According to figures released this week by the Jewish Agency and the Aliyah and Integration Ministry, over 20,000 new immigrants arrived between Sept. 2025 and Sept. 2026.
Last week, reports covered the vast exodus from Israel by medical professionals. In a study by Tel Aviv University, total emigration was much higher than emigration among doctors and nurses. The study, based on data supplied by the Central Bureau of Statistics, indicated that between 2023 and 2025, 268,509 citizens left for a period of at least three consecutive months, compared with 183,219 during the corresponding three-year period 10 years earlier.
The ministry, the agency, and organizations such as Nefesh B’Nefesh appear to be more interested in immigration than emigration, and are anticipating large waves of immigration as antisemitism continues to spread and violent antisemitic incidents go unchecked.
Meanwhile, Israelis who believe that they can keep their Jewish identities under wraps are leaving the country in the hope that they will have a better future abroad than what they can anticipate in Israel. There’s a Hebrew expression, meshaneh makom meshaneh mazal, which translates as a change of place – a change of luck. This more or less sums up the reason for emigration. Immigrants to Israel are called olim, meaning they have “ascended” to the Promised Land. Those who emigrate are called yordim, meaning they have “descended” to something allegedly inferior.
Not so long ago, the worst thing one could say about another person was to call them a yored or yoredet. To leave Israel literally meant to those who stayed that yeridah was equivalent to falling into the abyss.
According to the report, few of those who sought to improve their lives elsewhere completely turned their backs on Israel. Those who left close relatives behind typically returned every year or so for a vacation and a reunion.
In their new countries, they cultivated other yordim and spoke Hebrew among themselves, sharing any news they had of Israel. They renewed their Israeli passports and kept their Israeli ID cards. When Israel was dragged into yet another war, the yordim turned up in droves at international airports and were willing to pay any amount for a flight ticket to go home and fight.
Some reservists packed their army uniforms in their luggage when they left and wore them again in foreign airports.
It’s the old story. You can take the man out of Israel, but you can’t take Israel out of the man.
Israelis coming home to vote
Some Israelis living abroad are worried about the outcome of the Knesset elections. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli expatriates have announced that they are coming home to vote. But media reports earlier this month revealed that at least 100 of them will not be able to vote because their names have been removed from the electoral rolls.
All 100 claimed they were not notified in advance and appealed to the High Court of Justice to reverse the Interior Ministry’s decision. The court responded that the appeals were made too late for the current elections and lacked factual records, but that another appeal could be considered in the future.
Why do expats who want to vote have to spend a lot of money on a round-trip ticket to cast their ballot? Other countries offer postal voting or ballot boxes at embassies and consulates. Surely Israel could do the same.
After all, it allows state civil servants working abroad and their spouses to vote at an embassy. This includes diplomats, employees of the Jewish Agency, JNF-KKL, Keren Hayesod, and the World Zionist Organization, as well as IDF personnel.
But Israel is very good at biting off its nose to spite its face, and denying the same rights to other Israelis who are expats. One of the best examples of this is the Psychometric University Entrance Test, whose results determine whether a would-be medical student will be admitted to study at one of Israel’s universities.
Countless students who had their hearts set on becoming physicians but failed the exam went to Italy, Hungary, Russia, or elsewhere to receive the proper training. Some proved very successful and chose to remain in the host country.
Their reputations, reportedly, brought Israeli headhunters to the facilities where these doctors worked. The headhunters offered all kinds of incentives for the physicians to return to Israel. Seemingly, had they been able to study in Israel, all that effort would have been unnecessary, and more physicians would have been available here.
Some new immigrant doctors and nurses discover, to their shock, that their qualifications are not acceptable in Israel, and that they have to undergo another course to be permitted to practice. This also applies in most cases to Israelis who received their qualifications abroad.
The huge influx from the former Soviet Union included many scientists and physicians. Some were accepted into local institutions. Others had to find other professions, including low-income jobs that required no professional training.
In an article published more than 30 years ago, there was a story about someone who had collapsed in front of a hospital janitor who had been a physician in the Soviet Union.
The janitor acted instinctively and saved the person’s life. As a result, the hospital’s director-general appointed the janitor as a physician on the staff.
As Israel’s population continues to increase, the shortage of medical professionals becomes more acute. If the exodus of physicians continues, the situation will get a lot worse.
It is ludicrous that an appointment with a hospital doctor – not necessarily a specialist in any particular field of medicine – can take anywhere from six months to a year. A patient could die in the interim.
More attention must be paid to people who want to leave, and more must be done to help them change their minds and decide to stay.
Some of the reasons given for leaving are the constant uncertainty; the high cost of living; the fear of terrorism or loss of loved ones in war; the bureaucracy; and political policies with which they disagree.
The exodus includes people who came as immigrants with hopes and dreams of contributing to Israeli society. Those hopes were dashed – and they went back to the countries from which they came.
Not everyone adapts, and the truth is that aliyah emissaries tend to dwell only on the positive while ignoring the negative.
We are living in an era of change. The most welcome change would be for ordinary citizens to receive much more respect and consideration from elected and appointed officials.