The return to Zion (Hebrew: שִׁיבָת צִיּוֹן‬, Shivat Tzion, or שבי ציון‬, Shavei Tzion, lit. Zion returnees) refers to the event in the biblical books of Ezra-Nehemiah in which the Jews returned to the Land of Israel from the Babylonian exile following the decree by the emperor Cyrus the Great, the conqueror of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE, also known as Cyrus's edict. The term was first coined after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.[citation needed]

The biblical meaning of the return to Zion, aliyah, was borrowed later from the ancient event and was adopted as the definition of all the immigrations of Jews to the Land of Israel and the State of Israel in modern times. The period between the return to Zion and the modern one consisted of several attempts of small groups to immigrate to the Land of Israel, and this period could be roughly divided into two categories: one for the aliyah during the Middle Ages and during the period of Renaissance, and the other for the Aliyah during the modern era (18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century).

The modern aliyah began in the midst of the 19th century, to Jaffa, of the followers of Yehuda Bibas and Judah Alkalai, known as the "Herald of Zionism" (מבשרי הציונות) pioneers of modern Zionism, and up to the rest of the aliyot (plural of aliyah) made after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

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