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1880s. Refugees from Russian Empire

Having lost their statehood two millennia ago, Jews gradually settled throughout the globe. The process of migration has been particularly intense over the past 500 years, starting with the expulsion of Jews from Spain and the discovery of America. This period of our history can be called the "Great Migration of the Jews"

Alexander VISHNEVETSKY

Jewish migration is always associated with persecution, discrimination and economic motives. The global Jewish diaspora formed as a result of resettlement represents people living outside their country of origin (Eretz Israel) in the form of ethnic and subethnic groups. In the Jewish Diaspora, its various centers are closely connected, often located at great distances from each other. Migration processes led to declines and the emergence of new centers Jewish life outside the historical homeland. Already before new era within the framework of the Jewish diaspora, independent centers developed in regions remote from each other - for example, in Alexandria, Babylon.

The history of the Jewish diaspora, like, for example, the Chinese or Armenian, can be traced back for many centuries, but no historical diaspora has such a high degree of cultural diversity and dynamism as the Jewish one. The meeting of Jews from different established diaspora centers as a result of migration processes across many centuries (for example, Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the Netherlands in the 17th century) is one of the most intriguing aspects Jewish history.

Members of a dispersed ethno-religious community traditionally play important role as intercultural mediators, including with members of other diasporas. In the respective host society, they form a minority whose well-being depends on interaction with the local population and other migrant groups, on security, and favorable economic and political conditions. In order to survive, this minority occupies empty economic niches in their countries of residence. Preservation of cultural differences with the local population, unique professional activities, adherence to religious beliefs, prohibition of mixed marriages were necessary conditions to preserve Jewish communities in the Diaspora for many generations.

Migrations, primarily due to forced evictions, have been a common phenomenon in human history, and the Jewish one is no exception, although the idea of ​​​​the eternal wandering of the Jews on earth until the second coming of Jesus is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition in the form of anti-Semitic prejudices.

Jewish migrations can be roughly divided into three successive periods between the 1450s and the present:

1492-1789 - expulsion from Spain and growth of the diaspora in Eastern Europe;

1789-1914 - mass migration from Eastern European countries and rapid population growth in new centers of the diaspora;

20th century, since 1914: expulsions, the Holocaust, the creation of the Jewish state and mass repatriation to Israel.

Already by the middle of the 10th century, there were three independent and very culturally different centers in the diaspora, between which active exchanges took place. The main center of the Diaspora, both in terms of Jewish population and culture, was located on the Iberian Peninsula. Here, during the Middle Ages, a thriving Sephardic community developed under the rule of Muslims who were initially tolerant of Jews. From the mid-15th century, most Spanish Jews were under Christian rule, with more and more Jews forced Catholic Church convert to Christianity. Many of the so-called "Marans" continued to practice Judaism secretly. The complete expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1492 was also marked by the expulsion of Jews who had not converted to Christianity from Spain, Sicily and southern Italy. Portugal, which was the closest refuge for Jews, issued a similar decree under Spanish pressure in 1497 to persecute unbaptized Jews. The expulsion of Spanish Jews led to a significant weakening of the cultural and religious autonomy of the Sephardim.

IN Central Europe- the second center of the diaspora, dispersed over a large territory, lived Ashkenazi Jews, but their number was significantly smaller than the number of Sephardim in the first center. Despite brutal persecution during the Crusades and expulsion from most territories in the west of the continent in the 13th and XIV centuries, Jews lived in many parts of the Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century.

The third and oldest center was located in the Muslim port cities of the Middle East and Persia, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia. Most Sephardi Jews fled Spain and Portugal to North Africa, where they settled for several generations around Mediterranean Sea, from Morocco in the west to the coast of Asia Minor, present-day northern Greece, Bosnia and Bulgaria. The Sephardim founded a number of thriving communities. In some cities, such as Thessaloniki, they represented a significant proportion of the population. Some Sephardim ended up in Turkey. Muslim rulers imposed a high tax burden on the Jews, but at the same time guaranteed security, commercial privileges, and religious autonomy.

Increasing persecution and economic hardship explain why Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe gradually moved into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ottoman-ruled southeastern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. In Poland and Lithuania, Jews were under the protection of the crown, they had relatively favorable living and working conditions. Jewish immigrants settled in large and small cities (towns) in the territory of modern Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and the western part of Ukraine.

The creation of a ghetto in the flourishing merchant republic of Venice in 1516 meant the recognition of Jews as independent entities in the Mediterranean trading network. After persecution and expulsion, ghettos, like shtetls in Eastern Europe, became concessions to Jewish communities, a guarantee cultural autonomy and participation in the economies of the respective countries. The Sephardic Jews of Venice maintained contacts with members of the Eastern and Ashkenazi diasporas.

At the same time, two more centers arose - in northwestern Europe and in the New World. Both centers owe their development to attractive economic and legal conditions. In Amsterdam, at the end of the 16th century, an influential Sephardic community, whose members were mainly Jews from Spain and Portugal, established itself. Sephardic merchants from Amsterdam opened trade throughout Western Europe, as well as with the colonies in South America. In 1654, 23 Sephardic Jews arrived from Brazil in New Amsterdam (from 1664 - New York), where they received the right to settle and found the first Jewish community in North America. In the 17th century, the first Ashkenazi Jews migrated to the Netherlands and the New World.

The educated Ashkenazi center in Eastern Europe flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries as the most populous and culturally dominant center of the diaspora. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy, and they created the Vaad, a regularly meeting Jewish parliament at which the main communities of Ashkenazi Jewry were represented.

The phase of relative political stability associated with the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in Central and Western Europe in 1648 gave way in the same year to a prolonged crisis in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, Bohdan Khmelnitsky (1595-1657) rebelled against the Polish crown, while the Jewish population of Eastern Europe suffered greatly, and a massive wave of refugees arose. Against the backdrop of the political and economic crisis of the 17th century, Hasidism arose in western Ukraine, in mid-18th century century, it became a response to the crisis of traditional Judaism. By this time, the number of Ashkenazi Jews exceeded the number of Sephardim and Eastern Jews. In the last third of the 18th century, Poland lost its political independence, its Jewish population was divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia.

The year was 1789 turning point. Ideals french revolution related to receiving all civil rights, for most European Jews were of a dual nature. The presence of freedom and equality opened up new opportunities, but also posed a threat to Jewish communities in the form of assimilation. Later, by 1870, the number of Jews in various regions of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and in Southeastern Europe had grown to four million; most of them lived in shtetls. They represented more than two-thirds of world Jewry. Germany, the largest community outside Eastern Europe, was home to some 450,000 Jews—their relatively large numbers the result of natural growth and the Prussian annexation of parts of Poland in late XVIII century. Before early XIX centuries of restrictions on the possibilities of their migration were associated with the negative attitude of already established Jewish communities, such as in Amsterdam, the increase in moving costs and risks, so only individual Jews migrated to the Central and Western Europe or even to the New World.

The stormy wave of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe began in the last third of the 19th century and was due to many reasons: economic, religious and political. The situation of the Jewish population in Russia and Romania has worsened - unfavorable economic situation, increasing violence, huge population growth, numerous restrictions. Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, starting in 1881, became the decisive argument for hundreds of thousands of Jews to leave their homes. The migration flow was mainly directed to the United States, where by 1900 the main center of Jewish life outside Europe had been created. Jewish migration became a global movement; from 1881 to 1914, during the heyday of mass immigration, more than two million Jews came from the Russian Empire, Romania, and Austria-Hungary to the United States. Behind XIX century About 100 thousand Jews from German states also left for North America. But even the huge outflow of emigrants did not disrupt the overall demographic balance - moreover, the number of Jews in Eastern Europe continued to grow rapidly due to increased life expectancy and a decrease in infant mortality. By 1900, the Jewish population worldwide had grown to ten million; nine million of them were Ashkenazi. Throughout the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries, until the beginning of the Nazi genocide, about 80 percent of world Jewry continued to live in Eastern Europe.

The countries of the New World needed European settlers. Network development railways and maritime transport has provided safe and quick way moving from Europe and America. The average travel time from settlements in Central Europe to anywhere in North America has fallen from several months to less than three weeks. Soon after 1880, huge ocean-going ships began crossing the Atlantic Ocean in less than a week, making moving to America accessible to everyone. In large cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, large Jewish ghettos. In many new diaspora centers, newly arrived Jews formed a majority within a few years, including in the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, Argentina and Palestine. Migration from the Russian and Habsburg Empires and Romania not only upset the balance between the centers of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and beyond, it also driving force rapid growth Jewish population in new centers. But the global mass migration of Jews ran into opposition from immigration opponents who were influenced by anti-Semitic stereotypes.

International cooperating Jewish relief organizations such as the Paris World Jewish Union, the New York Jewish Immigrant Aid Society and the Jewish Immigrant Society (HIAS), and the Berlin Society for the Aid of German Jews provided support to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, primarily with food.

Suffered greatly in the First World War big center Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe. Russian military authorities deported tens of thousands of Jews into the interior of the country in 1915-1916. The Habsburg Empire began mass persecution in Galicia, and a wave of refugees poured into Vienna and Budapest. The war led to the collapse of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, military conflicts continued until the 1920s. According to the most conservative estimates, 60 thousand Jews died in 1918-1919 as a result of pogroms, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes. Large groups managed to escape to the West, but for most refugees the routes were closed. Behind the American immigration restrictions of 1921 was not only the fear of the spread of Bolshevism, but also clearly anti-Semitic prejudice.

Despite this, by 1925 there were already more than a million people in New York and Brooklyn, representing over ten percent of the world's Jewish population. Canada, the UK and Argentina have also made immigration more difficult. Many states required valid passports and transit visas for entry, which refugees did not have, and without documents, people lost the right to free movement. For many years, Jewish settlers lived throughout Europe in refugee camps and urban slums as transit passengers. Many of these people were subjected to Nazi persecution after 1939 and died.

Few countries remained open to migrants from Eastern Europe after 1918. These were the Weimar Republic, which pursued a relatively liberal policy towards refugees, and France, which needed labor resources.

The response to growing anti-Semitism and nationalist movements in Eastern Europe was Zionism. After World War I, it became a mass movement and led to an increase in the number of settlers in Eretz Israel. Palestine gained in the 1920s higher value for immigrants, but difficult conditions life under the British Mandate explains why the number of those returning to their original countries of residence was already almost as high as the repatriates in the second half of the 1920s.

There was significant Jewish migration in the Soviet Union big cities and to Crimea. Many were resettled in the late 1920s east to Birobidzhan during Stalin's forced collectivization. China, Brazil and Mexico became new homes for thousands of Jewish refugees in the early 1920s. During the interwar period, Jewish and other migrants played a significant role in the cultural boom in Berlin.

The global economic crisis that began in 1929 caused economic migration and tightened immigration restrictions. This presented great obstacles for Jewish refugees from Germany after 1933. In 1939, the world's Jewish population had grown to seventeen million, of which approximately 14 million were Ashkenazi. With more than eight million Jews, Eastern Europe was still the most important center of the diaspora, followed by the United States. There was an increase in anti-Semitism in all Western countries, the Jews of Europe again became the subject of false accusations, suspicions, and sometimes undisguised hatred. In Poland in the mid-1930s, anti-Semitic policies were pursued, and attitudes towards Jewish citizens deteriorated sharply.

After the Nazis seized power, about 250 thousand Jews managed to emigrate from Europe through complex routes, often after losing all their property and waiting for months, even years. From the beginning of 1938 until the outbreak of war, persecution of Jews began in the territories of annexed Austria, the Sudetenland and, finally, occupied Bohemia and Moravia. Economic activity Jews in Nazi-controlled countries was completely stopped.

The Evian Conference in June 1938, convened by American President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) to discuss ways to facilitate the emigration of German and Austrian Jews, produced virtually no result: none of the 32 participating countries was prepared to accept Jewish refugees.

The outbreak of war worsened the situation. In October 1941, Germany introduced a ban on Jewish emigration from territories controlled by by German troops. At this time, the Wehrmacht, Allied forces and local collaborators had already exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews in the West Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, the "Final Solution" plan for the Jewish Question was adopted. The organized deportation of millions of Jews to death camps across Europe was a form of forced migration. The catastrophe completely destroyed the main center of the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe in just four years. The victims of the Holocaust also included Sephardim, mainly from Greece, Yugoslavia and Tunisia. Some Jews in the USSR (more than two million) avoided this fate by evacuating deeper into the country. Some escaped because they were deported to the Gulag after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939.

After the liberation of the surviving Jewish refugees, many, as after the First World War, during for long years lived in constant anticipation of transit. Only a few countries were ready to accept them. In the United States, immigration was thwarted by anti-Semitic circles. Most countries in the Middle East have declared Jews an undesirable minority. In Palestine, the British raised insurmountable obstacles to the repatriation of Jews.

The creation of Israel on May 14, 1948 changed the situation. One of the first decrees of the new state was the decision to turn repatriation into public policy. The process of disappearance of many centers of the Diaspora in the countries of dispersion and the revival of the national Jewish state in Israel began, which continues to this day. In the four years since independence, Israel has received 680,000 new immigrants. In the 1970s, yielding to powerful pressure from the Western world, the migration of Jews from the Soviet Union began. Initially, persecuted refuseniks were released in small numbers, then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, economic motives came to the fore. foreground and caused a massive wave of repatriation. By the end of the 1970s, 140,000 new repatriates arrived in the country. The late 1980s - early 1990s, during the collapse of the USSR, saw the peak of aliyah from the countries of the former Soviet Union; by 2000, 750 thousand Jews arrived in the country from the post-Soviet space. Migration from former USSR some also went to the United States, Canada, and Germany.

The collapse of the “camp of socialism”, the “Arab Spring”, the emergence of the Islamic State, the uncontrolled influx of Muslim migrants to Europe - these are the most visible changes in the last period of time that led to constant growth migration processes. The Jewish population in existing diaspora centers is declining. The reasons are assimilation, anti-Semitism and aliyah to Israel.

Nevertheless, the presence of diaspora centers is still an important factor in the political, economic and cultural interaction Israel with the outside world...

ALIA(עֲלִיָּה, `ascent`):

1. repatriation, resettlement of Jews to Israel for permanent residence;
2. groups of Jews who arrived in Eretz Israel from a certain country or during a certain period of time (for example, German Aliyah, Fifth Aliyah).

The Second Aliyah (1904–14) consisted mainly of immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, who at first were hired workers in the moshavot and in the cities. They founded the first workers' parties and mutual aid societies (see Halutzim), which belonged mainly to settlement movements kvutsot(see Kibbutz movement), and also laid the foundation for a new movement in the Hebrew press and literature. This aliyah, numbering more than 40 thousand repatriates, was interrupted by the First World War.

The Third Aliyah (1919–23) consisted of young pioneers (chalutzim), belonging mainly to the He-Halutz and Ha-Shomer ha-Tza'ir movements. Together with veterans of the second aliyah, they founded the federation of Jewish workers H istadrut and Gdud ha-'avodah, worked on road construction, created many kibbutzim and the first cooperative settlements - moshav. More than thirty-five thousand people arrived during this period.

The Fourth Aliyah (1924–28), numbering about 67 thousand people, included a significant number of representatives of the middle classes; more than half of them were from Poland. Approximately 4/5 of the arriving repatriates settled in cities. They built new neighborhoods, created workshops and small factories. This aliyah was suspended by the crisis and unemployment of 1926–28.

During the period of the fifth aliyah (1929–39), more than 250 thousand Jews moved to the country, more than a quarter of them from Nazi Germany. This aliyah significantly changed the character of the Yishuv. German repatriates brought with them significant funds, valuable work skills, economic experience and high qualifications in various fields of science, culture and art.

In 1940–48 About one hundred thousand people arrived in the country, sometimes called the sixth and seventh aliyah.

Under the English Mandate (1918–48), aliyah was regulated by the Palestine Administration. The official criterion for the permitted volume of aliyah until 1939 was the “economic capacity of the country,” regarding the indicators of which disagreements constantly arose between the British authorities and Jewish leaders; in addition, aliyah of capital owners, skilled artisans, students, etc. was allowed. However, during times of crisis, aliyah was often suspended or sharply limited for political reasons. The White Paper issued by the British government in May 1939 reduced aliyah to fifteen thousand people a year and then only until 1945. This measure, as well as the Nazi rise to power in Germany that preceded it and the subsequent Second World War and the Holocaust caused an increase in "illegal" immigration, which Jews called Aliya bet or H a'pala(“boldness”)

In 1934–48 About 115 thousand people entered the country illegally. 51.5 thousand people were interned by the authorities in Cyprus and allowed into Israel only after the declaration of independence. The State of Israel immediately abolished all restrictions on aliyah and passed the Law of Return (1950), which guaranteed every Jew the right to resettle in the country (as long as he did not pose a danger to the health or safety of society) and to obtain citizenship immediately upon arrival. The mass aliyah that followed the creation of the state took on the character of a kibbutz galuyot; some Jewish communities resettled almost entirely in Israel (such as communities in Bulgaria, Yemen and Iraq). State funds, as well as large deposits Diaspora Jews who entered the Jewish Agency were mobilized to transport, receive and integrate repatriates. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, over 1.25 million Jews arrived in the country, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe, North Africa and Arab countries Middle East. The flow of repatriates reached its maximum in 1948–51. (684 thousand people), 1955–57 (161 thousand people) and 1961–64. (220 thousand people). After the Six-Day War of 1967, there was an increase in aliyah from Western Europe, North and South America, and in 1971–74. a large flow of aliyah from the USSR. From total number 261 thousand repatriates arrived in Israel in the period 1967–74, about 100 thousand came from the Soviet Union.

According to the Ministry of Absorption, out of approximately 540 thousand. olim, who arrived in Israel in 1990–94. from the Soviet Union and the countries formed after its collapse, 81.2% are Jews according to Halacha, 9.4% are persons mixed origin, whose fathers are Jews and mothers are non-Jewish, 7.3% are spouses of Jews, 2.1% are grandchildren of Jews, for the most part who arrived with their Jewish relatives. About 50% of adults olim, repatriated in 1990–92. from the Soviet Union and the countries formed after its collapse, had a higher or incomplete higher education; among them there were about 12 thousand doctors and about 45 thousand engineers and architects. In 1992–94 the number of repatriates arriving in Israel each year has decreased compared to 1990–91. more than doubled, but the scale of aliyah remained very significant (in 1992 - 77,057 people, in 1993 - 76,805, in 1994 - 79,156). Significant majority olim were immigrants from the Soviet Union and countries formed after its collapse (in 1992 - 84.6%, in 1993 - 86.2%, in 1994 - 85.7%).

Jewish history developed in such a way that, having lost their state two millennia ago, Jews gradually settled throughout the globe. This process of settlement has been particularly intense over the past 500 years, starting with the expulsion of Jews from Spain and the discovery of America. This period of our history can be called the “great migration of people.”
Jewish migration is always associated with persecution, discrimination and economic motives. The global Jewish diaspora formed as a result of migration represents people living outside their country of origin (Eretz - Israel) in the form of ethnic and subethnic groups. In the diaspora, its various centers are closely connected, often located at great distances from each other. The presence of migration processes led to the decline and growth of centers of the Jewish Diaspora. Already before the new era, within the framework of the Jewish diaspora, independent centers developed in regions remote from each other, such as, for example, in Alexandria and Babylon.
The history of the Jewish diaspora, like, for example, the Chinese or Armenian, can be traced back for many centuries, but no historical diaspora has such a high degree of cultural diversity and dynamism as the Jewish one. The meeting of Jews from different established diaspora centers through migration processes over many centuries (for example, Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the Netherlands in the 17th century) is one of the most intriguing aspects of Jewish history.
Members of a dispersed ethno-religious community have traditionally played an important role as intercultural mediators, including with members of other diasporas. In the respective host society, they form a minority whose well-being depends on interaction with the local population and other migrant groups, on security, and favorable economic and political conditions. In order to survive, this minority occupies empty economic niches in their countries of residence. Maintaining cultural differences with the local population, unique professional activities, adherence to religious principles, and the prohibition of mixed marriages were necessary conditions for the preservation of Jewish communities in the Diaspora for many generations.
Migrations, primarily due to forced evictions, have been common in human history, and Jewish history is no exception, although the idea of ​​​​the eternal wandering of Jews on earth until the Second Coming of Christ is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition as anti-Semitic prejudice.
Jewish migrations can be roughly divided into three successive periods between the 1450s and the present (the following division into periods is according to the article: "Jewish migration, tobias brinkmann"):
1492-1789 - expulsion from Spain and growth of the diaspora in Eastern Europe;
1789-1914 - mass migration from Eastern European countries and rapid population growth in new centers of the diaspora;
20th century, starting from 1914: expulsions, the Holocaust, the creation of a Jewish state and mass repatriation to Israel.
Already in the tenth - eleventh centuries, there were three independent and very culturally different centers in the diaspora, between which active exchange took place. The main center of the Diaspora, both in terms of the size of the Jewish population and its role, was located on the Iberian Peninsula. Here, in the Middle Ages, a thriving Sephardic community developed under the rule of Muslims who were initially tolerant of Jews. From the mid-fifteenth century, most Spanish Jews were under Christian rule, with more and more Jews forced by the Catholic Church to convert to Christianity. Many of the so-called baptized Marano Jews continued to secretly practice Judaism. The complete expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1492 was also marked by the expulsion of Jews who had not converted to Christianity from Spain, Sicily and southern Italy. Portugal, which was the closest refuge for Jews, issued a similar decree under Spanish pressure in 1497 to persecute unbaptized Jews. The expulsion of Spanish Jews led to a significant weakening of the cultural and religious autonomy of the Sephardim.
In Central Europe, in the second center of the diaspora, widely dispersed over a large territory, Ashkenazi Jews lived, but their numbers were significantly smaller than the number of Sephardim in the first center. Despite severe persecution during the Crusades and expulsion from most territories in the west of the continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Jews lived in many parts of the Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century.
The third and oldest center was located in the Muslim and port cities of the Middle East and Persia, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Asia. Most Sephardic Jews fled Spain and Portugal to North Africa, where they settled over several generations around the Mediterranean, from Morocco in the west to the coast of Asia Minor, what is today northern Greece, Bosnia and Bulgaria. The Sephardim founded a number of thriving communities. In some cities, such as Thessaloniki, they represented a significant part of the population. Some Sephardim ended up in Turkey. Muslim rulers imposed higher tax burdens on Jews, but at the same time guaranteed security, commercial privileges, and religious autonomy.
Increasing persecution and economic hardship explain why Ashkenazi Jews gradually moved from central Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to areas of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ottoman-ruled southeastern Europe. In Poland and Lithuania, Jews were under the protection of the crown, they had relatively favorable living and working conditions. Jewish immigrants settled in large and small cities (towns) in the territory of modern Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and the western part of Ukraine.
The creation of the ghetto in the flourishing merchant republic of Venice in 1516 meant the recognition of Jews as independent entities in the Mediterranean trading network. After arbitrary persecution and expulsion, ghettos, like shtetls in Eastern Europe, became concessions to Jewish communities, a guarantee of cultural autonomy and participation in the economies of their respective countries. The Sephardic Jews of Venice maintained contact with members of the Eastern and Ashkenazi diaspora.
Later, two more centers arose - in northwestern Europe and in the New World. Both centers owe their development to attractive economic and legal conditions. In Amsterdam, at the end of the sixteenth century, an influential Sephardic community, whose members were mainly Jews from Spain and Portugal, established itself. Sephardic merchants from Amsterdam opened trade throughout Western Europe, as well as with the colonies in South America. In 1654, 23 Sephardic Jews arrived from Brazil in New Amsterdam (from 1664 - New York), where they received the right to settle and found the first Jewish community in North America. In the seventeenth century, the first Ashkenazi Jews migrated to the Netherlands and the New World.
The educated Ashkenazi center in Eastern Europe flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the most populous and culturally dominant center of the diaspora. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy, they created the Vaad - a regularly meeting Jewish parliament, at which the main communities of Ashkenazi Jewry were represented.
The phase of relative political stability associated with the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in Central and Western Europe in 1648 gave way in the same year to a prolonged crisis in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, Bohdan Khmelnitsky (1595-1657) rebelled against the Polish crown, while the Jewish population of Eastern Europe suffered greatly, and a massive wave of refugees arose. Against the backdrop of the political and economic crisis of the seventeenth century, Hasidism arose in western Ukraine; it became a response in the mid-eighteenth century to the crisis of traditional Judaism. By this time, the number of Ashkenazi Jews exceeded the number of Sephardim and Eastern Jews. In the last third of the eighteenth century, Poland lost its political independence and its Jewish population became divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia.
1789 was a turning point. The ideals of the French Revolution, associated with obtaining full civil rights, were ambivalent for most European Jews. The presence of freedom and equality opened up new opportunities for Jews, but also represented a threat to Jewish communities in the form of assimilation. Later, by 1870, the number of Jews in various regions of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and in Southeastern Europe had grown to four million; most of them lived in shtetls. They represented more than two-thirds of the world's Jewish population. Germany, the largest community outside of Eastern Europe, was home to some 450,000 Jews—their relatively large numbers there were the result of natural increase and the Prussian annexation of parts of Poland in the late eighteenth century. Until the beginning of the 19th century, restrictions on migration opportunities were associated with the negative attitude of already established Jewish communities, such as in Amsterdam, rising costs of relocation and risks, so only a few Jews migrated to Central and Western Europe or even to the New World.
The stormy wave of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe began in the last third of the 19th century and was due to many reasons: economic, religious and political. The situation of the Jewish population in Russia and Romania worsened - an unfavorable economic situation, increasing violence, huge population growth, numerous restrictions. Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, starting in 1881, became decisive arguments for hundreds of thousands of Jews to leave their homes. The migration flow was mainly directed to the United States, where by 1900 the main center of Jewish life outside Europe had been created. Jewish migration from Eastern Europe became a global movement; from 1881 to 1914, during the heyday of mass immigration, more than two million Jews came from the Russian Empire, Romania, and Austria-Hungary to the United States. During the 19th century, about 100 thousand Jews from German states also left for North America. But even the huge outflow of emigrants did not disrupt the general demographic balance of the Jewish people - moreover, the number of Jews in Eastern Europe continued to grow rapidly due to increased life expectancy and a decrease in infant mortality. By 1900, the Jewish population worldwide had grown to ten million; nine million of them were Ashkenazi. Throughout the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries, until the beginning of the fascist genocide, about 80 percent of world Jewry continued to live in Eastern Europe.
The countries of the New World needed European settlers. The development of a network of railways and maritime transport provided, starting in the 1850s, a safe and fast way to travel from Europe to America. The average travel time from settlements in Central Europe to anywhere in North America has fallen from several months to less than three weeks. Soon after 1880, huge ocean-going ships began crossing the Atlantic Ocean in less than a week, making moving to America accessible to everyone. Large Jewish ghettos arose in large cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. In many diaspora centers, Jewish newcomers have been in the majority for several years, including the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, Argentina, and Palestine. Migration from the Russian and Habsburg Empires and Romania not only upset the balance between Jewish diaspora centers in Europe and beyond, it was the driving force behind the rapid growth of Jewish populations in the new centers. But the global mass migration of Jews ran into opposition from immigration opponents who were influenced by anti-Semitic stereotypes.
International cooperating Jewish relief organizations such as the Paris World Jewish Union, the New York Jewish Immigrant Aid Society and the Jewish Immigrant Society (HIAS), and the Berlin Society for the Aid of German Jews provided support to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, primarily with food.
In World War I, a large center of Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe suffered greatly. Russian military authorities deported tens of thousands of Jews into the country in 1915-1916. The Habsburg Empire began mass persecution in Galicia, and a wave of refugees poured into Vienna and Budapest. The war led to the collapse of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and military conflicts continued until the 1920s. According to the most conservative estimates, 60 thousand Jews died in 1918-1919 as a result of pogroms, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Jews lost their homes. Large groups managed to escape to the West, but for most refugees the routes were closed. Behind the American immigration restrictions of 1921 was not only the fear of the spread of Bolshevism, but also clearly anti-Semitic prejudice.
Despite this, by 1925 there were already more than one million people in New York and Brooklyn, representing over ten percent of the world's Jewish population. Canada, the UK and Argentina have also made immigration more difficult. Many states required valid passports and transit visas for entry, which refugees did not have, and without documents, people lost the right to free movement. For many years, Jewish settlers lived throughout Europe in refugee camps and urban slums as transit passengers. Many of these people were subjected to Nazi persecution after 1939 and died.
Few countries remained open to migrants from Eastern Europe after 1918. These were the Weimar Republic, which pursued a relatively liberal policy towards refugees, and France, which needed labor resources.
The response to growing anti-Semitism and nationalist movements in Eastern Europe was Zionism. After World War I, it became a mass movement and led to an increase in the number of settlers in Eretz Israel. Palestine became more important to immigrants in the 1920s, but the difficult conditions of life under the British Mandate explain why the number of returnees to their countries of origin was already almost as high as the number of immigrants in the second half of the 1920s.
In the Soviet Union there was significant Jewish migration to major cities and to Crimea. Many were resettled in the late 1920s east to Birobidzhan during Stalin's forced collectivization. Shanghai, Brazil and Mexico became new homes for thousands of Jewish refugees in the early 1920s. During the interwar period, Jewish and other migrants played a significant role in the cultural boom in Berlin.
The global economic crisis that began in 1929 caused economic migration and tightened immigration restrictions. This presented great obstacles for Jewish refugees from Germany after 1933. In 1939, the world's Jewish population had grown to seventeen million—of which approximately 14 million were Ashkenazi. With more than eight million Jews, Eastern Europe was still the most important center of the diaspora, followed by the United States. There was an increase in anti-Semitism in all Western countries, the Jews of Europe again became the subject of false accusations, suspicions, and sometimes undisguised hatred. In Poland in the mid-1930s, anti-Semitic policies were pursued, and attitudes towards Jewish citizens deteriorated sharply.
After the Nazis seized power, some 250,000 Jews managed to emigrate from Europe through complex routes, often after losing their property and waiting for months, even years. From the beginning of 1938 until the outbreak of war, persecution of Jews began in the territories of annexed Austria, the Sudetenland and, finally, occupied Bohemia and Moravia. Jewish economic activity in Nazi-controlled countries was completely stopped.
The Evian Conference in June 1938, convened by American President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) to discuss ways to facilitate the emigration of German and Austrian Jews, produced virtually no results; none of the 32 participating countries was prepared to accept Jewish refugees.
The outbreak of war worsened the situation. In October 1941, Germany introduced a ban on Jewish emigration from areas controlled by German troops. At this time, the Wehrmacht, Allied forces and local collaborators had already exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews in the western Soviet Union. Soon after this, a plan for the "final solution" of the Jewish question was adopted. The organized deportation of millions of Jews to death camps throughout Europe was a form of forced migration. The catastrophe completely destroyed the main center of the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe in just four years. The victims of the Holocaust also included Sephardim, mainly from Greece, Yugoslavia and Tunisia. Some of the Jews in the USSR (more than two million) escaped by evacuating deeper into the country. Some escaped because they were deported to the Gulag after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939.
After the liberation of the surviving Jewish refugees, many, as after the First World War, lived for many years in constant anticipation of transit. Only a few countries were ready to accept them. In the United States, immigration was thwarted by anti-Semitic circles. Most countries in the Middle East have declared Jews an undesirable minority. In Palestine, the British put up insurmountable obstacles to the emigration of Jews.
The creation of Israel on May 14, 1948 changed the situation. One of the first decrees of the new state was the decision to turn emigration into state policy. The process of disappearance of many centers of the Diaspora in the countries of dispersion and the revival of the national Jewish state in Israel began, which continues to this day. After the war, aliyah came from two main centers: from British camps on the island of Cyprus, where refugees from Europe who survived the Holocaust were sent. as well as Jews from countries Arab East. Emigration mainly came from the three largest communities: Iraq, Yemen and Morocco, leading to the complete disappearance under the influence of violence of centuries-old Jewish centers in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean region. Large groups Jews also arrived from Romania and Poland. In the four years following the declaration of independence, Israel received 680,000 new immigrants. In the 1970s, yielding to powerful pressure from the Western world, the migration of Jews from the Soviet Union began. Initially, persecuted political objectors were released in small numbers, then after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, economic motives came to the fore and caused a massive wave of migration. Until the end of the 70s, 140,000 new repatriates arrived in the country. The late 1980s and early 1990s, during the collapse of the USSR, saw the peak of aliyah from the countries of the former Soviet Union; by 2000, 750 thousand Jews arrived in the country from the post-Soviet space. Migration from the former USSR also partially went to the United States, Canada, and Germany.
The collapse of the “camp of socialism”, the “Arab Spring”, the emergence of the Islamic State, the uncontrolled influx of Muslim immigrants into Europe - these are the most visible changes in the most recent period of time, which have led to a constant increase in migration processes. The Jewish population in existing diaspora centers is declining. The reasons are assimilation, anti-Semitism and aliyah to Israel.
However, the presence of diaspora centers is an important factor in Israel's political, economic and cultural interaction with the outside world...

For many centuries, Jews dreamed of finding their own state. They considered not only the Promised Land as a refuge, but also other places on the planet, for example, East Africa.

Relocation in English

On August 14, 1903, the British government made a formal proposal to the Zionist Organization to create an autonomous Jewish settlement in British East Africa in the territory of Kenya, called Uganda (not to be confused with modern state Uganda).

This idea arose a year earlier at a meeting between one of the leaders of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and the British banker Nathan Rothschild, and was later discussed with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.

According to the developed plan, the internal administration of the settlement was to be autonomous, but the supreme power belonged to the British government. The boundaries of the territory of the Jewish state were not discussed and had to be established after consultation with British experts and the conclusion of a special commission of the Zionist Organization, which planned to study the site of the proposed settlement.

British officials and bankers motivated this idea with a desire to help the Jewish people suffering from pogroms in Europe. However, it appears that Great Britain was primarily motivated by the desire to attract professional professionals to East Africa. labor and capital for economic development region.

London also had other reasons. The Anglo-Boer War had recently ended and the British authorities were interested in settling civilized white inhabitants on the territory of “black Africa” and making it easier for themselves to resolve the issue of confrontation with local peoples.

However, the noble idea of ​​​​help should not be completely discounted. Despite the fact that Jews were also discriminated against in Britain, as in continental Europe, English anti-Semitism was still more restrained and tolerant. And in some aristocratic and literary circles Victorian England even benevolent romantic feelings towards Jews were cultivated.

Herzl's dreams

The founder of the World Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl, like no one else, reacted painfully to any manifestations of anti-Semitism. He was deeply outraged by how the public cultural capital Europe - Paris can shout “death to the Jews!” and similar slogans. The question of saving Eastern European Jewry became especially acute during the days of Christian Easter in 1903, when a bloody pogrom broke out in Chisinau.

Increased anti-Semitic sentiments in Europe turn of XIX-XX centuries and the dispersion of Jews fleeing oppression from Russia finally convinced Herzl of the need to create Jewish autonomy.

Despite Herzl's significant disagreements with other leaders of the Zionist Organization, Oskar Marmorek and Max Nordau, they agreed on one thing: the Jews needed their own independent state. But the question of its location continued to remain controversial.

Dr. Herzl tried to explain the essence of the British project and his position: “Uganda is not the end of Zionism, Uganda is only a junction station, a rallying point for Israel on the way to Zion. The history of Israel is about to repeat itself in Uganda. Is it the first time that Africa will serve as a stage for the Jews to move to the Promised Land? Remember the Patriarch Joseph and the land of Goshen.”

Not all Jews supported the idea of ​​moving to Africa, although even representatives of other nationalities saw its advantages. For example, Russian prose writer Alexander Amfitheatrov wrote: “It’s wonderful there, really! And palm trees, and the sea, and even giraffes!” He argued to his friend Rebbe Nuchim that Palestine would not be able to feed the Jews if the Zionist movement took on a much larger scale.

“Palestine is stone and sand, wild mountains, neglected steppes, skinny rivers, treelessness, disgusting coastline, salt marshes, malaria, Bedouins, locusts... You will suffocate in this jar of sand worse than even in your ill-fated Pale of Settlement,” argued Amphiteatrov .

According to historians, Herzl, who promoted a plan for Jewish autonomy, had this to do with self-interest, which, first of all, consisted of establishing close ties with the British government. Official London could be useful in carrying out the resettlement and settlement of Jews in new territories, and in the future it would strengthen the position of the Zionist Organization in negotiations on the creation of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel.

Ultimately, Herzl's motives were primarily strategic: the creation of the so-called "night refuge" - Nachtasy, which did not constitute a deviation from the Basel program (adopted at the 1st Zionist Congress), which provided for a public legal refuge for Jews in Palestine.

Rabbi Berl Wein noted that for Herzl, Zionism was not a religious idea or a branch of Jewish history and tradition, but a new pragmatic approach to solving the problem of Jewish suffering. Therefore Uganda was acceptable as any possible territory.

Discord

The Uganda Plan was presented by Herzl at the 6th Zionist Congress in August 1903. The plan caused fierce debate. During the congress, the majority of Russian members of the Executive Committee of the Zionist Organization handed Herzl a statement of their disagreement with the plan and left the meeting room.

But in the end the plan was supported by 295 votes (178 were against, 132 abstained). As a result of the congress, a commission was sent to Uganda to assess the prospects for creating Jewish autonomy in Africa. However, the disputes did not end there, which threatened the unity of the Zionist movement.

In October 1903, opponents of the Uganda plan at the Kharkov Conference united into the group Tsionei Zion (“Zionists of Zion”), the leaders of which were Russian Hasidic Jews Yehiel Chlenov and Menachem Usyshkin. Herzl refused to accept a delegation sent to him with an ultimatum demanding that he renounce the Uganda plan. However, at an informal meeting with representatives of the opposition, Herzl still managed to convince them that he intended to continue to seek recognition of the right of Jews to settle in Palestine, which saved the Zionist Organization from a final split.

At a meeting of the Executive Committee on April 11, 1904, reconciliation was achieved between the conflicting parties. By this time, the Jewish commission from Uganda had returned, declaring the territory unsuitable for settlement. In addition, the British government also cooled down to the Uganda plan.

The controversy surrounding the plan to resettle Jews in East Africa did cost the Zionist movement its integrity. So, I left the organization famous writer Israel Zangwill created his own territorialism movement. Many Russian Zionists also left the organization.

In July 1905, shortly before the 7th Zionist Congress, which was supposed to finally resolve the issue of Uganda, Theodor Herzl died suddenly of a heart attack.

Only Eretz Israel

After Herzl's death, his ideas continued to live. Israel Zangwill, who put forward the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” continued to consider the possibility of creating Jewish autonomy anywhere on the planet. He spent the next few decades trying to establish a Jewish state in Australia, Africa and North America.

It is interesting to note that on the eve of World War II in Poland, as part of the proposed Polish colonization of Madagascar, a movement arose to resettle Jews on this island. With the outbreak of the war, the Third Reich, not without the influence of the British Ugandan program, was developing a plan for the forced resettlement of all Jews from Europe to Madagascar.

At the 7th Zionist Congress, the plan to resettle Jews in Uganda, based on the negative conclusion of the commission sent to East Africa, was finally rejected. The congress delegates adopted a resolution stating that “according to the Basel Program, the Zionist Organization should facilitate the settlement of Jews only in Eretz Israel.” They say that shortly before his death, Theodor Herzl himself said: “Palestine is the only country where our people can find peace.”

Thanks to high level social development of Israel, favorable conditions residence and employment, moving there has become very popular. Russians do not need a visa to stay in the country for up to three months.

If they decide to move, they receive financial support within the framework of programs for migrants (only persons of Jewish nationality).

Peculiarities

Israel's migration policy is aimed at the return of Jewish citizens and persons with Jewish roots who live abroad. According to the official policy of the state, nationality is determined through the maternal line. But even if the grandparents are Jews, in practice this is enough.

Under certain circumstances, persons who have converted to Judaism are considered Jews.

It is not necessary to renounce existing citizenship upon repatriation, unlike naturalization.

After arrival, a person with Jewish nationality, they meet you and in a special room they give you an internal passport, travel money, a SIM card and a card for registering with the health insurance fund.

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The immigrant receives the right to employment, pension and health care. For six months, a certain amount of money will be paid, customs benefits, discounts on the purchase of housing and cars will be provided.

For the first three months, a foreign Jew cannot participate in elections, and he will be given a passport only after a year of living in Israel.

For people of other nationalities, different conditions apply. They will receive citizenship only after three to four years of legal residence with existing material income and knowledge of Hebrew.

Methods

For those who are not Jews, there are several ways to obtain a residence permit:

After four years of legal residence, a migrant can apply for permanent residence. To obtain citizenship, which gives the right to obtain a national passport, participate in elections and find employment in government agencies, you can go through the naturalization process.

The repatriation program will help people with Jewish roots quickly obtain Israeli citizenship. The status can also be assigned to children and spouses of applicants and members of their families.

Stages of immigration to Israel from Russia

To obtain Jewish citizenship or a residence permit, you must contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in some cases the consulate. First you need to decide on the method of immigration and the reasons for moving.

Next steps:

1. Submission of documents. It is carried out by appointment. The waiting time can take up to two months.
2. Filling out the form. Is an important point. A special point is religion, since any other faith other than Judaism can become a reason for refusal.
3. Interview with the consul. All family members are required to attend, including children over three years of age. The applicant must be honest about the reasons for the move.
4. Verification of submitted documents by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
5. Obtaining a visa for up to one year, with subsequent extension for the same period.

If an immigrant decides to illegally remain in the country after the end of the visa-free visit, he will be deported and banned from entry for 10 years.

After four years of stay with a residence permit, you can begin to obtain permanent residence (permanent residence).

Its holder has all the rights enjoyed by Israeli citizens, except the following:

• get a local passport;
• hold positions in government bodies;
• take part in elections.

You can apply for citizenship after seven years of legal residence on Israeli territory. But not all foreigners decide to do this, because they do not want to lose their original citizenship.

Jewish origin provides an almost 100% guarantee of obtaining resident status.

Required documents

The most win-win option for moving to Israel is moving to permanent residence thanks to Jewish roots. “Right of blood” extends to the family up to the third generation.

But this requires documentary evidence.

• international passport;
• birth certificate of all family members on the maternal side;
• marriage or divorce certificate;
• two color photographs;
• A completed application form;
• education papers: diploma, certificate, certificate;
• employment history;
• medical certificate of health;
• insurance policy;
• military ID;
• certificate of no criminal record;
• documents confirming the presence and place of residence of relatives in Israel;
• death certificate of a deceased Jewish relative.

An invitation from relatives is not always required. But if there are old family photos, archival documents, letters, then this will be useful when considering the application at the consulate and will speed up the adoption of a positive decision.

All papers must be certified by a notary and translated into Hebrew and English.

Advantages and disadvantages

Moving to Israel for Russians has both positive and negative sides:

Now, knowing about all the pitfalls, everyone can make a conclusion for themselves whether they will like living in this country. And, if the positive aspects outweigh, you can go for a visa. Of course, it's worth going on an orientation tour first.