Yishuv

The Yishuv was the Jewish community in Palestine before the founding of Israel in 1948. Historians distinguish the Old Yishuv, the long-established religious communities of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron, from the New Yishuv created by Zionist immigration from the 1880s. Under the British mandate the Yishuv built its own institutions, schools, militia and economy, which formed the basis of the new state.