December 31, 2010

By Raphael Ahren

Australia and New Zealand have strong economies and no rampant anti-Semitism, yet the numbers of Jews leaving these countries and moving to Israel jumped nearly 50 percent this year, from 175 to 260, according to Jewish Agency figures released this week.

"I can proudly say that we managed, in the past two years, to brand aliyah as something good, something to think of [as] something to do," Oren Sella, the Jewish Agency's aliyah emissary in Melbourne, told Anglo File. "The aliyah seeds have been planted long ago in the hearts of the Jews here. They are still being planted."

The size of Australia's Jewish community is approximately 110,000 to 150,000. Some 8,000 Jews live in New Zealand, according to the country's Zionist Federation. An average of 100 Jews on immigrated to Israel between 1990 and 1999 and 110 between 2000 and 2010. Immigration has steadily increased since a low of 60 in 2002, with 250 coming from Australia and 10 from New Zealand this year.

"It's not a rise in anti-Semitism, it's not a difficult economic situation, as we've recovered from the financial crisis, fairly similar to Israel - it really is a very positive aliyah," said Yigal Sela, the director of Zionist Federation of Australia's Israel office. He credits several factors for the increase, mainly the Jewish community's strong Zionist convictions and the growing number of participants on short- and long-term Israel programs for young Jews, such as Taglit-Birthright Israel and Masa.

"I think there is a correlation between the fact that we have a record number of olim".