Jewish diaspora Totally Explained

Everything about The Jewish Diaspora totally explained

The Jewish diaspora (Hebrew: Tefutzah, "scattered", or Galut גלות, "exile", Yiddish: tfutses), the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion of the Jewish people out of their land, migrations from there, and religious conversion to Judaism. The diaspora is commonly accepted to have begun with the 8th-6th century BCE conquests of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, destruction of the First Temple, and expulsion of the enslaved Jewish population, and is also associated with the destruction of the Second Temple and aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, during the Roman occupation of Judea in the 1st and 2nd Century CE.
A number of Middle Eastern Jewish communities were established then as a result of tolerant policies and remained notable centers of Torah life and Judaism for centuries to come. The defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt in the year 70 CE and of Bar Kokhba's revolt in 135 CE against the Roman Empire notably contributed to the numbers and geography of the diaspora, as many Jews were scattered after losing their state Judea or were sold into slavery throughout the empire.

Pre-Roman Diaspora

In 722 BCE, the Assyrians under Shalmaneser V conquered the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel and many Israelites were deported to Khorasan. Since then, for over 2,700 years, the Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran.
   After the overthrow in 588 BCE of the kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, (see Babylonian captivity), and the deportation of a considerable portion of its inhabitants to Mesopotamia, the Jews had two principal cultural centers: Babylonia and the land of Israel.
   Although a majority of the Jewish people, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence it led there, under the successive rules of the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, was obscure and devoid of political influence. The poorest but most fervent element among the exiles returned to Judaea during the reign of the Achaemenids. There, with the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem as its center, it organized itself into a community, animated by a remarkable religious ardor and a tenacious attachment to the Torah, which thenceforth constituted the focus of its identity. No sooner had this little nucleus increased in numbers with the accession of recruits from various quarters, than it awoke to a consciousness of itself, and strove for political enfranchisement.
   After numerous vicissitudes, and especially owing to internal dissensions in the Seleucid dynasty, on the one hand, and to the interested support of the Romans, on the other, the cause of Jewish independence finally triumphed. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then kings, the Jewish state displayed even a certain luster, and annexed several territories. Soon, however, discord in the royal family, and the growing disaffection of the pious, the soul of the nation, toward rulers who no longer evinced any appreciation of the real aspirations of their subjects, made the Jewish nation an easy prey to the ambition of the Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 BCE, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.

Early diaspora populations

As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish author of the third book of the Oracula Sibyllina, addressing the "chosen people," says: "Every land is full of thee and every sea." The most diverse witnesses, such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke (the author of the Acts of the Apostles), Cicero, and Josephus, all mention Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean. See also History of the Jews in India and History of the Jews in China for pre-Roman (and post-) diasporac populations.
King Agrippa I, in a letter to Caligula, enumerates among the provinces of the Jewish diaspora almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient; and this enumeration is far from being complete, as Italy and Cyrene are not included. The epigraphic discoveries from year to year augment the number of known Jewish communities. There is only scant information of a precise character concerning the numerical significance of these diverse Jewish conglomerations; and this must be used with caution. After the Land of Israel and Babylonia, it was in Syria, according to Josephus, that the Jewish population was the densest; particularly in Antioch, and then in Damascus, in which latter place, at the time of the great insurrection, 10,000 (according to another version 18,000) Jews were massacred. Philo gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as 1,000,000; one-eighth of the population. Alexandria was by far the most important of the Jewish communities, the Jews in Philo's time were inhabiting two of the five quarters of the city. To judge by the accounts of wholesale massacres in 115, the number of Jewish residents in Cyrenaica, at Cyprus, and in Mesopotamia were also large. In Rome, at the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus, there were over 7,000 Jews: this is the number that escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus. Finally, if the sums confiscated by the governor Lucius Valerius Flaccus in the year 62/61 BCE represented the tax of a didrachma per head for a single year, it would imply that the Jewish population of Asia Minor numbered 45,000 adult males, for a total of at least 180,000 persons.

Post-Roman Diaspora

Roman destruction of Judea

Roman rule continued until a revolt from 66-70, terminating in the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, the centre of the national and religious life of the Jews throughout the world. After this catastrophe, Judea formed a separate Roman province, governed by a legate, at first "pro prætore," and later, "pro consule," who was also the commander of the army of occupation. The complete destruction of Jerusalem, and the settlement of several Grecian and Roman colonies in Judea, indicated the express intention of the Roman government to prevent the political regeneration of the Jewish nation. Nevertheless, forty years later the Jews put forth efforts to recover their former freedom. With Palestine exhausted, they strove, in the first place, to establish upon the ruins of Hellenism actual commonwealths in Cyrene, Cyprus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. These efforts, resolute but unwise, were suppressed by Trajan (115-117); and under Hadrian the same fate befell the attempt of the Jews of Palestine to regain their independence (133-135). From this time on, in spite of unimportant movements under Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus, the Jews of Palestine, reduced in numbers, destitute, and crushed, lost their preponderance in the Jewish world. Jerusalem had become, under the name "Ælia Capitolina," a Roman colony, a city entirely pagan. The Jews were forbidden entrance, under pain of death. Nevertheless, 43 Jewish communities in Palestine remained in the sixth century: 12 on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan, and 31 villages in Galilee and in the Jordan valley. Further Jewish revolts erupted in the years 351, 438 and 614 in alliance with the Persians who governed Jerusalem for five years.

Dispersion of the Jews

The destruction of Judea exerted a decisive influence upon the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world, as the center of worship shifted from the Temple to Rabbinic authority.
Some Jews were sold as slaves or transported as captives after the fall of Judea, others joined the existing diaspora, while still others remained in Judea and began work on the Jerusalem Talmud. For those Jews in the diaspora, they were generally accepted into the Roman Empire, but with the rise of Christianity, restrictions grew. Forced expulsions and persecution resulted in substantial shifts in the international centers of Jewish life to which far-flung communities often looked; although not always unified due to the Jewish people's dispersion itself. Jewish communities were thereby largely expelled from Judea and sent to various Roman provinces in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
During the Middle Ages, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two groupings: the Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) and Sephardic Jews (Spanish and Middle Eastern Jews). These groupings incorporate parallel histories sharing many series of persecutions and forced expulsions, which finally culminated in events in the 20th century that led to the State of Israel.

The "Negation of the Diaspora" by Zionism

   According to Eliezer Schweid the rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in all currents of Zionism. Underlying this attitude was the feeling that the Diaspora restricted the full growth of Jewish national life. For instance the poet Bialik wrote: � And my heart weeps for my unhappy people ...

   How burned, how blasted must our portion be, � If seed like this is withered in its soil. ...

According to Schweid Bialik meant that the “seed” was the potential of the Jewish people, which they preserved in the Diaspora, where it could only give rise to deformed results. However once conditions changed the “seed” could still give a plentiful harvest.
   In this matter Sternhell distinguishes two schools of thought in Zionism. One was the liberal or utilitarian school of Herzl and Nordau. Especially after the Dreyfus Affair they held that anti-Semitism would never disappear, and saw Zionism as a rational solution for Jewish individuals. The other was the organic nationalist school. It was prevalent among the Zionists in Palestine, and saw Zionism as a project to rescue the Jewish nation and not as a project to rescue Jewish individuals. Zionism was a matter of the "Rebirth of the Nation".

The Diaspora in Contemporary Jewish life

Numerous subsequent exiles and persecution, as well as political and economic conditions and opportunities, affected the numbers and dynamics of Jewish diaspora.
As of 2006, the largest number of Jews lives in Israel (5,309,000), United States (5,275,000), France (492,000), Canada (372,000), and the United Kingdom (297,000). As of 2006 it's estimated that the country with the largest number of Jews is the State of Israel, with the United States falling to #2 due to assimilation and a low birth rate.
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast continues to be an Autonomous Oblast of Russia. (External Link

) The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city. (External Link

) Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations." (External Link

) The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934. (External Link

) An estimated 70,000 Jews live in the vast Siberia region. Metropolitan areas with the largest Jewish populations:

Gush Dan (Tel Aviv and surroundings) - Israel - 2,900,000.
New York - U.S. - 1,970,000.
Haifa - Israel - 800,000.
Los Angeles - U.S. - 621,000.
Jerusalem - Israel - 600,000.
Miami - U.S. - 514,000.
Paris - France - 310,000.
Philadelphia - U.S. - 276,000.
Chicago - U.S. - 261,000.
Boston - U.S. - 227,000.
San Francisco - U.S. - 210,000.
London - United Kingdom - 195,000.
Buenos Aires - Argentina - 175,000.
Toronto - Canada - 175,000.
Washington, D.C. - U.S. - 165,000.
Beer Sheva - Israel - 165,000.
Moscow - Russia - 108,000.
Baltimore - U.S. - 95,000.
Montreal - Canada - 95,000.
Detroit - U.S. - 94,000.

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