The Jewish story in the Land of Israel is often told with an enormous hole in the middle.

The script runs something like: there were ancient Jewish kingdoms and then Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. Jews were forced into exile, and then, nearly 1,800 years later, Zionists began arriving in Palestine.

That shorthand turns one of history’s longest relationships between a people and a land into an unexplained disappearance and sudden reappearance.

The actual story is more remarkable.

After the Destruction of the Second Temple

The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE was catastrophic, but it did not empty the land of Jews. Six decades later, Jews launched the Bar Kokhba Revolt from Judea. After its defeat in 135, Roman repression devastated Jewish life in Judea and severely restricted Jews in Jerusalem.

So Jewish life shifted north. The Galilee became its major center, particularly Tiberias and Sepphoris. Around 200 CE, Judah ha-Nasi compiled the Mishnah in the Land of Israel. Centuries later, Jewish scholars there produced the Jerusalem Talmud. Archaeology has uncovered synagogues across the country from this period.

The Jewish state was gone. The Jews were not.

Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Hebron

The rulers changed repeatedly with new invaders: Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman. So did the size and location of the Jewish population.

Under early Muslim rule, Jews reestablished themselves in Jerusalem. The Crusader conquest brought another catastrophe, including killings and displacement.

Again, Jews returned.

In 1267, Nachmanides—Ramban—arrived in Jerusalem and helped rebuild its shattered Jewish community.

After the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the Ottoman conquest in 1517, Safed became an international center of Jewish civilization, producing Joseph Karo, whose Shulchan Aruch became a foundational code of Jewish law, and Isaac Luria, whose teachings transformed Jewish mysticism.

Ottoman tax records make the population visible. Safed/Tzfat contained 233 Jewish households in 1525–26; by 1567–68 there were 945. Jews were also recorded in Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus, Peki’in and elsewhere.

The Four Holy Cities

Over time, four cities became especially identified with Jewish life in the land: Jerusalem. Hebron. Safed. Tiberias.

Their Jewish populations rose and fell through war, disease, earthquakes, economic hardship and persecution. The communities kept being rebuilt, and Jews kept arriving.

Hundreds accompanied Judah HeHasid to Jerusalem in 1700. Hasidic Jews came from Eastern Europe in 1777. Beginning in 1808, disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in successive waves.

Follow the Population

By the nineteenth century, the continuity becomes difficult to miss. Moses Montefiore’s censuses recorded dramatic growth:

City	1839	1875
Jerusalem	2,916	11,237
Safed	1,384	3,753
Tiberias	801	1,552
Hebron	419	939
Jaffa	86	660
Haifa	138	531

The communities covered by the census tripled from 6,173 Jews in 1839 to 18,672 in 1875.

Historical estimates differ because Ottoman-era demographic records were not modern censuses. But the trend is unmistakable. One reconstruction estimates roughly 6,700 Jews in the country in 1800, 42,900 in 1890 and 94,000 by 1914.

And Jews were not simply scattered individuals. By 1880, one reconstruction estimates Jews constituted approximately 57% of Jerusalem, 52% of Safed and 60% of Tiberias.

Modern Zionism Accelerated the Return

This is where conventional histories often begin. But it wasn’t the beginning; it was an acceleration.

Petah Tikva was founded in 1878, in part by Jews from the existing Jerusalem community. The First Aliyah began in the 1880s, helping establish and expand agricultural communities including Rishon LeZion, Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pina.

The Second Aliyah brought another wave. In 1909, Jews founded Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, something extraordinary was occurring: Hebrew returned as the everyday language of a society. A language preserved through centuries of prayer, scholarship and literature became the language of children, workers and shopkeepers.

What About the Land?

By the end of the British Mandate, Jews did not privately own most of Palestine. British statistics for April 1945 put Jewish landholdings at approximately 1.49 million dunams, or 5.67% of the total territory.

The remaining territory was not privately owned “Arab land.” It included state domain, desert, communal lands and other Ottoman and British legal classifications.

Jewish ownership was concentrated where Jewish society was developing. By the mid-1940s, historical land statistics put Jewish ownership at roughly 39% in the Jaffa/Tel Aviv subdistrict, 38% in Tiberias, 35% in Haifa, and 18% in Safed.

And much of this land had been purchased.

The British Survey of Palestine recorded a net 938,365 dunams purchased and registered by Jews between 1920 and the end of 1945 alone.

Presence, Memory, Return

The nearly 1,900 years between Rome and Israel can be understood through three words.

Presence. Jews continued living in the land, sometimes in substantial communities, despite conquest, persecution and repeated displacement.

Memory. Jews elsewhere continued facing Jerusalem in prayer, praying for return, remembering Jerusalem at weddings, ending Passover with the hope of being there the following year and financially supporting Jewish communities in the land.

Return. Ramban came in 1267 after the Crusades. Jews came from Spain after 1492. Many followed Judah HeHasid in 1700, the Hasidim in 1777, the disciples of the Vilna Gaon beginning in 1808, the First and Second Aliyahs, fleeing Russian pogroms and Nazism, and as survivors of the Holocaust.

The scale changed. The political objective changed. The ability to return changed.

1948 Was Not the Beginning

Beginning the story of Israel in 1948 – or even with Herzl in 1897 – fundamentally distorts Jewish history. Those were not years when Jews suddenly showed up. They were the times when Jews accelerated their return and became self-governing once again.

Related:

The Greatest Decolonization Story, Inverted (August 2026)