First Aliyah

[1][2] Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen, stimulated by pogroms and violence against the Jewish communities in those areas.

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.

[11] The Jewish community from the Pale of Settlement in western Russia, Galicia, and Romania, in particular, suffered from economic difficulties.

Most of the Jewish emigrants (who mainly migrated to America) were families seeking to escape persecution and aiming to improve their personal and economic security.

[12] Antisemitic persecution both by authorities and by the local population in Eastern Europe, primarily in the Russian Empire, intensified the Jewish migration.

Its members opened branches in many cities and towns, leading to a national awakening among part of the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement areas, extending beyond the borders of Russia.

The rise in antisemitism made the Zionist movement popular, replacing the attitude of integration into European societies.

[13] Mosheh Halevy Goldrin, a leader and visionary, called the convention 'the Union for the Agricultural Settlement' and presented a bold plan to organize group emigration to Palestine and Syria and establish farming communities there.

The committee organized expeditions from Galați on the Danube to the Land of Israel, bringing emigrants from Jewish communities in Romania.

Through the committee's activities, about 600 people, out of approximately 1,000 early immigrants, settled in nine Moshava, including Rosh Pina and Zichron Yaakov.

The purpose of this organization was to absorb immigrants to Ottoman Syria who came as a result of the activities of Hovevei Zion in Russia.

[19] Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine from Eastern Europe occurred as part of mass emigrations of approximately 2.5 million people[20] that took place towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

A rapid increase in population had created economic problems that affected Jewish societies in the Pale of Settlement in Russia, Galicia, and Romania.

It was after these movements that the World Zionist Organization sent Shmuel Yavne'eli to Yemen to encourage Jews to emigrate to the Land of Israel.