LXV.

AN OPEN LETTER OF RABBI CHAYYIM ZEBI SNEERSOHN OF JERUSALEM (1863)

“THERE were hundreds of Jews, preferring labour to starvation, to be seen working for their daily bread at one shilling per day in the fields of the so-called ‘Industrial Plantations for Jews,’ then under the auspices of Mr. Finn, late English Consul for Palestine, and up to the present time there are many Jews engaged in performing even the most menial offices and doing their best to provide food for their families. The other day a meeting was held by the Chief Rabbi, Haim David Hassan, and many other notabilities of the different congregations, at which I also attended. The subject proposed was an enquiry to ascertain the number of those who are likely to devote themselves to agricultural pursuits and to draw up a plan in which way they could be helped in order to attain the object desired. The result was that up to the present about one hundred heads of families declared their readiness to go and till the ground of their fathers. The result of the preliminary discussion on the plan to be adopted was to get a _hodjet_, or secure possession from the Government or possession of cultivated ground, consisting of gardens, olive trees, vineyards and fields.”

Palestinian Rabbis were quick to recognize the activity of the British Consul. James Finn was indeed an English pioneer of the idea of colonization of Palestine and of Britain’s protection of Palestinian Jews. He was appointed Consul before the death of Bishop Alexander (who was a converted Jew and the first Bishop appointed by the British Government in Jerusalem), in 1848, and the chief reason for his appointment was his known love of the Jewish cause. He was at the time a member of the London Society’s Committee, had published an interesting and learned work on the History of the Spanish Jews, as well as a tract upon the Chinese Jews, had devoted himself with great zeal and rare success to the study of Hebrew, which he spoke and wrote with fluency, and was considered on this account to be particularly well qualified for the post of Consul at Jerusalem (another proof of the great appreciation of the national Jewish character of Palestine on the part of the British Government at that time). Finn went out as a devoted friend to the Jewish cause, and such he proved himself throughout. Though an ardent Christian, he won the sympathy of the most orthodox Jerusalem Rabbis, and their moral support for the colonization of Palestine.

Palestinian Jews themselves advocated the establishment of Jewish agricultural colonies in 1863:――

“Behold, we are now awaking to a sense of the profound degradation which systematic dependence on charity must produce and to the awful demoralization which must be the necessary consequence of its precariousness. The increasing prosperity of those around us makes us the more deeply feel our own unutterable misery: while European ideas, gradually penetrating to us, are rousing us from our apathy and inspiring us more and more with the wish to wipe away from us the disgrace of sloth, with which we are but too often stigmatized. We want to work, and to work hard, in order to support ourselves by the sweat of our brows. But there is in Palestine no other source of employment capable of giving bread to a community consisting of thousands of individuals, save agriculture. You dole out to us annually thousands of pounds, just enough to keep us, year after year, on the brink of starvation. This has now been going on for centuries, with the result which we have seen. Now try whether a change for the better could not be brought about. Lay out, by way of experiment, and on a small scale, just to begin with, a portion of the funds destined for the Holy Land in productive labour. Some of us, at least, will, instead of being maintained in involuntary idleness, see what our handiwork can produce, whereby you give the mere consumer of to-day a chance of becoming the producer of to-morrow, and in time you may have the satisfaction of seeing the country dotted with self-supporting agricultural colonies of happy Jews――the very same who are now a burden to you, and whose cry of distress every now and then resounds through the countries of the West.”

Rabbi Sneersohn was on a visit to Melbourne in 1861, and addressed (in Hebrew) a “Meeting of the members of the Jewish Faith (to which persons of other denominations were also invited) for the purpose of adopting measures to assist in building houses of refuge on Mount Zion” (_The Salvation of Israel_, an address, etc., by Rabbi Hayim Zwi Sneersohn, Melbourne, 1862).