Aliyah Numbers Rise, But the Majority of Oli, Are Coming From Just Three Countries

As the Knesset prepares to vote on an official “Aliyah Day”, new figures from the Jewish Agency place aliyah in 2015 at a 12-year high. In the last year, Israel welcomed an estimated 30,883 new immigrants under its Law of Return, representing a modest 0.4 percent gross increase in the country’s total population; the Jewish Agency predicts that immigration will continue rising in 2016. But the data provided to me by the Jewish Agency also provides some sobering news for those hoping the Jewish state will continue to be nourished in the long run by new arrivals.

Firstly, continued aliyah is precariously dependent on just three countries: France (an estimated 7,900 new immigrants in 2015), Ukraine (7,300, who represent a staggering 11 percent of Ukrainian Jewry) and Russia (6,800). According to data for 2013 from demographer Dr Sergio DellaPergola, the Jewish Diaspora numbers 7.84 million individuals. The Jewish population of the three main feeder countries numbers just 730,000. This means that 70 percent of contemporary aliyah comes from countries with less than 10 percent of Diaspora Jewry combined.

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