Jewish Diaspora Summary

EDITOR’S NOTE

The first exile was the Assyrian exile, the expulsion from the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) begun by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria in 733 BCE. The story of the Diaspora is the Jewish story outside Israel and Judea from then till today.
Jews were largely concentrated in North America (44%)
and the Middle East-North Africa region (41%) in 2010.
Most of the remainder was in Europe (10%)
and the Latin America-Caribbean region (3%) (Pew Research Center).

In Jewish history, Jews have experienced numerous mass expulsions and they have also fled from areas after experiencing ostracism and threats of various kinds by various local authorities seeking refuge in other countries.

The Land of Israel has been regarded by Jews as their homeland After its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel adopted the 1950 Law of Return which restored Israel as the Jewish homeland and made it the place of refuge for Jewish refugees both at that time and into the future. This law was intended to encourage Jews to return to their homeland in Israel.

JEWISH DIASPORA
Wikipedia

The Jewish diaspora (Hebrew: Tfutza, תְּפוּצָה) or exile (Hebrew: Galut, גָּלוּת; Yiddish: Golus) refers to the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.

In terms of the Hebrew Bible, the term "Exile" denotes the fate of the Israelites who were taken into exile from the Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE, and the Judahites from the Kingdom of Judah who were taken into exile during the 6th century BCE. While in exile, the Judahites became known as "Jews" (יְהוּדִים, or Yehudim), "Mordecai the Jew" from the Book of Esther being the first biblical mention of the term.

The first exile was the Assyrian exile, the expulsion from the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) begun by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria in 733 BCE. This process was completed by Sargon II with the destruction of the kingdom in 722 BCE, concluding a three-year siege of Samaria begun by Shalmaneser V. The next experience of exile was the Babylonian captivity, in which portions of the population of the Kingdom of Judah were deported in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE by the Neo-Babylonian Empire under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II.

A Jewish diaspora existed for several centuries before the fall of the Second Temple, and their dwelling in other countries for the most part was not a result of compulsory dislocation. Before the middle of the first century CE, in addition to Judea, Syria and Babylonia, large Jewish communities existed in the Roman provinces of Syria Palaestina, Egypt, Crete and Cyrenaica, and in Rome itself; after the Siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, when the Hasmonean kingdom became a protectorate of Rome, emigration intensified. In 6 CE the region was organized as the Roman province of Judea. The Judean population revolted against the Roman Empire in 66 CE in the First Jewish–Roman War which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. During the siege, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem. This watershed moment, the elimination of the symbolic centre of Judaism and Jewish identity constrained many Jews to reformulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement.

In 132 CE, Bar Kokhba led a rebellion against Hadrian, a revolt connected with the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. After four years of devastating warfare, the uprising was suppressed, and Jews were forbidden access to Jerusalem.

During the Middle Ages, due to increasing migration and resettlement, 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 Spain in 1492, the expulsion from England in 1290, 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 Central Europeans 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.

WHO ARE THE JEWS
A RACE? A RELIGION? A CULTURE? A WAY OF LIFE ?

Each definition is valid, yet each is elusive, none quite capturing the Jewish spirit. Until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, it would clearly have been impossible to call them a nation; they were the Diaspora: the dispersed ones from the land to which they are now returning.
(From front cover of ‘The Diaspora’ - Keller)

So, who is a Jew?

The Jews are unique in world history. They became stateless following their defeat in 135CE by the Romans (see Jewish-Roman wars).
In 1948 - almost 2,000 years later - the United Nations created Israel allowing them to return home and creation of the state of Israel.

It was invaded on the following day by neighbouring Arab states intent on its abolition. Go to Israel to see how it was created and survived.
How, with no state, did the Hebrew language survive for 2,000 years
and then become the language of Israel ?

This return happened after the Holocaust when 6,000,000 Jews where murdered by the Nazis. The arguments by the vocal group who deny this happened in whole or in part are described in Denial.

Misleading information about the Jews circulated during the past 2.000 years and still circulates today is summarised in antisemitism

So, what is a Diaspora, when was the first Diaspora and how did the Jews stay together for so long and then create the only democracy in the Middle East?

The first Jewish expulsion was in 733BCE
from Samaria (Israel/Judah) by King Tiglath-Pileser III

See also Timeline by Country
(Wikipedia)

JEWISH DISPERSION,
A BANE AND A BOON
(Hebrew History Federation)

The dispersions of the Jews from their homelands proved to be both a bane and a boon. Again and again Jews were ripped from their roots. Again and again Jews were obliged to make a new life in strange surroundings. Nonetheless, some factors worked in their favor. Most importantly, the Jews were a literate people who shared a common language with their relatives and compatriots in other lands. The Jews have not only been the "People of the Book" but the people who, in the main, could read a book. Literacy leads not only to learning but to the transfer of information from persons unknown, even from persons long dead. Importantly, it leads to the ability to communicate over time and space.

The Jews enjoyed a commercial advantage by virtue of familial ties and ability to communicate. Having a common interest, they established commercial liaisons of mutual benefit, and were, often uniquely, able to issue letters of credit that were certain to be honored months later from distant lands.

Throughout the ages the participation of the Jews in the evolution of commerce was far out of proportion to their numbers. Jewish communities were rarely deployed into primitive hinterlands, but in ports that gave them access to their peers abroad, or along trade routes, or in centers at the forefront of the technological revolution. Subsequent displacements widened the web of their commercial contacts. Jews became integral to the international trade of the countries into which they settled or were hurled. Inter-national intercourse became part and parcel of Jewish life.

Erudite Jewish traveler-traders maintained an interchange of Judaic law and cultural precepts between the dispersed communities. Jewish identity was preserved through the links provided by world-girdling sages.

PANIC FLIGHT FROM RUSSIA
(this illustrates why Jews
move from one country to another)

Hence from 1881, this vicious, mounting and cumulatively overwhelming pressure on Russian Jewry produced the inevitable consequence- a panic flight of Jews from Russia westwards. Thus 1881 was the most important year in Jewish history since 1648, indeed since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Its consequences were so wide and fundamental, that it must be judged a key year in world history too. The first big rush to get out came in 1881—2. Thereafter Jews left at an average of 50,000—60,000 a year. With the Moscow expulsions, 110,000 Russian Jews left in 1891 and 137,000 in 1892.

In the pogrom year 1905—6, over 200,000 Jews left. The exodus was by no means confined to Russia. Between 1881 and 1914 more than 350,000 Jews left Austrian Galicia. More Jews emigrated from Lithuania, where they were also under pressure. The net result was not to reduce the Jewish population of eastern Europe. In 1914 there were still five and a half million Jews in Russia and two and a half million in the Austrian empire. What the movement did was to take the natural population increase, some two and a half million, and transfer it elsewhere.

Therein lay momentous effects, both for the Jews and for the world. We must now examine them in turn.

Of these emigrants, more than two million went to the United States alone, and the most obvious and visible consequence, therefore, was the creation of a mass American urban Jewry. This was a completely new phenomenon, which in time changed the whole balance of Jewish power and influence in the world, and it came quite suddenly. The original Jewish settlement in America was small and slow to expand. As late as 1820 there were only about 4,000 Jews in the United States, and only seven of the original thirteen states recognized them politically. The slow growth of the community is hard to understand,

Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p365

Jewish
Diaspora

Who
are the Jews?
A race?
A religion?
A culture?
A way of life ?

Jewish Dispersion
a

Bane and a Boon

Panic
Flight
From Russia