Holiday honoring Immigrants

At the end of last year, Israel’s population surpassed 10 million inhabitants for the first time, compared to the approximately 800,000 people who lived in the country when the State of Israel was established.
The holiday Yom HaAliyah honors all the immigrants who have arrived in the country since the declaration of independence in 1948.

Last year Israel’s population surpassed 10 million inhabitants. Photo: Daniel Majewski

On April 7–8, 2025, corresponding to the 10th of Nisan in the Jewish year 5785, Israel will celebrate Yom HaAliyah to commemorate how Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. According to the Bible (Joshua 4:19), this event took place on this exact date:
“On the tenth day of the first month, the people went up from the Jordan…”
The holiday also honors Jews who have made aliyah, meaning those who have immigrated from the diaspora to the modern Jewish state. Yom HaAliyah is also observed in Israeli schools in the fall, on the 7th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, which typically falls in October.
Celebrating aliyah is central to the Jewish people as a way of honoring the continuous influx of people into Israeli society. The term originally referred to ascending toward the Temple in Jerusalem.
Israel’s population surpassed 10 million for the first time in 2024, but the figure at the end of the year includes individuals with foreign citizenship on extended stays, a category previously excluded from the count.

Statistics at the end of 2024 show an increase in the number of Israelis leaving the country and a slowdown in population growth. A total of 82,700 Israelis registered as having moved abroad, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, compared to about 55,000 the previous year. That figure was already a significant increase from the preceding decade when approximately 35,000 people left each year.
Emigrants are defined as those who have spent most of a year outside the country, meaning that most of those included in last year’s numbers had already left in 2023—a year marked by significant turmoil due to the government’s attempts to overhaul the judiciary, Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, according to The Times of Israel.
However, the trend reversed in November and December 2024, seemingly corresponding to an influx of Israelis returning during those months a year earlier to contribute to the war effort following the Hamas-led terror attack on October 7.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, 23,800 Israelis returned home in 2024, alongside 32,800 new immigrants—a decrease of about 15,000 from the previous year. The negative net migration caused the country’s population growth rate to drop to 1.1% from 1.6% the previous year and 2.2% in 2022.
A total of 7.7 million residents are registered as Jewish or “other,” a category that includes non-Arab Christians and individuals with no listed ethnicity on official documents. The Arab population was estimated at 2.1 million. The total population count also included 216,000 foreign nationals.
In total, approximately 181,000 babies were born in Israel in 2024, with around 76% born to Jewish mothers and 24% to Arab mothers. About 51,400 residents died during the year, slightly more than in 2023.