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By Root 1143 0

years old, nearly a hundred, so many years getting up every morning at five o'clock, taking a cold douche every morning every morning since nearly hundred years, even in Russia cold douche in the morning, even in Vilna, hundred years now eating every morning every morning slice of bread with salty herring, drinking glass of chai and going out every morning every morning always to stroll half an hour in the street, summer or winter, morning stroll, this is for the motion, it gets the circulation going so well! And right away after that coming home every day every day and reading a bit newspaper and meanwhile drinking another glass chai, nu, in short, it's like this, dear boy, this bakhurchik of nineteen, if he is killed, Heaven forbid, he still hasn't had time to have all sorts of regular habitats. When would he have them? But at my age it is very difficult to stop, very very difficult. To stroll in the street every morning—this is for me old habitat. And cold douche—also habitat. Even to live—it's a habitat for me, nu, what, after hundred years who can all at once suddenly change all his habitats? Not to get up anymore at five in the morning? No douche, no salt herring with bread? No newspaper no stroll no glass hot chai? Now, that's tragedy!'

18

IN THE YEAR 1845 the new British Consul James Finn together with his wife Elizabeth Anne arrived in Ottoman-ruled Jerusalem. They both knew Hebrew, and the consul even wrote books about the Jews, for whom he always harbored a sympathy. He belonged to the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, although so far as is known he was not directly involved in missionary work in Jerusalem. Consul Finn and his wife believed fervently that the return of the Jewish people to their homeland would hasten the salvation of the world. More than once he protected Jews in Jerusalem from harassment by the Ottoman authorities. James Finn also believed in the need to make the Jews lead "productive" lives—he even helped Jews gain a proficiency in building work and adapt themselves to agriculture. To this end he purchased in 1853, at a cost of £250 sterling, a desolate rocky hill a few miles from Jerusalem intra muros, to the northwest of the Old City, an uninhabited and untilled piece of land that the Arabs called Karm al-Khalil, which translated means "Abraham's Vineyard." Here James Finn built his home and set up an "Industrial Plantation" that was intended to provide poor Jews with work and train them for "useful" lives. The farm extended over some ten acres, James and Elizabeth Anne Finn erected their house on the summit of the hill, and around it extended the agricultural colony, the farm buildings, and the workshops. The thick walls of the two-story house were built of dressed stone, and the ceilings were constructed in oriental style, with crossed vaults. Behind the house, around the edge of the walled garden, wells were sunk, and stables, a sheep pen, a granary, storehouses, a wine press and cellar, and an olive oil press were constructed.

Some two hundred Jews were employed on the Industrial Plantation in Finn's farm in work such as removing stones, building walls, fencing, planting an orchard, and growing fruit and vegetables, as well as developing a small stone quarry and engaging in various building trades. In the course of time, after the consul's death, his widow set up a soap factory in which she also employed Jewish workers. Not far from Abraham's Vineyard, almost at the same time, the German Protestant missionary Johann Ludwig Schneller founded an educational institute for Christian Arab orphans fleeing from the fighting between Druse and Christians in the Lebanon mountains. It was a large property surrounded by a stone wall. The Schneller Syrian Orphanage, like Mr. and Mrs. Finn's Industrial Plantation, was based on a desire to train its inmates for a productive life in handicrafts and agriculture. Finn and Schneller, in their different ways, were both pious Christians who were moved by the poverty, suffering, and backwardness of Jews and Arabs in the Holy