Second Aliyah

The Second Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה השנייה, romanized: HaAliyah HaShniya) was an aliyah (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from Russia, with some from Yemen, immigrated into Ottoman Palestine. The Second Aliyah was a small part of the greater emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe which lasted from the 1870s until the 1920s. During this time, over two million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe. The majority of these emigrants settled in the United States where there was the greatest economic opportunity. Others settled in South America, Australia, and South Africa. There are multiple reasons for this mass emigration from Eastern Europe, including the growing antisemitism in Tzarist Russia and the Pale of Settlement. The manifestations of this antisemitism were various pogroms, notably the Kishinev pogrom and the pogroms that attended the 1905 Russian Revolution. The other major factor for emigration was economic hardship. The majority of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe was poor and they left in search of a better life. Jews left Eastern Europe in search of a better economic situation which the majority found in the United States. The Palestine region on the other hand offered very limited economic incentives for new immigrants, because there was very little industry in the region. Thus, the majority of the Jewish immigrants found a livelihood through working the land. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease. David Ben-Gurion estimated that "90% of the Second Aliyah despaired of the country and left”.