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Aliyah

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For the singer, see Aaliyah. For other uses, see Aliyah (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Aaliyah (disambiguation).

Part of a series on

Aliyah

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Jewish return to the Land of Israel

Concepts

Promised LandGathering of IsraelDiaspora NegationJews who remained in the Land of IsraelHomeland


for the Jewish peopleZionismJewish questionLaw of Return

Pre-Modern Aliyah

Return to ZionOld YishuvPerushim

Aliyah in modern times

FirstSecondduring World War IThirdFourthFifthAliyah BetBrichafrom Muslim countries


YemenIraqMoroccoLebanonfrom the Soviet Union post-Sovietfrom Polandfrom Ethiopiafrom
Romaniafrom Latin America

Absorption

Revival of the Hebrew language Hebraization of surnamesHebraization of place


namesUlpanKibbutzYouth villageOne Million Plan Immigrant campsMa'abarotDevelopment
townAusterity

Organizations

World Zionist OrganizationJewish National FundJewish Agency for IsraelYouth AliyahMossad LeAliyah
BetEl AlMinistry of Aliyah and IntegrationNefesh B'NefeshAm Yisrael Foundation

Related topics

YishuvSabraYeridaJewish refugeesHistory of the Jews in the Land of IsraelDemographic history of


Palestine (region)Historical Jewish population comparisonsYom HaAliyah

vte

Aliyah (US: /ˌæliˈɑː/, UK: /ˌɑː-/; Hebrew: ‫ ֲע ִלי ָּה‬aliyah, "ascent") is the immigration of Jews from the
diaspora to the Land of Israel historically, which today includes the modern State of Israel. Also defined
as "the act of going up"—that is, towards Jerusalem—"making aliyah" by moving to the Land of Israel is
one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action, emigration from the "Land of Israel", is
referred to in Hebrew as yerida ("descent").[1] The State of Israel's Law of Return gives Jews, their
children, and their grandchildren automatic rights regarding residency and Israeli citizenship.

For much of their history, most Jews have lived in the diaspora and aliyah, though a national aspiration
for the Jewish people, was acted upon by few prior to the development of the Zionist movement in the
late nineteenth century.[2] The large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine began in 1882.[3] Since the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have moved to Israel.[4] As of
2014, Israel and adjacent territories contain 42.9% of the world's Jewish population.[5]

Contents

1 Historical overview

2 Etymology

3 Religious, ideological and cultural concept

4 Historical background

5 Pre-Modern Aliyah

5.1 Biblical

5.2 Second Temple period

5.3 200–500 AD

5.4 10th–11th century

5.5 1200–1882

6 Zionist Aliyah (1882 on)

6.1 Ottoman Palestine (1881–1914)

6.1.1 First Aliyah (1882–1903)

6.1.2 Second Aliyah (1904–1914)

6.2 British Palestine (1919–1948)

6.2.1 Third Aliyah (1919–1923)

6.2.2 Fourth Aliyah (1924–1929)

6.2.3 Fifth Aliyah (1929–1939)

6.2.4 Aliyah Bet: Illegal immigration (1933–1948)


6.3 Early statehood (1948–1960)

6.4 From Arab countries

6.5 From Iran

6.6 From Ethiopia

6.7 From the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states

6.8 From Latin America

6.9 From France

6.10 From North America

6.11 Since the 1990s

6.11.1 Paternity testing

7 Holiday

8 Statistics

8.1 Recent trends

8.2 Historic data

9 See also

10 References

11 Further reading

12 External links

Historical overview

See also: Pre-Modern Aliyah

Throughout the years of dispersion, a small-scale return migration of Diaspora Jews to the Land of Israel
is characterized as the Pre-Modern Aliyah. Successive waves of Jewish settlement are an important
aspect of the history of Jewish life in Israel. The "Land of Israel" (Eretz Yisrael) is the Hebrew name for
the region commonly known in English through the middle of the twentieth century, from the ancient
Roman designation, as Palestine. This traditional Hebrew toponym, in turn, has lent its name to the
modern State of Israel. Since the birth of Zionism in the late 19th century, the advocates of aliyah have
striven to facilitate the settlement of Jewish refugees in Ottoman Palestine, Mandatory Palestine, and
the sovereign State of Israel.

The following waves of migration have been identified: the First Aliyah and the Second Aliyah to
Ottoman Palestine; the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Aliyah to Mandatory Palestine including Aliyah Bet
(immigration done in spite of restrictive Mandatory law) between 1934 and 1948 and the Bericha of the
Holocaust survivors; the aliyah from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the aliyah
from Western and Communist countries following the Six-Day War with the 1968 Polish political crisis,
as well as the aliyah from post-Soviet states in the 1990s. Today, most aliyah consists of voluntary
migration for ideological, economic, or family reunification purposes.

Etymology

Aliyah in Hebrew means "ascent" or "going up". Jewish tradition views traveling to the Land of Israel as
an ascent, both geographically and metaphysically. In one opinion, the geographical sense preceded the
metaphorical one, as most Jews going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which is situated at approximately
750 meters (2,500 feet) above sea level, had to climb to a higher elevation. The reason is that many Jews
in early rabbinic times used to live either in Egypt's Nile Delta and on the plains of Babylonia, which lay
relatively low; or somewhere the Mediterranean Basin, from where they arrived by ship.[6]

Religious, ideological and cultural concept

"Olim" redirects here. For other uses, see Olim (disambiguation).

Aliyah by Salvador Dalí from the Yosef Matisyahu Collection

Aliyah is an important Jewish cultural concept and a fundamental component of Zionism. It is enshrined
in Israel's Law of Return, which accords any Jew (deemed as such by halakha and/or Israeli secular law)
and eligible non-Jews (a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a
Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew), the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in
Israel, as well as Israeli citizenship. Someone who "makes aliyah" is called an oleh (m.; pl. olim) or olah
(f.; pl. olot). Many religious Jews espouse aliyah as a return to the Promised land, and regard it as the
fulfillment of God's biblical promise to the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. Nachmanides (the Ramban) includes making aliyah in his enumeration of the 613
commandments.[7]

In the Talmud, at the end of tractate Ketubot, the Mishnah says: "A man may compel his entire
household to go up with him to the land of Israel, but may not compel one to leave." The discussion on
this passage in the Mishnah emphasizes the importance of living in Israel: "One should always live in the
Land of Israel, even in a town most of whose inhabitants are idolaters, but let no one live outside the
Land, even in a town most of whose inhabitants are Israelites; for whoever lives in the Land of Israel may
be considered to have a God, but whoever lives outside the Land may be regarded as one who has no
God."
Sifre says that the mitzvah (commandment) of living in Eretz Yisrael is as important as all the other
mitzvot put together. There are many mitzvot such as shmita, the sabbatical year for farming, which can
only be performed in Israel.[8]

In Zionist discourse, the term aliyah (plural aliyot) includes both voluntary immigration for ideological,
emotional, or practical reasons and, on the other hand, mass flight of persecuted populations of Jews.
The vast majority of Israeli Jews today trace their family's recent roots to outside the country. While
many have actively chosen to settle in Israel rather than some other country, many had little or no
choice about leaving their previous home countries. While Israel is commonly recognized as "a country
of immigrants", it is also, in large measure, a country of refugees, including internal refugees. Israeli
citizens who marry individuals of Palestinian heritage, born within the Israeli-occupied territories and
carrying Palestinian IDs, must renounce Israeli residency themselves in order to live and travel together
with their spouses.[9]

According to the traditional Jewish ordering of books of the Tanakh (Old Testament), the last word of
the last book in the original Hebrew (2 Chronicles 36:23) is veya‘al, a jussive verb form derived from the
same root as aliyah, meaning "and let him go up" (to Jerusalem in Judah).[10]

2 Chronicles 36:23 (KJV) Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God
of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which [is] in Judah.
Who [is there] among you of all his people? The LORD his God [be] with him, and let him go up.

Historical background

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Return to the land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers recited every day, three times a day,
and holiday services on Passover and Yom Kippur traditionally conclude with the words "Next year in
Jerusalem". Because Jewish lineage can provide a right to Israeli citizenship, aliyah (returning to Israel)
has both a secular and a religious significance.

For generations of religious Jews, aliyah was associated with the coming of the Jewish Messiah. Jews
prayed for their Messiah to come, who was to redeem the land of Israel from gentile rule and return
world Jewry to the land under a Halachic theocracy.[11]

Pre-Modern Aliyah

Main article: Pre-Modern Aliyah

Biblical

The Hebrew Bible relates that the patriarch Abraham came to the Land of Canaan with his family and
followers in approximately 1800 BC. His grandson Jacob went down to Egypt with his family, and after
several centuries there, the Israelites went back to Canaan under Moses and Joshua, entering it in about
1300 BC.

A few decades after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people,
approximately 50,000 Jews returned to Zion following the Cyrus Declaration from 538 BC. The Jewish
priestly scribe Ezra led the Jewish exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem in 459 BC.

Second Temple period

Jews returned to the Land of Israel throughout the era of the Second Temple. Herod the Great also
encouraged aliyah and often gave key posts, such as the position of High Priest to returnees.[12]

200–500 AD

In late antiquity, the two hubs of rabbinic learning were Babylonia and the land of Israel. Throughout the
Amoraic period, many Babylonian Jews immigrated to the land of Israel and left their mark on life there,
as rabbis and leaders.[13]
10th–11th century

In the 10th century, leaders of the Karaite Jewish community, mostly living under Persian rule, urged
their followers to settle in Eretz Yisrael. The Karaites established their own quarter in Jerusalem, on the
western slope of the Kidron Valley. During this period, there is abundant evidence of pilgrimages to
Jerusalem by Jews from various countries, mainly in the month of Tishrei, around the time of the Sukkot
holiday.[14]

1200–1882

See also: Old Yishuv

The number of Jews migrating to the land of Israel rose significantly between the 13th and 19th
centuries, mainly due to a general decline in the status of Jews across Europe and an increase in
religious persecution. The expulsion of Jews from England (1290), France (1391), Austria (1421), and
Spain (the Alhambra decree of 1492) were seen by many as a sign of approaching redemption and
contributed greatly to the messianic spirit of the time.[15]

Aliyah was also spurred during this period by the resurgence of messianic fervor among the Jews of
France, Italy, the Germanic states, Poland, Russia, and North Africa.[citation needed] The belief in the
imminent coming of the Jewish Messiah, the ingathering of the exiles and the re-establishment of the
kingdom of Israel encouraged many who had few other options to make the perilous journey to the land
of Israel.

Pre-Zionist resettlement in Palestine met with various degrees of success. For example, little is known of
the fate of the 1210 "aliyah of the three hundred rabbis" and their descendants. It is thought that few
survived the bloody upheavals caused by the Crusader invasion in 1229 and their subsequent expulsion
by the Muslims in 1291. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and the expulsion of Jews from
Spain (1492) and Portugal (1498), many Jews made their way to the Holy Land. Some Ukrainian Jewish
refugees fleeing the pogroms of the Khmelnytsky Uprising of the mid-17th century also settled in the
Holy Land. Then the immigration in the 18th and early 19th centuries of thousands of followers of
various Kabbalist and Hassidic rabbis, as well as the disciples of the Vilna Gaon and the disciples of the
Chattam Sofer, added considerably to the Jewish populations in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron, and Safed.

The messianic dreams of the Gaon of Vilna inspired one of the largest pre-Zionist waves of immigration
to Eretz Yisrael. In 1808 hundreds of the Gaon's disciples, known as Perushim, settled in Tiberias and
Safed, and later formed the core of the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem.[16][17] This was part of a larger
movement of thousands of Jews from countries as widely spaced as Persia and Morocco, Yemen and
Russia, who moved to Israel beginning in the first decade of the nineteenth century—and in even larger
numbers after the conquest of the region by Muhammad Ali of Egypt in 1832—all drawn by the
expectation of the arrival of the Messiah in the Jewish year 5600, Christian year 1840, a movement
documented in Arie Morgenstern's Hastening Redemption.

There were also those who like the British mystic Laurence Oliphant tried to lease Northern Palestine to
settle the Jews there (1879).

Zionist Aliyah (1882 on)

Further information: Zionism

Aliyah by numbers and by source

In Zionist history, the different waves of aliyah, beginning with the arrival of the Biluim from Russia in
1882, are categorized by date and the country of origin of the immigrants.

The first modern period of immigration to receive a number in common speech was the Third Aliyah,
which in the World War I period was referred to as the successor to the First and Second Aliyot from
Babylonia in the Biblical period. Reference to earlier modern periods as the First and Second Aliyot
appeared first in 1919 and took a while to catch on.[18]

Ottoman Palestine (1881–1914)

The pronounced persecution of Russian Jews between 1881 and 1910 led to a large wave of emigration.
[19] Since only a small portion of East European Jews had adopted Zionism by then, between 1881 and
1914 only 30–40,000 emigrants went to Ottoman Palestine, while over one and a half million Russian
Jews and 300,000 from Austria-Hungary reached Northern America.[19]

First Aliyah (1882–1903)

Main article: First Aliyah

Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews immigrated to the Ottoman Palestine, joining the
pre-existing Jewish population which in 1880 numbered 20,000-25,000. The Jews immigrating arrived in
groups that had been assembled, or recruited. Most of these groups had been arranged in the areas of
Romania and Russia in the 1880s. The migration of Jews from Russia correlates with the end of the
Russian pogroms, with about 3 percent of Jews emigrating from Europe to Palestine. The groups who
arrived in Palestine around this time were called Hibbat Tysion, which is a Hebrew word meaning
"fondness for Zion." They were also called Hovevei Tysion or "enthusiasts for Zion" by the members of
the groups themselves. While these groups expressed interest and "fondness" for Palestine, they were
not strong enough in number to encompass an entire mass movement as would appear later on in other
waves of migration.[20] The majority, belonging to the Hovevei Zion and Bilu movements, came from
the Russian Empire with a smaller number arriving from Yemen. Many established agricultural
communities. Among the towns that these individuals established are Petah Tikva (already in 1878),
Rishon LeZion, Rosh Pinna, and Zikhron Ya'akov. In 1882 the Yemenite Jews settled in the Arab village of
Silwan located south-east of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem on the slopes of the Mount of Olives.
[21] Kurdish Jews settled in Jerusalem starting around 1895.[22]

Second Aliyah (1904–1914)

Main article: Second Aliyah

Between 1904 and 1914, 35–40,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Palestine. The vast majority came
from the Russian Empire, in particular from the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. Jews from other
countries in Eastern Europe such as Romania and Bulgaria also joined. Jewish emigration from Eastern
Europe was largely due to pogroms and outbreaks of anti-Semitism there. However, Mountain Jews
from the Caucasus and Jews from other countries including Yemen, Iran, and Argentina also arrived at
this time. The Eastern European Jewish immigrants of this period, greatly influenced by socialist ideals,
established the first kibbutz, Degania Alef, in 1909 and formed self-defense organizations, such as
Hashomer, to counter increasing Arab hostility and to help Jews to protect their communities from Arab
marauders.[23] Ahuzat Bayit, a new suburb of Jaffa established in 1909, eventually grew to become the
city of Tel Aviv. During this period, some of the underpinnings of an independent nation-state arose:
Hebrew, the ancient national language, was revived as a spoken language; newspapers and literature
written in Hebrew were published; political parties and workers organizations were established. The
First World War effectively ended the period of the Second Aliyah. It is estimated that over half of those
who arrived during this period ended up leaving; Ben Gurion stated that nine out of ten left.[24]

British Palestine (1919–1948)

Third Aliyah (1919–1923)

Main article: Third Aliyah

Abba Hushi during his Hachshara, circa 1920

Between 1919 and 1923, 40,000 Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe arrived in the wake of World War I.
The British occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the British Mandate created the conditions
for the implementation of the promises contained in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Many of the
Jewish immigrants were ideologically driven pioneers, known as halutzim, trained in agriculture and
capable of establishing self-sustaining economies. In spite of immigration quotas established by the
British administration, the Jewish population reached 90,000 by the end of this period. The Jezreel
Valley and the Hefer Plain marshes were drained and converted to agricultural use. Additional national
institutions arose such as the Histadrut (General Labor Federation); an elected assembly; national
council; and the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces.

Fourth Aliyah (1924–1929)

Main article: Fourth Aliyah

Between 1924 and 1929, 82,000 Jews arrived, many as a result of increasing anti-Semitism in Poland and
throughout Europe. The vast majority of Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe mostly from Poland,
the Soviet Union, Romania, and Lithuania, but about 12% came from Asia, mostly Yemen and Iraq. The
immigration quotas of the United States kept Jews out. This group contained many middle-class families
that moved to the growing towns, establishing small businesses, and light industry. Of these
approximately 23,000 left the country.[25]

Fifth Aliyah (1929–1939)

Main article: Fifth Aliyah

Survey of Palestine, showing place of origin of immigrants between 1922 and 1944

Certificate issued by the Jewish Agency in Warsaw, Poland, for immigrant to Mandatory Palestine,
September 1935.

Between 1929 and 1939, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, a new wave of 250,000 immigrants
arrived; the majority of these, 174,000, arrived between 1933 and 1936, after which increasing
restrictions on immigration by the British made immigration clandestine and illegal, called Aliyah Bet.
The Fifth Aliyah was again driven almost entirely from Europe, mostly from Central Europe (particularly
from Poland, Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia), but also from Greece. Some Jewish immigrants
also came from other countries such as Turkey, Iran, and Yemen. The Fifth Aliyah contained large
numbers of professionals, doctors, lawyers, and professors, from Germany. Refugee architects and
musicians introduced the Bauhaus style (the White City of Tel Aviv has the highest concentration of
International Style architecture in the world with a strong element of Bauhaus) and founded the
Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. With the completion of the port at Haifa and its oil refineries,
significant industry was added to the predominantly agricultural economy. The Jewish population
reached 450,000 by 1940.

At the same time, tensions between Arabs and Jews grew during this period, leading to a series of Arab
riots against the Jews in 1929 that left many dead and resulted in the depopulation of the Jewish
community in Hebron. This was followed by more violence during the "Great Uprising" of 1936–1939. In
response to the ever-increasing tension between the Arabic and Jewish communities married with the
various commitments the British faced at the dawn of World War II, the British issued the White Paper
of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to 75,000 people for five years. This served to
create a relatively peaceful eight years in Palestine while the Holocaust unfolded in Europe.

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