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The Jewish diaspora ( ), alternatively the dispersion ( ) or the exile ( ; ), consists of Jews who reside outside of the Land of Israel. Historically, it refers to the expansive scattering of the Israelites out of their homeland in the Southern Levant and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the world, which gave rise to the various Jewish communities.Ben-Sasson, Haim Hillel. "Galut." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 7, Macmillan Reference (US) 2007, pp. 352–63. Gale Virtual Reference Library
In the Hebrew Bible, the term () denotes the fate of the Twelve Tribes of Israel over the course of two major exilic events in ancient Israel and Judah: the Assyrian captivity, which occurred after the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE; and the Babylonian captivity, which occurred after the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE. While those who were taken from Israel dispersed as the Ten Lost Tribes, those who were taken from Judah—consisting of the Tribe of Judah and the Tribe of Benjamin—became known by the identity "Jew" ( , ) and were repatriated following the Persian conquest of Babylonia.André Chouraqui (1975). 9780870231728, Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press. . ISBN 9780870231728
A Jewish diaspora population existed for many centuries before the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In the preceding Second Temple period, it existed as a consequence of various factors, including the creation of political and war refugees, enslavement, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military employment, and opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture.Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans Harvard University Press, 2009 pp. 3–4, 233–34: "The vast bulk of Jews who dwelled abroad in the Second Temple period did so voluntarily. Even where initial deportation came under duress, the relocated families remained in their new residences for generations—long after the issue of forced dislocation had become obsolete. No single objective impelled them; there were multiple motives. Overpopulation in Palestine may have been a factor for some, indebtedness for others. But hardship need not have been the spur for most. The new and expanded communities that sprang up in the wake of Alexander’s conquests served as magnets for migration. And Jews made their way to locations in both the eastern and western Mediterranean. Large numbers found employment as mercenaries, military colonists, or enlisted men in the regular forces. Others seized opportunities in business, commerce, or agriculture. All lands were open to them." Prior to the mid-1st century CE, in addition to Judea, Syria, and Babylonia, large Jewish communities existed in the Roman provinces of Roman Egypt, Crete and Cyrenaica, and in Ancient Rome itself. In 6 CE, most of the Southern Levant was organized as the Roman province of Judaea, where a large uprising led to the First Jewish–Roman War, which destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem. The Jewish defeat to the Roman army and the accompanying elimination of the symbolic centre of Jewish identity (the Temple in Jerusalem) marked the end of Second Temple Judaism, motivating many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement.Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans, Harvard University Press, 2009 pp. 233–34: Nevertheless, intermittent warfare between Jewish nationalists and the Roman Empire continued for several decades. In 129/130 CE, the Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of Aelia Capitolina over the ruins of Jerusalem, sparking the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 CE. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, this uprising endured for four years, but was ultimately unsuccessful and became the last of the Jewish–Roman wars; Jews were massacred or displaced across the province, banned from Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, and forbidden to practice Judaism, leading to a significant rise in the Jewish diaspora.
By the Middle Ages, owing to increasing migration and resettlement, diaspora Jews divided into distinct regional groups that are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings: the Ashkenazi Jews, who coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire and Eastern Europe; and the Sephardic Jews, who coalesced in the Iberian Peninsula and the Arab world. These groups have parallel histories, sharing many cultural similarities and experiences of persecution and expulsions and exoduses, such as the expulsion from England in 1290, the Alhambra Decree, and the expulsion from the Muslim world after 1948. Although the two branches comprise many unique ethno-cultural practices and have links to their local host populations (such as for Ashkenazi Jews, and Hispanic and Arabs for Sephardic Jews), their common religious practices and shared ancestry, as well as their continuous communication and population transfers, have been responsible for cementing a unified sense of peoplehood between them since the late Roman period.
Steven Bowman argues that diaspora in antiquity connoted emigration from an ancestral mother city, with the emigrant community maintaining its cultural ties with the place of origin. Just as the Greek city exported its surplus population, so did Jerusalem, while remaining the cultural and religious centre or metropolis ( ir-va-em be-yisrael) for the outlying communities. It could have two senses in Biblical terms, the idea of becoming a 'guiding light unto the nations' by dwelling in the midst of gentiles, or of enduring the pain of exile from one's homeland. The conditions of diaspora in the former case were premised on the free exercise of citizenship or resident alien status. Galut implies by comparison living as a denigrated minority, stripped of such rights, in the host society. Sometimes diaspora and galut are defined as 'voluntary' as opposed to 'involuntary' exile.Jeffrey M. Peck, Being Jewish in the New Germany, Rutgers University Press, 2006 p 154. Diaspora, it has been argued, has a political edge, referring to geopolitical dispersion, which may be involuntary, but which can assume, under different conditions, a positive nuance. Galut is more Teleology, and connotes a sense of uprootedness.Howard K. Wettstein, ‘Diaspora, Exile, and Jewish Identity,’ in M. Avrum Ehrlich (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2009 pp.61-63, p.61:’Diaspora is a political notion; it suggests geopolitical dispersion, perhaps involuntary. However, with changed circumstances, a population may come to see virtue in diasporic life. Diaspora-as opposed to galut-may thus acquire a positive charge. Galut rings of teleology, not politics. It suggests dislocation, a sense of being uprooted, in the wrong place. Perhaps the community has been punished; perhaps awful things happen in our world Daniel Boyarin defines diaspora as a state where people have a dual cultural allegiance, productive of a double consciousness, and in this sense a cultural condition not premised on any particular history, as opposed to galut, which is more descriptive of an existential situation, that properly of exile, conveying a particular psychological outlook.Daniel Boyarin in Ilan Gur-Ze'ev (ed.), 'Diasporic Philosophy and Counter-Education,' Springer Science & Business Media 2011 p. 127
The Greek word διασπορά (dispersion) first appears as a neologism in the translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, where it occurs 14 times,Stéphane Dufoix, The Dispersion: A History of the Word Diaspora, Brill Publishers, 2016 pp.28ff, 40. starting with a passage reading: ἔση διασπορὰ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς (‘thou shalt be a diaspora (or dispersion) in all kingdoms of the earth’, ), translating 'ləza‘ăwāh', whose root suggests 'trouble, terror'. In these contexts it never translated any term in the original Tanakh drawn from the Semitic root glt (גלה), which lies behind galah, and golah, nor even galuth.Dufoix pp.41,46. Golah appears 42 times, and galuth in 15 passages, and first occurs in the 's reference to the deportation of the Judean elite to Babylonia.Dufoix p.47. Stéphane Dufoix, in surveying the textual evidence, draws the following conclusion:
galuth and diaspora are drawn from two completely different lexicons. The first refers to episodes, precise and datable, in the history of the people of Israel, when the latter was subjected to a foreign occupation, such as that of Babylon, in which most of the occurrences are found. The second, perhaps with a single exception that remains debatable, is never used to speak of the past and does not concern Babylon; the instrument of dispersion is never the historical sovereign of another country. Diaspora is the word for chastisement, but the dispersion in question has not occurred yet: it is potential, conditional on the Jews not respecting the law of God. . . It follows that diaspora belongs, not to the domain of history, but of theology.'Stéphane Dufoix, p.49
In and post-Talmudic Rabbinic literature, this phenomenon was referred to as galut (exile), a term with strongly negative connotations, often contrasted with geula (redemption).See for example, Kiddushin (tosafot) 41a, ref. "Assur l'adam..." Eugene Borowitz describes Galut as "fundamentally a theological categoryEugene B. Borowitz, Exploring Jewish Ethics: Papers on Covenant Responsibility, Wayne State University Press, 1990 p.129:'Galut is fundamentally a theological category.' The modern Hebrew concept of Tefutzot תפוצות, "scattered", was introduced in the 1930s by the American Jews Zionist academic Simon Rawidowicz,Simon Rawidowicz, 'On the concept of Galut,', in his State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity: Essays on the "ever-dying People, UPNE, 1998 pp.96ff. p.80 who to some degree argued for the acceptance of the Jewish presence outside the Land of Israel as a modern reality and an inevitability. The Greek term for diaspora (διασπορά) also appears three times in the New Testament, where it refers to the scattering of Israel, i.e., the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel as opposed to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, although James (1:1) refers to the scattering of all twelve tribes.
In modern times, the contrasting meanings of diaspora/galut have given rise to controversy among Jews. Bowman states this in the following terms,
(Diaspora) follows the Greek usage and is considered a positive phenomenon that continues the prophetic call of Israel to be a 'light unto the nations' and establish homes and families among the gentiles. The prophet Jeremiah issues this call to the preexilic emigrants in Egypt. . . Galut is a religious–nationalist term, which implies exile from the homeland as a result of collective sins, an exile that will be redeemed at YHWH’s pleasure. Jewish messianism is closely connected with the concept of galut.’Steven Bowman, 'Jewish Diaspora in the Greek World: The Principles of Acculturation,' in Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard (eds.) Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Volume I: Overviews and Topics; Volume II: Diaspora Communities, Springer Science & Business Media, 2004 pp.192ff. p.193
In Zionist debates a distinction was made between galut and golus/gola. The latter denoted social and political exile, whereas the former, while consequential on the latter, was a psycho-spiritual framework that was not wholly dependent on the conditions of life in diasporic exile, since one could technically remain in galut even in Eretz Israel. Whereas Theodor Herzl and his follows thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would put an end to the diasporic exile, Ahad Ha-am thought to the contrary that such a state's function would be to 'sustain Jewish nationhood' in the diaspora.Yosef Gorny Converging Alternatives: The Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985, SUNY Press, 2012 p.50.
After the overthrow of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE 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."In the beginning, when the Torah was forgotten by Israel, Ezra came from Babylonia and reestablished it. Later the Torah became forgotten again. Then came Hillel the Babylonian and reestablished it." Sukkah 20aHersh Goldwurm (1982) History of the Jewish People: The Second Temple Era p.143, Mesorah Publications, New York
Deportees returned to the Samaria after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was in turn conquered by Cyrus the Great. The biblical book of Ezra includes two texts said to be decrees allowing the deported Jews to return to their homeland after decades and ordering the Temple rebuilt. The differences in content and tone of the two decrees, one in Hebrew and one in Aramaic, have caused some scholars to question their authenticity. The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus"Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, vol.1 2004 pp.76ff. regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event. There is no sudden expansion of the population base of 30,000 and no credible indication of any special interest in Yehud Medinata.Lester L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period: Yehud - A History of the Persian Province of Judah v. 1, T & T Clark, , 2004 p.355.
Although most of the Jewish people during this period, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence they led there, under the successive rulers of the Achaemenids, the Seleucid Empire, the , and the Sassanid dynasty, was obscure and devoid of political influence. The poorest but most fervent of the exiles returned to Judah / the Land of Israel during the reign of the Achaemenids (c. 550–330 BCE). There, with the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem as their center, they organized themselves into a community, animated by a remarkable religious ardor and a tenacious attachment to the Torah as the focus of their identity. As this little nucleus increased in numbers with the accession of recruits from various quarters, it awoke to a consciousness of itself, and strove once again for national independence and political enfranchisement and sovereignty.
The first Jewish diaspora in Egypt arose in the last century of pharaonic rule, apparently with the settlement there, either under Ashurbanipal or during the reign of Psamtik I of a colony of Jewish mercenaries, a military class that successively served the Persian, the Ptolemaic and Roman governments down to the early decades of the second century CE, when the revolt against Trajan destroyed them. Their presence was buttressed by numerous Jewish administrators who joined them in Egypt's military and urban centres.Steven Bowman, 'Jewish Diaspora in the Greek World, The Principles of Acculturation,' in Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard (eds.) Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Volume I: Overviews and Topics; Volume II: Diaspora Communities, Springer Science & Business Media, 2004 pp.192ff. pp.192-193. According to Josephus, when Ptolemy I took Judea, he led 120,000 Jewish captives to Egypt, and many other Jews, attracted by Ptolemy's liberal and tolerant policies and Egypt's fertile soil, emigrated from Judea to Egypt of their own free will.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, in The Works of Josephus, Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Edition (Translated by William Whiston, A.M.; Peabody Massachusetts:Hendrickson Publishers, 1987; Fifth Printing:Jan.1991 Bk. 12, chapters. 1, 2, pp. 308-309 (Bk. 12: verses 7, 9, 11) Ptolemy settled the Jews in Egypt to employ them as mercenaries. Philadelphus subsequently emancipated the Jews taken to Egypt as captives and settled them in cleruchy, or specialized colonies, as Jewish military units. Jews began settling in Cyrenaica (modern-day eastern Libya) around the third century BCE, during the rule of Ptolemy I of Egypt, who sent them to secure the region for his kingdom. By the early first century BCE, the geographer Strabo identified Jews as one of the four main groups residing in the city of Cyrene.
While communities in Alexandria and Rome dated back to before the Maccabean Revolt, the population in the Jewish diaspora expanded after the Pompey's campaign in 62 BCE. 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 within the royal family and the growing disaffection of the pious towards rulers who no longer evinced any appreciation of the real aspirations of their subjects made the Jewish nation easy prey for the ambitions of the now increasingly autocratic and imperial Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 BCE Pompey invaded Jerusalem, the Jewish people lost their political sovereignty and independence, and Aulus Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.
As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE the Jewish author of the third book of the Oracula Sibyllina addressed the "chosen people," saying: "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 basin. See also History of the Jews in India and History of the Jews in China for pre-Roman (and post-) diasporic populations.
King Agrippa I, in a letter to Caligula, enumerated among the provinces of the Jewish diaspora almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient. This enumeration was far from complete as Italy and Cyrene were not included. The Epigraphy discoveries from year to year augment the number of known Jewish communities but must be viewed with caution due to the lack of precise evidence of their numbers. According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, the next most dense Jewish population after the Land of Israel and Babylonia was in Syria, particularly in Antioch, and Damascus, where 10,000 to 18,000 Jews were massacred during the great insurrection. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as one million, one-eighth of the population. Alexandria was by far the most important of the Egyptian Jewish communities. The Jews in the Egyptian diaspora were on a par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and close ties existed for them with Jerusalem. As in other Hellenistic diasporas, the Egyptian diaspora was one of choice not of imposition.
To judge by the later accounts of wholesale massacres in Kitos War, the number of Jewish residents in Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia must also have been large. At the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus, there were over 7,000 Jews in Rome (though this is only the number that is said to have escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Herod Archelaus; compare: Bringmann: Klaus: Geschichte der Juden im Altertum, Stuttgart 2005, S. 202. Bringmann talks about 8,000 Jews who lived in the city of Rome.). Many sources say that the Jews constituted a full one-tenth (10%) of the population of the ancient city of Rome itself. Finally, if the sums confiscated by the Promagistrate 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 Anatolia numbered 45,000 adult males, for a total of at least 180,000 persons.
The suppression of the Kitos War of 116–117 CE resulted in the near-total destruction of Jewish communities in Cyrenaica and Egypt. By the third century, Jewish communities began to re-establish themselves in Egypt and Cyrenaica, primarily through immigration from the Land of Israel.
Exactly when Roman Anti-Judaism began is a question of scholarly debate, however historian Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson has proposed that the "Crisis under Caligula" (37–41) was the "first open break between Rome and the Jews".Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, , The Crisis Under Gaius Caligula, pages 254–256: "The reign of Gaius Caligula (37–41) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Julio-Claudian empire. Until then—if one accepts Sejanus' heyday and the trouble caused by the census after Archelaus' banishment—there was usually an atmosphere of understanding between the Jews and the Empire ... These relations deteriorated seriously during Caligula's reign, and, though after his death the peace was outwardly re-established, considerable bitterness remained on both sides. ... Caligula ordered that a golden statue of *himself* be set up in the Temple in Jerusalem. ... Only Caligula's death, at the hands of Roman conspirators (41), prevented the outbreak of a Jewish-Roman war that might well have spread to the entire East." Meanwhile, the Kitos War, a rebellion by Jewish diaspora communities in Roman territories in the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, led to the destruction of Jewish communities in Crete, Cyprus, and North Africa in 117 CE, and consequently the dispersal of Jews already living outside of Judea to further reaches of the Empire.
Jerusalem had been left in ruins from the time of Vespasian. Sixty years later, Hadrian, who had been instrumental in the expulsion from Palestine of Marcius Turbo after his bloody repression of Jews in the diaspora in 117 CE,Galimnberti, 2010, p.73. on visiting the area of Iudaea, decided to rebuild the city in 130 CE, and settle it, circumstantial evidence suggesting it was he who renamed it Ælia Capitolina, with a Roman colonia and foreign cults. It is commonly held that this was done as an insult to the Jews and as a means of erasing the land's Jewish identity,Gudrun Krämer A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, Princeton University Press p.14:"As another element of retaliation, the Romans renamed the province of Judaea "Syria Palestina" to erase any linguistic connection with the rebellious Jews. As mentioned earlier, the name "Palestine" in itself was not new, having already served in Assyrian and Egyptian sources to designate the coastal plain of the southern Levant."William David Davies, Louis Finkelstein, Steven T. Katz (eds.) The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4, The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, Cambridge University Press 1984p=?: 'Hadrian visited Palestine in 130, as part of a tour of the eastern provinces of the Empire. It now seems likely, though not absolutely certain, that it was on this occasion that he announced his intention to restore Jerusalem, not as a Jewish city, but as a Roman colony to be named Aelia Capitolina, after himself (his full name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus) and Jupiter Capitolinus, the chief god of the Roman pantheon. This was presumably both intended and understood as a humiliating insult to the defeated God of Israel, who had previously occupied the site, and by extension to the people who persisted in worshiping Him. It also rendered the restoration of His Temple moot.’Ariel Lewin, The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine, Getty Publications 2005 p. 33: "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name - one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus - Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land.'Peter Schäfer, The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered Mohr Siebeck 2003 p.33. Others argued that this project was expressive of an intention of establishing administratively and culturally a firm Roman imperial presence, and thus incorporating the province, now called Syro-Palaestina, into the Roman world system. These political measures were, according to Menachem Mor, devoid of any intention to eliminate Judaism,Menahem Mor, The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 CE, Brill Publishers, 2016 p.487:’Despite the fact that the actions of Hadrian were of a political nature, their intention was not to bring about the eliminating of Judaism, at least not according to Hadrian’s perceptions. Some of the Jewish population in the Judeaean mountains regarded Roman conquest and the general policy of the emperor carried out by Tineius Rufus, the local governor, as sufficient cause for another revolt against Rome. Yet the territorial limitations of the Second Revolt testify that most of the Jewish population in Judea did not regard these activities as a reason for rebellion.’ indeed, the pagan reframing of Jerusalem may have been a strategic move designed to challenge, rather, the growing threat, pretensions and influence of converts to Christianity, for whom Jerusalem was likewise a crucial symbol of their faith. Implementation of these plans led to violent opposition, and triggered a full-scale insurrection with the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE),Giovanni Battista Bazzana, 'Bar Kochba’s Revolt and Hadrian’s Religious Policy,’ in Marco Rizzi (ed.), Hadrian and the Christians, Walter de Gruyter, 2010 pp.85-109 p.89-91. assisted, according to Dio Cassius, by some other peoples, perhaps Arabs who had recently been subjected by Trajan.Alessandro Galimberti, 'Hadrian, Eleusus, and the Begi nning of Christian Apologetics' in Marco Rizzi (ed.), Hadrian and the Christians, Walter de Gruyter, 2010 pp.71-84, p.74. The revolt was crushed, with the Jewish population of Judea devastated. Jewish war captives were again captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to Jewish tradition, the Romans deported twelve boatloads of Jews to Cyrenaica.Gilbert, Martin: In Ishmael's House, p. 3 Voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea in the aftermath of the Bar-Kokhba revolt also expanded Jewish communities in the diaspora. Jews were forbidden entrance to Jerusalem on pain of death, except for the day of Tisha B'Av. There was a further shift of the center of religious authority from Yavne, as rabbis regrouped in Usha in the western Galilee, where the Mishnah was composed. This ban struck a blow at Jewish national identity within Palestine, while the Romans however continued to allow Jews in the diaspora their distinct national and religious identity throughout the Empire.Martin Goodman, 'The Roman State and Jewish Diaspora Communities in the Antonine Age,' in Yair Furstenberg (ed.), Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World, Brill Publishers, 2016 pp.75-86 p.75.
The military defeats of the Jews in Judaea in 70 CE and again in 135 CE, with large numbers of Jewish captives from Judea sold into slavery and an increase in voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea as a result of the wars, meant a drop in Palestine's Jewish population was balanced by a rise in diaspora numbers. Jewish prisoners sold as slaves in the diaspora and their children were eventually manumitted and joined local free communities.E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: a Study in Political Relations, Brill Publishers 2001 p.507. It has been argued that the archaeological evidence is suggestive of a Roman genocide taking place during the Second revolt.J. E. Taylor The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea, Oxford University Press 2012 p.243:'Up until this date the Bar Kokhba documents indicate that towns, villages and ports where Jews lived were busy with industry and activity. Afterwards there is an eerie silence, and the archaeological record testifies to little Jewish presence until the Byzantine era, in En Gedi. This picture coheres with what we have already determined in Part I of this study, that the crucial date for what can only be described as genocide, and the devastation of Jews and Judaism within central Judea, was 135 CE and not, as usually assumed, 70 CE, despite the siege of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction.' A significant movement of gentiles and Samaritans into villages formerly with a Jewish majority appears to have taken place thereafter.Isaiah Gafni, Land, Center and Diaspora: Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997 p.66. During the Crisis of the Third Century, civil wars in the Roman Empire caused great economic disruption, and taxes imposed to finance these wars impacted the Jewish population of Palestine heavily. As a result, many Jews emigrated to Babylon under the more tolerant Sassanid Empire, where autonomous Jewish communities continued to flourish, lured by the promise of economic prosperity and the ability to lead a full Jewish life there.Cherry, Robert: Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure: Their Origins and Relevance in the Twentieth-Century, p. 148 (2018), Wipf and Stock Publishers Between the 3rd and 7th centuries, estimates indicate that the Babylonian Jewish community numbered approximately one million, which may have been the largest Jewish diaspora population of the time, possibly outnumbering those in the Land of Israel.
Palestine and Babylon were both great centers of Jewish scholarship during this time, but tensions between scholars in these two communities grew as many Jewish scholars in Palestine feared that the centrality of the land to the Jewish religion would be lost with continuing Jewish emigration. Many Palestinian sages refused to consider Babylonian scholars their equals and would not ordain Babylonian students in their academies, fearing they would return to Babylon as rabbis. Significant Jewish emigration to Babylon adversely affected the Jewish academies of Palestine, and by the end of the third century they were reliant on donations from Babylon.
The effect that the destruction of Jerusalem had on the Jewish diaspora has been a topic of considerable scholarly discussion. David Aberbach has argued that much of the European Jewish diaspora, by which he means exile or voluntary migration, originated with the Jewish wars which occurred between 66 and 135 CE. Martin Goodman states that it is only after the destruction of Jerusalem that Jews are found in northern Europe and along the western Mediterranean coast.
Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan challenge the "widespread notion" the Jews in Judea were only expelled after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the Jewish defeat during Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. They also contend it is "misleading" that the expulsion from Judea created the diaspora. No Return, No Refuge (Howard Adelman, Elazar Barkan, p. 159)
Israel Bartal contends that Shlomo Sand is incorrect in his claim that the original Jews living in Israel were not exiled by the Romans,'Every historian knew that the myth combining destruction and expulsion was very much alive in the mind of the public, having derived from a religious tradition and become firmly rooted in secular consciousness. In the popular discourse, as in the political statements and the educational system, the expulsion of the people of Israel after the fall of the kingdom was carved in stone. Most intelligent scholars evaded this dubious area with professional elegance; here and there, as though unwittingly, they supplemented their writings with alternative explanations of the prolonged exile.' Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, Verso 2009 pp.129ff. p.143 instead arguing that this view is negligible among serious Jewish study scholars. These scholars argue that the growth of diaspora Jewish communities was a gradual process that occurred over the centuries, starting with the Assyrian destruction of Israel, the Babylonian destruction of Judah, the Roman destruction of Judea, and the subsequent rule of Christians and Muslims. After the revolt, the Jewish religious and cultural center shifted to the Babylonian Jewish community and its scholars. For the generations that followed, the destruction of the Second Temple event came to represent a fundamental insight about the Jews who had become a dispossessed and persecuted people for much of their history.
Erich S. Gruen contends that focusing on the destruction of the Temple misses the point that already before this, the diaspora was well-established. Gruen argues compulsory dislocation of Jews during the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE) cannot explain more than a fraction of the eventual diaspora. Rather, the Jewish diaspora during this time period was created from various factors, including through the creation of political and war refugees, enslavement, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military employment, and opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture."The vast bulk of Jews who dwelled abroad in the Second Temple period did so voluntarily. Even where initial deportation came under duress, the relocated families remained in their new residences for generations—long after the issue of forced dislocation had become obsolete. No single objective impelled them; there were multiple motives. Overpopulation in Palestine may have been a factor for some, indebtedness for others. But hardship need not have been the spur for most. The new and expanded communities that sprang up in the wake of Alexander’s conquests served as magnets for migration. And Jews made their way to locations in both the eastern and western Mediterranean. Large numbers found employment as mercenaries, military colonists, or enlisted men in the regular forces. Others seized opportunities in business, commerce, or agriculture. All lands were open to them." Erich S. Gruen, "Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans", pages 2-3) Avrum Ehrlich also states that already well before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, more Jews lived in the Diaspora than in Israel. Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1 p. 126: "In fact, well before the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), more Jews lived in the Diaspora than in the Land of Israel." Jonathan Adelman estimated that around 60% of Jews lived in the diaspora during the Second Temple period. According to Gruen:
Israel Yuval contends the Babylonian captivity created a promise of return in the Jewish consciousness which had the effect of enhancing the Jewish self-perception of Exile after the destruction of the Second Temple, albeit their dispersion was due to an array of non-exilic factors. The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Oxford University Press 2009) pp. 17–18"the dispersal of the Jews, even in ancient times, was connected with an array of factors, none of them clearly exilic" According to Hasia R. Diner, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, followed by the dissolution, in 132 CE, of Jewish sovereignty over the territory renamed Syria Palaestina, had launched the second dispersion of the diaspora, the first being the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE. She writes that, "Although many Jews had lived outside Judea even before that the, the ending of home rule set in motion the world’s longest diaspora."
In 638, Palestine came under Muslim rule with the Muslim conquest of the Levant. One estimate placed the Jewish population of Palestine at between 300,000 and 400,000 at the time. However, this is contrary to other estimates which place it at 150,000 to 200,000 at the time of the revolt against Heraclius.James Parkes (1949). A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times. Victor Gollancz.Salo Wittmayer Baron (1957). Social and Religious History of the Jews, Volume 3: High Middle Ages: Heirs of Rome and Persia. Columbia University Press. p. 237. . According to historian Moshe Gil, the majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritans.Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine: 634–1099, p. 3. The land gradually came to have an Arab majority as Arab tribes migrated there. Jewish communities initially grew and flourished. Umar allowed and encouraged Jews to settle in Jerusalem. It was the first time in about 500 years that Jews were allowed to freely enter and worship in their holiest city. In 717, new restrictions were imposed against non-Muslims that negatively affected the Jews. Heavy taxes on agricultural land forced many Jews to migrate from rural areas to towns. Social and economic discrimination caused significant Jewish emigration from Palestine, and Muslim civil wars in the 8th and 9th centuries pushed many Jews out of the country. By the end of the 11th century the Jewish population of Palestine had declined substantially.Gil, M. A History of Palestine, 634–1099. p. 294
During the First Crusade, Jews in Palestine, along with Muslims, were indiscriminately massacred and sold into slavery by the Crusaders. The majority of Jerusalem's Jewish population was killed during the Crusader Siege of Jerusalem and the few thousand survivors were sold into slavery. Some of the Jews sold into slavery later had their freedom bought by Jewish communities in Italy and Egypt, and the redeemed slaves were taken to Egypt. Some Jewish prisoners of war were also deported to Apulia in southern Italy.Goitein, S.D. "Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders." Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952), pp. 162–177, pg 163Kedar, Benjamin Z., Phillips, Jonathan, Riley-Smith, Jonathan: Crusades: Volume 3, p. 82 (2016), Routledge
Relief for the Jewish population of Palestine came when the Ayyubid dynasty defeated the Crusaders and conquered Palestine (see 1187 Battle of Hattin). Some Jewish immigration from the diaspora subsequently took place, but this came to an end when Mamluks took over Palestine (see 1291 Fall of Acre). The Mamluks severely oppressed the Jews and greatly mismanaged the economy, resulting in a period of great social and economic decline. The result was large-scale migration from Palestine, and the population declined. The Jewish population shrunk especially heavily, as did the Christian population. Though some Jewish immigration from Europe, North Africa, and Syria also occurred in this period, which potentially saved the collapsing Jewish community of Palestine from disappearing altogether, Jews were reduced to an even smaller minority of the population.
The result of these waves of emigration and expulsion was that the Jewish population of Palestine was reduced to a few thousand by the time the Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine, after which the region entered a period of relative stability. At the start of Ottoman rule in 1517, the estimated Jewish population was 5,000, composed of both descendants of Jews who had never left the land and migrants from the diaspora.
By 1764 there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population (comprising the Middle East and the rest of Europe) was estimated at 1.2 million.
In 2006, a study by Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, Israel demonstrated that the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews, both men and women, have Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Nicholas Wades' 2010 Autosomal study Ashkenazi Jews share a common ancestry with other Jewish groups and Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews have roughly 30% European ancestry with the rest being Middle Eastern. According to Hammer, the Ashkenazi population expanded through a series of bottlenecks—events that squeeze a population down to small numbers—perhaps as it migrated from the Middle East after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, to Italy, reaching the Rhine in the 10th century.
David Goldstein, a Duke University geneticist and director of the Duke Center for Human Genome Variation, has said that the work of the Technion and Ramban team served only to confirm that genetic drift played a major role in shaping Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited in a matrilineal manner. Goldstein argues that the Technion and Ramban mtDNA studies fail to actually establish a statistically significant maternal link between modern Jews and historic Middle Eastern populations. This differs from the patrilineal case, where Goldstein said there is no doubt of a Middle Eastern origin.
In June 2010, Behar et al. "shows that most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster with common genetic origin, that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochin Jews) cluster with neighboring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant." "The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." In conclusion the authors are stating that the genetic results are concordant "with the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". Regarding the samples he used Behar points out that "Our conclusion favoring common ancestry (of Jewish people) over recent admixture is further supported by the fact that our sample contains individuals that are known not to be admixed in the most recent one or two generations."
A 2013 study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by Costa et al., reached the conclusion that the four major female founders and most of the minor female founders had ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. According to the study these findings 'point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities" and their intermarriage with Jewish men of Middle Eastern origin.
A study by Haber, et al., (2013) noted that while previous studies of the Levant, which had focused mainly on diaspora Jewish populations, showed that the "Jews form a distinctive cluster in the Middle East", these studies did not make clear "whether the factors driving this structure would also involve other groups in the Levant". The authors found strong evidence that modern Levant populations descend from two major apparent ancestral populations. One set of genetic characteristics which is shared with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians is most prominent in the Levant amongst "Lebanese, Armenians, Cypriots, Druze and Jews, as well as Turks, Iranians and Caucasian populations". The second set of inherited genetic characteristics is shared with populations in other parts of the Middle East as well as some African populations. Levant populations in this category today include "Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, as well as North Africans, Ethiopians, Saudis, and Bedouins". Concerning this second component of ancestry, the authors remark that while it correlates with "the pattern of the Islamic expansion", and that "a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners," they also say that "its presence in Lebanese Christians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Cypriots and Armenians might suggest that its spread to the Levant could also represent an earlier event". The authors also found a strong correlation between religion and apparent ancestry in the Levant:
Another 2013 study, made by Doron M. Behar of the Rambam Health Care Campus in Israel and others, suggests that: "Cumulatively, our analyses point strongly to ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews primarily from European and Middle Eastern populations and not from populations in or near the Caucasus region. The combined set of approaches suggests that the observations of Ashkenazi proximity to European and Middle Eastern populations in population structure analyses reflect actual genetic proximity of Ashkenazi Jews to populations with predominantly European and Middle Eastern ancestry components, and lack of visible introgression from the region of the Khazar Khaganate—particularly among the northern Volga and North Caucasus populations—into the Ashkenazi community."
A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal (mitochondrial) DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Costa, Richards et al. that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.
A small number of Sephardic refugees who fled via the Netherlands as settled in Hamburg and Altona Germany in the early 16th century, eventually appropriating Ashkenazic Jewish rituals into their religious practice. One famous figure from the Sephardic Ashkenazic population is Glückel of Hameln. Some relocated to the United States, establishing the country's first organized community of Jews and erecting the United States' first synagogue. Nevertheless, the majority of Sephardim remained in Spain and Portugal as , which would also be the fate for those who had migrated to Spanish and Portuguese ruled Latin America. Sephardic Jews evolved to form most of North Africa's Jewish communities of the modern era, as well as the bulk of the Turkish, Syrian, Galilean and Jerusalemite Jews of the Ottoman period.
The differences between Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism go back more than a thousand years. Rabbinical Judaism originates from the Pharisees of the Second Temple period. Karaite Judaism may have its origins among the Sadducees of the same era. Karaite Jews hold the entire Hebrew Bible to be a religious authority. As such, the vast majority of Karaites believe in the resurrection of the dead. Karaite Jews are widely regarded as being halachically Jewish by the Orthodox Rabbinate. Similarly, members of the rabbinic community are considered Jews by the Moetzet Hakhamim, if they are patrilineally Jewish.
The Paradesi Jews of Cochin are a community of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors settled among the larger Cochin Jews community located in Kerala, a coastal southern state of India.The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities by Orpa Slapak. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 2003. p. 28. .
The Paradesi Jews of Madras traded in diamonds, precious stones and corals, they had very good relations with the rulers of Golkonda, they maintained trade connections with Europe, and their language skills were useful. Although the Sephardim spoke Judaeo-Spanish (i.e. Spanish or Judeo-Spanish), in India they learned to speak Tamil language and Judeo-Malayalam from the Malabar Jews.Katz 2000; Koder 1973; Thomas Puthiakunnel 1973
The Samaritans consider themselves Bnei Yisrael ("Children of Israel" or "Israelites"), but they do not regard themselves as Yehudim (Jews). They view the term "Jews" as a designation for followers of Judaism, which they assert is a related but an altered and amended religion which was brought back by the exiled Israelite returnees, and is therefore not the true religion of the ancient Israelites, which according to them is Samaritanism.
Studies of Autosome, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most people in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, and Mizrahi Jews Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrews and Israelites residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". , Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly , while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations and Sub-Saharan Africans. Behar et al. have remarked on an especially close relationship of Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to Arabs.
The studies also show that persons of Sephardic Bnei Anusim origin (those who are descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism) throughout today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), estimated that up to 19.8% of the modern population of Iberia and at least 10% of the modern population of Ibero-America, has ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, meanwhile, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, also have some more remote ancient Jewish descent.
According to Schweid, Bialik meant that the "seed" was the potential of the Jewish people. Preserved in the diaspora, this seed could only give rise to deformed results; however, once conditions changed the seed could still provide a plentiful harvest.Schweid, p. 157
In this matter Sternhell distinguishes two schools of thought in Zionism. One was the liberal or utilitarian school of Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau. Especially after the Dreyfus Affair, they held that antisemitism would never disappear and they saw Zionism as a rational solution for Jews.
The other was the organic nationalist school. It was prevalent among the Aliyah and they saw the movement as a project to rescue the Jewish nation rather than as a project to only rescue Jews. For them, Zionism was the "Rebirth of the Nation".Z. Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel, 1998, pp. 3–36, , pp. 49–51
In the 2008 book The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand argued that the formation of the "Jewish-Israeli collective memory" had inculcated a "period of silencing" in Jewish history, particularly with regard to the formation of the Khazar Kingdom out of Gerim. Israel Bartal, then dean of the humanities faculty of the Hebrew University, countered "that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically 'pure.' ... No 'nationalist' Jewish historian has ever tried to conceal the well-known fact that conversions to Judaism had a major impact on Jewish history in the ancient period and in the early Middle Ages. Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions."
The Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av commemorates the destruction of the First Temple and Second Temple Temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent exile of the Jews from the Land of Israel. The Jewish tradition maintains that the Roman exile would be the last, and that after the people of Israel returned to their land, they would never be exiled again. This statement is based on the verse: "(You paying for) Your sin is over daughter of Zion, he will not exile you (any)more" "תם.Tanakh, Lamentations 4:22
a. Austria, Czech republic, Slovenia
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast continues to be an Autonomous Oblast of Russia. The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city. Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations." The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934. An estimated 75,000 Jews live in Siberia.
Metropolitan areas with the largest Jewish populations are listed below though one source at jewishtemples.org, states that "It is difficult to come up with exact population figures on a country by country basis, let alone city by city around the world. Figures for Russia and other CIS countries are but educated guesses." The source cited here, the 2010 World Jewish Population Survey, also notes that "Unlike our estimates of Jewish populations in individual countries, the data reported here on urban Jewish populations do not fully adjust for possible double counting due to multiple residences. The differences in the United States may be quite significant, in the range of tens of thousands, involving both major and minor metropolitan areas." World Jewish Population Study 2010, by Sergio DellaPergola, ed. Dashefsky, Arnold, Sheskin, Ira M., published by Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ), North American Jewish Data Bank, The Jewish Federations of North America, November 2010
Perhaps three to five million Jews dwelled outside Palestine in the roughly four centuries that stretched from Alexander to Titus. The era of the Second Temple brought the issue into sharp focus, inescapably so. The Temple still stood, a reminder of the hallowed past, and, through most of the era, a Jewish regime existed in Palestine. Yet the Jews of the diaspora, from Italy to Iran, far outnumbered those in the homeland. Although Jerusalem loomed large in their self-perception as a nation, few of them had seen it, and few were likely to. The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism: Essays on Early Jewish Literature and History: Gruen, Erich S., p. 285
Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader periods
In the 4th century, the Roman Empire split and Palestine came under the control of the Byzantine Empire. There was still a significant Jewish population there, and Jews probably constituted a majority of the population until some time after Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th century. The ban on Jewish settlement in Jerusalem was maintained. There was a minor Jewish rebellion against a corrupt governor from 351 to 352 which was put down. In the 5th century, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire resulted in Christian migration into Palestine and the development of a firm Christian majority. Judaism was the only non-Christian religion tolerated, but the Jews were discriminated against in various ways. They were prohibited from building new houses of worship, holding public office, or owning slaves.M. Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, Jerusalem 1984 chapters XI–XII The 7th century saw the Jewish revolt against Heraclius, which broke out in 614 during the Byzantine–Sasanian War. It was the last serious attempt by Jews to gain autonomy in the Land of Israel prior to modern times. Jewish rebels aided the Persians in capturing Jerusalem, where the Jews were permitted autonomous rule until 617, when the Persians reneged on their alliance. After Byzantine Emperor Heraclius promised to restore Jewish rights, the Jews aided him in ousting the Persians. Heraclius subsequently went back on his word and ordered a general massacre of the Jewish population, devastating the Jewish communities of Jerusalem and the Galilee. As a result, many Jews fled to Egypt.Gil, Moshe: A History of Palestine, 634–1099, p. 9 (1997). Cambridge University Press
Post-Roman period Jewish diaspora populations
During the Middle Ages, due to increasing geographical dispersion and re-settlement, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings: the Ashkenazi of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), North Africa and the Middle East. These groups have parallel histories sharing many cultural similarities as well as a series of massacres, persecutions and expulsions, such as the expulsion from England in 1290, the Alhambra Decree, and the expulsion from Arab countries in 1948–1973. Although the two branches comprise many unique ethno-cultural practices and have links to their local host populations (such as for the Ashkenazim and Hispanics and Arabs for the Sephardim), their shared religion and ancestry, as well as their continuous communication and population transfers, has been responsible for a unified sense of cultural and religious Jewish identity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim from the late Roman period to the present.
Classical period
After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Judah (יְהוּדָה ) became a Yehud Medinata. This status continued into the following Hellenistic period, when Yehud became a disputed province of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria. In the early part of the 2nd century BCE, a revolt against the Seleucids led to the establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans adopted a deliberate policy of imitating and reconstituting the Davidic kingdom, and as part of this forcibly converted to Judaism their neighbours in the Land of Israel. The conversions included (Zabadeans) and Itureans, the peoples of the former Philistine cities, the Moabites, and Edomites. Attempts were also made to incorporate the Samaritans, following takeover of Samaria. The success of mass-conversions is however questionable, as most groups retained their tribal separations and mostly turned Hellenistic or Christian, with Edomites perhaps being the only exception to merge into the Jewish society under Herodian dynasty and in the following period of Jewish–Roman Wars.
Middle Ages
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews is a general category of Jewish populations who immigrated to what is now Germany and northeastern France during the Middle Ages and until modern times used to adhere to the Yiddishkeit and the Nusach Ashkenaz. There is evidence that groups of Jews had immigrated to Germania during the Roman Empire; they were probably merchants who followed the Roman Legions during their conquests. However, for the most part, modern Ashkenazi Jews originated with Jews who migrated or were forcibly taken from the Middle East to southern Europe in antiquity, where they established Jewish communities before moving into northern France and lower Germany during the High and Late Middle Ages. They also descend to a lesser degree from Jewish immigrants from Babylon, Persia, and North Africa who migrated to Europe in the Middle Ages. The Ashkenazi Jews later migrated from Germany (and elsewhere in Central Europe) into Eastern Europe as a result of persecution.Ben-Jacob, Abraham (1985), "The History of the Babylonian Jews".Grossman, Abraham (1998), "The Sank of Babylon and the Rise of the New Jewish Centers in the 11th Century Europe"Frishman, Asher (2008), "The First Asheknazi Jews". Ashkenazi - Definition, Encyclopedia Britannica Some Ashkenazi Jews also have minor ancestry from Sephardi Jews exiled from Spain, first during Islamic persecutions (11th–12th centuries) and later during Christian reconquests (13th–15th centuries) and the Spanish Inquisition (15th–16th centuries). Ashkenazi Jews are of mixed Middle Eastern and European ancestry, as they derive part of their ancestry from non-Jewish Europeans who intermixed with Jews of migrant Middle Eastern origin.
all Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) cluster in one branch; Druze from Mount Lebanon and Druze from Mount Carmel are depicted on a private branch; and Lebanese Christians form a private branch with the Christian populations of Armenia and Cyprus placing the Lebanese Muslims as an outer group. The predominantly Muslim populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen.
Sephardic Jews
Sephardi Jews are Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain or Portugal. Some 300,000 Jews resided in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, when the Reyes Católicos reconquered Spain from the Arabs and ordered the Jews to convert to Catholicism, leave the country or face execution without trial. Those who chose not to convert, between 40,000 and 100,000, were expelled from Spain in 1492 in the wake of the Alhambra decree. Sephardic Jews subsequently migrated to North Africa (Maghreb), Christian Europe (Netherlands, Britain, France and Poland), throughout the Ottoman Empire and even the newly discovered Latin America. In the Ottoman Empire, the Sephardim mostly settled in the European portion of the Empire, and mainly in the major cities such as: Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Bursa. Selânik, which is today known as Thessaloniki and found in modern-day Greece, had a large and flourishing Sephardic community as was the community of Maltese Jews in Malta.
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus, largely originating from the Babylonian Jewry of the classic period. The term Mizrahi is used in Israel in the language of politics, media and some social scientists for Jews from the Arab world and adjacent, primarily Muslim-majority countries. The definition of Mizrahi includes the modern Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Persian Jews, Afghan Jews, Bukharian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews. Some also include the North-African Sephardic communities and Yemenite Jews under the definition of Mizrahi, but do that from rather political generalization than ancestral reasons.
Yemenite Jews
Temanim are Jews who were living in Yemen prior to immigrating to Ottoman Palestine and Israel. Their geographic and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community over the course of many centuries allowed them to develop a liturgy and set of practices that are significantly distinct from those of other Oriental Jewish groups; they themselves comprise three distinctly different groups, though the distinction is one of religious law and liturgy rather than of ethnicity. Traditionally the genesis of the Yemenite Jewish community came after the Babylonian exile, though the community most probably emerged during Roman times, and it was significantly reinforced during the reign of Dhu Nuwas in the 6th century CE and during later Muslim conquests in the 7th century CE, which drove the Arab Jewish tribes out of central Arabia.
Karaite Jews
Karaite Judaism are Jews who used to live mostly in Egypt, Iraq, and Crimean Karaites during the Middle Ages. They are distinguished by the form of Judaism which they observe. Rabbinic Jews of varying communities have affiliated with the Karaite community throughout the millennia. As such, Karaite Jews are less an ethnic division, than they are members of a particular branch of Judaism. Karaite Judaism recognizes the Tanakh as the single religious authority for the Jewish people. Linguistic principles and contextual exegesis are used in arriving at the correct meaning of the Torah. Karaite Jews strive to adhere to the plain or most obvious understanding of the text when interpreting the Tanakh. By contrast, Rabbinical Judaism regards an Oral Law (codified and recorded in the Mishnah and the Talmud) as being equally binding on Jews, and mandated by God. In Rabbinical Judaism, the Oral Law forms the basis of religion, morality, and Jewish life. Karaite Jews rely on the use of sound reasoning and the application of linguistic tools to determine the correct meaning of the Tanakh; while Rabbinical Judaism looks towards the Oral law codified in the Talmud, to provide the Jewish community with an accurate understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Modern era
Israeli Jews
Jews of Israel comprise an increasingly mixed wide range of Jewish communities making aliyah from Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere in the Middle East. While a significant portion of Israeli Jews still retain memories of their Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi origins, mixed Jewish marriages among the communities are very common. There are also smaller groups of Yemenite Jews, Indian Jews and others, who still retain a semi-separate communal life. There are also approximately 50,000 adherents of Karaite Judaism, most of whom live in Israel, but their exact numbers are not known, because most Karaites have not participated in any religious censuses. The Beta Israel, though somewhat disputed as the descendants of the ancient Israelites, are widely recognized in Israel as Ethiopian Jews.
American Jews
The ancestry of most American Jews goes back to Ashkenazi Jewish communities that immigrated to the US in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as more recent influxes of Persian and other Mizrahi Jewish immigrants. The American Jewish community is considered to contain the highest percentage of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews, resulting in both increased assimilation and a significant influx of non-Jews becoming identified as Jews. The most widespread practice in the U.S. is Reform Judaism, which does not require members to prove, or consider the Jews to possess direct descent from the ethnic Jews or Biblical Israelites. These attitudes had been present in Reform Judaism for many years but were codified in a 1983 decree by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, On Patrilineal Descent. Among other assertions, the 1983 decree holds that matrilineal descent is not necessary for a person to be considered Jewish. This is in marked contrast to Orthodox Judaism, whose adherents represent around 30% of the Jews in Israel. Orthodox Judaism considers the Jewish people to be a closed ethnoreligious community and consequently possesses very strict procedures for conversion, a practice that it does not generally encourage.
French Jews
The Jews of modern France number around 400,000 persons, largely descendants of North African communities, some of which were Sephardic communities that had come from Spain and Portugal—others were Arab and Berber Jews from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, who were already living in North Africa before the Jewish exodus from the Iberian Peninsula—and to a smaller degree members of the Ashkenazi Jewish communities, who survived WWII and the Holocaust.
Mountain Jews
Mountain Jews are from the eastern and northern slopes of the Caucasus, mainly Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Dagestan. They are the descendants of Persian Jews from Iran.
Bukharan Jews
Bukharan Jews are an ethnic group from Central Asia who historically practised Judaism and spoke Bukhori, a dialect of the Tajik-Persian language.
Kaifeng Jews
The Kaifeng Jews are members of a small Jewish community in Kaifeng, in the Henan province of China who have assimilated into Chinese society while preserving some Jewish traditions and customs.
Cochin Jews
Cochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews, are the oldest group of Indian Jews, with possible roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon. The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities by Orpa Slapak. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 2003. p. 27. .Weil, Shalva. "Jews in India." in M. Avrum Erlich (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Jewish Diaspora, Santa Barbara, USA: ABC CLIO. 2008, 3: 1204-1212. The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India,Weil, Shalva. India's Jewish Heritage: Ritual, Art and Life-Cycle, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2009. first Katz 2000; Koder 1973; Menachery 1998 now part of the state of Kerala.Weil, Shalva. "Cochin Jews", in Carol R. Ember, Melvin Ember and Ian Skoggard (eds) Encyclopedia of World Cultures Supplement, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002. pp. 78-80.Weil, Shalva. "Cochin Jews" in Judith Baskin (ed.) Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 107. As early as the 12th century, mention is made of the Black Jews in southern India. The Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, speaking of Kollam (Quilon) on the Malabar Coast, writes in his Itinerary: "...throughout the island, including all the towns thereof, live several thousand Israelites. The inhabitants are all black, and the Jews also. The latter are good and benevolent. They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha." The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (ed. Marcus Nathan Adler), Oxford University Press, London 1907, p. 65 These people later became known as the Malabari Jews. They built synagogues in Kerala beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries.Weil, Shalva. From Cochin to Israel. Jerusalem: Kumu Berina, 1984. (Hebrew)Weil, Shalva. "Kerala to restore 400-year-old Indian synagogue", The Jerusalem Post. 2009. They are known to have developed Judeo-Malayalam, a dialect of the Malayalam language.
Paradesi Jews
Paradesi Jews are mainly the descendants of Sephardic Jews who originally immigrated to India from Sepharad (Spain and Portugal) during the 15th and 16th centuries in order to flee forced conversion or persecution in the wake of the Alhambra Decree which expelled the Jews from Spain. They are sometimes referred to as White Jews, although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory and it is instead used to refer to relatively recent Jewish immigrants (end of the 15th century onwards), who are predominantly Sephardim.
Georgian Jews
The Georgian Jews are considered ethnically and culturally distinct from neighboring Mountain Jews. They were also traditionally a highly separate group from the Ashkenazi Jews in Georgia.
Krymchaks
The Krymchaks are Jewish ethno-religious communities of Crimea derived from Turkic-speaking adherents of Orthodox Judaism.
Anusim
During the history of the Jewish diaspora, Jews who lived in Christian Europe were often attacked by the local Christian population, and they were often forced to convert to Christianity. Many, known as "Anusim" ('forced-ones'), continued practicing Judaism in secret while living outwardly as ordinary Christians. The best known Anusim communities were the Jews of Spain and the Jews of Portugal, although they existed throughout Europe. In the centuries since the rise of Islam, many Jews living in the Muslim world were forced to convert to Islam, such as the Jews of Persia, who continued to practice Judaism in secret and eventually aliyah. Many of the Anusim's descendants left Judaism over the years. The results of a genetic study of the population of the Iberian Peninsula released in December 2008 "attest to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced) driven by historical episodes of religious intolerance, which ultimately led to the integration of the Anusim's descendants.
Modern Samaritans
The Samaritans, who comprised a comparatively large group in classical times, now number 745 people, and today they live in two communities in Israel and the West Bank, and they still regard themselves as descendants of the tribes of Ephraim (named by them as Aphrime) and Manasseh (named by them as Manatch). Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text, sometimes in important ways, and less so from the Septuagint.
Genetic studies
Y chromosome studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths. In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly . For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany and the French Rhine. This is consistent with Jewish traditions which place most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.Molecular Photofitting: Predicting Ancestry and Phenotype Using DNA by Tony Nick Frudakis P:383 [42]
Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of the non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons."
Zionist "negation of the Diaspora"
According to Eliezer Schweid, the rejection of life in the diaspora is a central assumption in all currents of Zionism.E. Schweid, "Rejection of the Diaspora in Zionist Thought", in Essential Papers on Zionsm, ed. By Reinharz & Shapira, 1996, , p.133 Underlying this attitude was the feeling that the diaspora restricted the full growth of Jewish national life. For instance the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik wrote:
Mystical explanation
Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov (Bnei Yissaschar, Chodesh Kislev, 2:25) explains that each exile was characterized by a different negative aspect:
In Christian theology
According to Aharon Oppenheimer, early Christians developed the concept of exile, beginning after the destruction of the Second Temple. They saw the destruction of the Temple as a punishment for Jewish deicide and, by extension, as an affirmation of Christians as God's new chosen people, "New Israel," having Supersessionism the Jews’ chosenness. In the period following the destruction of the Temple, Jews enjoyed many freedoms under Roman rule. The people of Israel had religious, economic, and cultural autonomy, and the Bar Kochba revolt demonstrated Israel's unity and political-military power at that time. Therefore, according to Oppenheimer, the Jewish exile started only after the Bar Kochba revolt, which devastated the Jewish community of Judea. Despite popular conception, Jews have had a continuous presence in the Land of Israel despite the exile of the majority of Judeans. The Jerusalem Talmud was compiled in the 4th century, hundreds of years after the revolt. Moreover, many Jews remained in Israel even centuries later, including during the Byzantine period; many remnants of synagogues are found from this period. Jews have been a majority or a significant plurality in Jerusalem in the millennia since their exile with few exceptions (including the period following the Siege of Jerusalem (1099) by the Crusaders and the 18 years of Jordanian rule of eastern Jerusalem, in which Jerusalem's historic Jewish quarter was expelled).
Historical comparison of Jewish population
Europe 8,977,581 2.20% 9,237,314 3,228,000 0.50% 1,455,900 0.18% Austria 1,224,899 4.68% 13,000 0.06% Belgium 12,000 0.18% 30,300 0.28% Bosnia and Herzegovina 8,213 0.58% 500 0.01% Bulgaria/Turkey/Ottoman Empire 390,018 1.62% 24,300 0.02% Denmark 5,000 0.20% 6,400 0.12% France 86,885 0.22% 530,000 1.02% 483,500 0.77% Germany 586,948 1.04% 30,000 0.04% 119,000 0.15% Hungary 851,378 4.43% 70,000 0.68% 52,900 0.27% Italy 34,653 0.10% 28,400 0.05% Luxembourg 1,200 0.50% 600 0.12% Netherlands 103,988 2.00% 30,000 0.18% Norway/Sweden 5,000 0.07% 16,200 0.11% Poland 1,316,776 16.25% 3,200 0.01% Portugal 1,200 0.02% 500 0.00% Romania 269,015 4.99% 9,700 0.05% Russian Empire (Europe) 3,907,102 3.17% 1,897,000 0.96% 311,400 0.15% Serbia 5,102 0.20% 1,400 0.02% Spain 5,000 0.02% 12,000 0.03% Switzerland 12,551 0.38% 17,600 0.23% United Kingdom/Ireland 250,000 0.57% 390,000 0.70% 293,200 0.44% Asia 352,340 0.04% 774,049 2,940,000 0.14% 5,741,500 0.14% Arabia/Yemenite Jews 30,000 0.42% 200 0.00% China/Taiwan/Japan 2,000 0.00% 2,600 0.00% India 18,228 0.0067% 5,000 0.00% Iran 35,000 0.39% 10,400 0.01% Israel 2,582,000 86.82% 5,413,800 74.62% Russian Empire (Asia) 89,635 0.38% 254,000 0.57% 18,600 0.02% African Jews 372,659 0.28% 593,736 195,000 0.05% 76,200 0.01% Algeria 51,044 1.07% Egypt 30,678 0.31% 100 0.00% Beta Israel 50,000 1.00% 100 0.00% Libya 18,680 2.33% Morocco 109,712 2.11% 2,700 0.01% South Africa 50,000 4.54% 118,000 0.53% 70,800 0.14% Tunisia 62,545 4.16% 1,000 0.01% Americas 1,553,656 1.00% 4,739,769 6,200,000 1.20% 6,039,600 0.64% Argentina 20,000 0.42% 282,000 1.18% 182,300 0.45% Bolivia/Chile/Ecuador/Peru/Uruguay 1,000 0.01% 41,400 0.06% Brazil 2,000 0.01% 90,000 0.09% 107,329ftp://ftp.ibge.gov.br/Censos/Censo_Demografico_2010/Caracteristicas_Gerais_Religiao_Deficiencia/tab1_4.pdf Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Retrieved on 2013-11-13 0.05% Canada 22,500 0.42% 286,000 1.34% 375,000 1.11% Central America 4,035 0.12% 54,500 0.03% Colombia/The Guianas/Venezuela 2,000 0.03% 14,700 0.02% Mexico 1,000 0.01% 35,000 0.07% 39,400 0.04% Suriname 1,121 1.97% 200 0.04% United States 1,500,000 1.97% 4,975,000 3.00% 5,400,000 2.63% 5,275,000 1.71% Oceania 16,840 0.28% 26,954 70,000 0.36% 115,100 0.32% Australia 15,122 0.49% 65,000 0.52% 107,500 0.50% New Zealand 1,611 0.20% 7,500 0.17%
b. Albania, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Macedonia, Syria, Turkey
c. Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia
d. Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Belarus, Moldova, Russia (including Siberia), Ukraine.
e. Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijani Jews, Georgia), Bukharan Jews (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbek Jews).
Today
As of 2023, about 8.5 million Jews live outside Israel, which hosts the largest Jewish population in the world with 7.2 million. Israel is followed by the United States with approximately 6.3 million. Other countries with significant Jewish populations include France (440,000), Canada (398,000), the United Kingdom (312,000), Argentina (171,000), Russia (132,000), Germany (125,000), Australia (117,200), Brazil (90,000), and South Africa (50,000). These numbers reflect the "core" Jewish population, defined as being "not inclusive of non-Jewish members of Jewish households, persons of Jewish ancestry who profess another monotheistic religion, other non-Jews of Jewish ancestry, and other non-Jews who may be interested in Jewish matters." Jewish populations also remain in Middle Eastern and North African countries outside of Israel, particularly Turkey, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, and the Emirates. In general, these populations are shrinking due to low growth rates and high rates of emigration (particularly since the 1960s).
See also
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
(2025). 9780814740170, New York University Press. ISBN 9780814740170
External links
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