"#Anglican #missionary Rev. #WBLewis describing the desperate situation of #Jews living in #Jerusalem under #Ottoman #Turkish rule in 1824.
#Lewis wrote his letter from #Aintoura, a village in present-day #Lebanon, on February 23, 1824. His account is one of the most detailed non-#Jewish eyewitness reports of what life was really like for Jews in the #HolyLand at that time.
He describes horrifying #extortion, #beatings, wrongful #imprisonment, #forcedlabor, and stolen property â all suffered by a community with no #European diplomatic protection in Jerusalem. The letter also covers the long Jewish struggle to reclaim the ruined #Hurva #Synagogue, which had been destroyed by #Arab creditors a century earlier.
This document is historically valuable precisely because Lewis was a non-Jewish outsider with nothing to gain by exaggerating. His testimony confirms what Jewish sources also describe about life under Ottoman rule in Jerusalem."
https://vinnews.com/2026/02/17/horrific-life-of-jews-under-the-ottomans-new-historical-report-discovered-about-rav-menachem-mendel-of-shklov-on-his-yahrtzeit/