The Holy Land and SyriaCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Religion
The Holy Land and Syria
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Palestine -- Description and travel; Syria -- Description and travel
The latter is known as the Rishon le Zion, or “the first colony of Zion.”
It supports a village of about twelve hundred people, who cultivate three
thousand acres, on which are grown almonds, oranges, and other fruits,
especially grapes. This colony annually makes millions of gallons of
wine and it exports great quantities of Jaffa oranges. I am told that
its wine cellars are the third largest in the world. It was founded by
the Rothschilds to give persecuted Russian Jews a refuge, and afterward
managed by the Hirsch colonization fund. It is run at a profit. The other
colonies are similar to it, and some of them nearly as large. Each has a
school, a drug store, a hospital, and a synagogue.
The Sir Moses Montefiore colonies and schools at Jerusalem are doing
good work, and the French-Jewish Society, which has a million members,
maintains a number of schools, including manual training schools for
girls and boys. If the students do well they are given capital to start
out with and are established in little shops of their own. In some of
these schools the children are so poor that they are furnished one meal a
day and one suit of clothes every year.
Another colony, Tel Aviv, or “The Hill of the Ears of Grain,” has a high
school graduates from which have been admitted to Columbia and other
American universities. The only language spoken in this school is Hebrew,
which is being revived as the language of a great many of the Jews who
have settled in the Promised Land. The colony of Gederah is celebrated
for its large flock of doves, which are the common property of the
community. Rechoboth, founded in 1890, was the first colony to introduce
Jewish workmen with success.
While the Jews of ancient Palestine were farmers, it is now nearly two
thousand years since they have had any land of their own to develop. When
they were driven out of their country by their conquerors, they were
scattered over the world, and took refuge in the cities where most of
them have been living ever since. There they became a people of traders
and shopkeepers, and because of this fact many have believed that the
Jewish colonies in the Holy Land could never succeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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