carious. Thereupon, in 1601, the leaders of the Jewish congregations in Venice came to their aid with 'A Fund for the Support of the Inhabitants of the Holy Land.' The same course was followed by the Jews in Poland, Bohemia and Germany. This was the origin of the Halukka system, which only in the last few years has ceased to be a prime factor in the economic life of the Palestinian Jews. This Halukka ('division,' 'dole') was a scanty financial subsidy distributed amongst the Jews of the Holy Land to support them while they led a life of study and prayer on behalf of their fellow-Jews of the Dispersion.
Recent Jewish Immigration.—In 1839 the Jews of Palestine were reported to number about 12,000. In 1880 they were estimated at 35,000, in 1900 at 70,000; and at the outbreak of the war at about 85,000. It was about 1880 that Jewish immigration was resumed on an appreciable scale, and since this period most of the Jewish immigrants have been Ashkenazim from Central and Eastern Europe. The Balfour Declaration has, of course, given a considerable impetus to further Jewish immigration from all parts of the Jewish Diaspora.
In addition to the Ashkenazim and Sephardim there are in Palestine, and particularly in Jerusalem, other Jewish communities, attracted to the country by its sacred associations. One of the most interesting of these is the colony of so-called Bokhara Jews in Jerusalem, consisting of picturesquely clad Jews from the Khanates of Bokhara and Khiva, and from Samarkand in Russian Turkestan. These people speak Hebrew or Persian Yiddish, and write in a peculiar and handsome variety of Hebrew cursive script; they claim to be the descendants of Jews who emigrated from Babylon to Persia and thence to Central Asia, where they have been established since the time of Timur-lenk.
Another element deserving of mention is the colony of Yemenite Jews, who speak both Hebrew and Arabic, and have been cut off from the rest of the world since the rise of Islam in the seventh century of our era. They are a
