The Yishuv (Hebrew: ישוב‎, literally "settlement") or Ha-Yishuv (the Yishuv, Hebrew: הישוב‎) is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across Palestine, then comprising the southern part Ottoman Syria, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were about 700,000 Jews there. The term is used in Hebrew even nowadays to denote the Pre-State Jewish residents in Palestine.

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv: The Old Yishuv refers to all the Jews living there before the aliyah (immigration wave) of 1882 by the Zionist movement. The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews, living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Smaller communities were in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram and until 1779 also in Gaza. A large part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off Ma'amodot (stipends), donated by Jews in the Diaspora.

Berel Wein is an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and writer. He is regarded as an expert on Jewish history and has popularized the subject through more than 1,000 audio tapes, a four-volume book series, newspaper articles and international lectures. Throughout his career, he has retained personal and ideological ties to both Modern Orthodox and Haredi Judaism.

Rabbi Wein was born March 25, 1934 in Chicago to a family descended from Lithuanian rabbis. His father, Zev, emigrated to the United States and served as a Rabbi in Chicago until the 1970s.

Wein received semicha (rabbinic ordination) from Hebrew Theological College, which was founded by his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Rubinstein. His main teacher was Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth and his personal mentors there included Rabbis Mordechai Rogow and Yisrael Mendel Kaplan. He was a student of the late Rabbi Oscar Z. Fasman in Chicago, and spoke at the latter's funeral [1].

He received a Bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University in Chicago and earned a law degree from De Paul University. After passing the Illinois Bar he practiced as an attorney in Chicago for a number of years.

Moshe Feinstein (Hebrew: משה פיינשטיין‎; March 3, 1895 – March 23, 1986) was a Lithuanian Orthodox rabbi, scholar and posek (an authoritative adjudicator of questions related to Jewish law), who was world-renowned for his expertise in Halakha and was regarded by many as the de facto supreme halakhic authority for Orthodox Jewry of North America during his lifetime. In the Orthodox world he is widely referred to simply as "Reb Moshe", and his halakhic rulings are widely quoted in contemporary rabbinic literature.

Feinstein was born, according to the Hebrew calendar, on the 7th day of Adar, 5655 (traditionally the date of birth of the Biblical Moshe) in Uzda, near Minsk, Belarus, then part of the Russian empire to his father Rabbi David Feinstein, rabbi of Uzdan. His father was a descendant of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman, Rabbi of Kapolye, whose glosses on the Talmud have been published in the back of the Gemarah; and also the author of other Talmudic works.

He studied with his father and also in yeshivas located in Slutsk, Shklov and Amstislav, before being appointed rabbi of Lubań where he served for sixteen years. He married Shima Kustanovich in 1920 and had 4 children (Pesach Chaim,Fay Gittel, Shifra, and David) before leaving Europe. Under increasing pressure from the Soviet regime, he moved with his family to New York City in 1936 where he lived for the rest of his life.