America and Palestine's Jews
Photographic History of American Involvement in the Holy Land 1850-1948The secret identity of American preacher Mendenhall John Dennis (Mendel Diness of Jerusalem)
In 1988, John Barnier visited a garage sale in St. Paul, Minnesota. There he found and purchased eight boxes of old photographic glass plates. Fortunately, Barnier is an expert in the history of photographic printing.
He had little idea that he had uncovered a historic treasure. Later, he viewed the plates and saw that they included old pictures of Jerusalem. He contacted the Harvard Semitic Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for its large collection of old photographs from the Middle East.
On some of the plates they found the initials MJD. Until then the name Mendel Diness was barely known by scholars. It was assumed that with the exception of one or two photos his collection was lost. Click to see moreAmerican volunteers helped the British liberate the Holy Land from the Turks
The history of the Jewish Legion that fought in Palestine in World War I is relatively unknown.
Many of the soldiers were recruited from the ranks of the disbanded Zion Mule Corps, Palestinian Jews exiled by the Turks in April 1917 who were recruited in Egypt, or from Diaspora Jewry recruited in Canada and the United States.
As many as 500 Jewish Legion soldiers came from North America; many of them were originally from Poland or Russia. One Legionnaire was Pvt. Click to see more
Who knew Calvin Coolidge met the Chief Rabbi of Palestine in the White House?
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was a renowned Talmud scholar, Kabbalist and philosopher. He is considered today as the spiritual father of religious Zionism, breaking away from his ultra-Orthodox colleagues who were often opposed to the largely secular Zionist movement. Born in what is today Latvia, Rabbi Kook moved to Palestine in 1904 to take the post of the Chief Rabbi of Click to read moreClick on pictures to enlargeMark Twain in the Holy Land, 1867, and the Innocents Abroad
Are these Photographs of Mark Twain's Companions from The Innocents Abroad?
"The Pilgrims and the Sinners" in the Holy Land
Mark Twain was a relatively unknown writer in 1867 when he visited Palestine in the company of 64 "pilgrims and sinners" and wrote these words:
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.... Click to read moreCelebrating July 4th in the Holy Land 1918
The founders of the American Colony in Jerusalem in 1881 were proud of their American roots. The group of utopian, millennialist Christians were later joined by Swedish-American and Swedish believers.
The American Colony set up clinics, orphanages, cottage industries and soup kitchens for the poor of Jerusalem, earning favor with the Turkish rulers of Palestine. Click to read more
Why was an American flag flying on a Jerusalem steamroller 100 years ago?
The Library of Congress archives includes two photographs of a steam roller on the streets of Jerusalem.No explanation was given for the American flag; nor was a definitive date provided. Click to read moreU.S. Aid to the Jews of "Palestine" Was Essential 100 Years Ago
Click picture to enlarge During the first years of the 20th Century the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael -- Palestine -- suffered terribly. A massive plague of locusts, famine and disease hit the community hard. Ottoman officials harassed, tortured, imprisoned and expelled Jews, especially "Zionist" activists.
An account of life in Palestine during the first world war was presented to the World Zionist Congress in 1921 by the London Zionist Click to read moreCongressional Visits to Israel Are Not New. Pictures of a Senate Delegation in 1936, a Critical Year
April 1936 was the start of a vicious anti-Semitic and violent "Arab Revolt" in Palestine that would last through 1939.
The murderous attacks against Jews, Jewish communities and Jewish property were widespread throughout Palestine. British government offices, banks and railroads were also attacked.
Coming so soon after the 1929 massacres of Jews in Palestine and under the looming shadow of the Nazi threat, the attacks against Palestine's Jews alarmed friends of the Zionist Click to read moreWhat Lincoln Would Have Seen in Jerusalem
Abraham Lincoln "said he wanted to visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footprints of the Saviour. He was saying there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem," Mary Todd Lincoln told the Springfield, Ill. pastor who presided at Abraham Lincoln's funeral. She explained that the 16th president told her of his desire before he was fatally shot in Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865.
Truth or Mary Todd Lincoln's imagination? We can only Click to read more- NOV14
The Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Old City, the Leading Sephardic Seminary Was Destroyed and Rebuilt
The original caption read: "Clearing of lower end of Tyropean Valley, near Dung Gate (1935)." The photo shows the
Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City before its destruction in 1948. The Porat Yosef Yeshiva is in the
center of the picture with the white dome. Today this area is the entrance way to the Western Wall plaza.
(Library of Congress, circa 1935, captions added by Israel Daily Picture)
Several ultra-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries in Israel can claim to be the leading Ashkenazic yeshiva-- the massive Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem with its 6,000 students, Ponevezh Yeshiva in B'nai Brak, or the Hevron Yeshiva in Jerusalem, once the famous Slabodka seminary in Europe which relocated to Hebron until the 1929 massacre of Jews there.
A puzzling picture from the Library of Congress collection showing
the "Temple area. Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock and the western
Temple wall." Presumably the wide white lines are photographic
editor's tape. At the corner made by the tape is the Porat Yosef dome. The
Library of Congress dates the picture "between 1898 and 1946," but
Porat Yosef was not built until 1923. 1946 is the year the American
Colony Photographic Department closed.
But there are few challengers in the haredi Sephardic community to the pre-eminence of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The site for the seminary was purchased 100 years ago; the cornerstone was laid in 1914, and the building was inaugurated in 1923. The building contained study halls, a synagogue, classrooms and apartments.
It was all destroyed by the Jordanian army in 1948, along with all of the synagogues and homes in Jewish Quarter. The photos of the war in the Old City and the destruction of the Jewish Quarter were taken byLife Magazine's John Phillips.
After the 1967 war, the Porat Yosef seminary was rebuilt and overlooks the Western Wall Plaza.
The destruction of Porat Yosef Yeshiva (John Phillips, Life Magazine 1948) 0Add a comment
Book of Kings II, Chapter 7: ... Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate [of besieged Samaria]; and they said one to another: 'Why sit we here until we die? ... If we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Arameans...And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Arameans; and when they came to the outermost part of the camp of the Arameans, behold, there was no man there."
Lepers, presumably in Jerusalem, (Library of Congress, circa 1900)
For thousands of years the scourge of leprosy has struck fear among humanity. In the Bible it was considered a severe punishment. Leprosy was called a "living death," and its victims were often exiled from cities or imprisoned in leper colonies.
In the 19th century, Christian missionaries, well-versed in the Bible, saw lepers in the Holy Land as candidates for their holy mission, and photographers, perhaps seeing a commercial demand, viewed the lepers through the lenses of their cameras. The pictures here were taken by the photographers of the American Colony.
Group of leper women (circa 1900)
Today, scientists know that leprosy is caused by a bacteria and is rarely contagious, particularly if the patient is receiving treatment. It is transmitted by the transfer of body fluids and is treatable with antibiotics. While the disease has been "beaten back," it still exists in developing countries.
In 1887, Hansen’s Hospital, known as the “Lepers Home," was built on the then-remote outskirts of Jerusalem, according to writer Ruth Wexler. It was designed by the German architect Conrad Schick and operated by the Moravian Church.
"Hansen Hospital, an architectural treasure, is now situated in the midst of an affluent neighborhood," Wexler wrote. "During the 122 years of its existence around 600 people spent their lives within its walls. In the year 2000, the last leprosy in-patients moved out."
A group of leper men (circa 1900)
Despite medical advances, the leprosy stigma divided patients from society. Going against the norm was Rabbi Aryeh Levin (1885-1969), a revered Jerusalem rabbi.
Hansen's Hospital, across from the Jerusalem Theater.
(Judy Lash Balint, 2005)
"He was a frequent visitor at hospitals for lepers," Simcha Raz wrote in A Tzaddik in Our Time. "Reb Aryeh began this holy practice after he had found a woman weeping bitterly by the Western Wall. Reb Aryeh asked her, 'what made her cry so intensely.' She told him that her child had no cure, and was locked up in the leper hospital in Jerusalem. He immediately decided to visit the young child, and when he arrived all the patients burst into tears. It had been years since they had the privilege to see any visitor from the outside world."
Today, the hospital is undergoing renovation to become a cultural center and gallery for arts, media, design and technology.0Add a comment
1857 picture, original caption: "The Tomb of David. This building was formerly a Christian Church; it is of great
antiquity, and much venerated by the Muslims, who allow no Christian to enter the Tomb. There is also
in the building a room which is said to be that in which [Jesus' Last] Supper was instituted. (Robertson
Beato & Co photographers, Palestine Exploration Fund)
"Modernity meets antiquity" explains the discovery of most of the photographs that appear inwww.IsraelDailyPicture.com. As more and more archives and libraries digitalize the photographs in their collections, they put them online. The pictures presented on this site come from the Library of Congress, the Palestine Exploration Fund, Emory University, the Central Zionist Archives, New York Public Library, and even the archives at the medical school of the University of Dundee, Scotland.
King David's Tomb (circa 1900). The original caption
said it was a "Tabernacle."
The 156-year-old photo above predates those we presented two years ago from the Library of Congress' collection. We reproduce that feature below and add a comment on the rediscovered "holiness" of the site.
Tomb exterior (circa 1900)
A thousand-year-old Jewish tradition believes that King David is buried in a tomb on Mt. Zion. And that is one of the reasons the belief is questioned by some Bible scholars.
The Bible (Kings I, 2:10) states that David and his descendants were buried in the City of David, generally believed to be south of the Temple Mount, not on Mt. Zion to the West.
The Tomb interior (circa 1900)
The Jewish tradition has taken hold over the last millennium, and the tomb is revered by many Jews, as evident in the Library of Congress' 100 year old picture.
King David's Tomb was particularly important from 1948 until 1967 when the Western Wall, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb were all under Jordanian control and forbidden to Jews. The Mt. Zion site was the closest Jews could get to the Western Wall.Adjacent to the Hagia Sion Abbey
(formerly the Dormition Abbey), the tomb is located beneath the room where, according to Christian belief, Jesus conducted his Last Supper.
Chamber of the Last Supper (circa 1900)
Comment from Reader "Lynne": The outcome of Israel's [1948] War of Independence was the main catalyst for the creation of a new map of Jewish pilgrimage sites. Places of only secondary importance before the war [such as King David's Tomb] now turned into central centers due to the realization of the importance of them. Previously, there was so much emphasis placed upon the re-establishment of the state of Israel (after having not been a nation for 2,000 years) and the re-establishment of the habitability of the land that the task of preserving the Biblical holy sites had not been a priority. Several categories of the sacred sites are discussed herein: sites in the possession of Jews before the 1948 war that were developed during the 1950s as central centers; sacred sites stolen by Muslims prior to the war, which were rightfully converted back into Jewish sacred sites during the 1950s; and new Jewish pilgrimage sites re-established after the establishment of the State of Israel. The research demonstrates how various official, semi-official, and popular powers took part in the re-establishing of the Jewish sacred space. [Source: Article by Doron Bar,Reconstructing the Past: The Creation of Jewish Sacred Space in the State of Israel, 1948–1967, Israel Studies - Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2008, pp. 1-21]0Add a comment
One Million Visitors!
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
America and Palestine's Jews Photographic History of American Involvement in the Holy Land 1850-1948 - picture a day
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Add a comment