The Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency for Israel is anticipating that immigration to Israel from North America will increase between 5 and 10 percent this year, marking the highest aliyah from North America in 25 years. In 2006, 3,200 residents of the US and Canada formally became Israeli citizens, the highest figure since 1983.
Some 300 New York area residents who will move to Israel this summer will participate Monday (July 2) in a farewell reception hosted by the Jewish Agency in Manhattan, in conjunction with the Israel Consulate, with Ambassador Dan Gillerman, Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, addressing the group. Similar farewell receptions have been held this month in Toronto, Boston, Miami, and Rockville, Maryland.
"We are seeing a continued increase of olim (immigrants) of all religious streams and age groups," said Boaz Herman, head of the Jewish Agency's Aliyah Department in North America, noting that the Jewish Agency has registered immigrants ranging in age from several months, to elderly individuals in their nineties.
Herman notes that 70 percent of immigrants from North America are under age 35 (nearly 40 percent are under 18). So far this year the oldest immigrant was a 94-year-old from Miami; a 90-year-old Auschwitz survivor will attend the farewell reception in New York in advance of her move this summer.
In last several years, the Reform and Conservative Jewish communities have become more active in promoting aliyah, similar to the Orthodox communities. The Jewish Agency is now working to introduce these olim to the option of moving to communities of the same religious affiliation in Israel.
Since the founding of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency has assisted in the aliyah of the approximately 125,000 North Americans who have moved to Israel since 1948.
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