Getting to the Promised Land Trivia Quiz

Answer: Babylonian Captivity

Judah, present-day Israel, was a territory of the Assyrian Empire when the Neo-Babylonians overran it in the 690s BCE. Egypt, to Israel's west, feared the encroachment of the Babylonians and began fortifying. The politics of the kingdom were divided into pro-Egyptian and pro-Babylonian factions, and the pro-Egyptians won out. Thus, Nebuchadnezzar II, then-Babylonian king, besieged Jerusalem, killing the king and pillaging the famous Temple. Many Israelites, including the prophet Ezekiel, were brought back to Babylon. They were only released in 538, when the Persian Empire and Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and began its domination of the Middle East and Central Asia. 50,000 Jews returned to Israel after the so-called Cyrus Declaration.

The Babylonian Captivity saw the adoption of the current Hebrew script as well as the growing importance of the Torah in Jewish culture; it also saw the first real mention of "aliyah" in history. The word itself means "going up," which has both religious and secular connotations. Not only does it imply the metaphorical ascent into the Promised Land; also, Jerusalem is situated more than 2,000 feet above sea level, making the journey a true "ascent." In the traditional formulation of the Hebrew Bible (ending with 2 Chronicles), "aliyah" is the last word.

Answer: Inquisition

The Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile were famous for more than their sponsorship of Columbus. Their leadership of Spain saw the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, a body designed to try and punish non-Catholics, particularly the Jews and Muslims living in the previously-religiously-tolerant nation. The Reconquista was the recapture of Muslim land in southern Spain from the caliphate, and ended in 1492 with the conquest of Granada. That same year, the monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree, expelling all Jews from Spain. Those who didn't either converted to Christianity (and were branded "conversos") or were publicly burned in autos-da-fe (public burnings). Or, they converted and then were brutally tortured and burned.

So, unsurprisingly, most of the Spanish Jews (also known as Sephardim) left. Some left south for northern Africa; others realized that there was a new continent to explore and hopped on a boat across the Atlantic. Still others tried to realize their aliyot to Israel, a trek which was made easier by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Still, though, immigration to Israel remained low until the nineteenth century.

Answer: Russia

Jews had been repressed in Russia for ages, beginning with the establishment in 1791 of Pale of Settlement, a region in Western Russia where Jews were allowed to live. They were not allowed to live outside the Pale, due to the prevailing notion that they were overrunning the Russian middle class. Instead, they lived in small villages called shtetls (depicted famously in "The Fiddler on the Roof"), which were subject to anti-Semitic riots called pogroms.

To combat the issue, leaders began calling for change: immigration to Israel. Israel Belkins founded the Bilu movement, designed to open up agricultural settlement of Israel. An acronym for "Beit Yaakov Lekhu Vanelkha," or "House of Jacob, let us go up," Bilu gained many followers. Two million people left Russia in between 1880 and 1920, as a result of increased anti-Semitism, mostly to the United States and to Israel. The so-called First and Second Aliyah movements took place during this time period, and were dominated by Russians moving to Israel.

Answer: Arthur James Balfour

After World War I, a new wave of Jewish migration to Israel began, resulting in the displacement of at least 35,000 people between 1919 and 1923. The immigrants came from Eastern Europe, but were especially inclined to move due to what seemed to be an official endorsement from the British government for a Jewish homeland. Here's what happened:

The so-called Jewish Question, which had been haunting European governments for centuries, finally found an answer in the form of Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist who began the Zionist movement in the 1890s. Herzl argued that both Jews and Gentiles would benefit from the establishment of an all-Jewish homeland in Palestine, and his ideas saw moderate popular support. In 1917, Foreign Secretary Balfour wrote to British Jewish leader Baron Rothschild, saying: "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object."

Great, except in 1915, British diplomat Henry McMahon sent a letter to Mecca to Sharif Husayn bin-Ali, saying that the UK would support Arab independence in the area, which was implicitly explained to include Palestine. Whoops! Britain would later backtrack on the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, but the Balfour Declaration remained a prominent statement of intent, and it resulted in thousands of Jews making the aliyah to Israel. In 1922, the League of Nations established the British Mandate of Palestine, designed to promote the welfare of both Arab and Jewish settlements in the region. The Mandate divided the territory into Palestine, which was subject to British law, and Transjordan, which was under Arab control. Thus, Britain controlled the area politically up until Israeli independence in 1948.

Answer: The rise of Nazism

In 1929, there were riots in Palestine, with bad feelings boiling over between Muslims and Jews, struggling for control over land (sounds familiar?). More than one hundred people of each religious group were killed in the violence. Yet people still arrived by the hundreds coming into the Holy Land, mainly because of the Nazi takeover of Germany.

When Hitler came to power, Jews evacuated Germany as best they could. With closed gates in the US, though, Palestine offered an appealing alternative. In August 1933, the Nazis, keen to get the German Jews out of Germany, signed the Haavara Agreement, which effectively allowed some Jews to export German goods to Palestine and sell them there, thus making emigration a practical possiblity.

Professors, doctors, and lawyers moved to Israel. The development of Tel Aviv, a coastal city on the Mediterranean, occurred during this decade. In fact, exiled German artists of the Bauhaus school of architecture moved to Tel Aviv and began construction projects in such a style that the metropolis was renamed the "White City." Today, Tel Aviv has the highest concentration of Bauhaus architecture in the world.

Yet, tragically, when the Holocaust began its ravage of the European Jewish population, immigration (and escape) stalled. In 1939, the British government instituted the "White Paper," which restricted immigration to Palestine. Illegal immigration, called Aliyah Bet, dominated the era, with more than 100,000 European Jews, later including also Holocaust survivors making aliyah. (The Kielce Pogrom of July 1946 and other, less well known incidents made it very clear that returning to Poland from camps in Germany was unsafe).

Answer: Operation Magic Carpet

Anti-Jewish violence culminated in 1947 in Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with the UN plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state. At independence of the new country on May 14, 1948, tensions boiled over into rioting and outright war. Aden, a coastal city located in present-day Yemen but at the time belonged to the British, was one epicenter for violence. After Israel put down threats from its neighbors in the 1948 War for Independence, it began "rescuing" Jews in other Arab nations. Yemen was first. Almost every Jew in Yemen was transported to Israel by American and British planes, carrying about 47,000 people.

Although the official name was Operation on the Wings of Eagles, the mission has since been collectively known as Operation Magic Carpet. Interestingly, Operation Magic Carpet was also a name used for the repatriation of American soldiers after World War II. Regardless, Yemen was the first in a series of what can only be described as mass exoduses from Arab countries in the 50s and 60s to Israel. Jews in huge numbers left for Israel, from Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, and several other nations. Nearly one million immigrants made aliyah to Israel during this time period. In 2002, it was estimated that half of Israel's population was made up of these Jews from Arab countries.

Answer: Citizenship

Controversial yet effective, the Law of Return has been one of the major factors responsible for the continued aliyah of Jews to Israel in the years after independence. Jews immigrating to Israel are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship. Who gets this privilege? In 1970, the law was clarified to include 1) children of a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother (born Jews); 2) children with a Jewish father or grandfather (Jewish ancestry); or 3) converts to Judaism. Olah (people who have made aliyah), including Gentiles with a Jewish background, have come to the country in incredible numbers, taking advantages of the citizenship guaranteed.

Yet there is still intense controversy over the law. If one member of a couple is Jewish, then both receive citizenship. However, arguments erupted in 2011 when a half-Jewish gay couple immigrated. After months of debate, the Israeli government consented to give both of them the rights. Palestinians claim that the law endorses ethnic discrimination against non-Jews. Others claim that the Law of Return permits non-Jewish, anti-Israeli people to come to Israel and cause mischief, as evidenced by the 2007 uncovering of a neo-Nazi cell in Petah Tikva.

Answer: Ethiopia

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres instituted the Ethiopian airlift dubbed "Operation Moses" in 1984. Famine in the Sudan region justified his actions as saving refugees. Transporting 8,000 Ethiopian Jews by air, the program lasted until January 1985, when the Sudanese government, pressured by the Arab world, called an end to the airlift. Nearly 4,000 members of Beta Israel died in the journey to Sudanese refugee camps, and families were rent apart when only some members were taken to Israel before the program ended. Five years later, the new Operation Solomon came back for 14,000 more Ethiopian Jews.

One notable player in both the Ethiopian and Yemeni airlifts was the airline El Al. El Al, the Israeli flag carrier, used its fleet to transport the refugees. During Operation Solomon, it set a record for most passengers on a commercial airplane. El Al is also notable for its security protocols, which have made it the "safest" airline in the world.

Answer: Mikhail Gorbachev

There were two major waves of Soviet aliyah. In the 1970s, following Israel's success in the Six-Day War against the Soviet-backed Arab world, waves of nationalism and Zionism broke over the Soviet Jews. However, the government bureau providing exit visas refused in many circumstances to permit immigration; those who were denied were termed "refuseniks." In 1970, sixteen Soviet refuseniks attempted to hijack an airplane, but were ultimately unsuccessful. The so-called Dymshits-Kuznetsov affair ended with the sentence of death on all individuals involved. However, international pressure forced the Soviet government to relent slightly, and to loosen its grip upon emigration.

So, in 1970, USSR borders cracked open. As the Soviet Jewish intellectuals dashed out of Europe, the government instituted a so-called "diploma tax" on emigrants who had received a college education, trying to prevent "brain drain." Nevertheless, the era saw the immigration of several thousand Jews to Israel, though many more to the United States.

In the 90s, however, things changed. The US repealed its classification of Russian Jews as "refugees," thus making it more difficult for immigration to the States. Instead, with all barriers down and living with an economy in turmoil, Russian Jews moved in heavy numbers to Israel. The aliyah of more than 600,000 caused a housing shortage in Israel, as caravan sites erupted to accommodate the new citizens. After time, the immigrants assimilated; however, their impact had far-reaching consequences on Israeli politics and culture. Many blamed the Soviet Jews for right-wing stances on war, which would topple the governments of Peres and Netanyahu. Others criticized the secular wave for its non-orthodox behavior and Russian Ashkenazi culture.

Answer: Japan

By the 21st century, the number of Jews in Japan was minuscule. In 2011, they made up just 2,000 people, or 0.0016% of Japan's population.

The other three countries, on the other hand, do (or did) have large Jewish populations, a significant amount of which made aliyah between 2000 and 2010. The United States has historically been populated by Jews, and strong ties to Israel have made it a source of aliyah for decades. Following Argentina's economic troubles around 2000, more than 10,000 of that nation's Jews (with Sephardic heritage, if you remember the Spanish Inquisition) moved to Israel. Anti-Semitism in France following the Second Intifada resulted in displacement of thousands of Jews from that country as well.

Other nations that saw significant aliyah during the 21st century include: Iran, India, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, the UK, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Brazil, and Canada.