Aliyah: Going Up to the Land, and Can Messianic Jews Make It?

Aliyah is Hebrew for "going up." Jewish people use it for moving to the Land of Israel. Can Messianic Jews make aliyah? Many have, and many Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) live in Israel as citizens today. The legal road can be harder for them than for other Jews, though, so anyone considering it should get current legal advice before starting.

David and Martha Stern are two of those believers. They made aliyah in August 1979 and have lived in Israel ever since. Much of what follows comes from their own account of how they got there and why they kept urging other Jewish believers to follow.

What "going up" means

The word has two everyday uses in Jewish life. In the synagogue, a person called forward to bless the Torah reading is given an aliyah. Outside the synagogue, "making aliyah" means leaving the diaspora to live in Israel. Someone who does it is an oleh (a woman, an olah).

The language is older than the modern state. Scripture always speaks of going up to Jerusalem, because the city sits in the hills, and because you do not go down to the place God chose for His name. The pilgrim songs in Psalms 120 to 134 are called "Songs of Ascents" for that reason. The Sterns liked to point out that even after arriving in Israel, their move to Jerusalem felt like "the final part of our aliyah."

Why the prophets talk about return

The hope of going back is woven into Jewish prayer. The weekday Amida asks God to sound the great shofar and gather the exiles from the four corners of the earth. Faithful Jews have said that prayer for centuries, wherever they lived.

The prophets put the promise in God's own mouth. "For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land" (Ezekiel 36:24). Just before that, God explains why He will do it. It is not because Israel has earned it, but for the sake of His holy name among the nations (Ezekiel 36:22-23). That matters. The return is about God's faithfulness first.

Two Americans who were not supposed to care

Neither of the Sterns grew up wanting Israel. Martha was raised in Michigan by parents who were firmly atheist and wanted nothing to do with the synagogue, the Jewish community or Israel. She felt like an outsider among both Jewish and non-Jewish kids. Then, at ten, she read Leon Uris's novel Exodus the year it came out (1958) during a summer at Keuka Lake in upstate New York. She decided on the spot that she would live in Israel. The idea faded through her art-school and hippie years, then came back when she came to faith in Yeshua in 1972.

David came from an old Los Angeles Jewish family. His ancestors were among the first Jews in the city in the 1850s and helped found the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a Reform congregation. The Reform movement of his upbringing was not very Zionist, and David had no interest in Israel either. He also came to faith in 1972. Already holding a Princeton doctorate in economics, he went to Fuller Theological Seminary and wrote nearly every paper on the Jewish side of the faith. Afterwards he spent a year studying at the University of Judaism.

On a summer Hebrew program in Israel, David stayed on and sat in at a yeshiva (a school for Orthodox Jewish study). He didn't announce his faith, but he didn't hide it. As he later put it, nature took about three hours to run its course. The yeshiva politely asked him not to attend, but they sent him to meet a rabbi who had made "the opposite odyssey": a former German Lutheran who had converted to Judaism. That rabbi was not offended by David's faith. He just asked him a question: "What are you doing living in L.A.? Don't you know that since the founding of the Jewish state nothing new will come out of the diaspora?" Then he quoted the prophet:

For out of Tziyon will go forth Torah, the word of Adonai from Yerushalayim. (Isaiah 2:3)

David said he turned 180 degrees in that moment. (Isaiah 2 is worth reading whole. See our notes on the prophet Isaiah.)

The next summer, in 1975, the two met at a Messianic conference in Pennsylvania. Three days later David more or less proposed. Martha had one condition. Since she believed a wife should follow her husband's calling, and she knew hers was Israel, would he live there? He already planned to. They married the next spring, visited Israel in 1977 so Martha could see it first, and moved in August 1979 with their four-month-old daughter, Miriam.

How they actually became citizens

The Sterns were nervous. Both had worked with Jews for Jesus, and David had studied and taught at Fuller. They expected a thorough application filed from the United States to turn them down. So they took a simpler route available then, before computers. They entered Israel as tourists, then applied for a temporary status valid for three years, during which a person could decide whether to become a citizen.

They didn't wait the three years. They soon applied for permanent status, and after a 90-day period in which the government could check for criminal reasons to refuse, they became Israeli citizens. Please don't treat this as a roadmap. It describes 1979, and the process today is different.

"You don't need a special word"

Back in America, the Sterns spoke at Messianic conferences about aliyah. David had a routine. "How many of you are Jewish?" Lots of hands. "How many want to make aliyah?" A few hands dropped, most stayed up. "How many have made definite plans for when?" Nearly every hand went down.

Then he would say: if you are waiting for a special word from the Lord to go, you don't need one. If you are Jewish, He has already given it. God gave the Land to the Jewish people. Nobody wakes up and prays, "Lord, should I rob someone today?" God has already spoken on that. In David's view it was the other way around: a Jewish believer needs a special word not to come. He granted that some are called to stay in the diaspora for ministry or other reasons. But the rule, as he saw it, is to live in Israel.

Not everyone liked hearing it. One major Messianic organization eventually stopped letting them speak or set up a literature table, worried too many members would leave. So David printed T-shirts that read "Messianic Jewish Aliyah Information Here," and they wore them every day of the conference. A friend, Joe Rosenfarb, walked up and said, "I see you are wearing your table."

Fishers and hunters

The Sterns' friend Meridel Rawlings wrote a book called Fishers and Hunters, named for a verse in Jeremiah. Read the verses just before it:

Therefore, says Adonai, the day will come when people will no longer swear, "As Adonai lives, who brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt," but, "As Adonai lives, who brought the people of Israel out of the land to the north and out of all the countries where he drove them"; for I will bring them back to their own land, which I gave to their ancestors. Look, says Adonai, I will send for many fishermen, and they will fish for them. Afterward, I will send for many hunters; and they will hunt them from every mountain and hill and out of caves in the rocks. (Jeremiah 16:14-16)

The Sterns read it this way. Being "fished" means coming in an orderly way, with planning and with your possessions. Being "hunted" means fleeing when your country turns dangerous through war, antisemitism or disaster, with little more than the clothes on your back. They had watched both happen. Jews came from Arab and Muslim countries in Israel's early years when they were no longer welcome. Later there was the large aliyah from the former Soviet Union and the rescue flights of Ethiopian Jews. More recently, people have arrived from Ukraine carrying very little.

"They loved their carpets"

In Martha's first Hebrew class (ulpan) in 1979, there were three men from Iran. This was just after the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. One day only one of them came. Martha asked where the others were. They had gone back to Iran, he said. Why? "They loved their carpets." Jewish life in Iran had been comfortable, and comfort is hard to leave.

Martha's own family carried a harder lesson. Relatives in Dresden owned a factory, and when Hitler rose, the father would not leave it. After he died of natural causes, the rest of the family fled as far as Holland, where the Nazis caught them. Only her cousin Werner survived Auschwitz. He went back to Dresden, by then in communist East Germany, recovered the factory, and raised a family. In the 1950s a friend warned him the authorities were coming for him and the factory. Werner and his wife Ada said, "We're not going to make the same mistake twice," and crossed into West Berlin with their children, leaving everything. (For how Israel remembers those years, see A Biblical Explanation of Israel's Days of Remembrance.)

That is why the Sterns' message was blunt. Don't assume it can't happen in your comfortable country. David has said he is waiting for the "Great American Aliyah," wondering what will move Jews to leave the Goldene Medina (the "Golden Land," as Jewish immigrants once called America). Their advice: don't wait to be hunted.

Can Messianic Jews make aliyah today?

Many have. When the Sterns arrived, there were a few hundred believers in Israel. Over the following decades they watched that grow to many thousands, with many congregations. Their son Daniel was born in Israel.

The legal side is real, though. Israel's Law of Return (1950) gives Jews the right to immigrate. In 1962, in the case of Oswald Rufeisen ("Brother Daniel"), a Jew who had become a Catholic monk, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that he could not claim citizenship as a Jew under that law. Since then, faith in Yeshua has often become the question in a Jewish believer's application. David Stern spent years helping people with aliyah legal cases and gathering documents. Today believers who are lawyers carry on that work. If you are a Jewish believer considering aliyah, talk with someone who knows the current law before you file anything.

What about converts to Judaism?

The Law of Return also extends to people who have converted to Judaism within a recognized Jewish community. Which conversions qualify is detailed and still disputed, so this too needs current advice. A conversion to Messianic Judaism does not give a right of return. We say more about that, and about Gentile believers' place in God's family, in How do I convert to Messianic Judaism?

For Christians reading this

Most readers of this page will never make aliyah, and that is fine. What the Sterns' story offers is a way to see Jeremiah and Ezekiel not as old poetry but as promises God has been keeping in living memory. If He keeps His word to Abraham's children across that many centuries, He can be trusted with the promises He has made to you in Yeshua.

This week, read Jeremiah 16:14-16 and Ezekiel 36:22-28 side by side. Notice what God says He will do, and why He says He will do it. Then pray Psalm 122:6 slowly, by name: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."

Questions people ask

Can Messianic Jews make aliyah?

Many Jewish believers in Yeshua have made aliyah and live in Israel as citizens, including David and Martha Stern, who arrived in 1979. However, since a 1962 Israeli Supreme Court ruling about a Jew who became a Catholic monk, faith in Yeshua has often become an issue in applications under the Law of Return. Anyone considering it should get current legal advice.

Can Jewish converts make aliyah?

Israel's Law of Return extends to people who converted to Judaism within a recognized Jewish community, though exactly which conversions qualify is detailed and disputed. A conversion to Messianic Judaism does not give a right of return. Check current rules with a qualified advisor.

What is an aliyah in Judaism?

Aliyah means "going up" in Hebrew. In the synagogue it is the honor of being called up to bless the Torah reading. More widely, it means a Jew moving from the diaspora to live in the Land of Israel.

Are Messianic Jews the same as Christians?

Messianic Jews share the central Christian conviction that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah and Son of God. Many also keep their Jewish identity and practice, such as Shabbat and the biblical feasts, rather than leaving their heritage behind. Both belong to the one body of believers.

Who are David and Martha Stern?

David and Martha Stern are Jewish believers in Yeshua who made aliyah from the United States in 1979 and have lived in Israel ever since. David is the author of the Complete Jewish Bible, the Jewish New Testament Commentary and Messianic Jewish Manifesto, now titled Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement with an Ancient Past. Martha is an artist who worked with him on all his books.