Welcome 3100 New Immigrants

Exceptionally wonderful Aliyah news: with this year’s seventh Nefesh b’Nefesh flight, Aliyah from North America reaches a 22-year high. Of course, there are about 3100 people who deserve to be congratulated for this, but then it would also be fair to congratulate Nefesh b’Nefesh 3100 times (which I will not take up space here to do).

Aside from the current high rate of Aliyah, which I hope is not a peak but still only a valley, another peak was in the early 80s and another in the late 60s. About the late 60s wave, it’s clear that most of those people were influenced dramatically by the Six Day War, and in many cases transformed by it, and that many of them were children of Holocaust survivors, or in any case the first generation to be raised after the Holocaust. But I’m a little bit unclear about the early 80s wave of Aliyah. Demographically, who were those people and why did they make Aliyah? Were they liberals fleeing Reagan? Washed-up ex-hippies who refused to yuppify themselves? Why didn’t the wave continue?