This is an article from the Hebrew-language newspaper Poalei Zion, describing the activity of the Committee for Relief from the Crisis within the Yishuv (the Jewish community of pre-state Israel) in Mandate Palestine during World War I.
At the beginning of the article there is a breakdown of the income and expenses of the committee. The article details the donations from the Yishuv in Israel and also from Jews in America. It also outlines the distribution of funds among the committees of the various communities – Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Yemenites – which were each responsible for distributing the funds within their own communities. It can also be seen that specific funds were allocated for the benefit of the Jews who had been drafted into the Ottoman army.
The article further details the central activities of the committee: the distribution of flour and food during a period of famine in the country caused, as mentioned at the end of the article, by a plague of locusts that spread throughout the country in 1915.
It is important to note that this article was written during the First World War. In addition to the famine and the locusts, the Halukkah funds, the charity sent from the diaspora to the Jews of Jerusalem and the other holy cities, was no longer available. The Jews in the diaspora were also facing financial and physical difficulty during this time, and transfer of money during the war was not possible. For these reasons, the Halukkah funds and the way of life that they enable, came to a stop and with that began a sense of independence and self-reliance that can be seen in the article.
This article was printed in Poalei Zion, a weekly newspaper run by the socialist Zionist movement of the same name. Poalei Zion was established in Europe in the early 1900s and called on the Jewish people to come to Israel, to work the land, and to create the new Jew. In Palestine, Poalei Zion also founded HaShomer, a group that provided security for the new settlements in the Yishuv.
