| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 100,000-150,000 [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Avital, Burgata, Geva Carmel, Givat Nili, Gvulot, HaGoshrim, Nahsholim, Tal Shahar, Yehud-Monosson | |
| Languages | |
| Hebrew (Main language for all generations); Older generation: Turkish, Ladino | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism |
Turkish Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Turkish Jewish communities, who now reside within the State of Israel. They number around 100,000-150,000. [2] [1]
For centuries, the Jewish population of Ottoman Palestine was divided between two groups: Jewish subjects of the Turkish Sultan, who formed their own legal entity, and foreign pilgrims who lived largely on alms. During Ottoman times, the Jewish presence was concentrated to four cities.
The immigration history of the Turkish Jews in Israel when the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923, Aliyah was not particularly popular amongst Turkish Jewry; migration from Turkey to Palestine was minimal in the 1920s. [3]
Between 1923 and 1948, approximately 7,300 Jews emigrated from Turkey to Mandatory Palestine. [4] After the 1934 Thrace pogroms following the 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law, immigration to Palestine increased; it is estimated that 521 Jews left for Palestine from Turkey in 1934 and 1,445 left in 1935. [5] Immigration to Palestine was organized by the Jewish Agency and the Palestine Aliya Anoar Organization. The Varlık Vergisi, a capital tax which occurred in 1942, was also significant in encouraging emigration from Turkey to Palestine; between 1943 and 1944, 4,000 Jews emigrated. [6]
The Jews of Turkey reacted very favorably to the creation of the State of Israel. Between 1948 and 1951, 34,547 Jews immigrated to Israel, nearly 40% of the Jewish population at the time. [6] Immigration was stunted for several months in November 1948, when Turkey suspended migration permits as a result of pressure from neighboring Arab countries. [7]
In March 1949, the suspension was removed when Turkey officially recognized Israel, and emigration continued, with 26,000 emigrating within the same year. The migration was entirely voluntary, and was primary driven by economic factors given the majority of emigrants were from the lower classes. [8] In fact, the migration of Jews to Israel is the second largest mass emigration wave out of Turkey, the first being the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. [9] when most of them arrived to Israel As with many other Jews from the Middle east and North Africa they were put into Transit camps or Ma'abarot.
After 1951, emigration of Jews from Turkey to Israel slowed materially. [10]
In the mid 1950s, 10% of those who had moved to Israel returned to Turkey. A new synagogue, the Neve Şalom was constructed in Istanbul in 1951. Generally, Turkish Jews in Israel have integrated well into society and are not distinguishable from other Israelis. [11] However, they maintain their Turkish culture and connection to Turkey, and are strong supporters of close relations between Israel and Turkey. [12]
In recent years during the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and deteriorating relations between Turkey and Israel, rising anti-Semitism, perceived threats to the personal security of Jews in Turkey and rising anti-Jewish discrimination from Turkish society caused a new wave of emigration from Turkey to Israel. [13] [14] [15]
In the 20th century, approximately 900000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia. Primarily a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.
This is a partial timeline of Zionism in the modern era, since the start of the 16th century.
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.
Yishuv, HaYishuv HaIvri, or HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el denotes the body of Jewish residents in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living in that region, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there. The term is still in use to denote the pre-1948 Jewish residents in Palestine, corresponding to the southern part of Ottoman Syria until 1918, OETA South in 1917–1920, and Mandatory Palestine in 1920–1948.
Aliyah Bet was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, most of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany, and later Holocaust survivors, to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939, which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish displaced persons and refugees from Europe began streaming into the new state in the midst of the 1948 Palestine war.
Yerida is emigration by Jews from the State of Israel. Yerida is the opposite of aliyah, which is immigration by Jews to Israel. Zionists are generally critical of the act of yerida and the term is somewhat derogatory. The emigration of non-Jewish Israelis is not included in the term.
The history of the Jews in Turkey covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Mossad LeAliyah Bet was a branch of the paramilitary organization Haganah in British Mandatory Palestine, and later the State of Israel, that operated to facilitate Jewish immigration to British Palestine. During the Mandate period, it was facilitating illegal immigration in violation of governmental British restrictions. It operated from 1938 until four years after the founding of the State of Israel in 1952. It was funded directly by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and was not subject to the control of the Jewish Agency who operated their own Aliyah department headed by Yitzhak Rafael.
The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen, stimulated by pogroms and violence against the Jewish communities in those areas. An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated. 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.
The Second Aliyah was an aliyah that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from Russia, with some from Yemen, immigrated into Ottoman Palestine.
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.
The Third Aliyah refers to the third wave, or aliyah, of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe. This wave lasted from 1919, just after the end of World War I, until 1923, at the start of an economic crisis in Palestine.
The Fourth Aliyah refers to the fourth wave of the Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine, mainly from Europe, between the years 1924 and 1928.
The Fifth Aliyah refers to the fifth wave of the Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe and Asia between the years 1929 and 1939, with the arrival of 225,000 to 300,000 Jews. The Fifth Aliyah, or fifth immigration wave, began after the comeback from the 1927 economic crisis in Mandatory Palestine and the 1929 Palestine riots, during the period of the Fourth Aliyah.
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.
The One Million Plan was a strategic plan for the immigration and absorption of one million Jews from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa into Mandatory Palestine, within a timeframe of 18 months, in order to establish a state in that territory. After being voted on by the Jewish Agency for Palestine Executive in 1944, it became the official policy of the Zionist leadership. Implementation of a significant part of the One Million Plan took place following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Moroccan Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Moroccan Jewish communities who now reside within the state of Israel. The 2019 Israeli census counts 472,800 Jews born in Morocco or with a Moroccan-born father, although according to the World Federation of Moroccan Jewry, nearly one million Israeli Jews are Moroccan or of Moroccan descent, making them the second-largest community in the country.
The history of the Jews in Paraguay has been characterised by migration of Jewish people, mainly from European countries, to the South American nation, and has resulted in the Jewish Paraguayan community numbering 1,000 today.
French Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the French Jewish communities, who now reside within the state of Israel. They numbered over 200,000 as of 2012.