Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century by J. Halper (San Francisco and Oxford: Boulder and Westview Press, 1991

For a number of reasons, a vast increase in scholarly research concerning the history of the Land of Israel during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century has taken place in recent years. The pertinent archives have been organized and opened to scholars. The passage of time has also provided the necessary sense of perspective. Most naturally, studies focusing on the Jewish community have centered on Jerusalem, reflecting the fact that the Jewish community in Palestine was concentrated in that city. (For example, on the eve of the First World War, Jerusalem's population totalled 50,000, whereas the entire Jewish community in Palestine during that period totalled 88,000). The expansion of research has yielded a cornucopia of articles and a number of books on the subject. Among the most important works, one should mention M. Eliav's Eretz Israel and its Yishuv in the Nineteenth Century 1777-1917, Jerusalem, 1978 [in Hebrew]; the two books by Y. Ben-Arieh Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: The Old City (Jerusalem-New York, 1984) and Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: Emergence of the New City (Jerusalem-New York, 1986); Y. Kaniel's Continuity and Change: Old Yishuv and New Yishuv During the First and Second Aliyah (Jerusalem, 1981) [in Hebrew]; A. Morgenstern's Messianism and the Settlement of Eretz-lsrael (Jerusalem, 1985) [in Hebrew]; and the compendium of articles, Jerusalem in Zionist Vision and Realization, edited by H. Lavsky (Jerusalem, 1989) [in Hebrew]. Halper's volume is an addition to research concerning Jerusalem's Jewish community during the nineteenth century and until the outbreak of the First World War which, for Jerusalem, marked the effective close of the nineteenth century. The book, comprising an introduction, fourteen chapters and an epilogue, attempts to analyse the Jewish community along two axes. Halper discusses the two prominent social strata...