The Law of Return to Israel: Who and When Jews Returned

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Jews suffered greatly when Jerusalem was taken by the Romans in 70 CE.  They were taken to Rome or other places as slaves.  Some managed to remain in Judah while others scattered to other parts of the Middle East.  It wasn't till May 14, 1948 that Israel was again re-created out of what the Ottoman Empire had taken of what was renamed as "Palestine."  This was because of the WWI when the Ottomans had lost the war-being they were on Germany's side

                    Israel is for the Ingathering of the Exiles

The Law of Return of 1950 gave legal sanction to all immigrant Jews. Israel was created as a haven for Jews who had suffered for 2,000 years from anti-Semitism in other countries for being what they were;  Jewish.  Judah  had been occupied by the Romans.  Jews had been blamed for killing Christ by causing him to be crucified, which was something that the Romans had done to thousands of Jews in Judah,  but Jews were blamed anyway being he had been Jewish even though they had denied causing this.   Jews had been the object of attacks by the Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, and then the Holocaust and actually were expulsed from countries or forcibly converted to Christianity.  Some communities had been annihilated even before the Holocaust.  They had not had the rights of citizens in these 2,000 years until after WWI.  In the Middle East they were treated as Dhimmis, which were not 1st class citizens.  There they were penalized in many ways for being Jewish.  The one country of safety was the USA, which had its share of anti-Semitism.
                                                                         

               Rome, parade of displaying Jewish artifacts stolen from Jerusalem

Now, what is a Jew?  There is no legal definition.  There are halachic concepts (rabinical law) and sociological ones.  By halacha, a Jew is a person born of a Jewish mother.  They can also be Jewish by conversion to Judaism.  Under 1970's amendment, the Law of Return grants Israeli nationality also to the spouse of any immigrant Jew and his descendants for 2 generations and to their spouses equally whether they were Jewish by halacha or not.
                                                                           

The population of Israel in May 1948 was 650,000.  By May 1972 it was 3,164,000.  This shows that 1,400,000 were immigrants (olim).  Immigrants entered in 4 large waves of immigration.  They have continued to arrive throughout all these years according to their own needs as well.

1.  May 1948-end of 1951:  754,800 came from :
     a. Holocaust in Europe mainly from Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia.
     b. Iraq (121,000 out of 130,000); Yemen (44,000 out of 45,000); Libya (30,500 out of 35,000).

2. 1955-1957:  165,000 came from:
     a. Morocco and Tunisia
     b. Poland and other countries such as Romania

3. 1961-1964:  215,000 came from:
    a. Eastern Europe
    b. North Africa

4. 1967-to end 1972; 200,000 on came from:
   a. North and South America
   b. Western Europe
  c. Soviet Union
                                                                     

1981:  Here I am in my Sachnoot apartment in Safed sitting on my bed-with pillows to look like a sofa in front of my barred window.  That's because we are on the ground floor.  We just moved in after living in Haifa for 10 months attending the ulpan (school).

5.  1980-2013 My husband and I made aliyah in 1980  and were in a large group of teachers of English from the Soviet Union.  We were one of the few actual professional teachers from the West and went through a 10 month program to earn our certification to teach English in Israel first.  There were over 40 in our class that was later divided into Hebrew language groups to bring us up to a level of higher ability.

19,135 olim arrived in 2011
18,691 olim arrives in 2012
Of them 2,432 were from Ethiopia.  Western Europe olim were 3,243 in 2012.  Soviet Union olim were 7,755 and France olim were 1,907.  North America had 3,512 olim in 2011 and 3,389 in 2012.  The UK had 560 in 2011 and 698 in 2012.

 The census now shows that there are 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs living in Israel.  As conditions have become worse towards Jews in France and Sweden with much anti-Semitism, they have been forced to move to Israel. About 3 years after we arrived, Ethiopians were coming to Safed.
                                                                       

                                                               Ethiopian immigrant
   
6.  The Lost 10 Tribes of Israel:-taken by Assyria 721 BCE and Babylon 597-586 BCE
     a. Returning from Ethiopia
     b. Africa-Masai
    c. Asia-Myanmar(Burma), Bnei Israel from Bombay, India, Bnei Menashe of India
    d. Middle East, Mashadi of Mashad, Iran

In integrating Jews from 2 separate cultures from the East (Sephardis, Mizrachim) and from the West (Ashkenazis) ,  we find that the  half of the immigrants that came from Muslim countries in North Africa and Asia had to live in poverty and  the basic values were those of a traditional and authoritarian society similar to the Muslim country they had left.  Most had very large families.

The other half came from European and American countries where the basic values were of a modern democratic and technological society.   This caused a cultural gap which gave immigrants from the developed countries an advantage over the Jews from the Muslim countries so the administration had to be devoted to narrowing this gap.

Education has been the means to do this.  Only 13% of children in 1956 from Asia and Africa attended high school  but by 1969-1970 there were 44% attending.  At the same time, children from Europe and America had 41% attending in 1956 and this went up to 77% by 1969-1970.   By 1970, 18.5% of marriages taking place were of mixed cultural origins.  In other words, the means to even out the disparity was through marriage.  It has increased since then.  Another means is through serving in the IDF.  It has erased differences in sex and in origins.  A Jew is just a Jew today in Israel, back to the way we were before 70 CE.  No differences.

The big population centers in Israel were in the coastal regions between Tel Aviv and Haifa.  New towns and development centers have been built.  This is where many of the immigrants have settled.  They have gone to Eilat, Dimona and Arad in the Negev; Kiryat Gat, Ashkelon and Beit Shemesh in the center;  and Karmiel which is almost all American and Kiryat Sh'mona in the Galilee.  I settled in Safed which is also in the Galilee simply because it reminded me of Oregon with all the fir trees and because it was higher up.  We went where jobs were available.  Being a teacher, I found that Jerusalem, which is a highly desirous city to live in, was already full of teachers and a more expensive place to live.  Teachers were wanted in development towns.  Israel managed to send Russians to the desert and Ethiopians to Safed where it was very cold, but they had to consider where available housing was at that time of immigration.  It gave us lots to laugh about.  Russians preferred to be in Tel Aviv where culture was at the height with music and theater.  We all had our preferences.

It is important to Israel to reclaim Jews who have been found to be still practicing Jewish  beliefs after all these years of separation.  They have been studied by rabbis and even have taken dna tests for their proof.  Through one or both of these tests, they have been accepted as one of our Lost brothers' descendants.  This has been prophesied in the Torah to happen at the end of days.  It's very exciting to us to find that many are still living and claiming their proud connection to the rest of us.  To me, they have gone through much pain to continue their heritage.

Resource: Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://www.jewishvoice.org/messianic-education/messianic-vision/lost-tribes-of-israel.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/11/india-burmas-lost-menashe-tribe-of.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/12/lost-tribe-of-israel-living-in-india.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/04/10-lost-tribes-and-what-happened-to.html
http://www.jta.org/2013/01/21/news-opinion/world/israel-sees-slight-drop-in-jewish-immigration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return

Israel's Ethiopian Community

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

'There are many colors in Israel and it's important to show it to the world" Yityish (Titi) Aynaw, 21, an Ethiopian Jew  said on stage ...when she won the Israel Beauty pageant and became Miss Israel.  Titi is a member of the Falah Mura who made aliyah to Israel at age 12 in 2004.  Her family never felt at home in Ethiopia.   Her name, Yityish in the Ethiopian language of Amharic means "a look to the future."  She has already served as an officer in the IDF and now is a manager of a fashion store.

Coming to Israel was not easy.  She had to learn Hebrew and live in a modern society, so different from her home in Ethiopia.  Now she hopes to become a successful model and would also like to be the first Ethiopian TV host, an Israeli Tyra Banks.  Martin Luther King has been a role model for her.

Ethiopian Jews  had started to arrive in Israel in Tzfat in 1981 when I lived there.  They came barefooted wrapped in white sheets. An empty apartment  was picked where clothes were donated and the new immigrants could try on clothing.  It didn't take them long at all to learn how to manage in our supermarket.

The history of Jews of Ethiopia (Abyssinia), a country in NE Africa which may also be "Cush" in the bible is said to go back to when the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon sometime in (961-920 BCE).  It turned out to be a fruitful visit and she and her retinue returned to her homeland with some pregnancies.  The emperors of Ethiopia have claimed descent from Menelik who was the son of their Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.  They even have used the title "Lion of Judah."  These Jews are referred to as Beta Israel (House of Israel.).  Most of Ethiopia is Christian and Muslim, so these Jews have suffered some discrimination.  They were called "Falashas, (the aliens, invaders.)  The government had caused them imposed exile and starvation.  There have been stories about them that were heard in Europe from the early Middle Ages.  Authentic information came from James Bruce in 1790.  They lived in some village communities practicing handicrafts and agriculture.  Once the 1/2 million Beta Israel ruled around Lake Tana.

The people I saw coming into Safed in 1981 were dark skinned with very Caucasian features.  By 2006 Tzfat, a city of 28,094 had 1,439 Beta Israelis which was 5.1% of the city population.  The Beta Israelis were brought to many Israeli cities.  They were small boned,  tall slender and beautiful.  After first recouping in the hospital, they acclimated themselves and in no time at all put on an art show in the city.

It was "Operation Moses" of the mid 1980's that this airlift took 20,000 to Israel.  This operation could not be completed because of complications.  Later, they had Operation Solomon in 1991 which brought in 15,000 were flown to Israel.  Yityish was in the some 2-3,000 that had to remain, perhaps not out of their own choice.

Their Judaism that they practiced was based on literal obedience to Torah injunctions.  They knew nothing about post-biblical Hebrew literature.   They only knew a few words of Hebrew.  Their Torah was written in Ge'ez , Old Ethiopic.  The even still practiced sacrifices on certain occasions by their priests, something dropped by the rest of us since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  They did not know about Hanukkah, Purim, etc.  This helps to date their becoming Jewish.  DNA tests have not determined any major Jewish haplogroup, such as J1.  It is thought that that they descended from Jewish converts before Christianity.

Resource: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4350667,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ejhist.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Zionism: Our Call To Freedom to Survive-and to Build

Nadene Goldfoot
Jews returning to their land  or becoming Zionists is not a modern idea only found in the 20th century.  Jews returned twice before from their Babylonia exiles and rebuilt their land, only to go through it a 3rd time in August of 70 CE when the invading Roman armies occupied and destroyed their ancient capital of Jerusalem, causing our Jewish independence to halt.  Thousands of Jews were driven out of their homeland then.  The exile lasted for 20 centuries but our nationalism never died.  It finally happened in the rebirth of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948.  The miracle was that the land had lain barren and empty; something nobody was interested in, as if it were just waiting for the rightful tenants to return because they were the only ones who really loved the land. 

Zionism now is a dirty word to many Arabs, some of who are even visiting Portland's  Lincoln High with a presentation about these "terrible racist Zionists" this week.  However, Zionism is the term of calling us back to our ancient homeland to farm and industrialize it, to build new towns and villages and live there.  Theodor Herzl was the founder of the Zionist Movement at the end of the 19th century.  Thousands of Jews began the "aliyah"-the going up to the land to live there once again along with Jews who had never left.  It was a time of buying land back that had once been in our hands.    

Along came the Bilu movement with Russian Jewish students who settled agricultural kibbutz'm in 1882 This had followed terrible pograms where Jews were attacked and killed in Russia. My grandfather, Nathan, must have been in those pograms as he was born in 1872, and I know my grandmother, Zlotta, was as she came out of it with broken legs. 

In 1893 Nathan Birnbaum coined the term Zionism as Mount Zion in Jerusalem has always symbolized the Land of Israel.

In 1897 the first Zionist congress was created by Herzl where the Jews defined their movement of establishing for the Jewish people their national home in Palestine.  Jews are a people or nation as well as having a religion  who wish to retain their identity as a national community.  By 1901 Herzl had created the Jewish National Fund with the practice of children giving their pennies of caronom'm to be used to buy land.  Land was bought at extremely high prices from Arab landowners usually living outside of Palestine who were glad to get rid of it. 
 
I was one of the recent people making aliyah, returning in September of 1980 to Haifa. It was a privilege to be a part of the prophecized "ingathering" of exiles from all over the world. 
 
The Arabs, meanwhile, have had ample time and chances to create their own state of "Palestine", since we took the ancient name of Israel to remember our roots, but they refused over and over, choosing instead to attack Israel with massive wars and constant bombings in their attempts to drive us into the sea and be gone.  Now they are saying that they intend to create a state but want part of Jerusalem as their capital.  Yet they refuse to sit down without preconditions and barter with us.  They use Israel's building as the reason why they won't even palaver.  They won't even accept us as a "Jewish" state.  Abbas, leader of Fatah, has recently stated that he regrets that they didn't choose to become a state in 1947-1848. 
 
Israel plans building 1,650 units in apartment houses in Jerusalem, it's capital in their annexed land regained from Jordan's illegal takeover that was recovered in 1967.  Other building will happen in Efrat and Maale Adumim, neighborhoods in the SE sector.  This land was already deemed to stay in Israel's hands no matter what the Arabs had decided to do with their statehood.  Yet the Palestinians claim the land as part of their future state and the international community has never recognized Israel's ownership.  In fact, they even have condemned Israel's building plans, much to their dishonor.  What irks Israel is that they had a moratorium of 10 months when they didn't build even a merapeset (balcony outside a window in an apartment building)or anything but the Arabs continued to not meet for a peace consult.  They had the chance to do something and balked.  The Arabs wouldn't discuss peace plans seriously when Israel wasn't building in Jerusalem and won't now, demanding that Israel have a complete halt in construction as a condition for resuming peace negotiations. 
 
Israel is in dire need of housing.  Most everyone in Israel lives in high rise apartment buildings.  Judea and Samaria were once part of the package offered by Britain and the League of Nations as the Jewish National Home, but the Arabs are claiming these places as well.   The land of Israel is but a postage stamp in size compared to other states, and yet the Arabs, who already have a majority in 47 or more states, want our capital of  Jerusalem as well.  They seem to want things only after they are developed and beautified by the Jews. 
 
The Arabs do not have a historical connection with Eretz Israel, or Palestine.  Their homeland is Arabia, which is the SW peninsula of Asia.  There they have 1,027,000 square miles or 2,630,000 square kilometers where Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrein, Qatar, Trucial Oman sit on the Persian Gulf along with Muscat and Oman, and South Yemen.  They only came to "Palestine" through Damascus in the Omayyad dynasty and held the land for a little over a century.  They were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids from Persia and then by the Turks.  The Abbasids were defeated by the Fatimids.  Their success wasn't in governing the land, it was in their language of Arabic and with Islam which became their major religion. 
 
As far as the present day Arabs living in Palestine,  most came there from the surrounding lands in order to secure jobs with the Jews that were building. 
 
What I can't understand is:
1. Why has the international community sided with the Arabs who do nothing but attack Israel's civilians with missiles and mortars and who refuse to come to peaceful terms with Israel?  Does oil really take priority in view of morality? 
2. How can Arabs call us racist when Jews are not allowed into any Arab land today such as Saudi Arabia?  Those that had lived in Muslim lands for centuries were forced out in 1948 with the rebirth of Israel, and had been living as 2nd class citizens or dhimmis.  They were not allowed to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims or to drink wine in public; were forced to wear distinctive clothing and were not allowed to pray or mourn in loud voices that might offend Muslims, they had to always yield to Muslims and give them the center of the road, was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Muslim and his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court, and to get a witness in court had to buy them, leaving little or no legal recourse when harmed by a Muslim.  The attitude of Muslims towards Jews and Christians was that of a master towards a slave, tolerating them as long as they kept their place.  If you tried to act as an equal, this was repressed immediately. 

Resource:  Book: Battleground; fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz
Oregonian Newspaper 11/2/11 page A8 Israeli settlements-Pace will increase in contested areas
Standard Jewish Encyclopedia : Zionism
Israel-Embassy of Israel, Washington D.C.
Book: From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
Book: Myths and Facts-a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Dr. Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb

Young Americans Make Aliyah and Join IDF

104 Young Americans have just made aliyah and will live on a kibbutz and then become soldiers in the IDF.  Young men and women make up the group.  They are most likely from Eastern USA.  These young people have been thinking of  this decision for some time.  They have to work on their Conversational Hebrew, though.  By making this decision, they have raised the spirits of Israelis. 

Reference: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/146837