Alexander
Zederbaum, the publisher of Ha-Meliz, succeeded in obtaining a charter
(February 9, 1890) for the Association for the Aid of Colonization in
Palestine and Syria. Such eminent rabbis as Mordecai Eliasberg, his son
Jonathan, Samuel Mohilever, N.Z.Y. Berlin, and Mordecai Joffe espoused
the cause, and set the example for their less prominent colleagues. When
the question arose whether Jewish agriculturists in Palestine are
obliged to observe the Biblical injunction not to till the ground in the
seventh year (shemittah), Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spector of Kovno, the
leading rabbi and Talmudist of his time, decided, in opposition to the
Jerusalem rabbinate, that the law had ceased to be effective with the
destruction of the Temple. Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris also came
to the rescue of the colonists, and, more important still, there began
an immigration of Russo-Jewish farmers into Palestine, of the class,
numbering about ninety-five thousand souls, whom Arnold White described
as "an active, well set-up, sun-burnt, muscular, agricultural people,
marked by all the characteristics of a peasantry of the highest
character.
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