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First ever Aliyah day

From the US to Fiji: Israel marks first 'Aliyah Day'

With over 40% of Israelis having been born outside of the country, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption marked its first ever 'Aliyah Day' to celebrate the contributions immigrants have made to building Israeli society.

Israel marked its first "Aliyah Day" earlier this week, celebrating new immigrants with a ceremony put on by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Jewish Agency.

 


Israel is a country of eight million citizens, 40 percent of whom were born outside of the country. Over three million people immigrated to the Jewish state since its inception in 1948, coming from every corner of the globe—from the US to Mozambique.

 

Some 101,900 people made aliyah (the Hebrew term for immigration to Israel) in 1948. Huge portions—if not the entirety—of the Jewish communities from Bulgaria, Libya, Poland, Yemen, Iraq, and Romania came to Israel in its first year of independence.

 

American Jews make Aliyah (Photo: Getty Images)
American Jews make Aliyah (Photo: Getty Images)


Another massive wave of immigration occurred between 1955 and 1957, which saw 166,492 Jews come to the State of Israel. Approximately 70,000 of them came from Morocco.

 

The next wave of immigrants came in the 1960's, seeing over a quarter million Jews arrive on the shores of Israel, amongst which were 160,000 Romanian Jews and Moroccan Jews.

 

New immigrants at an Ulpan Hebrew language center on King George street, Tel Aviv (Photo: Ilan Browner)
New immigrants at an Ulpan Hebrew language center on King George street, Tel Aviv (Photo: Ilan Browner)

 

According to Ministry of Immigrant Absorption figures, two million Jews have immigrated to Israel from 1972 until today. The country with the most Jews making aliyah was the former USSR, with 700,000 people moving to Israel in the 1970's and 1990's. The US follows with 117,000—a trend which has picked up in the last few decades.

 

Two other major waves of aliyah came from Ethiopia (93,246) and France (89,508).

 

A Jewish family who made Aliyah from the Caucuses at the turn of the 20th century
A Jewish family who made Aliyah from the Caucuses at the turn of the 20th century

 

Ministry figures also include reports of people making aliyah from countries with a miniscule Jewish population. For instance, 46 of the 600 member-strong Jewish community in Gibraltar moved to Israel, as did 22 from the Island of Mauritius. There were even 11 Jews who moved from New Caledonia—an island chain between Australia and Fiji. Additionally, eight Jews immigrated to Israel from Tahiti in French Polynesia.

 

But only four Jews moved to Israel from the South American country of Suriname—home to one of the first Jewish communities in the Western hemisphere, whose central synagogue is now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

 

A new immigrant of the Jewish Beni Menashe tribe arrives in Israel with her family from India (Photo: Moshe Milner)
A new immigrant of the Jewish Beni Menashe tribe arrives in Israel with her family from India (Photo: Moshe Milner)

 

There are also several countries from which only one member of their tiny Jewish community made aliyah, including: Mali, the Seychelles Islands, Haiti, Grenada, Malaysia, Vietnam, Fiji, Mongolia, the Spanish settlement of Melilla, Turks and Caicos, and Benin in west Africa.

 

The year with the single largest number of people making aliyah was between 1990 and 1991, when 373,585 Jews came to Israel from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia.

 

For comparison, 345,890 arrived in the Holy Land since the year 2000, with 52,000 people moving to Israel in the last two years alone.

 

A French-Ivorian Jewish family preparing to start a new life in Israel (Photo: Fellowship of Christians and Jews)
A French-Ivorian Jewish family preparing to start a new life in Israel (Photo: Fellowship of Christians and Jews)
 

 

The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption's director-general, Alex Kushner, said that the numbers of people making aliyah from North America have remained stable, at about 3,000 people a year.

 

"Reasons for making aliyah are split into two primary categories: Zionist and religious reasons, and socio-economic reasons," Kushner said of the North American immigrants.

 

New immigrant children in Israel in school at Kibbutz Naot (Photo: Fritz Cohen)
New immigrant children in Israel in school at Kibbutz Naot (Photo: Fritz Cohen)
 

 

The majority of these immigrants settle in Jerusalem—where there are approximately 9,166 Jewish immigrants of North American decent.

 

Absorption Minister Sofa Landver (Yisrael Beytenu) said that "olim (immigrants) make up this ingathering of the exiles we call Israel. Tens of thousands of Jews immigrate to Israel and choose to make their homes here, in the land of our forefathers. The goal of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption is to ensure that the country is doing everything it can to continue these waves of immigration, and, of course, make sure that their absorption goes as seamlessly as possible."

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 11.10.16, 15:59
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