Jewish Migration

Map a few Jewish migration journeys on a world map.

Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.

• Why do people leave home to settle elsewhere?
• What led Jews to migrate in different eras?
• Where have Jews migrated to?

Jewish communities have moved across the globe for thousands of years — sometimes for opportunity, sometimes fleeing danger. This explains why Jews live, look, and sound so differently worldwide.

• Aliyah — going up / immigration to Israel
• Galut / Diaspora — Jewish communities worldwide

“Why did Jews move so much?”

Sometimes for a better life, sometimes because they were forced to leave — and they carried Judaism everywhere.

• Children learn Jews migrated due to opportunity, regime change, and persecution.
• Children investigate historical materials and recount diverse places Jews have lived.

Connect to migration in children’s own families, including recent immigrants and refugees in the community.

Folktale. The Wandering Shoes (Diaspora folklore) — a pair of shoes that walked across many lands, like the Jewish people.

Changemaker. Albert Einstein — fled Germany in 1933 and then spent years signing affidavits and raising money to get other Jewish families out, one household at a time.

Whose reasons for migrating were they — opportunity, escape, or both?

“We traced Jewish migrations. Try at home: trace your own family’s journey on a map.”