“Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise.”  (Psalm 106:47)

In response to the continued rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Israel is investing NIS 30 million ($17 million) to help European Jewry make aliyah (immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return) in 2014 and 2015.

“In light of increasing anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, there is a real need to encourage aliyah from Europe,” Israeli Immigration Absorption Minister Sofa Landver said.

Israeli Immigration Absorption Minister Sofa Landver, who was born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia), made aliyah in 1979.

Aliyah as a whole has gone up 55 percent, drawing record numbers from the Ukraine and from France—four times as many as last year.

“Never in the history of the State of Israel has there been a Jewish community in the free world that has sent such a large proportion of its Jews to Israel,” Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said to reporters on Sunday.  (Israel Hayom)

The 2,250 French Jews who have immigrated to Israel since January should more than double by the year’s end, Sharansky said.

During this same period, the number of Jews making aliyah from Ukraine more than doubled to 1,590.

Six weeks ago, Israel reached out to the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ) for help with the immigration and absorption of Ukrainian Jews seeking refuge from rampant violence from the war with Russia as well as from anti-Semitism.  (BIN)

French immigrants arrive in Israel.

The ICEJ already has raised enough to sponsor 100 immigrants from Ukraine, with ICEJ media director David Parsons assuring that “we are working very hard and very quickly to bring as many of them to Israel as we can.”

“Not war, not peace—what we are living in now is a wild agony, waiting for something terrible to happen,” writes Ukrainian-Jewish mining engineer and Hebrew teacher Sasha Ivashchenko in a letter to the Jewish Agency, translated by Avital Chizhik for Tablet Mag.

In a June 8 letter in his hometown, Donetsk, Ivashchenko affirmed his intention to make aliyah with his family and save them from the country’s turmoil.

“Tears choke me out in shame over this injustice, over this destruction of the future, over my pain in having to take my child far away—and I am terrified that if I don’t move quickly, one day, I will be unable to take him away,” he wrote.

Another Donetsk resident, Alisa Voronova, said, “Every moment is one of loss—one person loses calm, another loses his home, another a loved one, another his own life.  We have all become hostages and victims of an undeclared war.”  (Tablet Mag)

Israel’s recent immigrants also include the Bnei Menashe of India, who are of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, exiled by the Assyrian Empire more than 2,700 years ago.   (Jspace News)

“After 2,700 years, the Bnei Menashe are returning to our people and our land, and we won’t stop until all the remaining 7,000 community members still in India will be able to come here,” said Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Israel Returns (Shavei Israel), an organization committed to shepherding home “lost Jews.”

Parsons says that the ICEJ has also helped 500 Bnei Menashe immigrate “and are paying for the flights of another 250 Bnei Menashe in about three weeks time, with another 500 expected by the end of the year.”  (BIN)

“He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac.  He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.'”  (Psalm 105:8–11)