We are all familiar with the Old City of Jerusalem. What we forget is that for many centuries there were no Jews living outside it. It was believed to be too dangerous. This all began to change in the 1860s, due to a man named “Yosef Rivlin.”
He was born in Jerusalem in 1836. His great-grandfather was a student of the Vilna Gaon and made aliyah with other students of the Vilna Gaon in 1809. His great-grandfather was the first head of the Ashkenazi Perushim rabbinical court in Jerusalem.
Yosef Rivlin followed the vision preached by the Vilna Gaon that by strengthening the Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael, the Jews could hasten the onset of the redemption. At the time, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was confined to the Old City, where they were prey to poverty, overcrowding, lack of sanitation and heavy taxes imposed by the Ottoman government. Rivlin’s vision was to expand Jewish settlement into neighborhoods outside the walls of Jerusalem, although that prospect carried with it exposure to attackers and roaming wild animals.
I will now quote six paragraphs from a book by Avraham Yaari. It was originally composed in Hebrew, as “Zichronot Eretz Yisrael.”
I am quoting from a 1958 abridgment and translation with the title, “The Goodly Heritage:”
“The first Jewish houses outside the wall were put up by the famous Anglo-Jewish philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore, in 1857, on a site near the present railway station. To begin with the houses were used for his weaving factory project, and when that failed, they were turned into a hospital. But that also failed, since patients were afraid to lie in such a dangerous place. The houses, therefore, remained uninhabited for a number of years.”
“Rivlin’s desire to found a new quarter pre-dated Montefiore’s project and amounted to an obsession. Indeed, when, on becoming betrothed in 1855, he told his future wife’s family of his intention (to live outside of the wall); they were so outraged that they sought to prevent the marriage; but, fortunately for Rivlin, the bride fell in with his plans. Nevertheless, it was generally agreed that he was possessed by a demon which attracted him to deserted places, and his family resorted to various devices to exorcise it … ”
“(Eventually Rivlin) began to negotiate with an Arab for the purchase of an area of land. But he refrained from telling him what his real intention was, for fear of offending the Arab landlords in the city, who felt they had their Jewish tenants at their mercy and who would have tried to frustrate any venture to build outside the wall. The negotiations went on for several years—as it was hard to find a suitable area with clearly defined boundaries which could be transferred without undue difficulty.”
“Meanwhile, events were favouring Rivlin’s scheme. An outbreak of cholera in 1865-66 had caused hundreds of Arabs to flee from Transjordan and crowd into Jerusalem, thus increasing the risk of infection. The Arab landlords exploited the opportunity to raise rents, and threatened to raise them still further. Finally, in 1867, Rivlin and his associates—together with a few others—succeeded in buying an area bordered on the north by the main highway, and on the south by an old Muslim cemetery. As the participants in the scheme did not want the matter to get to the ears of the Arab landlords in the city, the transfer was registered in the government offices by Rabbi Leib Hurwitz’s wife. To do this, she dressed as an Arab woman and veiled her face.”
“A financial arrangement was made to enable the participants (there were seven of them) to start building, and it was decided that each year, two of them were to build a house. Rivlin was one of the first to do so, and the laying of the foundation stone—on April 29, 1869—was a great event attended by a large number of Jews from the city. The first two houses were up within two months, and on Aug. 4, Rivlin moved in. At first, he slept there alone, and every morning, his relatives went down to the city gate to see whether he was still alive. Only occasionally did a visitor spend the night at Rivlin’s house, and then he would hardly sleep a wink at the thought of the terrible dangers he was braving.”
“Determined opposition was still offered to the scheme, and Rivlin’s opponents once exploited his absence to hire some fellahin to break the doors and windows of his house, so that he should think that it had been attacked by bandits. However, he was not deflected from his purpose, and continued to live in ‘Nachalat Shiva’ (“Portion of the Seven”), as the new quarter was destined to be called. Once he had demonstrated that it was possible to live outside the city wall, the other participants followed his example, and ‘Nachalat Shiva’ became the first outpost of Jewish settlement in the new city.”
The next new neighborhood to be formed outside the Old City was “Meah Shearim.” Rivlin was involved in that one as well. He helped establish 13 neighborhoods. These activities earned him the nickname, “Shtetlmacher” (“Town-maker”). He directed the supreme council of the Ashkenazi community in the Old City for over 30 years.
Here are the neighborhoods that Rivlin is credited with establishing—all in western and northwestern Jerusalem: Nachalat Shiva, Meah Shearim, Even Yisrael, Beit Yaakov, Mishkenot Yisrael, Mazkeret Moshe, Ohel Moshe, Knesset Yisrael, Zichron Tuvya, Shevet Amim, Shaarei Tzedek, Ezrat Yisrael and Yemin Moshe.
Here is some further background: In 1857, Rivlin founded the Bonei Yerushalayim company for the purpose of building neighborhoods outside the Old City walls. He enlisted signatories in the company from among his acquaintances, wealthy relatives in Shklov and Mohlev, and pro-Israel committees in Amsterdam and London and also traveled to Russia and Europe—with two colleagues—to promote the plan. The group collected 800 rubles toward the purchase of land for the neighborhood of Nachalat Shiva.
Rivlin was also instrumental in securing an annulment of the Ottoman ban on construction outside the Old City walls, issued in 1844. He went with another rabbi to Constantinople and procured an annulment of the law from the sultan’s secretary, effective in 1862.
Rivlin protected himself from attackers by constructing a high wall around his home and paying a Turkish soldier and later on, an Arab guard, to keep an eye on him. He insisted that his wife remain in the Old City, while another Jew boarded with him. He returned to his wife only on Shabbat. In 1872, the neighborhood was sufficiently populated that Rivlin brought his wife to live with him.
His modus operandi was to buy a house in each new neighborhood that he helped establish, live in it for a while and then move to a new home in the next neighborhood that he founded. In each neighborhood, he supervised the purchase and construction of homes and assisted home buyers in acquiring loans.
Rivlin and his first wife had a daughter in 1873. That same year, his wife was attacked in their Nachalat Shiva home by a dagger-wielding Arab; she fought him off and stabbed him to death, but she succumbed to shock and died of a heart attack. Rivlin later had two more wives and eight more children.
Mitchell First can be reached, in the Old City of Teaneck, on the “other side” of Route 4, at MFirstAtty@aol.com.
