Abstract: Статья исследует основные направления эмиграции горских евреев во второй половине XX – начале XXI века. Горские евреи, кавказские евреи или джууры, а если быть точнее, то их предки появились на Кавказе, предположительно в VI в. н.э. Местами их компактного расселения в данном регионе стали территории современной Азербайджанской Республики и юг Республики Дагестан. Горские евреи всегда в гармонии и мире проживали с другими народами на Кавказе. Ситуация поменялась в 1970-х. гг. когда они начали репатриироваться в Израиль. Однако, более массовый характер переселенческое движение приобрело в 1990-х гг. в период дезинтеграции СССР. Автор анализирует причины массового исхода представителей этой общины, включая политические, экономические и социальные факторы. Особое внимание уделяется миграционным маршрутам, таким как переезд в Израиль, США и Европу, а также особенностям адаптации горских евреев в новых условиях. В работе рассматриваются изменения в культурной идентичности и сохранении традиций в условиях диаспоры. Среди использованных в данном исследовании методов можно назвать исторический метод (историко-генетический), историко-сравнительный метод, историко-типологический метод, историко-структурный метод, документальный анализ. Исследование сочетает исторические и социологические аспекты эмиграции горских евреев, что позволяет более полно понять причинно-следственные связи. В статье представлены статистические данные, которые ранее не были учтены в исследованиях по данной тематике. Анализируются новые миграционные маршруты и связи с диаспорами, что актуализирует проблему идентичности и культурной адаптации. Исследуется влияние политических и экономических изменений в странах исхода и приема на динамику эмиграции. В ыводы: 1. Эмиграция горских евреев во второй половине XX века была преимущественно вызвана политическими и экономическими трудностями, а в начале XXI века – поиском лучших условий жизни и интеграции в новые общества. 2. Основные направления эмиграции: Израиль, США, Канада, Германия и Австрия, где горские евреи нашли возможность поддерживать свою культуру и идентичность. 3. Процесс эмиграции оказал значительное влияние на демографическую структуру, что привело, фактически, к исчезновению общин горских евреев в традиционных местах проживания.
Abstract: In this report:
According to new data from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 742 people emigrated to Israel (‘made aliyah’) from the UK in 2025 – the highest annual count for over 40 years. This report examines the recent migration data in its historical context to assess whether this latest figure represents a genuine shift and if so, whether it is being fuelled by concerns about antisemitism in Britain.
Some of the key findings in the report:
742 people emigrated to Israel (‘made aliyah’) from the UK in 2025 – the highest annual count for over 40 years.
Over the past 20 years, annual counts have remained within a fairly narrow range, from about 400 to about 740.
Taking the past three years together, an average of 566 British Jews made aliyah per annum – close to the annual average over the past two decades.
About 2 Jews per 1,000 in the UK Jewish population currently make aliyah each year, somewhat higher than the equivalent figure for Canada (0.7), but considerably lower than in France (6.4), and orders of magnitude lower than the levels associated with major cases of Jewish flight during 20th Century crises or periods of acute uncertainty.
Since October 7, 2023, British Jews have shown a small but marked increase in their likelihood of making aliyah.
Younger people, orthodox Jews and those most affected by antisemitism are most likely to say they are considering making aliyah in the coming five years.
Aliyah, like all forms of migration, is also informed by socioeconomic conditions; there is clear evidence that factors such as unemployment rates are key determinants in people’s decisions.
Migration is not a one-way street: the number of people living in the UK who were born in Israel rose from 12,229 in 2001 to 23,152 in 2021, a net increase of 10,923 over those 20 years.
Abstract: La création de l’État d’Israël, en 1948, reconfigure profondément les migrations juives internationales, et la France devient, surtout après 1967, l’un des foyers réguliers de l’alya, terme désignant l’immigration juive vers Israël. Depuis les années 2000, les départs s’intensifient et se diversifient, désormais motivés moins par l’idéologie sioniste que par un sentiment d’insécurité croissante en France. Malgré le paradoxe d’une installation dans un pays en guerre, les migrants placent en Israël une confiance forte, parfois idéalisée, dans sa capacité à assurer leur protection. Cette migration en provenance de France apparaît alors comme un mouvement ambivalent, pris entre urgence ressentie et avenir incertain, et marqué par une structuration communautaire exposée aux enjeux sécuritaires en France comme aux influences du sionisme religieux en Israël.
Abstract: While Jewish immigration to the State of Israel is a key component of Zionist ideology, emigration has been discouraged and vilified. Yet, Israeli Jewish citizens have been leaving throughout. This paper chronicles the approaches of the State of Israel towards its citizen diaspora, which shifted from rejection to the realisation of Israelis abroad as a fait accompli, and a resource for the state. At the same time, it depicts the self-organisation of Israeli citizens abroad, and their on-going ties to the State of Israel, even if they are highly critical of it. To elaborate on this dialectic, the paper zooms in on Israeli citizens in Germany. In consequence, I argue that the secularised notion of the ‘love for the Jewish people’ (ahavat yisrael) can be extended to ahava be’ad ha’medinat yisrael (love for the State of Israel) in the present to conceptualise the on-going relationship of Israeli citizens abroad to Israel, and its implementation by the state.
Abstract: This groundbreaking report released by the JPR European Demography Unit finds that 630,000 ex-pat Israelis live across the world, most of whom choose English-speaking and European countries as their new home. The report notes that an estimated 325,000 children have been born to these Israelis when living abroad, bringing the total number of Israeli migrants and their children to close to a million. The report also finds that in certain destination countries, the proportion of ex-pat Israelis and their families now exceeds 20% of the national Jewish population.
Some of the key findings in this report:
About 630,000 Israelis lived outside Israel in 2021-2023. Of these, 328,000 were born in Israel, and another 302,000 were born elsewhere but acquired Israeli citizenship and lived in Israel during their lives.
Estimating the number of children born to Israelis living abroad, the report concludes there are 955,000 ‘Israel-connected’ people worldwide.
The ‘Israel-connected’ Jewish population currently constitutes 9% of the population of the Jewish Diaspora.
The largest Israel-born Jewish communities are in English-speaking countries (US, Canada, and UK) and European countries (with those in Germany and the UK making up nearly 50% of Israelis living in Europe).
Europe hosts about one-third of Israeli ex-pats but only 16% of all Jews living in the Diaspora.
Israel-born Jews make up nearly half of the Jewish population in Norway, 41% in Finland, and over 20% of the Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain and Denmark.
Over the past decade, Israeli-born populations have grown significantly in the Baltic countries (up 135%), Ireland (+95%), Bulgaria (+78%), Czechia (+74%), Spain (+39%), The Netherlands (+36%), Germany (+34%) and the UK (+27%).
Israeli ex-pat communities in Europe are among the fastest growing in the world.
Abstract: Of about a million Jews that arrived to Israel from the (former) USSR after 1989 some 12% left the country by the end of 2017. It is estimated that about a half of them left "back" for the FSU, and the rest for the USA, Canada and the Western Europe. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of this specific Jewish Israeli Diaspora group through cutting-edge approaches in the social sciences, and examines the settlement patterns of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrants, their identity, social demographic profile, reasons of emigration, their economic achievements, identification, and status vis-à-vis host Jewish and non-Jewish environment, vision of Israel, migration interests and behavior, as well as their social and community networks, elites and institutions. Vladimir Ze’ev Khanin makes a significant contribution to migration theory, academic understanding of transnational Diasporas, and sheds a new light on the identity and structure of contemporary Israeli society. The book is based on the unique statistics from Israeli and other Government sources and sociological information obtained from the author’s first of this kind on-going study of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrant communities in different regions of the world.
Abstract: В статье подробно анализируется численная динамика и демографическая структура наиболее многочисленного в 1990-2023 гг. миграционного потока в Израиль, который шел из России. С этой целью рассмотрено ежегодное изменение чисел мигрантов из этой страны в Израиль за этот период. Выявлены пики миграции, обусловленные событиями в стране происхождения мигрантов, пришедшиеся на 1990-1991 и 1999-2000 гг. и новый, начавшийся в 2022 г. Для нового пика миграции проанализирована динамика чисел мигрантов за отдельные месяцы с выделением среди них двух групп: прибывших в Израиль с визой репатрианта («прямая алия») и тех, кто первоначально въехали в эту страну как туристы и после того получили статус репатрианта. Оценено влияние отрицательной нетто-миграции на снижение численности еврейского населения России в 1990-2022 гг.
Проведенный анализ показал, что современная очень постаревшая структура еврейского населения в России не может обеспечить масштабную эмиграцию. Однако израильский Закон о возвращении распространяется на значительно более широкий круг лиц, имеющих еврейское происхождение и их супругов. Ежегодные данные израильской статистики показывают, что доля евреев среди иммигрантов из России падала на протяжении рассмотренного периода. Возрастная структура мигрантов из России в Израиль была близка до конца прошлого десятилетия к возрастному составу всего городского населения страны выезда, а по самым последним данным даже стала более молодой по сравнению с ним. В общем составе мигрантов на протяжении большей части анализируемого периода численно преобладали женщины, однако в последней миграционной волне по данным 2022 г. стали незначительно преобладать мужчины.
Abstract: Un nombre considérable de juifs a quitté la France dans la dernière décennie, sans que les paroles rassurantes émanant des plus hautes autorités de l’État aient pu arrêter l’hémorragie. Quant à ceux qui restent, ils ne peuvent éviter l’idée de devoir peut-être partir un jour, au regard des événements et d’un climat général dont chacun perçoit le poids.
La sociologie politique, curieusement, n’a que bien peu à dire sur un tel phénomène. Prolixe sur la question de l’immigration, elle est pratiquement muette sur le fait que la France ait pu ainsi devenir une terre d’émigration. Qu’est-il donc arrivé ? Pour le comprendre, l’invocation commode des tensions intercommunautaires et du radicalisme islamiste est bien loin de suffire. C’est une généalogie au long cours de notre situation qui est requise, une restitution des dynamiques complexes où sont intriqués, depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les juifs, l’Europe et l’État d’Israël.
De cette manière, et de cette manière seulement, l’un des points les plus sensibles du malaise politique actuel peut enfin être affronté.
Abstract: La migration des Juifs de France vers Israël, longtemps ignorée par les pouvoirs publics, interroge aujourd’hui la société française. Les départs devenus conséquents au tournant du XXIe siècle rappellent la constance de l’antisémitisme et disent la crainte d’une population fragilisée par les incivilités, les meurtres et les attentats. Dans le même temps, l’alya (immigration des Juifs en Israël) relève aussi de dynamiques migratoires anciennes, de pratiques de circulations internationales et de politiques d’appel organisées par l’État d’Israël pour répondre à ses besoins démographiques et économiques.
Prise entre des pratiques migratoires de temps long et des commentaires soulignant le poids des appartenances nationales, du conflit israélo-palestinien et d’une actualité anxiogène, l’alya de France demande cependant à être comprise dans ses processus, ses encadrements institutionnels et les justifications que les individus donnent de l’acte de partir.
Laissant une place importante à l’expérience migratoire, ce livre étudie cette migration dans sa dimension historique, géographique et sociologique. À partir d’archives israéliennes inédites, de données cartographiques originales et d’enquêtes de terrain, il donne des clefs de compréhension d’un phénomène très médiatisé mais toujours lu au prisme d’enjeux politiques et symboliques.
Abstract: In this report:
We look into Jewish migration from 15 European countries - representing 94% of Jews living in Europe - comparing data from recent years to previous periods over the last century, and focusing on the signal that the current levels of Jewish migration from Europe send about the political realities perceived and experienced by European Jews.
Some of the key findings in this report:
Peak periods of Jewish migration in the past century – from Germany in the 1930s, North Africa in the 1960s and the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s, saw 50%-75% of national Jewish populations migrate in no more than a decade;
No European Jewish population has shown signs of migration at anywhere near that level for several decades, although recent patterns from Russia and Ukraine point to that possibility over the coming years;
France, Belgium, Italy and Spain saw strong surges in Jewish emigration in the first half of the 2010s, which declined subsequently, but not as far as pre-surge levels;
However, the higher levels of migration measured in these counties during the last decade have not reached the critical values indicating any serious Jewish ‘exodus’ from them;
For Russian and Ukrainian Jews, 2022 was a watershed year: if migration from these countries continues for seven years at the levels seen in 2022 and early 2023, 80%-90% of the 2021 Jewish population of Ukraine and 50%-60% of the 2021 Jewish population of Russia will have emigrated;
Jewish emigration from the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark has mainly been stable or declining since the mid-1980s;
In Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, there has been some decline in Jewish migration over the observed period, with migration eventually settling at a new, lower level.
Abstract: This detailed and thorough report is rapidly becoming the ‘must-read’ study on European Jews, taking the reader on an extraordinary journey through one thousand years of European Jewish history before arriving at the most comprehensive analysis of European Jewish demography today.
Written by leading Jewish demographers Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky, the Chair and Director of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit respectively, it explores how the European Jewish population has ebbed and flowed over time. It begins as far back as the twelfth century, travelling through many years of population stability, until the tremendous growth of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the dramatic decline prompted by a combination of mass migration and the horrors of the Shoah. Extraordinarily, after all this time, the proportion of world Jewry living in Europe today is almost identical to the proportion living in Europe 900 years ago.
Using multiple definitions of Jewishness and a vast array of sources to determine the size of the contemporary population, the study proceeds to measure it in multiple ways, looking at the major blocs of the European Union and the European countries of the Former Soviet Union, as well as providing country-by-country analyses, ranging from major centres such as France, the UK, Germany and Hungary, to tiny territories such as Gibraltar, Monaco and even the Holy See.
The report also contains the most up-to-date analysis we have on the key mechanisms of demographic change in Europe, touching variously on patterns of migration in and out of Europe, fertility, intermarriage, conversion and age compositions. While the report itself is a fascinating and important read, the underlying data are essential tools for the JPR team to utilise as it supports Jewish organisations across the continent to plan for the future.
Abstract: The present study investigated the role of socio-demographic characteristics, social networks, and satisfaction with various aspects of life in predicting the emigration intentions of Jews living in Russia. The study’s subjects consisted of Jews and their relatives eligible for immigration to Israel under the Israeli Law of Return. The study’s participants (n = 824) lived in five metropolitan areas. Socio-demographic characteristics, social networks, and satisfaction with life in Russia together explained 23% of the variance in emigration intentions among Russian Jews. Specifically, stronger emigration intentions were associated with a younger age, a smaller number of Jewish ancestors, a lower level of religiosity, a smaller number of Russian friends, a larger number of friends living abroad, a lower level of psychological well-being, and dissatisfaction with the education and healthcare systems in Russia. In addition, Jews living in Moscow and St. Petersburg expressed stronger emigration intentions than Jews living in other cities in Russia.
Abstract: We conceptualize motivations to emigrate as expressions of basic motivations in the context of emigration. We propose three theoretically distinct motivations to emigrate: preservation (physical, social, and psychological security), self-development (personal growth in abilities, knowledge, and skills), and materialism (financial wellbeing, wealth). We validate this typology in a sample of 158 potential Jewish emigrants from Russia with confirmatory factor analysis of reasons to emigrate. Each motivation correlates, as hypothesized, with the basic values theorized to underlie it. The relative importance of the motivations and their associations with preferred destination of immigration, group identifications, subjective wellbeing, and economic situation are also largely consistent with hypotheses. We discuss the generalizability of these motivations for understanding emigration in settings around the world.
Abstract: Recent negative economic, political, and anti-Semitic developments in Europe, question the future thriving of Jewish life on the old continent.
According to a large-scale survey on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of anti-Semitism commissioned by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), in three of the nine states surveyed (namely Belgium, France and Hungary), between 40-50% of respondents said they had considered emigrating from their country of residence because they did not feel safe there. Moreover, some 200-300 Jewish families of French origin have recently immigrated to Montreal, and at least 120 families to London.
Beyond the Aliyah of 50,000 French Jews since 1990 (10% of French Jewry), new-immigrant associations claim there are some 20-30,000 additional French Jews who live part of the year in Israel but for convenience – and in order to avoid Israeli bureaucracy – prefer not to take Israeli citizenship.
Despite the trends outlined above, benefiting from relatively high social, professional, and economic personal status, most European Jews will in all likelihood remain in Europe.
