The Law of Return in 10 Minutes

Enacted in 1950 as one of the founding statutes of the new state, Israel's Law of Return proclaims that every Jew, wherever they may live, has the inherent right to come home and claim citizenship—an open door forged from the ashes of the Holocaust and the long centuries of exile. To the Jewish people it stands as the legal embodiment of the Ingathering of the Exiles, a solemn promise that the gates of the ancestral homeland will never again be closed to those who seek refuge or return, transforming the ancient hope of "Next year in Jerusalem" into an enduring national covenant.