Halukkah חלוקה
Money collected in the dispersion and divided among the inhabitants of the four holy cities. For two hundred years it kept the Yishuv afloat—and for two hundred years it was reproached for exactly that.
The idea is simple and old: one who lives in the Land of Israel and studies Torah does it for everyone; one who cannot come sends money and has a share. It was collected community by community, often through emissaries—shelichim who travelled the dispersion with letters from the rabbis of Jerusalem.
The four holy cities are Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias.
How it was divided. By kollelim, that is by place of origin: money from Vilna went to the Vilna kollel, from Hungary to the Hungarian one. Hence the chief corruption: the division became a matter of power, and quarrels over shares could be fiercer than quarrels over law. Within a kollel it was divided by number of souls, by learning, by need—and every measure wronged somebody.
For and against. Against it was said: it accustoms people to dependence, kills the taste for a trade, and the emissaries eat part of the collection on the road. Montefiore wanted to replace it with work—he bought an orchard near Jaffa to teach farming, and put up a windmill so there would be bread of their own. Little came of it.
And the truth in its favour. Without the halukkah these communities would simply not have existed. They were given no land, admitted to no guild, and had nothing to trade with. Two hundred years of unbroken Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron were bought with this money; and when the new arrivals came, they did not come to an empty place.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Ḥalukkah" — how the collection and division by kollelim worked, the quarrels, and the attempts to replace it with work
Basis: documents and evidence.