I once had the good fortune to hear Elie Wiesel speak at a local university. Wiesel started with a message that has resonated with me ever since, but especially now. Noting that scholars are uncertain as to the authorship of the Book of Job, and noting that Job is not identified as being Jewish, Wiesel said that he could prove that Job was not Jewish. How? Because when the messengers came to tell him about the various calamities that had befallen his property and his family, he believed them.
Wiesel’s story is an example of the gallows humor that pops up among Jews, a strategy sometimes referred to as a Jewish survival tool. He was referring, of course, to the Holocaust, and the tendency by so many in the Jewish community, before and during World War II, not to believe the signs of impending doom.
Since the outbreak of the current war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the torture, kidnapping, and slaughter of Israeli men, women, and children on October 7, the level of antisemitism experienced by Jews around the world has reached levels not seen since the Holocaust.
A video taken on the Paris metro records chants of “F--k the Jews and we are Nazis and proud”; pro-Hamas demonstrators in Australia chant “Gas the Jews” and a London demonstrator holds a sign reading “Keep the world clean of Jews.” These are just a few of many examples.
A recent article by Zvika Klein in The Jerusalem Post notes that the Israeli Aliyah and Integration Ministry reported a surge in immigration inquiries by French and US Jews after October 7. Minister Ofir Sofer feels that the increased interest reflects a heightened sense of unity between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, as well as a desire to support Israel.
North American Jews feel fear and insecurity
What the article does not mention is the heightened sense of fear and insecurity that many North American Jews are feeling.
While Jews immigrated to the Holy Land throughout the centuries, the first accurate immigration statistics began with the advent of modern Zionism and the First Aliyah (1882-1903).
The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics lists five waves of pre-state Jewish immigration, as well a separate count for illegal immigration, The Second Aliyah, with a total of about 550,00 Jewish immigrants at the time of the establishment of the State in 1948. (This figure does not include natural increases in the Jewish population or losses from emigration.)
Since 1948 an additional 3.3 million Jews have made aliyah, the vast majority from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, or from the Arab/Muslim world. In spite of the large number of Jews in Canada and the United States, the number that have immigrated from North America is relatively small, totaling little more than 150,000, only 4.5% of the total.
In an article in Jewish Social Studies (1986), Michael Brown speaks of the interplay of push and pull factors to explain the migration that takes place from one country to another. Among the pull factors are economic climate, stable government, and – specific to Jews – the desire for Zionist fulfillment. Among the push factors are economic distress, political chaos, and – specific to Jews – antisemitism.
Will the explosion of Jew-hatred, evident after the Hamas terror attack, result in a significant increase in aliyah from North America? (I am writing this having just read that gunshots hit Jewish schools in Montreal, my city of birth, for the third time in less than a week.)
Clearly, those German Jews who immigrated to Mandatory Palestine prior to World War II; the Jews living precarious lives in the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel; or the Jews who were violently uprooted from their homes in Iraq or Egypt or Syria, who ended up in Israel, had little choice. Until now, North American Jews could make aliyah for ideological and or religious reasons, with no sense of urgency. October 7 may have changed the equation.
To experience antisemitism, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust, is to know what it is like to be vulnerable and powerless. I like the way that Shalom Hartman Institute senior fellow Yossi Klein Halevi summed up October 7 saying that it “wasn’t a response to the abuses of Jewish power; it was a reminder of the necessity of Jewish power. In a world in which genocidal enemies persist, powerlessness for the Jewish people is a sin.”
The writer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, who taught at the University of Waterloo.