First Aliya

The First Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה הראשונה, HaAliyah HaRishona), also known as the agriculture Aliyah, is a term used to describe a major wave of Zionist immigration to what is now Israel (aliyah) between 1882 and 1903. Jews who migrated to Ottoman Palestine in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Palestine during the First Aliyah. It is estimated that between 40% to 90% of those immigrants left Palestine again, most of them few years after their arrival. Because there had been immigration to Palestine in earlier years as well, the term First Aliyah is highly criticized among some scholars.

The Jewish people lived as a minority in numerous countries throughout the world, among many different ruling nations and under different regimes. Competing ideologies within the Zionist movement had to cooperate with each other. The difficulties of achieving National Sovereignty for Jews in a country where they were at first a tiny minority made even the most extreme "political" Zionists regard such sovereignty as an ultimate goal which had to be approached by stages. This specific view opened up the way for other Zionists, concentrating on nationalist cultural or social and economic aims, to enlist general immediate support for their objectives. In fact, this position caused not only Zionism but all modern Jewish ideologies to assume a distinctly different character from comparable movements among other peoples.

The immigration to Ottoman Palestine from Eastern Europe occurred as part of the mass emigrations of approximately 2.5 million people that took place towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

A rapid increase in population had created economic problems in Eastern Europe. The problems affected Jewish societies in the Pale of Settlement, Galicia, and Romania.

Russian persecution of Jews was also a factor. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and the authorities blamed the Jews for the assassination. Consequently, in addition to the May Laws, major anti-Jewish pogroms swept the Pale of Settlement. A movement called Hibbat Zion (love of Zion) spread across the Pale (helped by Leon Pinsker's pamphlet ), as did the similar Bilu movement. Both movements encouraged Jews to emigrate to Ottoman Palestine.

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