Aliya to America? A Comparative Look at Jewish Mass Migration, 1881-1914

Abstract

If we examine the motivations of the pioneers of the First Aliya (1881–1903) and Second Aliya (1904–1914), we find that the yearning for the Land of Israel after so many years of exile and the desire to create a new generation of Jews working the land were their main considerations. For many of them, the move to Palestine was perceived as a return to their old homeland from which they had only recently been expelled; their arrival was the realization of an old dream. Chayuta Busel, one of the leading figures of the Second Aliya period, wrote in her memoirs that she “longed to express my love for the dust and stones of the Land of Israel, where our forefathers shed their blood on the altar of freedom.” She considered herself “disgraced and abased” in the Diaspora and longed to live among nature.1 Sarah Azaryahu wrote that when she moved to Palestine she joined that small group “of fervid, bold revolutionaries who were already dwelling and working” in the ancient homeland, and that by coming she was burning all the bridges that had once tied her to her native land.2 Abraham Krinizi wrote in his memoirs that when he arrived in Palestine on Hanukkah 1905, he was reborn “afresh on the shores of the homeland” nineteen years after having been born in Grodno on Hanukkah 1886.3 A literary illustration of how the Second Aliya pioneers imagined life in Palestine can be found in Agnon's novel Only Yesterday. With his rare literary talent, Agnon—who himself was part of the Second Aliya—described how Yitzhak Kumer imagined the land and its inhabitants. “A blessed dwelling place was his image of the whole Land of Israel and its inhabitants blessed by God” Agnon wrote in the first chapter of Only Yesterday.” Its villages hidden in the shade of vineyards and olive groves, the fields enveloped in grains and the orchard trees crowned with fruit, the valleys yielding flowers and the forest trees swaying; the whole firmament is sky blue and all the houses are filled with rejoicing.”4

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