Aliyah is a Hebrew word that means to “go up.” While originally it referred to ascending to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feasts, today it has come to mean the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
Aliyah, simply stated, is the ingathering of the exiles from the four corners of the earth — it is the immigration of Jews back to their ancestral homeland. Aliyah “is rooted in the Jewish people’s fervent hope to rebuild its national life in the country from which it was exiled nearly 2,000 years ago.”
Aliyah is Biblical
The prophets spoke of Aliyah:
“He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:12)
Jeremiah suggested that an Aliyah would come that would eclipse the return of the children of Israel out of Egypt. In chapter 16:14,15 we find these words: “However, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when men will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say ‘As surely as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their forefathers.”
And in 30:2,3 God told Jeremiah: “Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. The days are coming, declares the Lord, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess.”
Chrisitian support for Aliyah
The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ) was the first Christian Aliyah organisation. As one of the largest today, ICEJ has sponsored thousands of flights including full airplanes, group and individual flights to bring God’s people. This is in direct fulfilment of Isaiah 49:22 “See. I will beckon to the Gentiles, I will lift up My banner to the peoples; they will carry your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders.”
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the ICEJ has assisted more than 140,000 Jews in making their way home to Israel from all over the world. This represents an investment of over $50 million in aliyah efforts, with most of the assisted Jewish olim coming from the former Soviet republics but also thousands from Western Europe, North and South America, the Bnei Menashe from India, the Kaifeng Jews from China and the Ethiopian Jews.
Together we are fulling the call of God who said: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”
