A population register of a Jewish colony in late Ottoman Palestine

This article presents a rare mukhtar (head of community) book written in Hebrew in the spring of 1917, preserved today in the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem. It was written most probably by the head or the managing committee of the colony of Rishon le-Zion near Jaffa in central Ottoman Palestine, anticipating possible evacuation orders by the Ottoman authorities. The circumstances and context prompting the writing of this register, its nature and rarity, colony demographics, and the gaps in the data are analysed and compared to other demographic sources dealing with Rishon le-Zion at the time, in particular a census carried out by the Palestine Office of the Zionist movement. The discussion centres on the overt and covert divisions among the colonists, as manifested in the population register, and points to the ways in which examining such registers can lead to broader conclusions about the Yishuv’s characteristics at the time.