First Aliyah

The First Aliyah, from 1882 to 1903, brought some 25,000 to 35,000 Jews to Ottoman Eretz Israel, most fleeing the pogroms in the Russian Empire and Romania. Among them were the students of BILU, whose name comes from Isaiah 2:5, "House of Jacob, come, let us go". Jews from Yemen also arrived from 1881 and settled in Jerusalem. The newcomers founded farming villages: Rishon LeZion on 31 July 1882, Zikhron Ya'akov and Rosh Pinna the same year, and they revived Petah Tikva.

Inexperience, malaria and debt nearly ruined them until Baron Edmond de Rothschild stepped in with funding and agricultural experts. Rishon LeZion saw many firsts: the first Hebrew-language kindergarten and school, the wine cellars of 1890, and the first public performances of the song "Hatikvah". Its flag became a model for the Zionist flag. These moshavot laid the foundations of the modern Jewish community in the land, the New Yishuv.