ABSTRACT
In Jewish history, which is almost by definition group history—social, religious, and also political—migration has played a seminal role. In Israel, the land of immigration par excellence, the conventional wisdom has it that there are two types of migration depending on the country of origin: one from “lands of distress” and the other from the free countries or, in Jewish Agency parlance, the Western countries. Separate Immigration Departments were maintained by the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. Until the Emancipation, the Jewish migrant, no matter how much on the move, remained within the Jewish community where he was rooted far more deeply than in the surrounding culture. At one time—this just as a gloss, for the historians—the machinery for dealing with the Western immigrants was separate from that handling the mass immigration from the countries of distress. Separate Immigration Departments were maintained by the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization.
