By Stan Goodenough
Jul 06, 2007
Israeli news outlets reported Thursday that a record number of Jews from North America will be making aliyah (immigrating) to Israel this summer.
A planeload of 230 new immigrants from the United States and Canada is scheduled to land at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv next Tuesday.
They will be welcomed at a festive ceremony attended by hundreds of Israelis who have come home from America in recent years.
Immigration from the US and Canada has reportedly gone up more than 80 percent in the last five years.
Modern-day Israel is a unique nation. It has been reconstituted from Jews from more than 100 different countries, the descendants of the people taken into captivity 200 years ago and forced to leave the same land to which they have now returned.
Predicted by the ancient Israelite prophets, and recorded in the Bible, this "ingathering" has been taking place in waves since the late 1800s.
While great number of Jews were driven out of the Arab countries, and the largest wave ever came from the former Soviet Union after 1989, largely-prosperous American Jews have been less willing to leave exile for Eretz Yisrael. This is now beginning to change.
According to the Bible, the physical return of the Jews will be followed by their national repentance and return to God, after which the long-awaited Messiah will come.