Aliyah Day festivities held Wednesday failed to garner much attention from either the media or the public, and that's a shame. The return of the Jewish people to their homeland, the Land of Israel, can be seen as the greatest miracle of our time. The reality of aliyah seems so natural to us that a majority of Israelis tend to forget: All of us, or at least, those among us who were fortunate to make aliyah from a foreign land, are the heroes in this unprecedented historic process.
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Who could have imagined just a century ago that waves of aliyah would bring nearly half of the Jewish people to the promised land? When I try to calculate just how many generations of my fathers' ancestors could only dream of making aliyah, I get the chills.
In contrast with popular opinion, which notices mainly the large waves of aliyah, the flow of immigration never ceases. Over the last decade, a little under the radar, thousands of Jews and their families from all over the world have continued to rush in. In a majority of cases, this is not the case of Jews making aliyah because they have no other choice. The new immigrants to Israel of the 21st century choose Israel because it is a flourishing state that affords them countless opportunities. Unlike those who made aliyah when I did 30 years ago, they are overwhelmed with information on what to expect. This doesn't mean they will experience integration par excellence. From the days of the return to Zion to the present day, assimilation in Israel has been a complicated process, both practically and emotionally.
Over the years, Israel has learned the methods for assimilating aliyah and adapting them to the changing reality. The transit camps of the 1950s made way for the assimilation centers of the 1970s, which were replaced by the "assimilation baskets" of the 1990s. At the outset of this century, a holistic approach was adopted that finds the appropriate package of solutions for each family immigrating to Israel.
Yet the reality has changed in one other important way, which Israel has yet to muster the courage to face. The accelerated assimilation of large Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union and in the United States and the amendment of the Right of Return Law in 1970, which expanded eligibility far beyond its initial intentions opened Israel's gates to people without any connection to the Jewish people. As long as Israel was a relatively poor country, this breach was rarely exploited. But when Israel entered the shortlist of wealthy states, Israel's draw increased among both Jews and others, who rushed to find a Jewish great-grandfather they had never met somewhere in their family tree. Thus, it turns out that a majority of those joining us every year are not Jews or relatives of Jewish immigrants. This needs to stop.
Israel is the country of the Jews returning to and their families, not of random immigrants looking for a better future. There is no room to grant eligibility through the right of return to those who have no connection to or interest in Jewish life. The sooner we apply the "yes to aliyah, no to immigration" rule, the better off we'll be.
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