Second Aliyah

Not to be confused with Aliyah Bet.
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The Second Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה השנייה, romanized: HaAliyah HaShniya) was an aliyah (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from Russia,[1] with some from Yemen,[2] immigrated into Ottoman Palestine.

The Second Aliyah was a small part of the greater emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe which lasted from the 1870s until the 1920s. During this time, over two million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe.[3] The majority of these emigrants settled in the United States where there was the greatest economic opportunity.[3] Others settled in South America, Australia, and South Africa.[4]

There are multiple reasons for this mass emigration from Eastern Europe, including the growing antisemitism in Tzarist Russia and the Pale of Settlement. The manifestations of this antisemitism were various pogroms, notably the Kishinev pogrom and the pogroms that attended the 1905 Russian Revolution.[5] The other major factor for emigration was economic hardship. The majority of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe was poor and they left in search of a better life.[6] Jews left Eastern Europe in search of a better economic situation which the majority[6] found in the United States.[7]

The Palestine region on the other hand offered very limited economic incentives for new immigrants, because there was very little industry in the region. Thus, the majority of the Jewish immigrants found a livelihood through working the land.[8] Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.[9] David Ben-Gurion estimated that 90% of the Second Aliyah “despaired of the country and left”.[10]

  1. ^ Israeli government site on the Second Aliyah
  2. ^ אלרואי, גור. "ההרכב הדמוגרפי של 'העליה השנייה' [The Demographic Make-Up of the Second Aliya]" (PDF). ישראל: כתב עת לחקר הציונות ומדינת ישראל היסטוריה, תרבות, חברה. 2: 33–55. ISSN 2415-5756. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  3. ^ a b Alroey, G. (2011). Information, decision, and migration: Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Immigrants & Minorities, 29(01), 33-63.
  4. ^ [Gur Alroey, Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century, American Jewish Archives Journal 56 (2004): 129]
  5. ^ Goldin, Semion (October 2014). "Antisemitism and Pogroms in the Military (Russian Empire)". 1914-1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  6. ^ a b Howe, I. (2017). World of our fathers: The journey of the East European Jews to America and the life they found and made. Open Road Media.
  7. ^ [Gur Alroey, Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience, Jewish Social Studies, 9 (2003) 28]
  8. ^ "22. העליה השנייה". רב היבטיים על ארץ ישראל (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  9. ^ Joel Brinkley, As Jerusalem Labors to Settle Soviet Jews, Native Israelis Slip Quietly Away, The New York Times, 11 February 1990. Quote: "In the late 19th and early 20th century many of the European Jews who set up religious settlements in Palestine gave up after a few months and returned home, often hungry and diseased.". Accessed 4 May 2020.
  10. ^ Teveth, Shabtai (1987) Ben-Gurion. The Burning Ground. 1886-1948. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-35409-9 p.42