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aliyah

/əliːˈjɑː/noun, verb

aliyah is a noun meaning “The calling up of someone to the bimah for the reading of the Torah” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-L-I-Y-A-H and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of aliyah is aliyahs or aliyot.

What does aliyah mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The calling up of someone to the bimah for the reading of the Torah.

  2. 2

    A subsection of a parashah (weekly Torah reading) read by (or on behalf of) one person.

  3. 3

    The immigration of Jews to Israel.

  4. 4

    One of the major waves of immigration of Jews to Israel.

noun

as Aliyah
  1. 1

    Alternative letter-case form of aliyah.

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo make aliyah, to immigrate to Israel.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce aliyah?

  • /əliːˈjɑː/
  • /əˈliːjə/

Aliyah has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of aliyah

  • aliyahs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • aliyot plural
  • aliyoth plural
  • aliyos plural
  • aliya
  • 'aliyah
  • aliyahing participle, present
  • aliyahed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is aliyah?

Aliyah appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 59,387th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Aliyah in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense immigration of Jews to Israel:

LanguageWords
Frenchalya
GermanAlija
Portuguesealiyá
Spanishaliyá, aliá

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does aliyah come from?

From Hebrew עלייה / עֲלִיָּה (aliyá, “ascent”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).