The year the pogroms began in Russia, 1881, is the year Russian
Jews started emigrating in large numbers to the United States. A
smaller number of them, however, turned their eyes toward Zion;
in 1882, several thousand Russian Jews emigrated to Palestine.
Prior to this, most Jews who made aliyah to Israel did so for
religious reasons; it was considered meritorious, for example,
to die in the Holy Land. Living in Palestine, however, was
considerably harder. It was an impoverished land, many — if not
most — of whose Jewish inhabitants depended on worldwide Jewish
charitable contributions. In 1882 also, a new Jewish
organization was founded that had a very different scenario in
mind for Jewish life in Israel. The group was called BILU, an
acronym based on a verse from Isaiah (2:5), "Beit Ya'akov Lekhu
Ve-nelkha/Let the house of Jacob go!" BILU's founders believed
that the time had come for Jews not only to live in Israel, but
to make their living there as well. (courtesy
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsour