The world’s attention is rightly focused on Ukraine. For Jewish media, one of the important stories arising from the war has been the emigration of some 7,000 Ukrainian Jews to Israel — a massive rescue operation.

But it is not just Ukrainian Jews who have been leaving Europe for Israel en masse this month. In the last three weeks alone, 1,400 Israeli entry visas have been granted to Russian Jews. With Vladimir Putin making his country more and more authoritarian, many Jews are questioning whether they have a future there. This is a tragically familiar story that has been repeated far too many times since the pogroms of the 19th century. 

But there is, of course, a big difference now. The existence of Israel provides an escape route which did not exist for earlier generations. Since 1948, Jews have had a country where we are all welcome, no matter where we are from.

The mass exodus of some 150,000 Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel is sometimes viewed from today’s perch merely as an item of history — important but no longer really relevant to modern Jewry. That is a profound mistake and a wilful blindness to the story of the Jews.

Current events in Ukraine and Russia are merely the latest demonstration of how the idea — and the reality — of Israel as a haven for Jews is as relevant now as it has ever been.