Jewish Diaspora Summary?

Throughout history Jews have lived lived outside Israel in a Diaspora, much of this time as a stateless people. But what is a Diaspora and when was the first Diaspora?

Diaspora, ( Greek: Dispersion) Hebrew Galut (Exile), the dispersion of Jews among the Gentiles after the Babylonian Exile; or the aggregate of Jews or Jewish communities scattered “in exile” outside Palestine or present-day Israel. Although the term refers to the physical dispersal of Jews throughout the world, it also carries religious, philosophical, political, and eschatological connotations, inasmuch as the Jews perceive a special relationship between the land of Israel and themselves. Interpretations of this relationship range from the messianic hope of traditional Judaism for the eventual “ingathering of the exiles” to the view of Reform Judaism that the dispersal of the Jews was providentially arranged by God to foster pure monotheism throughout the world.

Around the 1st century CE an estimated 5,000,000 Jews lived outside Palestine, about four-fifths of them within the Roman Empire, but they looked to Palestine as the centre of their religious and cultural life. Diaspora Jews thus far outnumbered the Jews in Palestine even before the destruction of Jerusalem in CE 70. Thereafter, the chief centres of Judaism shifted from country to country (e.g., Babylonia, Persia, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Russia and the United States – diasporas). Jewish communities gradually adopted distinctive languages, rituals, and cultures. Some submerged themselves in non-Jewish environments more completely than others. While some lived in peace, others became victims of violent anti-Semitism.

In 63 BCE, Judaea became a protectorate of Rome, and in 6 CE was organized as a Roman province. In 135, Hadrian’s army defeated the Jewish armies and Jewish independence was lost. Jerusalem was turned into a pagan city called Aelia Capitolina, the Jews were forbidden to live there and Hadrian changed the country’s name from Judea to Syria Palestina.

During the Middle Ages, the Jews had divided into distinct regional groups the Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Central and later Eastern Europe, the Sephardi Jews who settled in Iberia and later North Africa, and the Mizrahi Jews who remained in the Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple.

Today, Jews hold widely divergent views about the role of Diaspora Jewry and the desirability and significance of maintaining a national identity. While the vast majority support the Zionist movement (the return of Jews to Israel), some extreme Orthodox Jews oppose the modern nation of Israel as a godless and secular state, defying God’s will to send his Messiah at the preordained time.

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