Jewish Agency chairman Isaac Herzog expects that up to 100,000 people may leave their home countries for Israel, or make aliyah (literally “ascent”), once the current global health emergency is under control, Makor Rishon reported on Sunday.
Herzog called for the government and aliyah-oriented groups to prepare for “a major wave of immigration to Israel when the corona crisis ends, as happened in the past after many crises in Jewish communities around the world since the establishment of the state.”
In many places, Jews have been especially hard-hit by the deadly COVID-19 virus, with infections and deaths far out of proportion to their percentage in the population.
In Great Britain, 335 Jews have accounted for 1.6 percent of the deaths so far, while consisting of only 0.37 percent of the population. In France, an article in Haaretz stated two weeks ago that “coronavirus-related deaths are reportedly four times the proportion for the overall population.”
In the United States, there seems to be no official breakdown by religious affiliation, but anecdotal evidence suggests many hundreds of deaths at least, as Jewish burial societies report being overwhelmed.
JTA reported in early April that New York City’s Department of Health released figures showing that heavily Jewish areas have especially high rates of infection. While the average positive test rate in the city was 53 percent, in Boro Park, for example, over 67 percent of tests came back positive.
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