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{geni:about_me} According to several sources, Ashkenazi Jews settled in Jerusalem in the early 18th century. At that time, the Jewish population of the Old City was primarily Sephardi with a community of about 1,000 vs. 200 Ashkenazi Jews. These Ashkenazi immigrants emigrated at the urging of Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid, a Maggid of Shedlitz, Poland who went from town to town advocating a return to Eretz Yisrael to redeem its soil.
Almost a third of the group died of hardship and illness during the long journey. Upon their arrival in the Holy Land, they immediately went to Jerusalem. Within days, their leader, Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid, died. They borrowed money from local Arabs for the construction of a synagogue but soon ran out of funds and borrowed more money at very high rates of interest (disputed). In 1720, when they were unable to repay their debts, Arab creditors broke into the synagogue, set it on fire, and destroyed their homes. The Jews fled the city and over the next century, any Jew dressed in Ashkenazi garb was a target of attack. Some of the Ashkenazi Jews who remained began to dress like Sephardi Jews. One known example is Rabbi Abraham Gershon of Kitov.
In the 18th century, groups of Hasidim and Perushim settled in Eretz Israel, Ottoman Southern Syria at the time. In 1764 Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, a disciple and mechutan of the Baal Shem Tov settled in Tiberias. According to "Aliyos to Eretz Yisrael," he was already in Southern Syria in 1750.
In 1777, the Hasidic leaders Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Avraham of Kaliski, disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch, settled in the area. Rabbi Abraham Ben Alexander Ha-Kohen of Kalisk (1741–1810) was a prominent Chassidic Rabbi of the 3rd generation of Chassidic leaders. He was a disciple of the 2nd generation Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, who was the successor of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, in turn, the founder of Chassidism in the 1740s in Medzhybizh, now in western Ukraine. In his youth, Rabbi Abraham Kalisker studied Torah with the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah Kramer, 1720-1797), who later became the leader of the Mitnagdim i.e. those who opposed Chassidic Judaism.
Rabbi Abraham and his followers (the "Chassidim") took an emotional and mystical approach towards the service of God in contrast to the formalism of traditional religious scholars (Mitnagdim)who focused on Talmudic study. After the death in 1772 of his teacher, Rabbi Dov Ber Mezeritch,the Maggid of Mezeritch, most of the opposition to Chassidism was directed against Rabbi Abraham Kalisker and his disciples.
In 1777, at about age 36, he joined the first Chassidic aliyah under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk(1730-1788) and emigrated to the Holy Land. He died in Tiberias on 9 January 1810 ( 4th of Shevat of the year 5570 from creation).
Mitnagdim began arriving in 1780. Most of them settled in Safed or Tiberias, but a few established an Ashkenazi Jewish community in Jerusalem, rebuilding the ruins of the Hurvat Yehudah He-Hasid (the destroyed synagogue of Judah He-Hasid).
Starting in 1830, about twenty disciples of the Chasam Sofer settled in Southern Syria; almost all of them in Jerusalem. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Yishuv)
Jens Aaron
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