Ori Yehudai

This dissertation studies Jewish out migration from Palestine and Israel between 1945 and 1967. It examines the re-migration of Jews who immigrated there but decided to leave and the emigration of native-born who sought opportunities overseas. The dissertation seeks to understand the social and political roles that emigration as a phenomenon and emigrants as individuals played in the process of Zionist and Israeli nation-building. It examines the experiences, motives, and personal backgrounds of individual emigrants and the institutional reactions to their departure in Israel and in Jewish communities and organizations in receiving countries. Its main focus is on the tensions arising from the anti-emigration atmosphere prevailing in the country during the period under investigation.