Fourth Aliyah

Between 1924 and 1929 about 80,000 Jews arrived, roughly half of them from Poland, where Finance Minister Władysław Grabski's tax policies hit Jewish shopkeepers and artisans hard; it is often called the "Grabski Aliyah". At the same time the United States' Immigration Act of 1924 all but closed America's gates to Eastern European Jews. Unlike the pioneers before them, most newcomers were middle-class families who brought small savings and settled in towns. Tel Aviv grew from about 15,000 residents in 1922 to some 40,000 by 1926, and new towns such as Herzliya and Bnei Brak were founded in 1924.

The boom built Tel Aviv's shops, workshops, construction industry and first factories, and the same years saw the Technion begin classes in Haifa in 1924 and the Hebrew University open on Mount Scopus in 1925. A severe economic crisis in 1926–1927 brought mass unemployment and led thousands to leave again, yet the urban, entrepreneurial model of this aliyah proved as lasting as the pioneers' kibbutzim.