WhatsappThe State of Israel was formed in 1948, following a gradual return to the Land of Israel that began two centuries beforehand. Actually, there had always been a trickle of Jews who made the treacherous journey back to their homeland over many centuries. But the trickle only became a small movement in the latter part of the 18th century.
The students of the Baal Shem Tov, a great Hasidic Rabbi, usually coined as the father of Hasidism, were the first organized group to make Aliyah. The students of the Vilna Gaon followed suit a few decades later. These were groups of families, numbering in the tens. It would be a stretch to say that this was a movement. However, many of these original families who came have thousands of descendants all over the Land of Israel today, so credit must be given to the original pioneers.
More than 50 years later, Mark Twain would travel to the Holy Land and make his famous claim that the Holy Land was basically one wide expanse of empty wasteland. He was actually just one of many world travelers who pointed this out over the centuries. The Land of Israel, sometimes referred to as Palestine in the 18th and 19th century, was not filled with Arabs, Jews, or Christians. It was an empty land. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were far less than 50,000 Jews and Arabs in the entire Land of Israel. Most were in or around a few small ancient cities – Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Jaffa.
However, by the end of the 19th century, there were already more than 100,000 Jews and Arabs in the entire Land of Israel. That was not a large number, but a significant change had occurred. It all got going in earnest before Theodor Herzl was a Zionist leader.
The First Aliyah – in the 1880’s was probably driven largely by pogroms in Russia and the winds of nationalism that were spreading across Europe and Russia. It was never wonderful under the Czar for the Jewish people. But pogroms, which meant mass killings, hooliganism, and chaos, was yet another thing. Most Jews in Russia became enamored with ideas that would enhance their seemingly hopeless lives in Russia. The attractive philosophy of the time was communism, espoused by Karl Marx and others. Many Jews bought into it.
A small minority of the idealistic Jews viewed nationalism – Jewish nationalism – as the answer to their problems. They dreamed and moved to the Land of Israel, despite all of the risks. They fought off malaria to drain swamps and established the first settlements in the empty Land of Israel. This is what attracted Arabs from Syria and Egypt to come and work in the Land of Israel. There was more income to be earned working alongside the Jews in the Land of Israel than in Syria or Egypt.
By the turn of the 20th century, the small movement had grown into a mass movement of thousands of people moving to the Land of Israel in what would become known as the 2nd Aliyah. This group was not just nationalistic. They were largely socialist and less religiously inclined. But they would become the leaders of the future State of Israel. David Ben Gurion was one of the people in this group. Their ideology would dominate the Zionist movement for more than half a century.
When the State of Israel was formed in 1948, it’s leaders were largely a group of non-religious socialist Jews who believed in working the Land of Israel. Even the Soviet Union voted in favor of the formation of the State of Israel, hoping that the State of Israel would be a vital ally in it’s spread of Communism across the world.
Israel’s trade unions and the Army were the most dominant groups in the country for the first three decades. Anyone not affiliated with them had trouble getting ahead in Israel. But near the end of the 20th century, this was all changing. Benjamin Netanyahu takes a lot of the credit for this. But indeed, much of this was naturally occurring as the agricultural communal kibbutzim and moshavim were struggling financially, and the government could no longer afford to bail them out.
The gold rush draw of hi-tech success has enamored the masses of young people in Israel who are flocking towards jobs in the fields that promise rapid upward mobility. But how did Israel attain such rapid fire success in this field in just two decades. This video tackles that very issue.
