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Thursday, November 1, 2018

The Movement of Aliyah-Returning To Our Roots-LITERALLY!

Nadene Goldfoot                                       
Pogrom in Odessa, Russia, community 180,000
Jews lived here from 1798 and worked in grain trade, shop-keeping and banking.
Odessa was the center of Russo-Jewish assimilation , first secular school for Russian Jews.
Leaving in Zionist movement from 1890-1914-start of WWI.  Pogroms happened in 1821, 1859,
1871, 1881, 1905.  Nazi occupation of city by 1941.  26,000 Jews were massacred on October 23, 24, 25, 1941.  All fled or were killed.  
                                                             
                                                         POGROMS:
A Yiddish word meaning devastation of Russian Jews;  an organized massacre of Jews, helpless unarmed  people usually living in little villages called shtetls. 

                                                          PALESTINE-name given by the Romans
    Originally called the Kingdom of Israel ruled by Kings Saul, David and Solomon, etc. 
                                   Later reduced to the Kingdom of Judah
       Land ruled by the Ottoman Empire of Turkey from 1516 to 1917, the end of World War I.
  ISRAEL REBORN  May 14, 1948 after 30 year English Mandate and 2,000 years of waiting and yearning and praying to restore their national home and being the in-gathering of exiles.
                                                                               
Pogrom after Pogrom convinced many of our ancestors in the path to get out of Russia and find someplace better to live, and in the 1880s, that was a hard choice to make as not many countries wanted us, and we were a poor lot.  Russia presented them with oppression and persecution as did many other European countries as well as Middle Eastern ones.

In the meantime, they were communicating with Jews living in Palestine whose families had never left.  They had been living their continuously for over 3,000 years.  "Even after the Roman conquest in the 1st Century, Jewish communities remained and periodicaly flourished, and their exiled Jews had returned in waves of immigration.  However, many of these Jews also became an oppressed minority in their own homeland, and their numbers rose and fell, depending on the kindness or cruelty of the region's different rulers.

By the 1700s and early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire, who controlled the land, put on them the  crippling taxes, discrimination and  persecution of a foreign ruler from Turkey.  Natural disasters brought the Jewish community to a new low.
                                                                       
The Jewish community in Jerusalem were massacred by the Crusaders, Christians from Europe and England, in 1099.  These same Crusaders had slaughtered any Jews found on the way to Jerusalem.

England, an island nation, Expelled Jews from their country in 1290 and didn't allow them back until 1655.

In the mid 1800's, a very wealthy Jew in England, Sir Moses Montefiore,(1784-1885) a well-known philanthropist, made donations as well as ordinary Jews from around the world to help out the Palestinian Jews.  The Montefiore family were of Italian origins but had been living in England and doing very well..  In 1840 Moses was the sheriff of London and the 1st English Jew in modern times to be knighted.  He was very pious in that he actually visited Jerusalem with A Cremieux at the time of the DAMASCUS AFFAIR.  He was the interceder in behalf of the Jews of Russia in 1846 and 1872, of Morocco in 1863, of Romania in 1867 and of the kidnapped E. Mortara in Italy in 1858.  These journeys were official missions in behalf of the British government.  He made trips to Palestine 7 times, the last time at the age of 90!
                                                     
From 1871 to 1921, anti-Jewish pogroms took place in towns of Russia where many Jews lived. 

My grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus, was born in 1871 in Telsiai, Lithuania.  By 1878, his father had died, possibly in a pogrom.  In 1881, the Russians were slaughtering their Jews.  The Jewish homes and towns were being destroyed and their women were raped.  Mobs were led by by priests and the general cry was "KILL THE JEWS which could be heard all over the city.  Jews were being slaughtered like sheep.  Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mobs.  This went on until 1906.  The account was actually published by the New York Times on April 28, 1903., page 6.                                     
                                                                             
Without batting an eye, the 1st Aliyah of Jews returning to Palestine was started in 1882 when 25,000 Jews made the journey from then till 1903.  The Hebrew word for immigration to Israel, a special place where we were told to live by G-d as recorded in our Torah, is "ALIYAH" or GOING UP (religiously).  In this group were the Jews of Russia, Romania, Kurdistan and Yemen Jews, all trying to get along in the Ottoman Empire ruled land.  The 1st Aliyah Group of Biluim was in 1882 and I counted 17 people in their photograph.

The 1st Kibbutz was started by 12 people in 1909 at Degania.  This movement became one of the largest communal movements in history.  They were inspired by socialism, Zionism, and agrarian ideals and their own necessity of how to survive.  These young Zionists created such communities dedicated to equality using communal ownership of all wealth.  They worked cooperatively in decision-making, production, consumption, welfare and education.  Today there are 270 kibbutzim where 130,000 people live.  These people were idealists.

A 2nd Aliyah group made Aliyah in 1904 and this continued to bring Jews over until 1914.  40,000 Jews went up in this grouping. who had escaped pogroms and persecution.  They were made up of Russian and Polish Jews who wanted to restore their nationhood and dignity and realize their socialist ideals.Considering how they had been living, socialism sounded great to them, not knowing about democracy as yet.  My Lithuanian grandmother who lived in Lazdijai on the border with Poland, had both her legs broken in a pogrom, and opted for the USA, arriving there  by 1904 at age 17 alone but meeting up with her older sisters and their husbands.  This was a time that many Jews also immigrated to the USA.


The 3rd Aliyah began in 1919 with 35,000 Jews who were also escaping persecution and impoverishment.  53% were Russians, 36% were Polish and now 11% were from Lithuania, Romania, Western and Central Europe.   They also had the goal to restore their nationhood and dignity and realize their socialist ideals.

The 4th Aliyah group made Aliyah starting in 1924 with 67,000 Jews from Poland.  They made Aliyah in escaping persecution and impoverishment.  Their movement didn't stop until 1928, a 4 year period.
                                                                           
The 5th Aliyah group  of 250,000 Jews began the next year in 1929 and kept on with their immigration for 10 years until 1939  by Jews from Germany, Austria and other European countries.
They made the Aliyah in the very bad year all over the world with a Stock Market Crash in the USA and a 1929  massacre of Jews in Hebron, Palestine caused by the Sherif of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, appointed by an English Jew of the Mandate group.  His kindness most likely was seen as weakness.                                                                                     
Talk about throwing a wrench into the plan!  The British violated their Mandate obligations in response to Arab protests.  They repeatedly restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases, something they promised to do;  to help the Jews do these things, not to restrict them!  As anti-Semitism grew in Europe, these policies doomed hundreds of thousands of Jews who otherwise could have reached safetly in Palestine, which had been established in part to serve as a REFUGE FOR PERSECUTED JEWS OF ANTISEMITISM.

Resource: Messages From A Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt by Nadene Goldfoot  (tells about Damascus Affair)
ISRAEL 101, from StandWithUs.
A Must to Read is THE SETTLERS by Meyer Levin, a Novel but based on all the facts beautifully done.
facts about Israel -division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
THE SOURCE by James Mitchener...be sure to read the chapter about the Saintly men of Safed, where I lived for over 4 years.




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