Law of Return

On 5 July 1950, 20 Tammuz 5710, the anniversary of Theodor Herzl's death, the Knesset unanimously passed the Law of Return. Its first clause reads: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Ben-Gurion presented it not as a right the state grants but as one it recognizes: every Jew holds it simply by being a Jew. The Nationality Law of 1952 then made every oleh a citizen on arrival. In 1970 an amendment extended the right to the children and grandchildren of Jews and their spouses, and defined a Jew as one born of a Jewish mother or converted, and not of another faith.

The law was the answer to the Holocaust and the British White Paper, when Jewish refugees were turned back from the shores of the Land of Israel. Under it Israel has taken in more than three million olim, from the survivors of Europe to the Jews of the Arab lands, Ethiopia and the Soviet Union. It remains the legal heart of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and the question it raised, who is a Jew, is still debated.