Pavolotskij, Lejb-Gersh Shimonov.  The name from the Death Records Book read as Favolotskij, Lejb-Gersh Simonov.  This was all in Hebrew, and the Hebrew letter pe reads as both a p and a f, which was the cause of the confusion.

Another case as a Jew identified as Mojshe who was drafted into the army, but he was also fined 300 rubles for a supposed brother Moisej, who was said to have evaded the draft because this Mojshe had been listed as Moisej in one list.

There was the family of a Yankel Korotkin who was executed in Vilna and was fined because the deceased was accused of draft evasion.

Letichev resident Yanakael Rozenblat was murdered during a pogrom, but his family was fined.  Another family was fined because a girl named Sima was entered by in the books by mistake as Simkha.  Hundreds of such cases like these happened every year making the lives of many ordinary Jews unbearable because of the consequences of spelling errors.

Lithuanian Jews, who became Russian subjects, also contributed to the pool of names.  Such male first names as:
Aaron, Abel, Al'bert, Alexander, Alfred, Armand, Arnold, Aron, Asher, Avner, Benyamin, Bernard, Calvin, Conrad, David, Edmund, Eduard, Efraim, Elias, Eliaser, Elie, Emil, Ephraim, Eugenio, Frederic, Gabriel,  or feminine names as: Bella, Clara, Corolina, Debora, Dina, Emma, Etta, Eugenie, Eva, Fanni, Gena, Ida, Liza, Marianna, Nakhema, Nataliya, Nekhama, Rebeka, Regina, Rivka, Roda, Ruth, Sara, Sonya, Zlata.

Such names were written in Hebrew and then transliterated into Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyril,  According to Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary,  a ghetto is a quarter of a city in which Jews are required to live;   broadly, a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure.  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia defines ghetto as: a Jewish quarter, strictly, a quarter set up by the law to be inhabited only by Jews. I took it a step further calling the Pale of Settlement a huge ghetto and indeed it was.  I was not the first to say this.  That credit goes to Boris Feldblyum, born in Zhitomir, Ukraine in 1951,  who had lived in several cities in Ukraine, Russia and Lithuania before emigrating to the USA in 1979.  His book is listed in my resources.   He is a researcher of our Jewish history of the Jewish people in Russia and Eastern Europe.  He has written articles for Avotaynu, an international Journal of Jewish Genealogy on archival research and more.

The name "Ghetto" comes from the foundry or Ghetto in Venice where the Jews were segregated in 1517.  The idea of segregation of the Jews, implicit in earlier Church legislation goes back to the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215 which forbade Jews and Christians to live together in close contact.  In Spain, the Jews lived at least from the 13th century, in "juderias" provided with walls and gates for their protection, the city officials said.  Of course then in 1492 the Jews either had to convert or leave the country.  Their laws affected Portugal who did the same thing a few years later.  From the 15th century, the friars in Italy began to press for the effective segregation of the the Jews, and in 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered that Jews in the Papal States should be forced to live in separate quarters.  This was immediately carried into effect in Rome and became the rule throughout Italy in the course of the next generation.  The name "ghetto" which was already accepted in Venice, was now universally applied. The institution was common under the name Judengasse.  It was also found in use in Germany, Prague, where the Jukdenstadft was famous, and in some Polish cities.  It was a town within a town, enjoying a certain degree of autonomy and a vigorous spiritual and intellectual life, but it was insalubrious, overcrowded because of not being allowed to expand, and subject to frequent fires.  The system was often accompanied by forced baptism, the wearing of the Jewish Badge, conversionist sermons, occupational restrictions, etc.  It was finally abolished in Italy in the French Revolutionary Period and reintroduced locally in the 19th century and came to an end when Rome united with the kingdom of Italy in 1870. In other countries the record was similar.
Between 1939 and 1942, Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and other places were transferred mainly to the Warsaw and Lublin areas.  Ghettos were instituted there and at other places.  The Warsaw Ghetto population rose to 445,000.  

The Russian Catherine II used the same concept in respect to the Pale of Settlement.  Jews were confined to the Pale and could not enter Russia.  In fact, they had a very hard time leaving it.  When Jews started to emigrate to the USA in the early 1900's, my husband's family had to leave at night in the dark and sneak out at risk of their lives,and to do this they had to  pay a guide to get them out past the border.  In essence, this land was treated like a city ghetto only it was on a larger scale.  The idea was just the same.  The Jews were required to live within the borders that Catherine II allowed, and as you read, she changed her rules and confined them into the urban centers in the end.  In fact, the Pale, according to my encyclopedia was made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russ in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea where Jews were "permitted" permanent residence, depending of the permanent nature of the day, it looks like, for they were forced out and lost their homes as well.  Life outside the Pale wasn't much better as those outside without permission to be there depended on the arbitrary decision of the local governor  with the borders arbitrarily restricted from time to time by the oppressive Statute of 1835 concerning Jews.  The May Laws certainly were horrible and restrictive, as bad as any city ghetto condition.
The whole concept was definitely a Ghetto action on a very large scale.  Catherine II in 1762 permitted all aliens to live in Russia except Jews.  With Poland being partitioned in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the great Jewish masses of White Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects and were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.  In 1786 they were restricted to towns which lay the foundation of the Pale of Settlement.  Only the Karaites received equality of rights with the Christians in 1795.

Restricted to live in a Ghetto area, a quarter of land belonging to Russia, no rights like other citizens, all because of their religion being Jewish.  This is the foundation of a ghetto.  I'm looking at my map right now at Russia.  It's absolutely huge.  The countries of the Pale are barely seen on this map. The only one I can make out is Ukraine.  I would say that the Pale was only about 4% of Russia, and this reference came from Feldblyum.
                                                           

                                                Russia's Pale of Settlement

Reference:  Russian-Jewish Given Names by Boris Feldblyum
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_and_Tatar_states_in_Europe
Update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars, Lipka Tartars in Lithuania
Update: "1648–1655
The Ukrainian Cossacks led by Bohdan Chmielnicki massacre about 100,000 Jews and similar number of Polish nobles, 300 Jewish communities destroyed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
7/11/13 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pale_of_SettlementUpdate: