Since Israel gained its independence in 1948, Toronto’s Jewish community has repeatedly answered the call to help Jews from around the world settle in the land of Israel. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, through Operation Exodus, UJA Federation, with Jewish communities all over the world, helped more than one million Russian-speaking Jews make the historic Aliyah from what was the Soviet Union, and forever helped change the face of Israel and the Jewish people.