Map of the Jewish diaspora.

  Israel

  + 1,000,000

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Scene from Lachish Relief: Judahites from Lachish in Assyrian captivity, playing a later form of the Egyptian lyre

The Jewish diaspora (Hebrew: תְּפוּצָה, romanized: təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: גָּלוּת gālūṯ; Yiddish: golus)^{[lower-alpha 1]} is the biblical dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.^[3][4]

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.^[5] Before the middle of the first century CE, in addition to Judea, Syria and Babylonia, large Jewish communities existed in the Roman provinces of Egypt, Crete and Cyrenaica, and in Rome itself;^[6] 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 motivated many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement.^[7]

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 England in 1290, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, 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.

Origins and uses of the terms

Diaspora has been a common phenomenon for many peoples since antiquity, but what is particular about the Jewish instance is the pronounced negative, religious, indeed metaphysical connotations traditionally attached to dispersion and exile (galut), two conditions which were conflated.^[8] The English term diaspora, which entered usage as late as 1876, and the Hebrew word galut though covering a similar semantic range, bear some distinct differences in connotation. The former has no traditional equivalent in Hebrew usage.^[9]

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.^[10] Sometimes diaspora and galut are defined as 'voluntary' as opposed to 'involuntary' exile.^[11] 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 teleological, and connotes a sense of uprootedness.^[12] 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.^[13]

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,^[14] 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’, Deuteronomy 28:25), translating 'ləza‘ăwāh', whose root suggests 'trouble, terror'. In these contexts it never translated any term in the original Tanakh drawn from the Hebrew root glt (גלה), which lies behind galah, and golah, nor even galuth.^[15] Golah appears 42 times, and galuth in 15 passages, and first occurs in the 2 Kings 17:23's reference to the deportation of the Judean elite to Babylonia.^[16] 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.'^[17]

In Talmudic and post-Talmudic Rabbinic literature, this phenomenon was referred to as galut (exile), a term with strongly negative connotations, often contrasted with geula (redemption).^[18] Eugene Borowitz describes Galut as "fundamentally a theological category^[19] The modern Hebrew concept of Tefutzot תפוצות, "scattered", was introduced in the 1930s by the Jewish-American Zionist academic Simon Rawidowicz,^[20] 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.’^[10]

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.^[21][22] 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.^[21]

Pre-Roman diaspora

Routes of Jewish expulsion and deportation

In 722 BCE, the Assyrians, under Sargon II, successor to Shalmaneser V, conquered the Kingdom of Israel, and many Israelites were deported to Mesopotamia.^[23] The Jewish proper diaspora began with the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE.^[24]

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.^[25][26]

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.^[27] 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,^[28] but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem.^[28] Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus"^[29] 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.^[30]

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 Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, 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 its 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 Psammeticus 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.^[31] 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.^[32] 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 cleruchs, or specialized colonies, as Jewish military units.^[33]

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 Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.

Under the Roman Empire

The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.^[40] The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus, included non-Jews. The figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon.^{[41]: 90, 94, 104–05 [42]} Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken.^[43]: 185 Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. John R. Bartlett rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world.^{[41]: 97–103} The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the Land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete in 115–117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.

Destruction of Judea

Copy of relief panel from the Arch of Titus in the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish People, depicting the triumphal parade of Roman soldiers celebrating Judaea Capta ("Judaea is enslaved/conquered") and leading newly enslaved Jews, while displaying spoils of the siege of Jerusalem.^[44]

Roman rule in Judea began in 63 BCE with the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey. After the city fell to Pompey's forces, thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought from Judea to Rome and sold into slavery. After these Jewish slaves were manumitted, they settled permanently in Rome on the right bank of the Tiber as traders.^[45][38] In 37 BCE, the forces of the Jewish client king Herod the Great captured Jerusalem with Roman assistance, and there was likely an influx of Jewish slaves taken into the diaspora by Roman forces. In 53 BCE, a minor Jewish revolt was suppressed and the Romans subsequently sold Jewish war captives into slavery.^[46] Roman rule continued until the First Jewish-Roman War, or the Great Revolt, a Jewish uprising to fight for independence, which began in 66 CE and was eventually crushed in 73 CE, culminating in the Siege of Jerusalem and the burning and destruction of the Temple, the centre of the national and religious life of the Jews throughout the world. The Jewish diaspora at the time of the Temple's destruction, according to Josephus, was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), Arabia, as well as some Jews beyond the Euphrates and in Adiabene (Kurdistan). In Josephus' own words, he had informed "the remotest Arabians" about the destruction.^[47] Jewish communities also existed in southern Europe, Anatolia, Syria, and North Africa. Jewish pilgrims from the diaspora, undeterred by the rebellion, had actually come to Jerusalem for Passover prior to the arrival of the Roman army, and many became trapped in the city and died during the siege.^[48] According to Josephus, about 97,000 Jewish captives from Judea were sold into slavery by the Romans during the revolt.^[49] Many other Jews fled from Judea to other areas around the Mediterranean. Josephus wrote that 30,000 Jews were deported from Judea to Carthage by the Romans.^[50]

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".^[51] 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.^[52]

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,^[53] 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^[54][55] 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,^{[56][57][58][59]} 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,^[60] 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.^[61] Implementation of these plans led to violent opposition, and triggered a full-scale insurrection with the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE),^[62] assisted, according to Dio Cassius, by some other peoples, perhaps Arabs who had recently been subjected by Trajan.^[63] 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.^[64] Voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea in the aftermath of the Bar-Kokhba revolt also expanded Jewish communities in the diaspora.^[65] 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.^[66]

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.^[67] It has been argued that the archaeological evidence is suggestive of a Roman genocide taking place during the Second revolt.^[68] A significant movement of gentiles and Samaritans into villages formerly with a Jewish majority appears to have taken place thereafter.^[69] 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.^[70]

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.^[70]

It is commonly claimed that the diaspora began with Rome's twofold crushing of Jewish national aspirations. David Aberbach, for one, 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.^[71]: 224 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.^[72] This widespread popular belief holds that there was a sudden expulsion of Jews from Judea/Syria Palaestina and that this was crucial for the establishment of the diaspora.^[73] Israel Bartal contends that Shlomo Sand is incorrect in ascribing this view to most Jewish study scholars,^[74] instead arguing that this view is negligible among serious Jewish study scholars.^[75] 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.^[76] Following the Bar Kokhba revolt Jews were reduced to a completely diaspora people.^[77]

Erich S. Gruen maintains that focusing on the destruction of the Temple misses the point that already before this, the diaspora was well established. Compulsory dislocation of people cannot explain more than a fraction of the eventual diaspora.^[78] 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.^[79] Jonathan Adelman estimated that around 60% of Jews lived in the diaspora during the Second Temple period.^[80] According to Gruen:

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.^[81]

Israel Yuval claimed 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.^[82]

Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader era

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.^[83] 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.^[84] 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.^[85][86]

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.^[87] However, this is contrary to other estimates which place it at 150,000 to 200,000 at the time of the revolt against Heraclius.^[88][89] According to historian Moshe Gil, the majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritan.^[90] 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.^[91][92]

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.^[93][94][95]

Relief for the Jewish population of Palestine came when the Ayyubid dynasty defeated the Crusaders and conquered Palestine. Some Jewish immigration from the diaspora subsequently took place, but this came to an end when Mamluks took over Palestine. 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.^[96]

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.^[97][98]

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 expulsion from Spain in 1492, 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.

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.^[99]

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

See also: List of American Jews

European Jewish immigrants arriving in New York

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 doesn't require or see the Jews as direct descendants of the ethnic Jews or Biblical Israelites, but rather adherents of the Jewish faith in its Reformist version, in contrast to Orthodox Judaism, the mainstream practice in Israel, which considers the Jews as a closed ethnoreligious community with very strict procedures for conversion.

French Jews

Expulsion of French Jews, 1182

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 Jews from the eastern and northern slopes of the Caucasus, mainly Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Dagestan. They are the descendants of Persian Jews from Iran.^[114]

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 Jews in India, with possible roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon.^[115][116] The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India,^[117] now part of the state of Kerala.^[118][119] 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."^[120] These people later became known as the Malabari Jews. They built synagogues in Kerala beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries.^[121][122] 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.^[123]

The Paradesi Jews of Cochin are a community of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors settled among the larger Cochin Jewish community located in Kerala, a coastal southern state of India.^[123]

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 Ladino (i.e. Spanish or Judeo-Spanish), in India they learned to speak Tamil and Judeo-Malayalam from the Malabar Jews.^[124]

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 Mashhadi Jews of Persia, who continued to practice Judaism in secret and eventually moved to Israel. 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.^[125]

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.

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.

Genetic studies

Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths.^[126] In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. 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 Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions which place most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.^[127][128] Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous.^[129] 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.^[130] 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."^[129] 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."^{[131][132][133]}

Studies of autosomal DNA, 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.^[134] For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi 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 Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World".^[107] North African, 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 southern European, 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.^{[107][135][136]} Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to Arabs.^[137]

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 Sephardic Jewish 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.^{[138][139][140][133]}

Zionist "negation of the Diaspora"

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According to Eliezer Schweid, the rejection of life in the diaspora is a central assumption in all currents of Zionism.^[141] 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:

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. 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.^[142]

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 Zionist olim 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".^[143]

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 converted gentile tribes. 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.^[75]

Mystical explanation

Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov (Bnei Yissaschar, Chodesh Kislev, 2:25) explains that each exile was characterized by a different negative aspect:^[144]

1. The Babylonian exile was characterized by physical suffering and oppression. The Babylonians were lopsided towards the Sefirah of Gevurah, strength and bodily might.
2. The Persian exile was one of emotional temptation. The Persians were hedonists who declared that the purpose of life is to pursue indulgence and lusts—"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die." They were lopsided towards the quality of Chesed, attraction and kindness (albeit to the self).
3. Hellenistic civilization was highly cultured and sophisticated. Although the Greeks had a strong sense of aesthetics, they were highly pompous, and they viewed aesthetics as an end in itself. They were excessively attached to the quality of Tiferet, beauty. This was also related to an appreciation of the intellect's transcendence over the body, which reveals the beauty of the spirit.
4. The exile of Edom began with Rome, whose culture lacked any clearly defined philosophy. Rather, it adopted the philosophies of all the preceding cultures, causing Roman culture to be in a constant flux. Although the Roman Empire has fallen, the Jews are still in the exile of Edom, and indeed, one can find this phenomenon of ever-changing trends dominating modern western society. The Romans and the various nations who inherited their rule (e.g., the Holy Roman Empire, the Europeans, the Americans) are lopsided towards Malchut, sovereignty, the lowest Sefirah, which can be received from any of the others, and can act as a medium for them.

The Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av commemorates the destruction of the First and Second 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 עוונך בת ציון, לא יוסף להגלותך"].^[145]

In Christian theology

According to Aharon Oppenheimer, the concept of the exile beginning after the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple was developed by early Christians, who saw the destruction of the Temple as a punishment for Jewish deicide, and by extension as an affirmation of the Christians as God's new chosen people, or the "New Israel". In actually, in the period that followed the destruction of the Temple, Jews had many freedoms. The people of Israel had religious, economic and cultural autonomy, and the Bar Kochba revolt demonstrated the unity of Israel and their political-military power at that time. Therefore, according to Aharon Oppenheimer, the Jewish exile only started 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 signed in the fourth 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).^[146] 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

a.^ Austria, Czech republic, Slovenia
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, Azerbaijan, Georgia), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

Today

As of 2019,^[152] the largest numbers of Jews live in Israel (5,704,000), United States (5,275,000), France (484,000), Canada (375,000), the United Kingdom (292,000), Russia (205,000–1.5 million),^[153][154] Argentina (182,300), Germany (119,000),^[155] Australia (113,000–140,000),^[156] Brazil (107,000),^[151] South Africa (69,000–80,000), Ukraine (50,000–140,000) and Hungary (47,000–100,000).^[156] 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." Significant Jewish populations also remain in Middle Eastern and North African countries outside of Israel, particularly Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. In general, these populations are shrinking due to low growth rates and high rates of emigration (particularly since the 1960s).

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast continues to be an Autonomous Oblast of Russia.^[157] The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city.^[158] Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations."^[159] The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934.^[160] An estimated 75,000 Jews live in Siberia.^[161]

Metropolitan areas with the largest Jewish populations are listed below, though one source at jewishtemples.org,^[162] 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."^[155]

1. Gush Dan (Tel Aviv) – 2,980,000
2. New York City – 2,008,000
3. Jerusalem – 705,000
4. Los Angeles – 685,000
5. Haifa – 671,000
6. Miami – 486,000
7. Beersheba – 368,000
8. San Francisco – 346,000
9. Chicago – 319,600^[163]
10. Paris – 284,000
11. Philadelphia – 264,000
12. Boston – 229,000
13. Washington, D.C. – 216,000
14. London – 195,000
15. Toronto – 180,000
16. Atlanta – 120,000
17. Moscow – 95,000
18. San Diego – 89,000
19. Cleveland – 87,000^[164]
20. Phoenix – 83,000
21. Montreal – 80,000
22. São Paulo – 75,000^[165]

See also

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jewish diaspora.

• Jewish Diaspora at the JewishEncyclopedia.com
• World Jewish Congress – Jewish Communities
• Research and articles about the diaspora experience and Israel-Diaspora relations on the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner
• The Diaspora and Israel – Rich Cohen