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The Law of Return (Hebrew : חוק השבות, ḥok ha-shvūt) is an Israeli law, passed on 5 July 1950, which gives Jews, people with one or more Jewish grandparent, and their spouses the right to relocate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship. [1] Section 1 of the Law of Return declares that "every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh [immigrant]". In the Law of Return, the State of Israel gave effect to the Zionist movement's "credo" which called for the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. In 1970, the right of entry and settlement was extended to people with at least one Jewish grandparent and a person who is married to a Jew, whether or not they are considered Jewish under Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. [2]
On the day of arrival in Israel, or occasionally at a later date, a person who enters Israel under the Law of Return as an oleh would receive a certificate confirming their oleh status. The person then has three months to decide whether they wish to become a citizen and can renounce their prior citizenship during this time. Since 2005, the right does not apply to residents of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip due to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. The right to an oleh certificate may be denied if the person is engaged in anti-Jewish activity, is a hazard to the public health or security of the state, or has a criminal past that may endanger public welfare. [3]
The Law of Return was passed unanimously by the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, on 5 July 1950. [4] The date chosen so that it would coincide with the anniversary of the death of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl. [5] It declared:
In a declaration to the Knesset, the then Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion asserted that the law did not bestow a right but rather reaffirmed a right Jews already held: [6]
Follow-up legislation on immigration matters was contained in the Nationality Law of 1952.
Originally, the rights under the Law of Return applied only to Jews. [7] However, due to an inability on the lawmakers to agree on a definition of "who is a Jew", the Law did not define the term, relying instead on the issue to resolve itself over time. As a result, the Law relied in effect on the traditional halakhic definition. But, the absence of a definition of who is a Jew, for the purpose of the Law, resulted in divergent views of the various streams of Judaism competing for recognition.
Those who immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return are immediately entitled to citizenship in Israel. However, differences of opinion have arisen as to whether a person who claims citizenship under the Law of Return should be automatically registered as "Jewish" for census purposes. According to the halakhic definition, a person is Jewish if their mother is Jewish, or if they convert to Judaism. Orthodox Jews do not recognize conversions performed by Reform or Conservative Judaism. However, the Law provides that any Jew regardless of affiliation may migrate to Israel and claim citizenship.
The Law of Return was amended in 1970 to extend the right of return to some non-Jews. [8] [9] Amendment number 2, 4a, states:
The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law, 5712-1952***, as well as the rights of an oleh under any other enactment, are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew, except for a person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his/her religion. [10]
The law since 1970 applies to the following groups:
Jews who have converted to another religion are not eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return, even though they are still Jews according to halakha.
The 1970 amendment was induced by the debate on "who is a Jew?". Until then the law did not refer to the question. There are several explanations for the decision to be so inclusive. One is that as the Nuremberg Laws did not use a halakhic definition in its definition of "who is a Jew", the Law of Return definition for citizenship eligibility is not halakhic either. Another explanation is the 1968 wave of immigration from Poland, following an antisemitic campaign by the government. These immigrants were very assimilated and had many non-Jewish family members. [11]
A second explanation is that in order to increase immigration levels so as to offset the "demographic threat" posed by the growth of the Arab population, the law expanded the base group of those eligible to immigrate to Israel. [12]
A third explanation promoted by religious Jews is that the overwhelmingly secular leadership in Israel sought to undermine the influence of religious elements in Israeli politics and society by allowing more secular Jews and their non-Jewish spouses to immigrate. [13]
The Israeli Rabbinate is a purely Orthodox body that is far more strict in defining "who is a Jew". This creates a situation in which thousands of immigrants who are eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return's criteria, are ineligible for Jewish marriage by the Israeli Rabbinate. [14]
As of 2021, 3,340,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel since its independence in 1948. [15] Hundreds of thousands of people who do not have Jewish status under Orthodox Jewish interpretations of halakha received Israeli citizenship, as the law confers citizenship to all offspring of a Jew (including grandchildren) and their spouses. [16]
Section 2(b) of the Law of Return empowers the Minister of Interior to deny Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return on a number of grounds: For example, an applicant may be denied citizenship if they are considered a threat to the security of the State of Israel (e.g. treason against the Jewish State), or have a past criminal record involving a serious crime, such as murder, and pose a danger to the well-being of the State of Israel; or, for example, may be a fugitive in another country for any felony (unless they are persecution victims); or such persons who, by virtue of their illness, may pose a serious public health risk to the people of Israel; as also any person who may be actively engaged in any campaign that vociferously speaks out against the Jewish people and undermines their cause (such as demagoguery). [17]
This provision has been used to exclude applicants a handful of times since Israel's establishment. Notable cases include Robert Soblen, an American Communist who spied for the Soviet Union and fled to Israel in an attempt to escape a life sentence; Meyer Lansky, an American mobster who was initially granted entry to Israel but was expelled two years later; and Victor Vancier, an American Kahanist activist convicted of involvement in a series of bombings.
In 1962, the case of Oswald Rufeisen, born a Polish Jew and later a Catholic convert, came before the Israeli Supreme court. The Supreme Court decided that "no one can regard an apostate as belonging to the Jewish people". [18]
In 2024, Leo Franks, a Jewish Briton who was in the process of applying for Israeli citizenship, had his citizenship application closed and his deportation from the country ordered by the Ministry of the Interior. This came after he was arrested at an anti-war protest in Jerusalem and after having been detained twice in the West Bank, once when accompanying Palestinian shepherds and once when "filming settler violence against Palestinians". Franks interpreted his deportation and denial of citizenship as a change to the Law of Return, saying to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: "the courts have given the Ministry of Interior free rein to make decisions about who can be a Jew in Israel on the basis of his politics". [19] The lead editorial of both the English and Hebrew editions of the Israeli broadsheet Haaretz made the same claim about the political significance of Franks' case, titling the English-language version of the editorial as "Only the Right Jews Can Make Aliyah in Today's Increasingly Undemocratic Israel". [20]
The granting of citizenship under the Law of Return does not prevent a person from being extradited back to another country under an extradition treaty with that other country.
The Supreme Court of Israel ruled in 1989 that Messianic Judaism constituted another religion, and that people who had become Messianic Jews were not therefore eligible for Aliyah under the law. [21]
On April 16, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by a number of people with Jewish fathers and grandfathers whose applications for citizenship had been rejected on the grounds that they were Messianic Jews. The argument was made by the applicants that they had never been Jews according to halakha, and were not therefore excluded by the conversion clause. This argument was upheld in the ruling, [22] [23] and the government agreed to reprocess their applications. Despite this, Messianic Jews are considered to be eligible for the law if they can claim Jewish ancestry (having a Jewish father or grandfather).
Critics claim that the Law of Return runs counter to the claims of a democratic state. [24] [25]
Palestinians and advocates for Palestinian refugee rights criticize the Law of Return, which they compare with the Palestinian claim to a Palestinian right of return. [26] These critics consider the Law, as contrasted against the denial of the right of return, offensive and institutionalized ethnic discrimination. [27]
A report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) slammed the Law of Return, "conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country," as a policy of "demographic engineering" meant to uphold Israel's status as "the Jewish state". The report was later withdrawn following controversy. [28] [29]
On June 10, 2011, the Law of Return was tested when a gay male couple, one Jewish and one Catholic, made Aliyah to Israel. This couple was the first same-sex, different religion married couple to request joint Aliyah status, although opposite-sex married couples of different religions receive joint Aliyah as a matter of course. The Jewish man quickly received citizenship but the decision of citizenship for his husband was delayed by the Ministry of the Interior despite the clause in the law saying the spouse of the Jewish returnee must also be granted citizenship. [30] On August 10, 2011, the Ministry of the Interior granted citizenship to the non-Jewish husband as required by the Law of Return. [31]
In 2014, Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced that Jews in same-sex relationships who got married abroad but wished to immigrate to Israel were allowed to do so under the Law of Return, even with a non-Jewish spouse, and that both spouses would receive Israeli citizenship. [32]
Supporters of the law say that it is very similar to those in many European states, which also employ an ethnic component. [33] [34]
Supporters argue that:
Among Israeli Jews, continued Jewish immigration enjoys strong support. According to a 2016 poll conducted by Pew Forum, 98% of all Jewish Israelis wanted the law to continue to allow Jewish immigration. [41] However, some argue that the law permits the entry of too many non-Jews, undermining its purpose. [42]
Support for the law among Israeli Arabs is much less. According to a poll overseen by Haifa University sociologist Sammy Smooha among 700 Jews and 700 Arabs conducted in 2017 only 25.2% "accepted" the Law of Return, down from 39% in 2015. [43]
In September 2007, the discovery of a violent Israeli Neo-Nazi cell (Patrol 36) in Petah Tikva, made up of teenage immigrants from the former Soviet Union, led to renewed calls amongst politicians to amend the Law of Return. [44] Effi Eitam of the National Religious Party and the National Union, which represent the religious Zionist movement and have previously attempted to advance bills to amend the Law of Return, stated that Israel has become "a haven for people who hate Israel, hate Jews, and exploit the Law of Return to act on this hatred." [45] On the other end of the political spectrum, MK Ahmed Tibi of United Arab List and Ta'al criticized the system's double standard, stating that "people immigrated to Israel and received automatic citizenship under the Law of Return, while citizens of Nazareth and Tayibe are not allowed to visit their own relatives merely due to the fact that they are Arabs." [45]
Thirty-seven percent of Israelis polled said that deeper background checks on new immigrants would amount to racism against Jews from Russian-speaking countries. [46]
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Amongst those who are in favor of retaining the Law, controversy exists over its wording. The Law's definition of a "Jew" and "Jewish people" are subject to debate. Israeli and Diaspora Jews differ with each other as groups and among themselves as to what this definition should be for the purposes of the Law of Return. Additionally, there is a lively debate over the meaning of the terms "Jewish State" and "State of the Jews".
It is not only the Knesset, however, which has been repeatedly obliged to directly or indirectly address these issues. Over the years, many of Israel's interior ministers have examined the issue of the Law of Return and wavered as to how to apply it. The judiciary has also been called upon to express an opinion on matters relating to the Law. This burning and recurrent question in the country's political dialogue not only reveals but also exacerbates differences of opinion between Israelis.
One central issue is who has the authority over determining the validity of conversions to Judaism for purposes of immigration and citizenship. For historical reasons, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, under the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, made this determination, but this arrangement is in question. This practice has met opposition among non-Orthodox religious leaders both within Israel and in the diaspora. Several attempts have been made to resolve the issue, the most recent being the Ne'eman Commission, but an impasse persists.
On March 31, 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled 7–4 that all conversions performed outside of Israel would be recognized by the authorities under the Law of Return, notwithstanding the Ne'eman Commission's view that a single body should determine eligibility for immigration. The court had already ruled in 1989 that conversions performed outside of Israel were valid for the Law of Return (regardless of whether they were Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform). The 2005 ruling extended this, finding that overseas conversions were still valid even if the individuals did the preparatory work for the conversions while residing in Israel. [47]
The demographics of Israel, monitored by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, encompass various attributes that define the nation's populace. Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has witnessed significant changes in its demographics. Formed as a homeland for the Jewish people, Israel has attracted Jewish immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Messianic Judaism is a syncretic Abrahamic new religious movement that combines various Jewish traditions and elements of Jewish prayer with Evangelical Protestant theology. It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is generally considered to be a form of Christianity, including by all major groups within mainstream Judaism, since Jews consider belief in Jesus as the Messiah and divine in the form of God the Son to be among the most defining distinctions between Judaism and Christianity. It is also generally considered a Christian sect by scholars and other Christian groups.
Israelis are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jews and Arabs, who respectively account for 75 percent and 20 percent of the national figure, followed by other ethnic and religious minorities, who account for 5 percent.
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel or the Palestine region, which is today chiefly represented by the State of Israel. Traditionally described as "the act of going up", moving to the Land of Israel or "making aliyah" is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action – emigration by Jews from the Land of Israel – is referred to in the Hebrew language as yerida. The Law of Return that was passed by the Israeli parliament in 1950 gives all diaspora Jews, as well as their children and grandchildren, the right to relocate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship on the basis of connecting to their Jewish identity.
The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout the history of Palestine.
"Who is a Jew?", is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question pertains to ideas about Jewish personhood, which have cultural, ethnic, religious, political, genealogical, and personal dimensions. Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism follow Jewish law (halakha), deeming people to be Jewish if their mothers are Jewish or if they underwent a halakhic conversion. Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism accept both matrilineal and patrilineal descent as well as conversion. Karaite Judaism predominantly follows patrilineal descent as well as conversion.
Falash Mura is the name given to descendants of the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia who converted to Christianity, primarily as a consequence of Western proselytization during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This term also includes Beta Israel who did not adhere to any Ethiopian Jewish practices, as well as the aforementioned historical converts to Christianity. While most voluntarily converted, some were also forcibly converted against their will, or felt compelled to convert due to economic hardship and social exclusion in a majority Christian population.
The Bnei Menashe is a community of Indian Jews from various Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups from the border of India and Burma who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, allegedly based on the Hmar belief in an ancestor named Manmasi. Some of them have adopted Judaism. The community has around 10,000 members.
Shlomo Moshe Amar is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. He served in the position of Rishon LeZion from 2003 to 2013; his Ashkenazi counterpart during his tenure was Yona Metzger. In 2014 he became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.
Religion in Israel is manifested primarily in Judaism, the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. The State of Israel declares itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" and is the only country in the world with a Jewish-majority population. Other faiths in the country include Islam, Christianity and the religion of the Druze people. Religion plays a central role in national and civil life, and almost all Israeli citizens are automatically registered as members of the state's 14 official religious communities, which exercise control over several matters of personal status, especially marriage. These recognized communities are Orthodox Judaism, Islam, the Druze faith, the Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, Anglicanism, and the Baháʼí Faith.
Chinese people in Israel comprise several separate groups, including the groups of Jews from China who have immigrated to Israel making aliyah, as well as foreign students studying in Israeli universities, businessmen, merchants, and guest workers, along with Israeli citizens of Chinese ancestry.
Shavei Israel is an Israel-based Jewish organization that encourages people of Jewish descent to strengthen their connection with Israel and the Jewish people. Founded by Michael Freund in 2002, Shavei Israel locates lost Jews and hidden Jewish communities and assists them with returning to their roots and, sometimes, with aliyah. The organization's team is composed of academics, educators and rabbis.
The Gathering of Israel, or the Ingathering of the Jewish diaspora, is the biblical promise of Deuteronomy 30:1–5, made by Moses to the Israelites prior to their entry into the Land of Israel.
Israeli citizenship law details the conditions by which a person holds citizenship of Israel. The two primary pieces of legislation governing these requirements are the 1950 Law of Return and 1952 Citizenship Law.
Interfaith marriage in Judaism has historically been viewed with strong disapproval by Jewish leaders and remains a contentious issue within the Jewish community. According to Halakha, as derived from the Talmud, marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew is both prohibited and considered void under Jewish law. The Haskalah influenced more diverse perspectives on interfaith marriage.
In the years leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and for just over a decade thereafter, a particularly large number of Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet countries. The majority of these emigrants made aliyah, while a sizable amount immigrated to various Western countries. This wave of Jewish migration followed the 1970s Soviet aliyah, which began after the Soviet government lifted the ban on the country's refuseniks, most of whom were Jews who had been denied permission to leave the country.
Israeli Jews or Jewish Israelis comprise Israel's largest ethnic and religious community. The core of their demographic consists of those with a Jewish identity and their descendants, including ethnic Jews and religious Jews alike. Approximately 46% of the global Jewish population resides in Israel; yerida is uncommon and is offset exponentially by aliyah, but those who do emigrate from the country typically relocate to the Western world. As such, the Israeli diaspora is closely tied to the broader Jewish diaspora.
In Israel, the term status quo refers to a political understanding between secular and religious political parties not to alter the communal arrangement in relation to religious matters. The established Jewish religious communities in Israel desire to maintain and promote the religious character of the state, while the secular community sometimes wishes to reduce the impact of religious regulations in their everyday lives. Occasionally, one political side seeks to make changes to inter-communal arrangements, but these are often met by political opposition from the other side. The status quo preserves the established religious relations in Israel, and only small changes are usually made.
Russians in Israel or Russian Israelis are post-Soviet Russian citizens who immigrated to Israel and their descendants. As of 2022, Russian-speakers number around 1,300,000 people, or 15% of the Israeli population. This number, however, also includes immigrants from the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states other than Russia proper.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th centuries in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who emigrated normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but some of them emigrated to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, because only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the arrival of the Sephardic ancestors of Latin American populations coincided with the initial colonization of Latin America, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrants would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
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Myers told CBN News, "The bottom line is that if your father is Jewish or if any of your grandparents are Jewish from your father's side – even if you're a Messianic Jew – you can immigrate to Israel under the law of return or under the law of citizenship if you marry an Israeli citizen."
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