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.
The Arabs in Palestine have a saying that the love of trading is in the blood of a Jew and that he can’t help wanting to be a merchant any more than he can help wanting to possess the Holy Land. They say that a few years after coming to Palestine a Jewish colonist will be found looking out of the back windows of his house at a gang of Arabs doing his farm work, while in his front windows he displays, not his farm products, but goods he has bought for sale. Many of the Jewish settlers did, in fact, find it difficult to take up farm work, and were inclined to hire Arabs who would work for lower wages than Jews. This led to friction between Jews and Arabs, but now more and more of the colonists are doing their own farm work, road making, carpentering, and other manual labour. The colonists have also learned that the most scientific farming methods pay best, and are developing schools where their young people are taught how to get the most out of the land.
The Jews of other lands are liberal in their gifts to the Jews of Palestine, and, besides helping to set up the colonies, have established schools and hospitals in and about Jerusalem. One of the sources from which money comes for the settlement and advancement of the Jewish colonies is a fund collected from the synagogues of the United States, which is regularly sent from New York to the Holy Land. Jews all over our country contribute to it.
Nazareth lies in a little amphitheatre of hills with a rugged arena. There is hardly a level spot in the whole town
The boys of Nazareth are friendly, but in fanatical Nablus they throw stones at Christians