When Jewish people move to Israel, the ordinary word for immigration does not cut it: instead we talk about “making Aliyah”. The Hebrew word “Aliyah” means to ascend, due to the Biblical idea that we go up to the Holy Land. Similarly, when we’re in Israel we go up to Jerusalem, hence many of the Psalms about going up to the temple being called songs of ascent. It’s a step up, ascending Godward, as we go to meet Him in the place He chose to put His name.
Aliyah is such a special concept, and Jewish people returning to the land of our forefathers is such a profound phenomenon that we have a day to celebrate it: Yom ha Aliyah. Aliyah Day! It is marked on two dates — on the 10th of Nissan, the date that Israel finally crossed over into the Promised Land, and also on the 7th Cheshvan in the fall, in the week when we read the part of the Torah where God tells Abraham:
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1)
The 10th Nissan comes right before Passover on 15th, so often gets eclipsed by Passover preparations. For this reason educational establishments and other institutions like the army to choose the Cheshvan 7 date to celebrate instead.
Waves of Aliyah
Israel is a bit like an antique machine, switched on again after generations of stillness. At first creaking and rumbling back into action, then it gradually remembered itself and a whir of familiar activity was restarted. As a people, Israel seems to have picked up where we left off, now that we’re back in the Land. Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer prize winning Journalist, put it like this:
“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”
Many think of Jewish people making Aliyah only since 1948, and even though the number of Jewish people quickly doubled in the first few years, the fact is that almost half a million Jewish people had been streaming back to the land in the first half of the twentieth century. Before that, Jews had living in the land throughout the centuries but in relatively small numbers. In the year 1880 for example there were just over 20,000 in the land, mostly in Jerusalem, representing less than a tenth of the population.
However, there was a seismic shift when God started to supernaturally regather His people. In the last few decades of the nineteenth century, around 30,000 came from Eastern Europe and Yemen in what was known as the ‘First Aliyah,’ followed by five waves of Aliyah before the state was even established.
Since 1948 an estimated 3.5 million have returned home to Israel. Many Jewish people from the US and the west who had come to faith in Yeshua made Aliyah in the 1970s, and later the 1900s brought almost a million Jewish people from the former Soviet Union, among whom were many believers and those open to faith in Yeshua. These wave boosted the body of Messiah in the land considerably. Another 850,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim lands in North Africa and the Middle East between 1948 and the early 1970s, many arriving with nothing to their name, and over 90,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought back to Israel in covert operations coordinated by the state.
In many ways, modern Israel is nothing short of a miracle. The recent return of the Jewish people to the land had many similarities to our people’s return from Babylon in the time of Nehemiah: It did not happen all at once, but in waves, often helped by foreigners, and in the face of much opposition.
The parable of Dry Bones… and what comes next
Just like the vision in Ezekiel 37, God has been collecting the dry bones from the ashes of the Holocaust and restoring them to the Land, even though most were still in unbelief. Hardly any of those fleeing the Holocaust had faith in Jesus, and many were left reeling with no faith at all. But just like Ezekiel’s vision, the physical gathering is only the first step.
There has been a lot of both good and bad happening along the journey to statehood, but God always gets his way in the end. His plans were established long ago, as testified about by the prophets, and are now coming to pass. God’s people would return to the land of Israel and they would speak Hebrew. They would rebuild the ancient cities. The ancient machine is up and running again.
Today there are over ten million people living in Israel, both Jewish and Arab, and around half of global Jewry is now back in the land.
The nation of Israel may have been physically restored in a miraculous way but Ezekiel prophesied twice: first to the bones, and then after that to the wind to come and bring life.
“Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” (v.9)
Did you notice that the breath of God’s Spirit comes from the four corners of the earth? This is symbolic of the way God is using both Jews and Gentiles to bring the Gospel back to the house of Israel in these days.
God keeps His word, even if it takes 2000 years!
Israel’s restoration has been miraculous. You can clearly see the hand of God as He fulfilled His promises to regather His people. Just as He said, it was due to persecution, and would cause the land to flourish again.
Jewish people have been praying this blessing three times a day for millennia:
“Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us together from the four corners of the earth into our land. Blessed are You Lord, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel.” (Blessing #10. Ingathering of the Exiles – Kibbutz Galuyot)
This prayer is based on the promise written by Moses in Deuteronomy 30:4-5:
“If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.”
God has also promised that full spiritual restoration would happen after the physical restoration, and we are seeing the first signs of revival now in Israel. You are part of this prophecy as you help bring God’s Spirit back to Israel from the four corners of the earth.
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash
