1836 Battle for the Soul of Jerusalem: Faith, Medicine, and Jewish Resilience

 JEWISH MOMENTS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

1836
Battle for the Soul of Jerusalem:
Faith, Medicine, and Jewish Resilience

In 19th-century Ottoman Palestine, a powerful Christian missionary campaign targeted the destitute Jewish community, utilizing modern medicine and education as tools of persuasion. While initially vulnerable, the Jews of the Land of Israel mobilized a fierce spiritual and institutional defense. This struggle paradoxically strengthened the Jewish presence, spurring the creation of the independent Jewish health and welfare infrastructure.

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The ambitious missionary campaign that swept through the Land of Israel in the 19th century provoked a reaction that was as complex as it was decisive. The arrival of well-funded Protestant and Catholic missions, offering unprecedented social services to a population ravaged by disease and poverty, placed the traditional Jewish community under severe strain. Yet, the interplay between Christian outreach and Jewish self-preservation did more than create tension, it created resilience.

The Jewish response to this spiritual siege was far from uniform. Initially, attitudes were fractured along ethnic and legal fault lines. The Sephardi community, the established elite of the settlement, viewed the missionaries with unmitigated hostility. The trauma of the Iberian expulsions scarred their collective memory, and as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, they lacked external diplomatic protection. For Sephardi leaders like the Chacham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) Chaim Abraham Gagin (1787-1848), the missionaries were not merely a religious annoyance but an existential threat to the community’s delicate political standing. Consequently, they frequently issued severe bans against any interaction with missionary institutions, forbidding Jews from entering their schools or clinics under penalty of excommunication.

In contrast, the Ashkenazi community, particularly the Perushim, i.e., the disciples of the Vilna Gaon, initially adopted a more pragmatic stance. Many Ashkenazim in Jerusalem were foreign nationals who, under the system of “Capitulations,” enjoyed the diplomatic protection of European consuls, ironically, often the British Consul, who was closely aligned with the very Protestant missions targeting them. This diplomatic shield allowed Ashkenazim to navigate interactions with missionaries with a safety net the Sephardim lacked. Destitute and newly arrived, they sometimes accepted medical care, food, and shelter from missionary institutions, particularly during the frequent plagues and famines. However, this acceptance was always calculated, tinged with suspicion, and closely monitored by communal overseers.

Despite this pragmatic engagement, the community was deeply alarmed by a small but steady trickle of conversions. Between 1839 and 1914, records from the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews indicate that 432 Jews were baptized in Jerusalem. While statistically minor, and only about 25 of these converts remained in the city by the end of the period, each “apostasy” was experienced in the Jewish community as a devastating communal tragedy.

The drivers of conversion were often desperate circumstances rather than theological conviction. The devastating plague and famine of 1838–1839 left the Jewish quarter on its knees. Missionaries, particularly doctors like Edward Macgowan, who opened the English Mission Hospital in 1844, risked their lives to care for the sick. This self-sacrifice, combined with the crushing spiritual disappointment following the failed messianic expectations of the year 1840 (5600), created a window of vulnerability.

Rabbinic leadership mobilized on the spiritual front. Leaders such as R. Shmuel Salant (1816-1909) and R. Yehuda Alkalai (1798-1878) delivered fiery sermons emphasizing the historical dangers of conversion and the centrality of Jewish faith in the Land of Israel. Informal networks of “watchers” were established to patrol the entrances of missionary hospitals, taking down the names of Jews who entered and reporting them to community leadership for social sanction.

But the Jewish leadership also realized that bans and excommunication were insufficient. They needed to compete. The community’s response evolved from passive resistance to aggressive institution-building.

Indeed, the most enduring form of resistance was the construction of a parallel infrastructure. Realizing they could not prevent hungry and sick people from seeking help without offering an alternative, the community began building its own modern institutions. The expansion of the Bikur Cholim Hospital into a major institution in 1854 and the founding of the Rothschild Hospital that same year were direct strategic countermeasures to the English Mission Hospital. Similarly, the establishment of the Diskin Orphanage in 1881 by R. Yehoshua Leib Diskin (1818-1898) was a specific answer to missionary schools that preyed on vulnerable homeless children.

By the turn of the 20th century, this reactionary “resistance” had transformed into a robust, proactive “resilience.” The Jewish community in Jerusalem had developed a network of hospitals, schools, and soup kitchens that rivaled, and eventually surpassed, those of the missionaries. In their attempt to capture Jewish souls, the missionaries had inadvertently strengthened the Jewish body, forcing the community to build the very foundations of a modern social welfare system that would serve the Land of Israel for generations to come.