LATER AMERICAN WORK ON BEHALF OF THE JEWS

After the Civil War, American interest in the Land of Israel resumed, spearheaded particularly by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites (est. 1859). The Board supported Palestinian Jewry during the cholera outbreak in 1865, and two years later, established a permanent fund for Jewish interests. They donated funding for the new Mikve Yisrael Agricultural School, built in 1870, established a Jewish hospital fund in Jerusalem, and worked with the American Consul in Jerusalem to aid Jews during the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78).

Aside from these activities, there were others who made their contributions to the Land of Israel. In 1866, a group of American evangelists from Maine and New Hampshire moved to Palestine and, with the help of the American vice-consul in Jerusalem Herman Leventhal, a convert to Christianity, founded the settlement Mount Hope outside of Jaffa. The settlers would employ local Jews, teaching them agricultural pursuits. It was their belief that such enterprises would be a first step in bringing about a massive Jewish return to Israel and with it, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Their efforts failed, however as their settlement was exposed to constant Arab attacks as well as the harsh elements of desert and marsh. After a year, most left Palestine disillusioned. In 1870, Simon Berman, a Polish-born American Jew, had settled in Tiberias and founded the Holy Land Settlement Society. But despite its promising start and support from many Palestinian Jewish quarters, this enterprise, too, failed. Benjamin Peixotto made a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1874 in an attempt to relieve the persecution of the Jews as he had in Romania as US Consul-General in that country.