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- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen's main synagogue. R

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has led calls in Israel for French Jews to "come home to Israel" Saturday, after 17 people were killed in France during three days of Islamist attacks. "To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home," he said in a televised statement, referring to the Jewish practice of facing Jerusalem during prayer. "Unless the world comes to its senses, terror will continue to strike in other places," he added...

Increasing numbers of French Jews are leaving for Israel, citing dim economic prospects and a sense of being caught between an increasingly influential far right and militant Islam. More than 5,000 are on track to leave this year, the most since after the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel, seeing the influx as a success, is doubling down on its efforts to attract Europeans, planning to dedicate $29 million over two years to bring in new immigrants. France has the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States—about 500,000, according to rough estimates in a country that has outlawed...

The number of French Jews emigrating to Israel rose nearly four-fold in the first quarter of the year and could touch a record in 2014, a Jewish organization said Monday. The Jewish Agency for Israel, a global body responsible for the immigration and absorption of Jews into Israel, said 1,407 people left France for Israel between January and March against 353 people a year earlier. "This phenomenon is speeding up" said Ariel Kandel, the head of the Jewish Agency's French chapter.

A record-breaking 5,000 people from throughout France have thus far visited an aliyah fair taking place in the heart of Paris today, the same day as the French run-off election. The fair, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, is being attended by Jewish Agency Chairman of the Executive Natan Sharansky, as well as by representatives of various Israeli local authorities and government bodies, who are meeting with participants and presenting them with various opportunities for settling in Israel. Jewish Agency Chairman Sharansky noted emotionally that thousands of members of the French Jewish community had visited the fair. “I cannot...

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to enact an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1. Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran� in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran's third largest bank. At the same time as the...

According to figures released by the Jewish Agency and published this past week on the FightHatred.com website, in 2010 there was an increase of 63 percent in the number of Belgian Jews who made aliyah to Israel. Two hundred and fifty Belgian Jews chose to make Israel their home in 2010, compared to 152 in 2009. The report cites increasingly open anti-Semitism in recent years and the rise of violent attacks against members of the community, especially its highly-visible hareidi religious members, as causes for the sharp rise in the numbers of individuals making aliyah. There are 40,000 Jews in...

The government voted Sunday to bring the last members of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia to Israel. Once the estimated 8,000 tribe members arrive, mass Aliyah (immigration) from Ethiopia will end... ...ver 80,000 Ethiopian citizens have made Aliyah since the founding of the Jewish state. Mass immigration began in the 1980s with Operation Moses. Immigration from Ethiopia has since been limited, due to what Immigration and Absorption officials say are the high costs of integrating Ethiopian immigrants. Many Ethiopian-Israelis have accused the government of moving too slowly on bringing the community to Israel. However, others have called to end the...

If, like me, you are Jewish, then you probably are often challenged by the Israeli Press and many in our own communities to make Aliyah and return to Israel. Aliyah is always referred to as returning to Israel which is like the lyrics of an old John Denver song Rocky Mountain High, “Comin' home to a place I’ve never been before.” Of course, John is singing about Colorado and Aliyah pertains to Israel, but the concept is the same. The question often posed about making Aliyah is, “How?” The how is followed by leave my family, friends, life, comfort, job,...

After the attempt last spring to break the Israeli security blockade off the coast of the Gaza Strip, the British government denounced the Israeli navy’s forceful seizure of the blockade-runners as “completely unacceptable.” Long forgotten is Britain’s disgraceful history as a blockader of the Zionist Jews, and as a violent enforcer of that blockade. A brief account of this travesty would be instructive: Following the end of WWI, the Jewish survivors of Hitler’s Holocaust were desperate to leave the European killing grounds for a new life in Jewish Palestine. Knowing that the Palestinian Arabs were in the habit of launching...

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 Mediterranean (without Gaza) – and a 58% Jewish majority with Gaza. That Jewish majority benefits from a demographic tailwind and from a high potential of aliyah (Jewish immigration) and of returning Israeli expatriates.

Dimitri Volvinov, who immigrated to Israel on Sunday from Kyrgyzstan with his family, spoke on his arrival of the recent unrest in the country's capital, Bishkek. Riots in April led to the ouster of the country's president and thousands have been killed as ethnic tensions flared between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz this month. "[Bishkek] is in anarchy," Bolvinov said, "and no one from the police or the government is intervening. Since the night of the coup we have sat entire days at home with windows and blinds closed and shaking with fear." Volvinov, who arrived in Israel under the auspices of...

Nefesh B'Nefesh has decided to accelerate and deepen its activities in North America, in order to realize the potential increase in the number of immigrants to Israel during 2010. In cooperation with the Jewish Agency and government offices, the organization will hold next week, between March 7 and 14, eight large fairs in major cities in the US and Canada, in order to give hundreds of potential immigrants reliable information, guidance and inspiration on immigration to Israel. More than 1,500 North American Jews are expected to participate in the fairs. They will be able to meet representatives from government ministries,...

IQUITOS, Peru — If Ronald Reátegui Levy someday finds that he is the last Jew of Iquitos, it may well be of his own doing. His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel. “It is getting very lonely here,” said Mr. Reátegui Levy, 52, an inspector at Peru’s national oil company, referring to the more than 400 descendants of Jewish pioneers who have formally converted to Judaism this...

I just wanted to thank everyone for great enjoyment, learning, and (relative) mental stability I have gained here. The movers are here and the computer is to be packed shortly. Girls' last day at school is tomorrow. Off to Eretz Israel. Next Passover really will be in Jerusalem! Thank you all again. I will check back some, but not often.

Israel Gov’t Minister Favors Selective Aliyah… Nov. 24, 2008, He specifically referred to a rise in cases of neo-Nazism among Russian immigrants, some one million of which immigrated to Israel in the past 16 years. Three to four hundred thousand of the Russian immigrants are non-Jews recruited by the Jewish Agency using Jewish donor funds.http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124103 

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Not being an angel, I decided to rush in and discuss mixed-race marriages and Miranda Jones.. The Fifties was a conservative generation. Families were in and being good was in. Father knew best and nice girls didn’t do it. I was in college during the second half of it. Eisenhower was president, McCarthy began his witch hunt, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus and the US Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional. College intellectuals devoted themselves to national liberation in Africa at the expense of empire. But the...

Israel Enjoys Record Season of Nefesh B’Nefesh Aliyah By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----July 8....... Nefesh B’Nefesh will begin a record period of Aliya from the US and Canada with the first arrival of seven charter flights to Israel. Over 220 North Americans are making Aliyah through Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization dedicated to revitalizing North American and British immigration to Israel (in Hebrew, “Aliyah”) by removing or minimizing the financial, professional, logistical and social obstacles to Aliyah. Israel officials and dignitaries will greet the Nefesh B’Nefesh immigrants along with hundreds of family, friends and well-wishers. The first flight...

These days, even Jews who have never been to a synagogue are happy to assert that separateness: they are rossiiskiye, Russian citizens, but not russkiye, “Russians”. As many as 100,000 Russian-Israelis have gone back to Russia, says Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the director of the Lubavitch-run Federation of Jewish Communities, one of Russia's two main (and rival) umbrella groups. In a fast-growing market with a population over 20 times the size of Israel's, they often get better work. Today, a Russian Jew in Moscow will be more expensively dressed than his cousin in Tel Aviv: a big reversal from ten years...

PM Ehud Olmert received a standing ovation at the Orthodox Union’s annual convention in Jerusalem, speaking after outgoing Ambassador Danny Ayalon discouraged those present from coming on Aliyah. Ayalon, who just finished his term as Israel’s Ambassador to the US, stressed the need to unite behind Israel’s officials during these critical times. He also responded to Jewish Agency Chief Ze’ev Bielski’s call for American Jews to immigrate to Israel, saying: “I join Ze’ev’s call for Aliyah (Jewish immigration) from the states – but I have to say, you can wait a while.” Ayalon told the crowd of observant Jews that...