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Israel Educator Background Israel Educator Background Passport to Peoplehood Jewish are a multicultural people who live around the world. Big Ideas 1. Ancient Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people. 2. Jews have migrated and moved around the world. Many have lived in Israel for centuries, while others have immigrated to Israel since its establishment in 1948. 3. The modern State of Israel is enriched by the contributions of Jews from around the world. Biblical Origins From ancient times to this day, the small parcel of land that serves as the bridge between Africa and Asia has been sacred to the Jewish people. In the Bible, we read that this land was promised by God to Abraham and his descendants. Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac lived his whole life in the land of Israel. Isaac’s son Jacob and his children escaped famine in Israel by going to Egypt, where they were enslaved. After the Israelites were redeemed from slavery in Egypt, they made their way back to the land of Israel, as recounted in the book of Exodus. Each of the twelve tribes, which descended from Jacob’s sons, was assigned a territory on which to live and farm. The tribes did not always get along. Ancient Times Over time, the tribal lands of Israel were united under the kings of Israel. King David established the city of Jerusalem as the capital of all the tribes. His son, King Solomon, built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, securing its primacy as a religious center for all Jews. It was to Jerusalem that the members of the tribes journeyed three times a year to celebrate the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot. At these times, the people of Israel would come together in prayer and celebration. The Diaspora As the Ethiopian and Indian Jewish oral histories remind us, there were already diasporic communities that could not participate in the pilgrimage even as far back as the time of King Solomon. But while the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, Israel was home to the majority of Israelites. After the destruction of the first and second Holy Temples in Jerusalem, the majority 1 www.GlobalJews.org Israel Educator Background of Israelites were scattered, first to Babylonia and then over time around the world. Few countries in the world have never had an organized Jewish community. It is worth noting that there were Jewish communities throughout the Middle East for generations before Jews migrated to Russia and Poland. The nature of Jewish prayer and ritual changed in the Jewish diaspora, but the land of Israel and Jerusalem maintained and continue to maintain a central role for Jews throughout the world. The Ethiopian holiday of Sigd is dedicated to praying for the return to Jerusalem. Throughout Jewish liturgy, Israel and Jerusalem are recalled in specific prayers. And around the world Jews face toward Jerusalem when they build synagogues and pray. For example, Indian Jews pray to the west, South African Jews pray to the north, and American Jews pray to the east. The theological and emotional longing for return and memory was put into words by the poet Yehudah Halevi (c. 1075-1141 C.E.), who wrote the famous poem “My Heart is in the East” from his home in Spain. (See below for the text of the poem.) Through the generations, a small number of Jews continued to make their home in the land of Israel. Halevi, for example, made his way to the Holy Land in 1140. From the 1490s, there was an effort to create a Jewish settlement of refugees from the Spanish Inquisitionin Safed, which is in northern Israel. The city became a spiritual center for kabbalistic thought and home to a number of Sephardi, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi Jews. One notable example of an attempt at a bigger vision for resettlement occurred in the 1600s. In the early 1560s, Dona Gracia ha Nasi, a Sephardi Jew and former anusa (converso), helped secure and fund a Jewish community in Tiberius. Her hope was to create a refuge for those escaping the Inquisition. While the success of the Tiberius endeavor was short-lived, it provided a template for future Jewish settlement. Modern Zionism The rise of nationalism in Europe rekindled the desire among European Jews to establish a national homeland for all Jews in the land of Israel. Figures like the Austrian-born Theodore Herzl shaped this longing, which had existed through the generations, into a political project called Zionism. Herzl founded the World Zionist Congress, where delegrates came up with concrete goals and a plan for gaining statehood. Other Zionist thinkers, like Russian-born Ahad Ha’am (the pen name of Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg), envisioned the future state as a cultural ​ ​ and spiritual center for global Judaism. 2 www.GlobalJews.org Israel Educator Background Beginning in the 1800s, Jews from Europe and Yemen began to relocate to Israel with the intention of creating settlements that would provide the foundation for a future state. These early efforts were fraught; less than half of the halutzim, as these pioneers were known, ​ ​ survived. Still, over the decades, small numbers of European Jews continued to make their way to Israel. After WWI, the British took control of the land of Israel (then known as Mandatory Palestine) and enacted laws to restrict the immigration of Jews. With the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany, growing numbers of European Jews sought refuge from pogroms and death camps. However, even as the ravages of the Holocaust became known, the British refused entry to Jews. The need to establish a safe haven for Jews outside of Europe became even more pressing. Mass Migration After the Holocaust, as the remnants of European Jewry struggled to find homes, the United Nations voted to divide the British Mandate lands in two and grant Jewish sovereignty over part of the historic land of Israel. Through the hard work and sacrifice of many pioneers the modern State of Israel was declared in May 1948. In 1950, Israel established the Law of Return, which grants Jews from around the world automatic Israeli citizenship However, one’s ability to immigrate to Israel today is complicated by rules around conversion, country of origin, and other factors. The process of Jewish settlement has not been a simple one. Most immigrants arrived with limited financial means. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, it struggled not only with a fledgling economy but also with the threat from six Arab armies that waged war against it. The earliest Jewish communities were often built from scratch and by pioneers who lacked resources as well as experience in farming and building infrastructure. Yet from the moment it was possible, Jews from around the world began to arrive in the new State of Israel. Through the years, some have come because it was finally possible to fulfill the ancient dream of resettling the land. Others were forced to leave their home countries because of anti-Semitism. Life was particularly harsh for Jews in places like Yemen, Egypt, Libia, Iraq and Iran, which saw Israel as an enemy and sought to punish and push out local Jews. Others, like the Indian Jews, chose to come to Israel because it represented financial opportunity. 3 www.GlobalJews.org Israel Educator Background The influx of Jews from around the world to Israel has been responsible for its tremendous growth. In 1882 there were only 24,000 Jews living in the land of Israel. That number had grown to 449,000 by 1939. In 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, the Jewish population numbered 716,700. In 2019, the number of Jewish residents of the State of Israel is estimated at 6,697,000, or just under 75% of the total population. But security and financial challenges complicated the capacity of the State of Israel to absorb immigrants smoothly. Most groups of newcomers have faced challenges, from access to basic resources like housing and jobs to overt forms of discrimination. Non-European, darker-skinned Jews have had an especially difficult time assimilating into Israeli society. To accommodate the influx of newcomers in the early years of the state, immigrant camps (ma’abarot) were established in the less developed areas of the country. Ma’abarot were often ​ ​ ​ ​ little more than tent cities with minimal sanitation, health or educational facilities. , The government overwhelmingly settled those from European countries, deemed more sophisticated, in cities and areas with more resources. By contrast, Jews from Arab lands (known as Mizrachim) made up over 80% of those living in the Ma’abarot. Being relegated to ​ ​ the physical periphery had a long-lasting impact on the socioeconomic mobility of Jews from Arab lands. It also contributed to the strained relations between Jews from Arab and European backgrounds. The story of the Ethiopian Jews also contains layers of complexity when it comes to migration and race. Individual Ethiopian Jews began making their way to Israel beginning in 1948. In the early 1980s, political upheaval and drought destabilized life across Ethiopia, and Ethiopian Jewish activists lobbied the Israeli government for help in rescuing and relocating the community. In 1984 and again in 1991, the Israeli government saved the lives of approximately 135,000 Ethiopian Jews by airlifting and resettling them in Israel. For the Ethiopians, coming to Israel was the fulfillment of generations of longing. But there was a gap between the dream of Israel and the reality. Ethiopian Jews were surprised at the racial diversity of Israeli Jews, having never met Jews who were not black. While glad to be out of harm’s way, they faced significant challenges adjusting to western cultural norms, standards of education, and ideas of what it means to be Jewish.
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