By Howard Flower, ICEJ Aliyah Director

The war thrust upon Israel over recent months has left many Israelis traumatized, even while scores of Jews abroad are considering a move to the Jewish homeland to escape the rampant wave of antisemitism now spreading worldwide. As we start the new year, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem stands committed not only to helping with war relief efforts here in the Land of Israel, but just as importantly to bringing home as many Jewish immigrants as possible. In fact, our Aliyah efforts for 2024 are already underway in the form of winter Aliyah camps for Jewish youths which we sponsored last week in the Baltic states.

As antisemitism continues to rise across the globe, more and more Jews are considering returning to their ancestral homeland of Israel. Already since that dark day last October 7th, more than 4,000 Jewish olim (newcomers) have arrived in Israel on Aliyah.

Although Jewish immigration to Israel has slowed down somewhat since the beginning of the Gaza war in early October, it stems from many prospective immigrants simply deciding to delay their Aliyah for a few months. The Jewish Agency For Israel reports that, in fact, many more people have opened Aliyah application files since October than over the same period the year before – and no one has cancelled yet. The slowdown so far is less than what occurred during the first months of the Coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, after which Aliyah dramatically rebounded.

Following a series of Aliyah fairs in France in late December, the Jewish Agency announced that more than 1,200 French Jews have opened Aliyah files in the last three months, compared with only 220 in the same period the previous year – an increase of 450%.

The Israeli daily Israel Hayom also reported that in the last quarter of 2023, nearly 4,200 American Jews submitted immigration requests – an increase of 122% over the same period in 2022.

Recently, Jewish Agency chairman Doron Almog boldly forecast that Israel could see as many as one million new Jewish immigrants in the next few years due to the mounting wave of antisemitism around the globe. At a special Aliyah conference in Florida last week, JAFI official Danielle Mor assured that the Agency could handle such a mass influx and were ready to do just that.

In the new year of 2024, the ICEJ is committed to bringing as many Jewish immigrants home to Israel as possible and assisting them with fully integrating into Israeli society. Our Aliyah work first began in Vienna in 1980, and since then we have assisted more than 175,000 Jews in coming home to Israel, including more than 5,000 in 2023, while helping many more throughout the integration phase.

Our Aliyah activities for 2024 are already underway, as we just started the year by sponsoring winter Aliyah camps for 73 Jewish youth aged between 12 to17 who eagerly packed their warmest clothes and came together last week for a life-changing adventure in chilly Latvia!

There was a jovial atmosphere as the youth arrived and began mingling with each other. The Jewish teens, including Ukrainian refugee children now living in Poland, Germany and the Baltic countries, as well as Israeli youth temporarily out of Israel, all gathered at an ICEJ-sponsored Aliyah winter camp on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Latvia between 3-7 January. This winter camp, mostly conducted in the Russian language, was made possible through the generous support of Christian friends giving through our Finnish, German and USA branches.

Despite the freezing Latvian temperatures which dipped as low as -20 degrees Celsius, the young people participated in a variety of fun activities. They had an awesome pajama party, navigated through a web of strings, made new friends, played in the snow, and, most importantly, learned about Israel while embracing their Jewish identity. These Aliyah camps play a crucial role in planting the seeds for eventually making Aliyah to Israel deep within these Jewish youngsters.

The Christian Embassy has a long history of assisting with Aliyah summer and winter camps. More than ten years prior to the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, the ICEJ was approached by the Jewish Agency to help with Aliyah preparations in areas that were away from the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Since then, the ICEJ has assisted with dozens of these types of Aliyah camps and other preparatory gatherings in many countries, including Ukraine, Finland, Russia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Thank you for supporting the prophetic call of the Jewish people to return to their biblical homeland. Please continue to give generously to our Aliyah efforts.

Donate today at:  give.icej.org/aliyah

Photo credits: Jewish Agency for Israel in the Baltic states