Historians customarily count ten waves of Jewish immigration (aliyot) to the land of Israel, beginning with the first in the 1880s and ending with the tenth following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Amotz Asa-El claims that we may now be witnessing the eleventh, made up of West European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism, and describes this cohort’s defining features:
The unfolding French immigration is different from all [the previous aliyot]. Unlike the German immigration of the 1930s, it is happening despite, rather than because of, the country of origin’s government and elite. . . . Yet like the German immigration, and unlike the immigrations from the Middle East, Ethiopia, and post-World War II Europe, French Jews are arriving with some capital [and include] many professionals and entrepreneurs who are ready to join the middle class and in some cases, the upper class. . . .
[In addition], unlike the so-called Russian immigration and the German one before it, the French immigrants are mostly traditional. This will have political repercussions, as they can on the whole be expected to feel more at home on the Israeli Right. Then again, before it makes a political impact, this immigration will have to number at least 100,000—a figure which for now remains distant, even if it might be reached by the end of the decade.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/International/Middle-Israel-The-11th-Aliya-387910