From Limassol to Koh Phangan, Jews are building lives in places our grandparents would not have put on a map. Increasingly, that is the rational choice.

The wandering Jew has a new itinerary.

For most of the past century, the mental map of Jewish migration ran along familiar lines. You left Eastern Europe or the Middle East/North Africa for New York, London, Paris or Israel. Beyond that, you waited.

That map is being redrawn in real time, and the new pins are showing up in places that would have struck my grandparents as absurd. Limassol. Lisbon. Batumi. Koh Phangan. And yes, in growing numbers, Singapore and Bangkok too, which is where I am writing this from.

The reasons are not mysterious. In March and April 2026, a series of attacks targeted Jewish institutions across London. Synagogues, schools, charities, all hit by arson, explosives, and chemicals. Iranian proxies were implicated. On 29 April, a man went out into Golders Green with a knife specifically to stab “visibly Jewish” people. Two men, aged 34 and 76, were seriously wounded. The British government raised the national terror threat from substantial to severe and declared antisemitism an emergency.

The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025. Only one year on record was worse: 2023, the year of October 7.

In New York, the largest ‘Jewish city’ in the world, the political environment has shifted in ways that have many in the community openly weighing an exit. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has refused to recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, identified as an anti-Zionist, and previously declined to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada.” Within hours of his win, rabbis in Plano, real estate agents in Miami, and Israel’s Diaspora Minister were publicly inviting Jewish New Yorkers to come and build a life elsewhere. One synagogue board president in North Texas put it plainly: come where Jewish life is thriving and you are unmistakably welcome.

The interesting question is not whether Jews are leaving. They are. Aliyah from........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)