New Study on Jewish Aliyah from Europe

January 18, 2017

Friday, 20 January 2017 | A new study published by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (IJPR) concludes that although some European countries had witnessed a significant rise in the number of Jews making aliyah to Israel there is no “exodus” of Jews from Europe.

According to a report by the Guardian the IJPR compared recent trends of Jewish migration with cases of mass migration in response to persecution or major political upheavals in the past.

Jonathan Boyd, the IJPR’s executive director, told the newspaper: “It is clear that Jews in parts of Europe are genuinely concerned about their future, most likely because of anti-Semitism, but the levels of anxiety and apprehension are nowhere near those experienced during previous periods of intense stress, like the 1930s and 1940s.”

The IJPR study focuses on six countries – France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK, which account for about 70 percent of the European Jewish population. It concluded there had been an increase in migration, especially from France, Belgium and Italy; but in the UK, Germany and Sweden levels of migration were not unusual.

Suggesting a definition of an exodus as 30 percent of the Jewish population, it said 4 percent of Jews in Belgium and France had left for Israel between 2010 and 2015. The proportion leaving from the Britain, Germany and Sweden was well below 2 percent of the total.

Staetsky, the author of the IJPR report, said: “Large segments of Jewish populations in European countries perceive anti-Semitism to be on the increase…Migration plays a very central role in Jewish demography, as Jews are known to move in response to a particularly acute deterioration in the political or economic situation. If Jews feel unwelcome in Europe, their movement out of Europe will serve as the first sure sign of that.”

Posted on January 18, 2017

Source: (Excerpt of press release by the World Jewish Congress on 12 January, 2017. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Isranet