Providing a safe haven to Jews has always been central to Israel’s identity. Aliyah, the Hebrew term for Jewish immigration to the Promised Land, is a basic tenet of Zionism. But Israel has other reasons for wanting to attract more Jewish immigrants from Europe.
Immigration to Israel has fallen off sharply after a huge influx following the breakup of the Soviet Union. For most of the past decade, fewer than 20,000 immigrants have been arriving annually, with the largest numbers coming from former Soviet republics and Ethiopia. Ian Lustick, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied Israeli immigration, describes many of these recent immigrants as coming primarily for economic reasons. Some have relatively tenuous connections to Judaism—for example, one Jewish grandparent. About 75 percent of Israel’s population now is Jewish, down from nearly 90 percent in the 1960s.
Western European Jews, by contrast, generally have stronger connections to Judaism—and they are showing interest in Israel. Immigrant arrivals to Israel rose sharply last year, with France accounting for 7,000 of the 26,500 total, more than any other country. France has Europe’s largest Jewish population and also has suffered several terrorist attacks on Jewish sites, including a shooting that killed four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris on Jan. 30.