The neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem is famous for the dust-up between Israel and the U.S. Administration two years ago when Israel announced plans for expansion of the ultra-Orthodox housing project.
"Police intercede in Orthodox attempt to break up the
Maccabee football game" (1930s)
Originally, Jerusalem's legendary mayor Teddy Kollek planned that the area, known as the Shuafat ridge, would house a 50,000-seat football stadium, sports facilities and tennis courts.
Aerial photo of the sports field, adjacent
to the ultra-Orthodox Meah She'arim
neighborhood (1931). See a view of
the bleachers here, and the field here.
But access to the stadium would have to be through Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, and Sabbath protests and demonstrations were a certainty.
"Close-up of an Orthodox Jew in the
crowd." View another close-up with
the police - here (1930s)
Eventually, the stadium was built in southern Jerusalem near Malcha, and the Shuafat ridge became part of a contiguous stretch of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.
"Crowd of mixed Orthodox Jews who arrived on the scene en
masse to force the discontinuing of the Maccabee footbal game"The Sabbath tensions over public sports games on Saturdays were documented by the American Colony photographers some 80 years ago.
Some of the photographs identify the field as "near Bokharbia," perhaps meaning near the Bukhari Jewish neighborhood adjacent to Meah She'arim.
The decades-old issue of Sabbath observance in Jerusalem suggests that this dispute may indeed not be resolvable; rather, like other conflicts in the Middle East, the best one could hope for is that it would be manageable.
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Despite the wintery weather, grocery shoppers in Europe and North America today will find fresh fruit and vegetables from Israel on their shelves. And not just the delicious tomatoes and cucumbers. Exotic Israeli agricultural products are also on sale, such as pitayas, a cactus fruit; lychees and kiwis; yellow cherry tomatoes; miniature water melons; purple potatoes; star-shaped zucchinis; blue bananas, and many more.
Arabs wrapping oranges (circa 1900)
But the king of the exports is still the Jaffa orange, also known as the Shamouti orange. The Jaffa orange today also has competition from oranges grown in places like Spain and Morocco.
Jewish farmer irrigating grove in Rishon
Lezion (1930s)
Arab farmers in Palestine developed this sweet orange in the 1800s.
With the arrival of steam ships, the oranges were exported from Jaffa's port, thus the origin of the fruit's name.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
Tel Aviv port (1930s). View import of lumber for orange crates
Click on the captions to see the originals.
Jaffa Port (circa 1900) Citrus plantations were established by wealthy Arab landholders, and early Zionist farmers also planted citrus groves on the tracts of land they purchased.
Jewish farmer from Rishon Lezion
pruning an orange tree grafted onto a
lemon trunk
The American Colony photographers preserved pictures of the Arab and Jewish groves, the packing, export, and production of orange products. They also photographed the cooperation of Arab and Jewish workers in the 1930s.
Jewish supernumeraries on guard in
an orange grove. (1930s)
During the Arab revolt (1936-1939), Arab workers closed the Jaffa port with a lengthy strike. The new Tel Aviv port handled the import of lumber for orange crates and then the export of the oranges themselves.
Orange grove in Borochov, named for the
Zionist leader, Ber Brochov. The village,
founded in 1922, became part of the
town of Givatayim
Packing plant with Arab and Jewish workers (1930s) 
Jewish and Arab workers wrapping
oranges in Rehovot3View comments
- To the right is a snapshop of the "Live Traffic Feed" of Israel Daily Pictureearlier today and the locations of the visitors to the site. The "app" is located low in the right sidebar.
As this site nears the 250,000 readers mark, we are pleased to welcome the readers from Moslem/Arab countries such as Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and from the Palestinian territories.
In addition to the readers from the United States and Israel, others visited from Gibraltor, Brazil, India, Uruguay, Germany, Norway, Hungary and the Netherlands in this time period.
Thank you for visiting. Please enter your email in the right sidebar to receive the Israel Daily Picture delivered to your computer. 1800 readers have already subscribed.1View comments
In 1902, Theodore Herzl predicted a major seaport would be built in Haifa Bay. In October 1933 the new port was inaugurated., 
Excavations at the nearby Atlit quarries (1920s)
Read Part 1 of the Haifa Port story here.
Diver at work
The Haifa harbor had to be dredged, sandbars had to cleared, foundations and pillars had to be sunk, and raw materials for the new port facilities had to be dug and transported from the nearby Atlit quarries.
Atlit boulder slated for the port
construction
The American Colony photographers recorded the extensive excavations and construction carried out.
Dredging the Haifa harbor
And the photographers were there when the British High Commissioner officially opened the port in October 1933.
Official opening ceremony of the
Haifa harbor, Oct. 31, 1933
Pouring great cement blocks
Zionist leaders realized that the development of a port would have a tremendous impact on the region. As described by Joseph Glass in his book From New Zion to Old Zion, "The surrounding areas would enjoy speedy development as Haifa became the industrial hub of Palestine. The population would increase rapidly in order to service the new port and facilities, the associated industries, and the required service sectors. New neighborhoods and settlements would sprout up quickly to house the sizable population increase. In turn, this would most likely lead to the development of nearby agricultural settlements to satisfy the urban area's need for dairy and poultry products, fruits, and vegetables."
Haifa Port today (Haifa Port) View a video on the history of the Haifa port and a video on Haifa's new, advanced terminals and port facilities. Haifa is expected to be one of the top 50 ports in the world.The main base of the Israeli Navy is also located in Haifa.1View comments
By the 1930s, Jewish industries and settlements in Palestine were employing tens of thousands of Jews. In 1939, seventy-five percent of Jewish workers, some 100,000 men and women, were members of the Histadrut, the federation of trade unions. Many immigrants, fleeing the turmoil in Europe, were integrated into the work force.
Spinning yarn at Ata Textiles (1939)
To see Part 1 of this feature click here.
Fish ponds near Akko. "Fish are so
plentiful they are picked up with hand
nets" (1939). Also view here.
Rolling cigars near Haifa. View the
finished product here
Some of the small businesses photographed by the American Colony photographers are large conglomerates today.
Bottling olive oil at Shemen plant The Shemen corporation is a major producer of edible oils and feed with annual sales in the range of $150 million.
Kadar factory ceramics. Vintage ceramic
pieces can be found for sale on E-Bay
The wadding plant at Ata Textiles Ata textiles, featured in some of the pictures here, was the major industry in the town of Kiryat Ata outside of Haifa, but faced with higher raw cotton prices and cheaper competitors in the Far East, the factory closed in the 1985.
The Adi battery company 
Shemen's soap factory 
Margarine plant 1View comments
Jaffa was really the only major port in Palestine in the 19th century. The docks of Acco and the bay at Haifa were little more than fishermen's villages.
Arrival of the German emperor in 1898 on the quay of Haifa Bay.
His cruiser is at anchor in the background
British High Commissioner Herbert
Samuel arriving in Jaffa on rowboat
June 30, 1920
These pictures in the Library of Congress collection show the backwater nature of Haifa Bay, used by the German Emperor Wilhelm II for his arrival in Palestine in 1898. Perhaps the landing at Haifa reflected the presence of the German Colony established in the town in 1868.
The emperor's cruiser at Haifa 
Turkish band receiving the emperor at the Haifa quay.
In the 1920s the British Mandate began planning and construction of a deep water port in Haifa, and Jewish development funds began purchases of large tracts of surrounding land for development.
In the 1930s, faced with the strikes of Arab workers in the Jaffa port, British authorities and Jewish developers built theTel Aviv port. The Jewish state-in-the-making would have two major ports under its control, with ports in Ashdod and Eilat eventually added.
In 1898, the land of Palestine had one other visitor, Theodore Herzl, one of the founders of modern Zionism. In his 1902 novel, Altneuland, he presented his amazing prophetic vision of Haifa and its port:
New wharfs of Haifa Port 1933 As they approached the harbor they made out the details with the help of their excellent lenses. Great ships, such as were already known at the end of the nineteenth century, lay anchored in the roadstead between Acco and the foot of the Carmel. ...Below the ancient, much-tried city of Haifa on the curve of the shore, splendid things had grown up. Thousands of white villas gleamed out of luxuriant green gardens. All the way from Acco to Mount Carmel stretched what seemed to be one great park. The mountain itself, also, was crowned with beautiful structures.... A magnificent city had been built beside the sapphire blue Mediterranean. The magnificent stone dams showed the harbor for what it was: the safest and most convenient port in the eastern Mediterranean. Craft of every shape and size, flying the flags of all the nations, lay sheltered there. Kingscourt and Friedrich were spellbound. Their twenty-year-old map showed no such port, and here it was as if conjured up by magic.Next: The construction of Haifa Port0Add a comment
The Jerusalem neighborhood of Meah She'arim was one of the first neighborhoods built outside of the Old City walls.
Meah She'arim market. "Bukharan vegetable vendor with
donkey car" (circa 1935)
The name "Meah She'arim" can mean "100 gates" or "100 measures" and is taken from the verse in Genesis (26:12) "And Isaac sowed in that land and he reaped in that year one hundred times [what was estimated], [for] God had blessed him."
Meah She'arim market today 
Meah She'arim market (1935) Meah She'arim was established in 1874 during the same week that the verse from Genesis was read in the synagogue Torah reading.In 1890, the neighborhood was home to 800 residents in 200 buildings. The demand for housing was so great that within three years another 100 homes were built and the population almost doubled. Adjacent neighborhoods, such asBatei Ungarin and the Bukharan Quarter, were built to handle the burgeoning Jewish population.Each neighborhood contained its own marketplace full of stalls and stores. Not too many years ago, shopkeepers in the Bukharan market were still using their abacus to tally purchases.
Today, however, with the exception of shoppers in Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda market, the shopping habits of Jerusalemites have changed, and supermarket chains now attract more and more consumers.
Meah She'arim. "The chicken killer" (1935) 
Meah She'arim. "The fishmonger" (1935) 
The transaction in the market (1935) 
Meah She'arim bread stalls (1935) 
Group of Jews in Meah She'arim (1935) 
What's left of the market in the Bukharan Quarter today 0Add a comment
Safed, or Tsfat, the Galilee mountain town, is considered one of Judaism's holiest cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias.
Safed (circa 1900)
The town was a magnet for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and the home of some of Judaism's greatest medieval scholars -- Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (the "Ari"), Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (author of the prayer Lecha Dodi), and Rabbi Yosef Karo (the author of the Shulchan Aruch code of laws).
While Jews flocked to Safed over the last 800 years, they also had to flee on many occasions. Earthquakes, plagues and attacks decimated the community. Over the centuries, Druze, Ottoman and Arab gangs and militias plundered the Jewish quarter and murdered residents.
Meiron, near Safed, the burial site of Rabbi
Shimon bar Yochai (1920s)
The ancient and famous synagogues of Safed were destroyed in earthquakes in 1759 and 1837 and then rebuilt.
Safed, "a city built on a
hill" (1900)
In 1929, just days after the massacre of Jews in Hebron, Arab mobs stormed the Jewish neighborhoods in Safed and killed 20 Jews and wounded dozens.
Heavy fighting took place in Safed during the 1948 war of Israel's independence. The Arabs of Safed fled, many fearing Jewish revenge for the 1929 massacre.
Safed (1898)
Today, the mountain-top town is home to many artists and galleries.
Safed's flat roofs are covered with drying wheat (1920). 
Safed aerial view (1937) 
Safed today (Wikipedia)
Postscript: The mother of the late New York senator, Jacob K. Javits, was born in Safed. Ida Littman fled Safed when she was 19 after an Arab pogrom.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
Click on the captions to see the originals.2View comments
The Israel Daily Picture site published a photo essay in September as part of a series on the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt.
Arab hostage on a flatbed in front of a British patrol
checking the tracks for mines (1939)
The Arab attacks against the Jews and British in Palestine were frequently directed against motor vehicles and railroads. The essay's pictures from the Library of Congress-American Colony collection show the extensive damage to the trains and the special measures taken by the British, including armed escorts.
One of the British army's brutal tactics was to put an Arab hostage on a flatbed in front of a rail car in the expectation that Arab terrorists would desist from planting mines on the track.
We discovered this picture recently while viewing other pictures in the Library of Congress collection. The caption on the picture was incorrect, leading to the picture's misplacement, possibly for decades.1View comments
The British Mandatory forces sought to crush the Arab Revolt in 1936-1939 with an iron fist. Arab militias were hunted down and even the Royal Air Force was deployed. Widespread arrests and the destruction of Arab homes and even neighborhoods were common and were documented by the American Colony photographers and reproduced on these pages.
A British raid in the Jewish Machaneh Yehuda market
in Jerusalem
But the British also clamped down on Jewish fighters who organized to defend against Arab attacks and carried out retaliatory attacks against Arab targets.
Raids, arrests and even capital punishment were carried out against Jewish fighters, particularly members of the Irgun underground, led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
British troops patrol Jaffa Road in Jerusalem on the
eve of Bar-Yosef's execution in 1938
When the British responded to Arab demands to block Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Irgun organized illegal aliya-- Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael.
In April 1938, in reprisal for an Arab attack, three Irgun members attacked an Arab bus. The three were captured by the British, and one, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, was executed in June 1938 despite appeals by the Jewish Yishuv's leadership.
Machane Yehuda market today - at the site of the 1930s
British raid (Photo credit: The Real Jerusalem Streets)
Ben-Yosef was the first of 12 Jews executed by the British, mostly in 1947, when underground groups sought to end the British Mandate and turned their guns on British targets.2View comments
World War I brought widespread devastation to the Middle East as German and Turkish armies fought British, Australian and New Zealand troops in battlefields from the Suez Canal in the south to Damascus in the north.
The American Colony photographers
took hundreds of pictures of the
locust plague and the insects'
metamorphosis from larvae to adult
The war meant a cut-off of aid and relief to the Jews of Palestine from Jewish philanthropists in Europe and the United States.
As many as 10,000 Jews were expelled from Jaffa-Tel Aviv in April 1917, and many perished from disease and hunger.But the famine that struck the residents of Palestine was also caused by a massive plague of locusts that swarmed into Eretz Yisraelin March 1915 and lasted until October. Accounts of the locusts and the subsequent starvation and pestilence recalled the plagues of Bible.
A New York Times account from April 1915 described deaths from starvation. By November 1915, the Times detailed a cable from theAmerican Counsel General in Jerusalem in which he described "fields covered by the locusts as far as the eye could reach." The diplomat reported on efforts made by the Turkish leader of Palestine to combat the locusts. A Jewish agronomist, "Dr. Aaron Aaronsohn, who is well known to the Department of Agriculture at Washington, was appointed High Commissioner" to the "Central Commission to Fight the Locusts." 
A tree before the locusts arrived 
The same tree after the locusts
finished[Aaronsohn would go on to establish the anti-Turkish NILI spy ring in 1917. His sister Sarah was captured by the Turks for her involvement in the spy ring, and after torture, she committed suicide.]The American Colony in Jerusalem established soup kitchens to feed starving residents in Jerusalem. The colony's photographers documented more than 200 pictures of the locusts' devastation, efforts to combat them and the locusts' life cycle. An album of color (hand tinted) photographsis stored in the Library of Congress collection.
"Locusts stealing in like
thieves through
the window"
The Times reported, "Few crops or orchards escaped devastation. This was especially true on the Plain of Sharon, where the Jewish and German colonies, with their beautiful orange gardens, vineyards, and orchards, suffered most severely... In the lowlands there was a complete destruction of crops such as garden vegetables, melons, apricots and grapes ... upon whose supply the Jerusalem markets depend... few vegetables or fruits [were] to be had in the markets."
Team waving flags tries to push a swarm of locusts into a
trap dug into the ground. The Turkish governor demanded
that every man deliver 20 kilo (44 pounds) of locusts
"In Jerusalem and Hebron," the report continued, "the heaviest loss from the onslaught of the locusts has been in connection with the olive groves and vineyards. Olive oil is a staple of food among the peasants and poorer classes....The grape, too, is a similar staple among all classes."
Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem,
before the locusts
Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem, after the locusts
"When the larvae appeared near Jerusalem," the Times related, residents were mobilized "for immediate organized resistance....Tin-lined boxes were sunk in the earth in the direction in which the locusts were advancing." Men, women and children were given flags and "the flaggers would drive the locusts together in a dense column toward the trap..."
Both the forces of war and nature combined to take a terrible toll on the residents of Palestine during World War I.2View comments
-
Well before the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael was well established. The "OldYishuv," consisting primarily of Orthodox Jews, had been living in Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, Tiberias, Jaffa and even Gaza for centuries.
Inspecting polished diamonds (1939) View the factory here After 1880, the "New Yishuv," often supported by overseas philanthropists, purchased properties throughout Palestine and established agricultural settlements and industries. The photographers from the American Colony recorded dozens of pictures of these enterprises.
The economic development of the Yishuv is described by Mark A Tessler in his book, A History of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict (Indiana University Press, 1994). The following is an excerpt:
Tnuva cheese processing. Another
picture here. (1939)
The number of agricultural communities and workers grew rapidly.... There were 82 agricultural settlements by 1936. In the same year, there were about 32,000 Jews employed in agriculture, in contrast to fewer than 4,000 in 1921.
A similar pattern of growth took place in the industrial sector. By 1936 there were 5,602 manufacturing establishments in the Yishuv, about 90 percent of which were small-scale handicraft operations. The number of industrial workers rose from fewer than 5,000 in 1921 to almost 29,000 in 1936, and the value of industrial output reached $42 million in the latter year. Most of the products of the Yishuv's industries were consumer goods and construction materials, both of which were sold on the domestic market.....
Textile factory (1939). Textile
dyeing here
Furniture making. Another picture
A good overall indication of the Yishuv'sexpanding economic base during this period is the rapid acceleration that occurred in the consumption of electricity. The output of the Palestine Electric Company, whose largest shareholder was the Jewish Agency and whose principle consumer was the Yishuv, grew from 2 to 65 million kilowatt hours between 1926 and 1936. Industry and irrigation each consumed about one-third of this total.
Beverage and bottling
It should also be noted that the economy of the Yishuv was almost completely independent of the Arab economic sector. The monetary value of inputs from the Arab economy was only about 3 percent of all inputs....0Add a comment
"Arab Jew from Yemen" circa 1900 The 1880s saw the arrival of two immigrant groups in Jerusalem: The members of the American Colony, a group of American Christian utopians who first settled in the Old City, and a group of Yemenite Jews who were forced to settle in the Shiloach (Silwan) village outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City when they were not warmly received by the Jewish residents of the city.
"Rabbi Shlomo" circa 1936
More pictures of the rabbi
can be viewed here
As we wrote in an earlier posting, the most famous Jewish Yemenite migration to the Land of Israel took place in 1949 and 1950 when almost 50,000 Jews were airlifted to Israel in "Operation On Eagles Wings -- על כנפי נשרים" also known as "Operation Magic Carpet."
"The village of Siloan" 1901. The man is
a Jew from Habani according to experts
on the Yemenite Jewish community
The earlier Yemenite migration took place 70 years earlier in 1881-1882 when a group of Jews of Yemen arrived by foot to Jerusalem. They belonged to no "Zionist movement." They returned out of an age-old religious fervor to return to Zion.
Yemenite family probably from
Sanaa, according to expertsAnd the Christian photographers of the American Colony clearly loved to photograph them. Around 1900 they photographed a Yemenite Jew (without identifying him in the caption) standing above the Shiloach. In 1899 they photographed anotherYemenite (also unidentified) near the Yemin Moshe and Mishkenot Sha'ananim projects.
Yehia, on the Sukkot festival
The new immigrants settled on Jewish-owned property in the Shiloach village outside of the Old City walls of Jerusalem.
Other American Colony photos included Yemenite family portraits and portraits of two Yemenite rabbis, Avram and Shlomo.
Yemenite man announcing
the Sabbath with shofar
Rabbi Avram 1935 
Yemenite scribe Shlomo Washadi, 1935 0Add a comment
The American Colony photo collection possesses an amazing visual record of the violent events in Palestine in 1938. The photographers traveled the width and breadth of Palestine to record the results of many of the Arab attacks against British institutions, Jewish communities, and strategic targets such as the rail system.
Aftermath of Hebron attack on Barclay's Bank and British
armored car, August 1938. The driver was killed
The photographs also record one aspect of the British military's reaction -- the widespread destruction of homes in the urban hotbeds of the Arab revolt.
Arson of lumber yard in Jerusalem's
German Colony, August 1938The Galilee was one of the hottest areas in the conflict -- a war in all its aspects. Here are examples of reports filed by the British Mandatory office in their 1938 annual report just for the Jenin area:
Remains of Bethlehem police barracks
and post office after attack. Click here
to view arrival of British troops
Tiberias synagogue after 1938 attack 
Terrorist barricade on main road
between Nablus and Jenin, July 1938On March 3rd, there was a heavy engagement west of Jenin in which a military force, with aircraft co-operation, engaged and dispersed an armed band of between two and three hundred Arabs. One British officer was killed and an officer and two soldiers wounded. The losses among the band were thirty known to be killed and were estimated at twice that number. Sixteen prisoners were taken and a considerable quantity of arms, ammunition and bombs.
On August 24th Mr. Moffat, the acting Assistant District Commissioner in Jenin, was fatally wounded by an Arab assassin who penetrated to his office. In this case the murderer was almost immediately apprehended by troops and, in an ensuing attempt to escape, was shot dead.
Jenin debris after demolition operation
More pictures can be viewed here
"On October 2nd there occurred a general raid on the Jewish quarter of Tiberias. It was systematically organized and savagely executed. Of the 19 Jews killed, including women and children, all save four were stabbed to death."
The Special Night Squads led by the legendary British officer Orde Wingate were deployed during this period.
Following the assassination of the Mandate's assistant district commissioner in Jenin, many of Jenin's homes were blown up -- according to some accounts one-quarter of the town. The American Colony photographers recorded the widespread ruins.
Troops of the Irish Guard "on the outskirts of Nablus leaving to
fight the gangs on hills." July 1938
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Click on the photos to enlarge.
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Monday, August 10, 2015
The Tensions between Jerusalem's Religious and Secular Jews Go Way Back
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