Knesset Yisrael

Beneficiaries of the housing were poor Haredi Ashkenazi families and Torah scholars connected to the Central Committee kolel system.

[8] Knesset Yisrael was one of the "kolel neighborhoods" built on behalf of European Ashkenazi immigrants who were being supported by charity funds collected from their countrymen.

In 1888 the Central Committee, which oversaw the distribution of charity funds to Ashkenazi families, decided to purchase land and construct housing for its members.

[9] Their chosen location – a parcel of land south of Jaffa Road and adjacent to the newly built Jewish neighborhoods of Mishkenot Yisrael and Mazkeret Moshe – turned out to be the site for the planned terminus of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway.

Land prices skyrocketed as Christian groups from Germany, Greece, and Armenia sought to establish neighborhoods adjacent to the train station.

Hopelessly outbid, the Central Committee members tried to stall the legal proceedings in the Turkish municipality, and called on the Jewish community to engage in fasting and prayers in synagogues and by the graves of tzadikim in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias.

Several months later, the French company building the railway announced that it had decided to move the Jerusalem station to a point further south.

The Christian groups rushed to buy land at the new site (later known as the German Colony), and the Central Committee was able to purchase the property it wanted for the neighborhood of Knesset Yisrael.

[12][13] Construction funds were provided by donations from Jews in America and Australia,[2][7] and donors' names were inscribed on marble plaques over the doorways of the apartments.

By the end of the 19th century, years of drought led the Central Committee to purchase a water tanker from the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway company.