In what the Jewish Agency – the official body responsible for facilitating aliyah (immigration) into Israel is calling a record year, 70,000 new immigrants were documented entering Israel this year.

The Agency helped immigrants from 95 countries to make the move to the Jewish state and settle here.

According to Israel National News, this represents “a record number of olim for the past 23 years and a dramatic increase from 2021 when around 28,600 new immigrants arrived in Israel.”

By far the biggest number of new arrivals came from Russia (37,364) and Ukraine (14,680) as a result of the war.

Jewish Agency data reveals that early 30 percent of these immigrants are between the age of 18 and 35, which means that they will benefit Israel economically and make a significant contribution to society.

Israel’s restoration as a nation in its ancestral homeland has been marked, and enabled, by waves of immigration just like this one, since the ‘First Aliyah’ began in 1882. As in this instance, the majority of olim to Israel down the last 140 years have been refugees fleeing persecution and war.

This unprecedented resurrection of a long-dismembered people is a major topic of Biblical prophets, starting with Moses who, more than three millennia ago, foretold precisely the incredible national history that has unfolded ever since.

Today, more than half of all the Jews in the world, some eight million, live in Israel. The hope, and Biblically-based expectation, is that, before too much longer, the rest of the nation will make Aliyah and come back home.