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The Jewish population of the Land of Israel more or less doubled in size between 1808 and 1840. A significant segment of the immigrants were disciples of the Vilna Ga’on, who undertook an organized immigration effort beginning no later than 1806. Many were motivated by messianism, but some came in an effort to escape hardship in Europe. Many settled in the Galilee, in and around Safed, while others came to Jerusalem; there was a degree of rivalry between the groups (respectively led by Israel of Shklov and Menahem Mendel of Shklov). Immigration was adversely affected by recurring epidemics, natural calamities, poverty, and political instability. It increased substantially during the relatively enlightened and stable reign of Muhammad Ali, an Egyptian who took control of the Land of Israel from the Ottomans in 1831 and remained in power through the 1830s. The Montefiore Census of 1839 shows that nearly half of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel that year were under the age of twenty.

This chapter addresses criticisms of Christian Zionism. There are four principal charges: First, that evangelical Christians support aliyah (Jewish emigration to Israel) mainly because it speeds the battle of Armageddon, the mass conversion or death of the Jews, and Christ’s Millennial kingdom. Second, that evangelicals’ true motive is to convert the Jews. Third, that Christian Zionist theology distorts Christianity: that it misunderstands biblical covenants and ignores the scriptural emphasis on doing justice, relieving suffering, and showing compassion to the oppressed, who, in this view, are the Palestinians. The fourth major criticism is that the evangelical Zionists’ biblical worldview allies them with extreme right-wing Israeli politicians in opposing any exchange of land for peace. The chapter discusses efforts to evangelize Jews, and notes the beliefs of Messianic Jews. It examines the claim by some evangelicals that Christians are the heirs to God’s promises to Israel; that the covenantal promises to the Jews are conditional; and that modern Israel is not the fulfillment of prophecy. The chapter notes the role of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in opposing Christian Zionism and Israeli policies. It also considers the limits on empathy toward the other in this conflict.

This chapter examines the roots and effects of Zionism in Iran. It analyzes Zionism first as an indigenous movement that emerged in Iran as a response to the needs of Iranian Jews (with relation to the global movement of Zionism) and transformed itself as the needs of Iranian Jews changed in the course of the century. After 1948 and the establishment of Israel, Zionism could no longer be taken as a local movement alone. The contact with Israel and Israeli emissaries and the impact of state-sponsored Zionist activities ignited a new set of emotions and means of identification with or antagonism to Zionism, as well as a whole range of reactions in between. This chapter examines the way Israel dealt with the case of Iranian Jews, which was atypical compared with other Middle Eastern communities. In addition, this chapter examines the responses to Zionism among the non-Jewish intellectual elites in Iran.

Part II examines how British Jews related to Zionist state- and nation-building in the Middle East as participants in the transnational Jewish sphere of interaction. It charts the Peel Commission, the White Paper, the shoah, rescue, post-war-reconstruction, the displaced persons problem, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, the birth of the State of Israel, and the Suez crisis, and explores how British Zionists responded to these challenges by lobbying, fundraising, aliyah, and military engagement. While the part focuses on the principal channels through which British Zionists participated in Zionist state- and nation-building it also traces how competing liberal assimilationist, Communist, and radical Orthodox British Jews related to the Zionist project in the Middle East.lobbying the Peel Report the White Paper the Jewish Fighting Force the Jewish Brigade rescue displaced persons the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry birth of the State of Israel the machalniks the Suez crisis aliyah economic support

The first major system of remote control specifically targeting refugees was aimed at keeping out European Jews fleeing the Nazis. The United States and Cuba used their maritime forces to keep refugees from landing on their shores. Many countries throughout the Americas openly or secretly used their visa policies to keep out Jewish refugees. The British toolbox to keep Jews from reaching Palestine included naval interceptions, visa restrictions, diplomatic pressure on buffer countries, stationing immigration liaison officers abroad, carrier sanctions, publicity campaigns, sabotaging vessels in countries of transit, crackdowns on people smugglers, and offshore island detention centers. After the war, a new asylum regime aimed at avoiding a repeat of the Holocaust and embarrassing communist countries during the Cold War made non-refoulement a centerpiece of international treaties and domestic laws. Several major rich countries lagged in joining the global regime, including the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea.

This chapter connects with the preceding chapter on Jewish-Muslim life in rural Yemen. Although both studies describe tribally situated Jewish societies destined for dissolution through immigration, this “Moroccan chapter” centers on a country that was dominated by a French colonial administration. For many decades it was reported by different people—Israeli immigration emissaries of the Jewish Agency, foreign travelers, and officials of the colonial administration—that major pockets of Jewish farmers existed throughout rural Morocco. This social-historical study challenges what may now be regarded as no more than a myth. Certainly, small groups of agricultural Jews could be found in the central High Atlas Mountains and elsewhere in the country, but no more than that. In fact, the majority of Morocco's Jews were petty merchants and artisans, a fact that Jews regarded as a mark of distinction from, if not superiority over, the vast majority of Moroccan Muslims, for whom agriculture was the principal livelihood. Many years after the resettlement of most Moroccan Jewry in Israel, older Muslims remembered this distinction.

This chapter examines tensions looming large between local nationalists and Zionists in mid-twentieth-century Morocco, their relevance to the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the status of Moroccan Jewry in the transition of their country from a colonized entity to an independent nation-state. Morocco's geographical remoteness from the Middle East conflict hardly influenced local nationalists' decision to identify in solidarity with the Arab struggle over Palestine, a decision that affected Judeo-Muslim relations negatively, especially in urban areas. At the same time, Moroccan Jewry contributed to the weakening of Judeo-Muslim understanding. They refused to take the side of the nationalists in the struggle for statehood, hoping quietly that French and Spanish colonial presence would endure indefinitely. Finding themselves positioned between the colonizers and the colonized, the Jews were pressured by each side to embrace its cause, and it became apparent to the nationalists that the Jews—at least inwardly—supported the colonialists. These realities convinced the majority of Jews that they should opt for departure to Israel, France, and the Americas.

Hannah Arendt never seriously considered Aliyah, “going up,” the term used for emigration to Palestine/Israel, not before she fled Germany in 1933, not during her years in Paris when she worked for Youth Aliyah; and not when she finally escaped from Europe in 1941. In the early 1940s, she called for the formation of a Jewish army to fight the Nazis. She wrote passionately about her vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But along with Judah Magnes, she actively opposed the founding of a Jewish nation-state. Indeed, if Hannah Arendt's political recommendations had been followed, the state of Israel might never have been founded. For many people, these facts about Hannah Arendt — that she never considered Aliyah and that she actively opposed the founding of the state of Israel — are all that need to be said about Arendt's alleged Zionism. This chapter argues that this would be a serious mistake and shows the reasons why.

This chapter reviews the book Be’or shineihem: ’al ’aliyatam shel yehudei polin lifnei hashoah (In the Last Moment: Jewish Immigration from Poland in the 1930s) (2015), by Irith Cherniavsky. In the Last Moment provides an overview of a mass migration that was critical to Polish Jewry and the Yishuv. More specifically, it explores Polish Jews’ immigration to Palestine during the Fifth Aliyah (1930–1939). During the 1930s, strict immigration quotas in the United States made Mandatory Palestine the main destination for Polish Jewish immigrants. Cherniavsky criticizes scholars who have tended to focus on Polish Jewish immigrants of the Fourth Aliyah (1924–1926), even though “immigrants from Poland also comprised the majority of the Fifth Aliyah, of which only fifteen percent were from Central Europe (Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia).”

This chapter reviews the book South African Jews in Israel: Assimilation in Multigenerational Perspective (2015), by Rebeca Raijman. In South African Jews in Israel, Raijman explores Jewish immigration from South Africa to Israel and post-migration adaptation and mobility within the latter country. Drawing on a mainly quantitative approach as well as qualitative insights derived from the personal experiences of immigrants, Raijman delves into the linguistic, economic, and identificational assimilation of South African Jews in Israel. Her book provides a solid, balanced discussion of social theory and makes use of conceptualization, international comparison, and in-depth analysis, while also dispelling some of the myths and legends that continue to dominate the popular perception of aliyah.

Chapter 7 probes Orthodox resistance to female participation in public Torah reading, the first area in the realm of gender and synagogue ritual to be subjected to a serious academic discourse among observant Jews. According to Jewish tradition, only men can read publicly from the Torah and recite a special blessing before and after a section of the Torah is read (known as an aliyah). Still, the classical Jewish sources concerning these matters are capable of supporting more inclusive practices with respect to women. This chapter argues that the current normative practices derive from a consensus that developed in the Middle Ages and is based largely on cultural considerations concerning women and their place in the Jewish tradition rather than strictly legal precepts. Therefore, for willing traditional communities change is possible.

This chapter examines representations of sand in pre-state Hebrew poetry. It first considers the poem “A Small Letter” (1894), subtitled “From the Diaspora to My Brothers in Zion,” by Hayim Nahman Bialik, who describes the diaspora as unstable ground on which permanent residence is impossible. It then discusses changes in the Yishuv’s attitude toward the geographical space of Eretz Israel in the 1920s and how these relate to the evolving political structure of the Yishuv. It also analyzes the poetry of the Third Aliyah, including Avot Yeshurun’s Hunger and Thirst, in which the sand draws its meaning from place. The chapter suggests that the poetry of the Third Aliyah portrays Tel Aviv as a text written on sand, and that such portrayal is intertwined with the city’s location on the coast.