The American Aliyah Bet
Nefesh B'Nefesh closed 2025 with 4,150 olim from North America — its biggest year in four. The driver is solidarity, not flight. But the antisemitism baseline beneath the wave is unmistakable.
Originally published May 2026. Updated June 2026.
Nefesh B'Nefesh closed 2025 with 4,150 olim from North America — its biggest year in four. The driver is solidarity, not flight. But the antisemitism baseline beneath the wave is unmistakable, and so is the capital moving with it.
American Jewish aliyah used to be largely ideological. In 2025, it became infrastructural — a coordinated, community-organized, capital-intensive movement that operates at a different scale than any prior decade.
4,150 North American Jews made aliyah in 2025 through Nefesh B'Nefesh — a 12% increase over 2024 and the organization's highest figure since 2021. Behind that came a deeper pipeline: 6,590 US aliyah files opened in the post-October 7 absorption year, a 60% jump from the prior period. Canada added 870 files, up 87%.
The ADL Baseline
Any account of the American wave that omits antisemitism misreads the underlying force. The Anti-Defamation League's annual audit recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — a 5% increase over 2023 and the highest figure since ADL began tracking 46 years ago. The total represents a 344% increase over the five-year annual average and an 893% increase over the ten-year average.
In 2025, the count declined to 6,274 incidents — still roughly five times the decade-prior baseline — but physical assaults rose to 203, the highest figure ever recorded in the audit. Two Jewish people were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2025; an 82-year-old Jewish woman died from injuries sustained in the Boulder firebombing attack on June 1. ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt described 2025 as one of the most violent years for American Jews on record.
The states with the highest 2025 incident counts — New York (1,160), California (817), and New Jersey (687) — are also the states with the largest North American aliyah outflows. The correlation is not accidental.
Campus Hostility
ADL tracked 1,694 antisemitic incidents on US college campuses in 2024, the highest in the audit's history. The figure declined to 583 in 2025 under federal pressure on universities, but remained nearly three times the pre-2023 baseline. The campus protest period of 2023-2024 disrupted Jewish student life on dozens of major university campuses.
Synagogue bomb threat sprees became a structural feature of communal life. 100+ synagogues were threatened over a two-day window in January 2024. Federation security budgets across the major Jewish federations — New York UJA, Greater MetroWest, Los Angeles Federation — rose substantially in 2024 and 2025.
The Solidarity Engine
What distinguishes the American wave from the French is motivation. Nefesh B'Nefesh reports that more than half of 2025 applicants cited solidarity with Israel since October 7 as their central reason for making aliyah. This is a post-October 7 Zionist response — building, not fleeing.
American olim retain US passports. They use the Israeli olim tax framework as planning instrument, not as escape route. They typically maintain US professional networks, continue US-based work where possible, and frame the move as expansion rather than departure.
Where They Land
Five cities dominate North American olim absorption. Jerusalem leads with 798 NBN olim in 2025, followed by Beit Shemesh (457), Tel Aviv-Jaffa (304), Ra'anana (208), and Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut (133). Netanya, Herzliya, Haifa, Efrat, and Rehovot complete the top ten.
The single most striking shift in 2025 destination data: Kiryat Gat, a southern development town historically associated with North African Israeli immigration, saw 3 American olim in 2020 and 57 in 2025 — a 1,800% rise over five years.
Be'er Sheva also appeared in the top destinations for the first time in 2025 — absorbing both lone soldier track olim and young professionals tied to the Ben-Gurion University ecosystem and the surrounding national cyber and defense cluster.
The Buying Pattern
The American real estate budget runs 3 to 6.5 million shekels — roughly $800,000 to $1.75 million — modestly higher than the French cohort. The behavioral difference is more significant: 85% of US foreign buyers purchase to live in the home, not as investment.
Jerusalem's Holyland Park, Talbieh, German Colony, and Old Katamon attract higher-end religious and modern-Orthodox American buyers. Ra'anana's Anglo neighborhoods, Modi'in's newer towers, and Beit Shemesh's Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef through Heh are the four primary gravity wells.
The Brooklyn Pipeline
The American flow has a clear geographic source. The corridor runs Brooklyn (Flatbush, Crown Heights, Borough Park, Marine Park), the Five Towns (Cedarhurst, Lawrence, Woodmere, Hewlett), Bergen County (Teaneck, Englewood, Bergenfield), Monsey, Lakewood, and increasingly Baltimore (Park Heights) and Cleveland (Beachwood). The Bank Jerusalem 40-family group purchase model originated from this corridor.
Synagogues in these communities are now running coordinated aliyah programs: scouting trips, group flights, joint property tours, and shared mortgage broker relationships. Yeshivot are running junior-year programs in Israel designed to convert into post-graduation aliyah.
The Professional Mix
The 2025 cohort skewed medical, technical, and entrepreneurial. 541 doctors made aliyah globally in 2025 through the International Medical Aliyah Program, with 93 from North America — a record figure. Israel's 8,000-physician shortage created a structural demand pull; the olim tax framework gives US-trained doctors an unusual ten-year arbitrage window on foreign passive income while practicing in Israel.
Beyond medicine: software engineers, AI specialists, and finance professionals are increasingly arriving with remote-work arrangements that allow them to continue US-based employment under foreign-source income protections.
What It Means
The American Aliyah Bet is solidarity migration with an antisemitism baseline. Both forces are present. The capital, the property, the deposits, the professional licensure, and the family formation move together — not as separate phenomena but as one coordinated reorganization.
Entry points for institutional firms positioning into this flow are not Tel Aviv. They are Beit Shemesh, Modi'in, Ra'anana, Efrat, and Kiryat Gat. They are Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods. They are Be'er Sheva's technology corridor.
