One manifestation of that change is the fate of the word "yored," the ideologically loaded term for an Israeli who moves abroad. During the 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin called Israeli emigrants "moral lepers," "the fallen among the weaklings" and "the dregs of the earth" - but recanted those comments by 1992.

"It used to be that it was the worst thing you could be was a yored, someone who jumped ship," says Oren Harman, a social historian who produced a documentary series exploring Israeli identity called "Herzl Said That?"

"But now the word has literally disappeared from the lexicon," says Harman, an assistant professor at Bar-Ilan University. "People don't look down on people anymore who leave the country for jobs in hi-tech or academia."

Indeed, immigrants like Karen Fruchtman have discovered that rather than looking down on fellow Israelis who leave the country, some sabras look askance at those who arrive.

Fruchtman, a Conservative Jew in her 40s, was used to getting surprised looks whenever she told her acquaintances in Chicago that her family was planning to move to Israel, but she thought that incredulity would be behind her once she arrived. Instead, she discovered the gulf that separates the Zionists she and her husband had read about from the flesh-and-blood Israelis they encountered. After hearing that Fruchtman had moved here from the United States, one Israeli mother told her as they waited for their children to get out of school: "I just think you're crazy."

"All I wanted," recalls Fruchtman about her hope for what life would be like after moving to Israel, "was to be in a place where no one thought I was crazy."

But Fruchtman does not have demographics on her side.

Demographer Sergio DellaPergola, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says Orthodox Jews are significantly overrepresented among American immigrants to Israel. "About 10 percent of U.S. Jews are Orthodox, but close to 80 percent of those moving to Israel are religious," he says. "That's eight times their population."

Because so many of the Americans immigrating to Israel are Orthodox, Nefesh B'Nefesh, the nonprofit group aimed at helping Jews in America, Canada and England move here, has designed programs targeting non-Orthodox Jews who may also be interested in making the move.

Tzvi Richter, the organization's director of guidance and community resources, says it's important to attract non-Orthodox immigrants - who currently comprise only 30 percent of families that move here with Nefesh B'Nefesh but 60 percent of singles who do so - because more heterogeneous groups of immigrants can make more diverse contributions to Israel. He says the post-aliyah assistance Nefesh B'Nefesh provides, such as help with employment, education and military service, is often more important for the non-Orthodox because they tend to have fewer contacts already living here.

One reason it's harder for non-Orthodox Jews to make aliyah, says Waxman, the sociologist, is that they are typically lacking the "very strong religio-ethnic reasons" that bring the Orthodox here, despite the comforts of America.

"The more religious, the more likely they want to live in Jewish neighborhoods," says Waxman, who specializes in American Jewish immigration to Israel and serves as a fellow at the Jewish People's Planning Policy Institute. "Part of the reason they want to live in Israel is to be with other Jews. So that's the ethnic part. The religious part is that they believe the Land of Israel is the historical Eretz Yisrael, the promised land that belongs to the Jews."

But for all that, there are still some non-Orthodox Zionists making their way to the land that Herzl helped will into being.

Joyce Boll, a 40-plus independent broadcast producer from New York, says religion had nothing to do with her decision to move to Israel two years ago.

"Judaism isn't the right, or only, religion," says Boll, who was married to a Lebanese Christian man for nearly a decade before they got divorced. "That's not what it's about for me. It's about self-identity. I feel natural here."

Boll grew up in a secular home with a strong connection to Israel, in which her father, a Holocaust survivor, emphasized the importance of the country as a haven for Jews. She moved to Tel Aviv in 2006 to work as a consultant for a 3-D animation startup.

Boll is used to having native Israelis ask her why she would leave New York for Tel Aviv. "The dream has been achieved, and it's wonderful that they don't know what it's like to be a minority, to be spit on and have to take it," says Boll, who still remembers seeing a sign on the door of an Elks social club in 1970s New Jersey reading, "No dogs, no blacks, no Jews."

"Israelis don't really understand," says Boll. "It's a blessing, and a curse."