The Second Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה השנייה, romanized: HaAliyah HaShniya) was an aliyah (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from Russia,[1] with some from Yemen,[2] immigrated into Ottoman Palestine.
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The Second Aliyah was a small part of the greater emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe which lasted from the 1870s until the 1920s. During this time, over two million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe.[citation needed] The majority of these emigrants settled in the United States where there was the greatest economic opportunity.[citation needed] Others settled in South America, Australia, and South Africa.[3]
There are multiple reasons for this mass emigration from Eastern Europe, including the growing antisemitism in Tzarist Russia and the Pale of Settlement. The manifestations of this antisemitism were various pogroms, notably the Kishinev pogrom and the pogroms that attended the 1905 Russian Revolution.[4] The other major factor for emigration was economic hardship. The majority of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe was poor and they left in search of a better life.[citation needed] Jews left Eastern Europe in search of a better economic situation which the majority[citation needed] found in the United States.[5]
The Palestine region on the other hand offered very limited economic incentives for new immigrants, because there was very little industry in the region. Thus, the majority of the Jewish immigrants found a livelihood through working the land.[citation needed] Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.[6] David Ben-Gurion estimated that 90% of the Second Aliyah “despaired of the country and left”.[7]
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There is a large misconception that Zionism played a major role in the immigration of Jews to Ottoman Syria (later British Palestine) during The Second Aliyah.[citation needed] While Zionism may have had some influence, it cannot be viewed as a substantial factor of influencing emigration to Ottoman Syria when looking at the greater context of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. The two major reasons for Jewish emigration were poverty and persecution, and Ottoman Syria did not offer a respite from either. Jews emigrating from Eastern Europe often experienced much hardship on their way to their destinations, especially those going to the Palestine region.[14] Ottoman government had been negative to the migration of Jews ("Yishuv") to Palestine from late 19th century till the end of World War I.[citation needed] One of the reasons was that most of the Jews had foreign citizenship, which curtailed the Empire's ability to deal with them and enforce Ottoman law.[citation needed] Expulsions, deportations, arrests, denial of Ottoman nationality were some of the measures used to contain the Jewish immigration. Among the deportees were David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.[15]
The idea that the Second Aliyah was a realization of the zionist movement does not take all the hardships endured by the immigrants into account. Because of this, the majority of Jewish emigrants went to the United States where there was much more economic opportunity. Between the years 1907-1914 almost 1.5 million Jews went through Ellis Island, while only about 20,000 immigrated to Palestine.[16]
One of Ben Gurion's biographers states that there were only a few hundred idealists like Ben Gurion, totaling fewer than half the number of Templers living in Palestine at the time.[17]
The Second Aliyah created the security organization, HaShomer, which became the precedent for future Jewish defense organizations such as the Haganah.[citation needed]
[Gur Alroey, Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century, American Jewish Archives Journal 56 (2004): 129]
[Gur Alroey, Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience, Jewish Social Studies, 9 (2003) 28]
Teveth (1987). pp. JCA 41, pioneers 48
Israel Pocket Library (1973) History from 1880. Keter Books. ISBN 0-7065-1322-3. p.17 [Gur Alroey, Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience, Jewish Social Studies, 9 (2003) 59-60]
Yuval Ben-Bassat, Enciphered Ottoman telegrams from the First World War concerning the Yishuv in Palestine, Turcica, 46, 2015, p. 282- 285.
[Gur Alroey, Galveston and Palestine: Immigration and Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century, American Jewish Archives Journal 56 (2004): 139]
- Ben-Gurion, David, From Class to Nation: Reflections on the Vocation and Mission of the Labor Movement (Hebrew), Am Oved (1976)