The perushim (Hebrew: פרושים) were Jewish disciples of the Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, who left Lithuania at the beginning of the 19th century to settle in the Land of Israel, which was then part of Ottoman Syria.
Influenced by the Vilna Gaon, who had wanted to go to the Land of Israel but was unable to do so, a large group of his perushim disciples and their families, numbering over 500, with a few dozen younger earlier scouts, were inspired to follow his vision.
Enduring great hardships and danger, they traveled to and settled in the Holy Land, where they had a profound effect on the future history of the Old Yishuv.
The organization they formed was called Chazon Tzion ("Prophecy/Vision [of] Zion"), and was based on three main principles:[citation needed] The perushim migrated in three groups.
While some managed to evade the ban by entering Jerusalem disguised as Sephardic Jews, most of the perushim journeyed on to Safed, where they joined a strong Sephardi community that was already there.
Safed in the first quarter of the 19th century was a bustling town of over five thousand Jewish inhabitants, but was still struggling to recover from the devastating Near East earthquakes of 1759.
The community was nearly destroyed by the 1812–1819 Ottoman plague epidemic, and was further diminished by the catastrophic Galilee earthquake of 1837, which killed thousands of people throughout the region.
As a result, members of the perushim community were among the first to settle in the new neighborhoods of Nahalat Shiv'a and Mishkenot Sha'ananim, the first Jewish areas established outside the old walls of Jerusalem.