By SAM SOKOL, JPOST— Immigration to Israel increased by 2 percent in 2013, with over 16,000 olim arriving, the Central Bureau of Statistics announced on Tuesday. Of the 16,884 immigrants who arrived last year, 43% came from the former Soviet Union, primarily Russia and Ukraine, 17% came from France, 13% from the United States and…
This was the last song written for my new album, The Promise. I needed a groovy, let’s-all-make-aliyah theme song that would describe the various major redemption moments of the past century. The opening line quotes the Ethiopian Crown Prince Ahmad when he finally gave permission for the Jews to leave. My heart is Dancing in…
By GAD LIOR, YNET— Israel’s population has crossed the eight million threshold over Passover, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Thursday. With six million Jews, Israel has become the world’s largest Jewish center. The remainder of the population is comprised of 1.6 million Arabs, 350,000 non-Arab Christians and others, mostly olim or relatives of olim from…
By MICHAEL FREUND, JPOST— Last week, the small and unassuming mikve (ritual bath) in Hod HaSharon witnessed the unfolding of a remarkable scene in the annals of Jewish history. One by one, six young Chinese men, all descendants of the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, immersed themselves in the warm and purifying waters before a…
BY MICHAEL FREUND— This past Monday, as the Uzbekistan Airways flight began its descent to Tel Aviv, over 50 pairs of eyes looked out the plane’s windows, anxious to catch a glimpse of their new home. For more than 27 centuries, their ancestors had wandered in exile, clinging to the dream that one day, despite…
BY MICHAEL FREUND— Thousands of kilometers to the east, in the furthest reaches of northeastern India, a long-lost community continues to nourish its age-old dream of returning to its ancient homeland, the land of Israel. The Bnei Menashe, or “sons of Manasseh,” are descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, which were…
by Yoram Ettinger In 2010, a surge in the Israeli Jewish fertility rate is a long-term, unique, global phenomenon, while fertility rates decline sharply in the Third World in general and in Muslim countries in particular. In 2010, there is a 66% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the area between the Jordan River and the…
by Michael Freund, JPost.com King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella must be turning over in their graves. Five centuries after Spain’s Catholic monarchs sought to erase all vestiges of Jewish life in their realm through mass expulsion and forced conversion, a growing number of their victims’ descendants are seeking to return to their Jewish roots. It…
by Israel National News Staff Though international politics and intrigue have turned up the heat on another Israeli summer, a breath of fresh air breezed into the country on the tail of an El Al plane on Wednesday, as 232 North American Jews made aliyah. Among the new citizens are a five-month-old, a 95-year old,…