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This is the second chapter in a series written by Yaniv Weiss exploring the birth and development of Zionism. In his previous chapter, he discussed how Theodor Herzl transformed an ancient longing into a modern political movement.

To me, the subtext of this series is the speciousness of the claim that the Muslim Arab people, who have only started calling themselves Palestinians in recent decades, are the ancestral people of a sliver of land that has been the promised homeland of the Jewish people for centuries.

The Victory of Zionism Chapter 2: A People Dispersed

Jewish Life on Five Continents

Yaniv Weiss

WEISSWORD

April 11, 2025

I don't know if in the current situation in the Diaspora, given the nature of the Jews, it will be possible to arouse them, because they are not moved by anything until the axe actually falls on their heads. Moshe Sharet

Here, I examine the diverse global Jewish communities that would be called to this national awakening — their conditions, challenges, and cultural distinctiveness across five continents.

By the late 19th century, the world's approximately 10 million Jews had created vibrant communities across five continents, each with distinct characteristics shaped by local conditions. This population was comparable to several established or emerging European nations of the time—similar in size to Belgium (6.7 million), the Netherlands (5 million), and Sweden (5.1 million), and larger than Denmark (2.5 million), Norway (2.2 million), or Switzerland (3.3 million). The crucial difference was that while these populations governed their own sovereign territories, Jews constituted minorities everywhere they lived, lacking the national self-determination increasingly seen as a right for peoples of similar or even smaller size. These disparate Jewish experiences would profoundly influence how different communities responded to Zionism's call.

Eastern Europe: Under the Tsar's Shadow

In the Russian Empire, home to over five million Jews—more than half the world's Jewish population—legal discrimination created a parallel society. The May Laws of 1882 confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement while barring them from rural areas within this territory. "The Jews have crucified our Lord and are drinking the blood of Christians," wrote Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the Tsar's advisor on religious affairs. "Are we supposed to give them equal rights?"

Jews weren't alone in facing imperial Russian oppression. Poles (about 10 million) struggled under Russification policies that attacked their language and Catholic faith. Ukrainians (approximately 22 million) were denied recognition as a distinct nationality, with their language dismissed as a Russian dialect. Finns (about 2.6 million) saw their constitutional autonomy progressively eroded after 1899. But Jewish restrictions were distinctive in their comprehensive nature and explicit religious motivation.

A report from the American consul in Odessa described conditions: "Jews are forbidden to buy or rent land outside towns and cities; they are capriciously expelled from villages where they have lived for generations; they are denied entrance to universities and professional schools beyond minutely restricted quotas; they are excluded from government employment entirely."

Decades later, Chaim Weizmann would recall his childhood in the Pale: "Five of us children slept in one bed. The house consisted of one room partitioned by boards, one section serving as a living room, and behind it my father's primitive laboratory for making liqueurs." Despite this poverty, his family prioritized education, a pattern repeated throughout Jewish communities.

The pogroms that erupted periodically—particularly the waves of 1881-84 and 1903-06—often had government sanction. When Jews in Odessa organized self-defense groups during the 1905 attacks, police arrested them rather than their assailants. Russia was moving toward democracy after the Tsar issued his October Manifesto. Three days later, they came and seeking Jews with clubs and axes.

Central Europe: The Illusion of Acceptance

In Germany and Austria-Hungary, where approximately 1.5 million Jews lived, legal emancipation had made remarkable strides. Jews entered universities, businesses, and cultural life with unprecedented freedom. Gustav Mahler directed the Vienna Opera; Albert Ballin built Hamburg's shipping empire; Walter Rathenau headed Germany's largest electric company.

"We are Germans of the Mosaic faith," declared the Reform movement's leadership, modifying religious practices to align with European sensibilities. Yet this integration strategy faced increasing challenges as nationalism intensified.

Heinrich Class, chairman of the Pan-German League, articulated the nationalist response: "The Jew remains a Jew no matter where he is born or what passport he carries." This sentiment found organizational expression in political antisemitism. Vienna's municipal elections of 1895 saw Karl Lueger win the mayoralty on an explicitly anti-Semitic platform, despite Emperor Franz Joseph initially refusing to confirm his appointment.

This duality—professional advancement alongside persistent exclusion—characterized Central European Jewish life. It was precisely this contradiction that Theodor Herzl would experience firsthand as a successful journalist who nevertheless recognized the precariousness of Jewish acceptance.

Western Europe: Citizens But Not Equals

In France, Britain, Italy, and the Low Countries, approximately 750,000 Jews experienced varying degrees of integration. France had been first to emancipate its Jews during the Revolution, with Napoleon extending these rights across Europe during his conquests. Britain removed most restrictions by the 1870s, allowing Jews to enter Parliament and achieve prominence in business and public life.

Adolphe Crémieux, French Minister of Justice, exemplified this integration, helping extend French citizenship to Algerian Jews in 1870. The Rothschild family established banking dynasties across European capitals, while Benjamin Disraeli rose to become British Prime Minister (though after converting to Christianity).

Yet beneath this apparent success lay persistent tensions. The Dreyfus Affair in France revealed how quickly equality could crumble. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer, was falsely convicted of treason in 1894 amidst public anti-Semitic demonstrations. When evidence of his innocence emerged, many French institutions resisted reopening the case, preferring to protect the army's reputation than deliver justice.

Émile Zola's famous "J'Accuse" essay defending Dreyfus noted: "The sinister joke of it all is that people are ignorant, and good-natured, and that they are being organized into mobs who are made to cry 'Down with the Jews!' or 'Down with Dreyfus!'"

Even in Britain, where conditions were perhaps most favorable, social antisemitism remained pervasive. Exclusive clubs maintained "No Jews" policies, elite universities maintained informal quotas, and aristocratic circles rarely admitted Jewish families regardless of wealth. When the Jewish Chronicle surveyed readers in 1892 about whether they had experienced discrimination, 67% responded affirmatively.

North Africa and the Middle East: Indigenous Communities Under Pressure

Approximately one million Jews lived across North Africa and the Middle East, in communities that often predated Islam. Their status varied significantly by region and ruling power.

In Morocco, approximately 250,000 Jews lived in specialized quarters (mellahs) under the Sultan's protection, though this protection often proved unreliable. During the 1863 Spanish-Moroccan War, Muslim riots against Jews in Tetuan let tens of people dead. Sir Moses Montefiore, visiting in 1864, convinced the Sultan to issue an edict of tolerance, though its practical effects were limited.

Yet these communities maintained distinctive traditions, literature, and religious practices that had developed over centuries.

The North African Jewish experience paralleled that of other minority communities in the region. Coptic Christians in Egypt (approximately 750,000), Maronite Christians in Lebanon (about 200,000), and Assyrians in the Ottoman territories (roughly 500,000) all maintained distinct religious and cultural identities while living under Muslim rule. Like Jews, these communities developed specialized economic niches and internal governance structures, though none experienced the same degree of global dispersal as the Jewish people.

In Algeria, French colonization created complex dynamics. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews while denying it to Muslims, creating artificial divisions between communities with long-standing relations.

In the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Palestine and much of the Middle East, Jewish communities functioned under the millet system—a form of religious autonomy under the Sultan's ultimate authority. Jews paid the jizya tax and faced various restrictions, but generally experienced less violent persecution than in Europe.

Further south, Yemen's ancient Jewish community—numbering approximately 50,000-60,000—endured some of the harshest conditions faced by Jews anywhere in the world. Under the strict interpretation of Islamic law by Yemen's rulers, Jews were considered the lowest class of dhimmis. They were prohibited from wearing new or colorful clothes, riding animals in cities, building homes taller than Muslim structures, or engaging in most professions beyond craftwork and menial trades.

The Yemenite Jewish experience was codified in the Orphans' Decree, which mandated that any Jewish child whose father died would be taken from their family, forcibly converted to Islam, and raised as a Muslim. This decree, sporadically enforced depending on local authorities, created perpetual anxiety within the community. Despite these severe restrictions, Yemenite Jews maintained exceptional religious devotion, with some of the highest rates of Hebrew literacy among any Jewish community worldwide and distinctive traditions of poetry, song, and religious interpretation.

When news of early Zionist settlements reached Yemen in the 1880s, it sparked what became known as the "E'eleh BeTamar" (I Will Climb the Date Palm) movement—named for a messianic interpretation of the biblical Song of Songs. Several hundred Yemenite Jews made the difficult journey to Ottoman Palestine in the 1890s, becoming some of the earliest non-European Zionist immigrants. They settled primarily in Jerusalem and later in agricultural settlements, where their skills as silversmiths, leatherworkers, and artisans were valued, though they often faced discrimination from European Jewish immigrants.

The region historically known as Palestine was not a single administrative unit but divided between different Ottoman districts: the Sanjak of Jerusalem (administered directly from Constantinople due to its religious significance), northern portions under the Vilayet of Beirut, and eastern portions under the Vilayet of Damascus. This territory encompassed what would later become Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and initially what is now Jordan as well.

Jerusalem's Jewish community, numbering about 25,000 by the 1880s, consisted primarily of Orthodox Jews supported by charitable contributions from abroad (halukka). Their relationship with the newer Zionist immigrants would prove complex and often contentious, as religious and secular visions of Jewish return collided.

The Americas: New World, New Opportunities

Approximately 1.5 million Jews lived in the Americas by 1900, with the vast majority in the United States. Early Sephardic settlers had arrived in the colonial period, followed by German Jews in the mid-19th century. These established communities created institutions like B'nai B'rith (1843) and Reform temples that reflected their integration into American society.

The mass migration from Eastern Europe transformed American Jewish demographics. Between 1881-1914, approximately two million Jews arrived from the Russian Empire and neighboring countries. New York's Lower East Side became the world's most densely populated Jewish community, with Yiddish newspapers, theaters, and mutual aid societies recreating shtetl culture in an urban American setting.

Abraham Cahan, editor of the Yiddish Forward newspaper, described this immigrants' world: "The greenhorn who lands at Castle Garden [immigration station] brings with him not only his bundle of possessions but a bundle of dreams and longings and vague hopes."

American conditions offered unprecedented freedom for Jews as individuals, though societal discrimination remained. Housing covenants restricted where Jews could live; universities implemented quotas; elite social clubs excluded Jewish members. When Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell proposed an explicit Jewish quota in 1922, he framed it as preventing antisemitism: "If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling."

Smaller but significant Jewish communities developed in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. Argentina's Jewish population grew to approximately 100,000 by 1914, many settling in agricultural colonies established by Baron Maurice de Hirsch's Jewish Colonization Association—an alternative to Zionism that sought to transform Jews into farmers in the New World rather than the old.

Patterns Across Continents

Across these diverse settings, certain patterns emerged that would influence responses to Zionism:

First, Jews developed distinctive economic adaptations to restrictions. Barred from land ownership in many countries, they concentrated in trade, finance, and crafts. In Eastern Europe, approximately 40% worked in commerce and 35% in crafts, creating economic vulnerability during modernization.

Second, education became a central cultural value, with literacy rates exceeding surrounding populations even in impoverished communities. By 1897, approximately 97% of Jewish men in the Russian Empire could read in some language, compared to 28% of the general population. This emphasis on learning created human capital that would later contribute to Zionist institution-building.

Third, Jews maintained transnational connections through trade, philanthropy, and religious ties. When Damascus Jews faced blood libel accusations in 1840, European Jews mobilized diplomatic pressure for their protection—an early instance of international Jewish solidarity that prefigured Zionist organization.

Fourth, they developed complex identities balancing universal and particular elements. Reform Judaism in Germany, socialist Bundism in Russia, and Modern Orthodoxy all represented attempts to reconcile Jewish distinctiveness with modern citizenship. Zionism would emerge as another solution to this fundamental dilemma.

As the 19th century drew to a close, mass emigration transformed Jewish geography. Between 1881-1924, approximately one-third of Eastern European Jews left their birthplaces. The vast majority chose America over Palestine, seeking individual opportunity rather than national rebirth.

This Jewish migration was part of a broader wave of European emigration during this period. While approximately 2.5 million Jews left Eastern Europe, they were joined by 4 million Italians, 3.5 million Poles, 2.1 million Germans, and nearly 1 million Scandinavians departing for new homes—primarily in the Americas. Greeks (approximately 500,000), Lebanese and Syrians (roughly 360,000), and Armenians (about 100,000) also formed significant diaspora communities during this era of unprecedented global mobility.

What distinguished Jewish migration was its nearly complete character in some regions—certain towns in Lithuania and Belarus saw 80-90% of their Jewish populations depart—and its primary cause in persecution rather than purely economic motivation. While Italians and Poles also faced poverty, they weren't subjected to the legal restrictions and physical violence that drove Jewish emigration.

While Zionist pioneers numbered only thousands, American Jewish immigrants created what historians call "the golden land"—communities where Jews found unprecedented economic mobility and political freedom despite persistent social discrimination. As New York's Lower East Side became home to more Jews than any city in Palestine, the Zionist movement faced a paradoxical challenge: its potential constituents were voting with their feet for America rather than Zion.

In our next chapter, we'll examine Why did the UK decide to support the Zionist idea?

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