The Judah Touro houses outside the city walls are fairly well kept, but, of course, the more modern houses have the advantage of superior construction. The defects in earlier constructions have here been carefully avoided.
The Yemen Jews are very poor; they present a most peculiar ethnological type. They have a very dark complexion, almost of a deeper shade than that of the Arabs; they have beautifully chiselled features, lustrous eyes, are most simple in their piety and devotion to the Holy City. They still retain their manuscript prayer books, which Dr. Adler states are most interesting. I saw a Yemen woman with her child working in the heat of the sun at what, in Lancashire, would be termed navvy’s work, and at the close of the day saw the clerk of the works give her sixty centimes as her daily wages. They were in terrible distress at first and slept in caverns, but, thanks to the exertions of Mr. Marcus Adler, who raised a fund in England, they are building cottages on the hillside upon which they work themselves, and owing to their thrifty habits and aptitude for labour, it is to be hoped that their worst difficulties are passed, and that they will attain some degree of independence. There are two sets of tenements being built for them, the one by the London Committee and the other by the help of the Society called Ezrath Nedachim. I may add, the Yemen Jews, both male and female, dress exactly like the native Arabs, from whom they are hardly distinguishable.
When I write upon the Jewish tenements in the interior of the city my report, of course, must be less favourable. I took the means of going alone with M. Valero, when unexpected, into some of the back streets and slums of Jerusalem; I dropped into various houses here and there, and saw matters from a practical point of view. It is most unfair for any one coming from Princes Park, Liverpool, or Kensington, London, or the Champs Élysées, in Paris, instituting a comparison between those neighbourhoods and the lanes of Jerusalem. But I maintain that the old streets of Marseilles and Florence, the Ghetto in Rome, the labyrinths in Naples, and the slums of Venice, are infinitely worse than the worst slums of Jerusalem. Nay, more, I maintain that the old Judengasse in Frankfort, the Judengasse in Worms, and some of the by-lanes in Vienna are decidedly no better than those of Jerusalem. They are more ancient and grimy than dirty; the absence of timber, and the constant employment of stone for building purposes in Old Jerusalem, gives a rough and jagged appearance to the walls, but there is nothing except the absence of drainage (and that is the same in every continental city, whether it be in France, Italy, or Austria) that calls for especial condemnation, nay, the dingy tenements inside Jerusalem, inhabited by the Sephardi Jews, are made presentable by a considerable use of clean white calico hung over the walls and covered over their simple furniture and beddings.
The future prospects of Jerusalem rest entirely with the rising youth, and I shall speak later on of the enormous value and high hopes I entertain of the Lionel de Rothschild School, conducted by the admirable and excellent director, M. Nissim Behar, of whose devotion, ability, and conscientiousness nothing too much can be said.
The Lionel de Rothschild School, or “Institution Israélite pour Instruction et Travail,” contains 140 pupils, all boys. The institution is singularly fortunate in possessing M. Behar as its chief. To be able to effect good work in Jerusalem it is almost imperative to be a native of the city. A teacher from England, France, or Germany who has longings for Europe or his native land, however able he may be, or however zealous, is incapable of infusing enthusiasm in his pupils, and when one is found like M. Nissim Behar, who is a man of great culture, and combines Parisian refinement with an ardent love and patriotism for the city in which he was born, and feels that he has a mission to perform and is perfectly oblivious to pecuniary advantages, it is to have already gained half the victory. Everything is neat, clean, and methodical.
The hours of instruction are from 8 o’clock until 12, and from 1 to 5.
I shall devote my report principally to the course of technical education, with which I believe the future prosperity of the Jews of Jerusalem is bound up.
The Technical School contains a forge, a carpenter’s shop, a cabinet-maker’s bench, a tailor’s department, a shoemaker’s shop, a turner’s lathe, a school of art for modelling, drawing, and sculpture, and a gymnasium for physical development.
Of these schools, the forge, the carpenter’s shop, and the school of art have produced capital results; we saw Jewish lads, who have only been a few weeks at the classes, making some excellent sketches, and in order to test their genuineness gave them several impromptu subjects to execute in our presence, which they did admirably.
The Forge is another successful institution.