What’s with the Talk about an Aliyah of the Soul?

Rabbi Carl M. Perkins writes.:

I’m very curious about an expression that I’ve been hearing increasingly frequently. Referring to someone who has died, a speaker might say, “Today is my mother-in-law’s ninth yortsayt. May her n’shamah [soul] have an aliyah.” In my experience, use of this expression is by no means limited to Orthodox Jews. With its implied analogy of a rewarded afterlife to being called up to the Torah or to settling in Israel, it sounds bizarre to me, yet the folks who use it seem totally oblivious of this. What can you say about its origins?

While I’ve never encountered such an expression myself, it certainly seems as bizarre to me as it does to Rabbi Perkins. Its origins, however, don’t seem difficult to explain. The Hebrew noun aliyah, “ascent,” comes from the verb ’alah, to ascend, and was traditionally used by rabbinic Hebrew both for being called up to the Torah in synagogue and for settling in the Land of Israel.