What is the Jewish right of return?
In every generation throughout its history, the Jewish people have suffered persecution and expulsion, especially from countries across Europe. One of the primary goals of the Zionist movement was to create a state, the only one in the world, which would be a national home for the Jewish people and which would by definition be open to Jewish immigration. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, one of its most urgent challenges was to absorb hundreds of thousands of stateless Jews who had been forced from their homes and lost everything in the Holocaust. Israel passed a law that granted the right of citizenship to any Jew who wished to come and live in Israel. Whilst the traditional religious definition of a Jew is someone who has a Jewish mother, the right of return takes a broader definition. In Nazi Germany, individuals were persecuted as Jews if they had even one Jewish grandparent; therefore, the State of Israel defines a Jew for the purposes of the right of return as anyone
In every generation throughout its history, the Jewish people have suffered persecution and expulsion, especially from countries across Europe. One of the primary goals of the Zionist movement was to create a state, the only one in the world, which would be a national home for the Jewish people and which would by definition be open to Jewish immigration. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, one of its most urgent challenges was to absorb hundreds of thousands of stateless Jewish refugees who had been forced from their homes and lost everything in the Holocaust. Israel passed a law that granted the right of citizenship to any Jew who wished to live in Israel. Whilst the traditional religious definition of a Jew is someone who has a Jewish mother, the right of return takes a broader definition. In Nazi Germany, individuals were persecuted as Jews if they had even one Jewish grandparent. Therefore, the State of Israel defines a Jew for the purposes of the right of return as anyon
