Aliyot - Session 04 - The Founding of the State of Israel
Brief
Provide a broad overview of the waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century. Rather than provide a detailed history of each wave, the madrich/a should try to prompt chanichim to envision the circumstances that prompted European Jews to leave their homes at various times between 1882 and the 1940s, and to begin to understand the reality they faced in Palestine.
Equipment
Resources:
Appendix VII (1 copy per chanich/a)
Appendix VIII (1 copy per chanich/a)
Activity length: 45 minutes
Age Groups
Elementary, Middle School
Topics
Zionism
Shabbat Apropriate
Download for Printing
Program
The session should begin with the madrich/a asking chanichim why they think European Jews would have gone to Palestine in the late 1880s. Points to discuss:
Far more European Jews went to America between 1881 and 1914 than to Palestine (about 2 million vs. about 65,000.)
Presumably, most of the campers’ grandparents and great-grandparents were part of the massive exodus of Jews from Europe to America. Why do they think their ancestors chose America over Palestine?
The madrich/a should explain the harsh conditions in Palestine and that the Ottoman Turks, who ruled the land, were not particularly welcoming to European Jews.
The madrich/a should distribute the excerpts from The Story of the Jews (Appendix VII). Begin by reviewing the map and chart on page 23 and discussing it. Then, chanichim can take turns reading the remaining pages aloud.
Using the attached reference materials (Appendix VIII), the madrich/a should explain the basics of the waves of immigration as they are presented in the reading. Note the contributions of each wave of immigrants to the building of what would become the State of Israel, and allow chanichim opportunities to talk and ask questions about kibbutzim, urban settlements, and more.
In discussing the Aliyot, the following points should be covered:
Introduce the term Yishuv, or settlement, used by the Jews in pre-State Palestine to describe their community.
The five waves of aliyah took place between 1882 and 1940, bringing a total of nearly 450,000 Jews to Palestine. Many of them returned to the places they had come from because life in Palestine was too hard for them, but altogether they created the human critical mass needed to build national institutions and communities throughout the land, paving the way to independence.
The immigrants of this period invented the kibbutz, established dozens of cities including Tel Aviv, developed agricultural industries and built infrastructure that we take for granted today.
During World War Two and after, the British closed Palestine to further Jewish immigration, but many thousands continued to try to reach the homeland. With all that was happening in Europe, the need to reach Palestine was more urgent than ever. This wave of immigration was called Aliyah Bet. Whenever the British intercepted a boat off the coast of Palestine, they sent its passengers to detention camps in Cyprus or – even worse – back to Europe.
Sikkum discussion points:
Almost everything that we know about Israel today – from the spoken language to the cities and the street signs and the landmark buildings – got its start in the waves of aliyah of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Almost – but not all! The ancient roots of the Jewish people and the Jewish story are what create the tie to the land; everything that has happened in the past 130 years builds on what happened thousands of years ago.
Note that many thousands of Jews endured tremendous hardship to come to Palestine. Whether they came before the Holocaust or during World War Two, they chose a place where nothing was assured except that life would be hard, and many died of malaria (many from the First Aliyah who began kibbutzim in Galilee) or languished in British detention camps (many who tried to come on Aliyah Bet during the last years of British rule).
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