Salvador Dali [1904-1989], “The Rebirth of Israel.” 1968.
Historically, Diaspora Jews have often heaped praise on the Land of Israel, much of it mythical; here are four examples of such laudatory comments:
A man is safer in a pit filled with scorpions and snakes in the Land of Israel, than in the opulent palaces of a foreign land. Safer, in apparent physical danger in the Land of Israel, than in circumstances which appear physically secure outside the Land. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin [Russian Empire; 1749-1821].
In the Diaspora, whoever increases its settlement (by building a home or a business) adds to the destruction of the worship of God. But in the Land of Israel this same work is a mitzvah, since it settles the land. Rabbi Moses Sofer, known as Chatam Sofer [Slovakia; 1762-1839].
In our present peaceful existence outside the Land of Israel, where we [believe we] have found another Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem; this to me, is the greatest, deepest and most obvious and direct cause of all the awesome, frightening, monstrous, unimaginable destruction that we have experienced in the Diaspora. Rabbi Yaacov Emden [Germany; 1697-1776].
If a Jew will forget his origin and true identity and consider himself a full-fledged citizen of the country of his exile, if he thinks that Berlin is Jerusalem…then a raging storm will uproot him by his trunk. The tempest will arise and spread its roaring waves, and swallow, and destroy and spread forth without pity. Rabbi Meir Simcha HaCohen of Dvinsk [1843-1926] Meschech Chochma.
The punchline? None of the above rabbis ever settled in or even visited Israel.
The semi-tortured relationship that Jews outside of Israel have with the country has meant that, over time, Israel achieved a kind of fantasy status; in the imagination of many, the country was undoubtedly the “right place” for Jews, even if those who held this view remained rooted in every plot of earth except Israel. I do not say this critically; quite the opposite, I think there are many good reasons not to make aliyah (reasons which recruiters for aliyah will often conveniently skip over, and which I list further below).
More than three million Jews have moved to Israel since 1948. A majority of them came under circumstances where they were fleeing from some kind of persecution or antisemitic government policy; in the early years of the State, there were many Jews who were forcibly expelled from Arab countries in the region and ended up in Israel. Otherwise, the data is pretty consistent. North American Jews, by and large, do not make aliyah.
As the journalist Haviv Rettig Gur pointed out a decade ago, that reticence has been an endless source of frustration for the Jewish Agency and Israeli immigration officials: “[Many aliyah organizations argue that] aliya will come if Israeli bureaucracy does a better job serving the basic needs of immigrants. No one has done more in this regard than Nefesh B’Nefesh, which focuses on aliya from the US, Canada and the UK... Flush with financial grants and pamphlets explaining the logistics of Israeli life, bombarded with invitations to social events and job fairs both before and after their aliya, these [NBN] immigrants experienced an entirely different absorption into Israeli society than that of nearly any other immigrant in the country’s history. Arguably, no one has done it better. [But] as with every other aliya promotion program in the history of Zionism, it didn’t work.”
The data clearly backs up Rettig Gur’s assertion.
20 years of American aliya; figures from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics
And in the decade since the above chart, little has changed. American Jews immigrate at the rate of 2-3000 per year, maximum, with some spikes for reasons of the economy (see the slight rise after the 2008 global economic crisis). In the years from 2010-2019, 3800 Canadian Jews in total made aliyah (out of which there were three Malamets in 2013).
How should we account for this? In certain quarters, the answer has been staring at us all along – the Promised Land has moved west. Here is Reform Rabbi Gustav Poznanski, in 1841, at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina: “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”
This sentiment was echoed and amplified by the late Judaic Studies scholar, Jacob Neusner, in the 1980’s: “It's time to say that America is a better place to be a Jew than Jerusalem. If ever there was a Promised Land, we Jewish Americans are living in it. Here Jews have flourished, not alone in politics and the economy, but in matters of art, culture and learning. Jews feel safe and secure here in ways that they do not and cannot in the State of Israel. And they have found an authentically Jewish voice-their own voice-for their vision of themselves.”
Post October 7, such optimism may be branded as dangerously naïve; still, many North American Jews might have agreed with this characterization prior to the past year.
Certain Israeli writers, like A.B. Yehoshua have maintained a harsh critique of Diaspora ambivalence towards settling the Land: ”The nation hates the golah [exile] and dreams of Eretz Yisrael...On the other hand, throughout its historical activity it has been preoccupied with the one problem of how to survive in the golah, how to go on maintaining that hated existence.
Suppose, for example, that we had an unmarried friend that hated and suffered from his unmarried status, proclaimed that he believed in family life, and avidly sought it...Suppose that despite this he spoiled--almost intentionally--all possibilities of marriage, that every time we arranged a union between him and any woman, he did everything to get out of it, not because he did not like the woman or was incapable of love, but out of fear of marriage, in which he so fervently believed. Would it not be our duty to this friend to try to find out, by therapeutic means, the underlying motives for his profound neurotic conflict? The Jewish people are in need of just such therapy.”
Yehoshua was a full-time gadfly. I would never put it this harshly, as I think that guilt is poor substitute for happiness. To me, the reasons for aliyah aversion are not opaque and quite understandable, everything from taking care of aging parents, to wanting to be around one’s children and grandchildren; lack of job/income opportunities in Israel in a person’s chosen field; inability to learn Hebrew and an uneasiness towards Israeli manners and mores; enormous hesitation about coming with kids who will end up in the army; insecurity about violence/terrorism; trading in a larger house for a smaller apartment. The list goes on.
But the question of what is home remains. And as fractured as the body politic in this country may be, most Israeli Jews would affirm the title of a well-known song written by Ehud Manor in 1982: “Ein li eretz aḥeret” – “I have no other (home)land.”
What lyric will Diaspora Jews write now, and in the future?
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Further Reading
Haviv Rettig Gur, "The end of aliyah?" Times of Israel, Sept. 9, 2014
Prof. Jacob Neusner, "Is America the Promised Land for the Jews?" The Washington Post, March 8, 1987.
A.B. Yehoshua, "Exile as a Neurotic Solution" in Diaspora: Exile and the Contemporary Jewish Condition, 1986.