siyur

Today I helped lead a trip to the First Aliyah Museum in Zichron Ya'akov and the Pioneer Settlement Museum at Kibbutz Yifat. In the early 1800s a large number of Jews spoke yiddish and lived in eastern Europe -- mostly Poland and Russia. Many Jews left beginning in the 1880s because of anti-Semitic laws and pogroms (riots targeting Jews). Between 1880 and 1910, three million Jews immigrated from that region to the United States. Tens of thousands immigrated from that region to Palestine.

From about 1880 to 1903, the immigrants were mostly religiously motivated. This is labeled the first wave, or the First Aliyah. The second wave was from about 1904 to 1914, these immigrants were mostly motivated by ideology. The third wave was also ideologically motivated, from 1919 to 1923. As far as I can tell the main difference between the so called second and third waves is that one was before World War I and the other was after. In most meaningful respects they were part of the same phenomenon.

That's what I did today. Back to the grindstone.