The Changing Face of American Immigration to Israel

When Michael Oren came from the U.S. to Israel in the 1970s, it was a very different country than it is now. Likewise, American Jewry was quite different, and those American Jews who chose to leave their native country for their ancestral homeland often did so for very different reasons than they do now. Israeli society too has changed its attitudes toward aliyah: there is much less commitment now to the Zionist ideal that Diaspora communities would come wholesale to the Jewish state, and much more concern that new immigrants will compete for jobs and resources. Discussing his own experiences with Daniel Gordis—an American of about the same age who made aliyah decades later—Oren analyzes these changes, and urges Jerusalem once again to embrace the mission of encouraging the ingathering of exiles. (Audio, 34 minutes. A transcript is available at the link below.)