The Old Yishuv היישוב הישן

The Land was never left without Jews, but the communities were small and kept to the four cities called holy: Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, Hebron. That is the Old Yishuv—a name given in hindsight, when others arrived and a distinction was needed.

Who it was made of. First Sephardim—descendants of the exiles from Spain and long-settled families speaking Arabic and Ladino; being subjects of the sultan, they managed more easily with the authorities. Then Ashkenazim: Hasidim at the end of the eighteenth century and the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 5568. These remained foreigners, lived under the protection of consuls, and were divided into kollelim—associations by the place they had come from.

What they lived on. There was almost no craft, no land, little trade. They lived on the halukkah—money collected for them in the communities of the dispersion. People came here not to earn but to pray and to study, and the diaspora held that it was maintaining its own emissaries.

How it ended. Not at once and not entirely. In the nineteenth century the first quarters outside the walls of Jerusalem came out of it; then came the people of the First and Second Aliyah, with another language, other aims and often without the faith of their fathers—and the Old Yishuv became old in earnest. The argument between it and the new runs to this day, and in this reference it is visible in the article on the two poles of Jerusalem.