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The Jewish diaspora (or simply the Diaspora) is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות (Yiddish: 'Golus'), or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Judaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel.

The diaspora began with the 6th century BCE conquest of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, the destruction of the First Temple (c. 586 BCE), and the expulsion of the population, as recorded in the Bible. The Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar allowed them to remain in a unified community in Babylon. Another group of Jews fled to Egypt, where they settled in the Nile delta. From 597 BCE onwards, there were three distinct groups of Hebrews: a group in Babylon and other parts of the Middle East, a group in Judaea, and another group in Egypt. While Cyrus the Persian allowed the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BCE, most chose to remain in Babylon. A large number of Jews in Egypt became mercenaries in Upper Egypt on an island called the Elephantine. All of these Jews retained their religion, identity, and social customs; both under the Persians and the Greeks, they were allowed to conduct their lives according to their own laws.^[1]

In 63 BCE, Judaea became a protectorate of Rome. The Jews revolted in 70, but were defeated in 73. The Romans then destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem, and annexed Judaea as a Roman province.^[2] In 132 the Jews rebelled against Hadrian. In 135, Hadrian’s army defeated the Jewish armies and Jewish independence was lost. Jerusalem was turned into a pagan city called Aelia Capitolina and the Jews were forbidden to live there, and Hadrian changed the country’s name from Judea to Syria Palestina.^[3]

During the Middle Ages, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings: the Ashkenazi Jews of Northern and Eastern Europe and Sephardi Jews of Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East. Ashkenazi populations grew rapidly from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with the largest diaspora populations in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. Millions of Jews migrated to the Americas in the 20th century. In the early 21st century the largest diaspora populations were in the United States (~ 5.75 million), France (~ 475,000), Canada (~ 375,000), the United Kingdom (~300,000), and Russia (~ 200,000).

Origins of the term[link]

The Greek word διασπορά (dispersion) appears in the Ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint: ἔση διασπορὰ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς (thou shalt be a diaspora (or dispersion) in all kingdoms of the earth) (Deuteronomy xxviii:25).^[4] The modern Hebrew term of Tefutzot תפוצות, "scattered", was introduced in the 1930s by the German-American Zionist academic Simon Rawidowicz,^[5] who to some degree argued for the acceptance of the Jewish presence outside of the Land of Israel as a modern reality and an inevitability.

Pre-Roman diaspora[link]

In 722 BCE, the Assyrians under Shalmaneser V conquered the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel, and many Israelites were deported to Media and Persia.

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. For over 2,700 years since, Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran.

Although most of the Jewish people, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence they led there, under the successive rules of the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, was obscure and devoid of political influence. The poorest but most fervent of the exiles returned to Judaea during the reign of the Achaemenids. 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 for political enfranchisement.

After numerous vicissitudes, and especially owing to internal dissensions in the Seleucid dynasty on the one hand and to the interested support of the Romans on the other, the cause of Jewish independence finally triumphed. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then kings, the Jewish state displayed even a certain luster and annexed several territories. Soon, however, discord in the royal family and the growing disaffection of the pious, the soul of the nation, toward rulers who no longer evinced any appreciation of the real aspirations of their subjects made the Jewish nation easy prey for the ambition of the Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 BCE Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.

Early diaspora populations[link]

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-) diasporac 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 epigraphic 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 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. 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.

To judge by the accounts of wholesale massacres in 115 BCE, the number of Jewish residents in Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia was also large. At the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus, there were over 7,000 Jews in Rome (this is the number that escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus). Finally, if the sums confiscated by the governor Lucius Valerius Flaccus in the year 62/61 BCE represented the tax of a didrachma per head for a single year, it would imply that the Jewish population of Asia Minor numbered 45,000 adult males, for a total of at least 180,000 persons.^{[citation needed]}

Roman destruction of Judea[link]

In Rome the Arch of Titus still stands, depicting the enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple being brought to Rome.

Roman rule which began in 63 BCE continued until a revolt from 66–70 CE culminated in the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, the centre of the national and religious life of the Jews throughout the world.

Exactly when Roman Anti-Judaism began is a question of scholarly debate, however historian H.H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the "Crisis under Caligula" (37–41) was the "first open break between Rome and the Jews".^[6]

The complete destruction of Jerusalem, and the settlement of several Greek and Roman colonies in Judea indicated the express intention of the Roman government to prevent the political regeneration of the Jewish nation. Nevertheless, forty years later the Jews put forth efforts to recover their former freedom. With Israel exhausted, they strove to establish commonwealths on the ruins of Hellenism in Cyrene, Cyprus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. These efforts, resolute but unwise, were suppressed by Trajan (115–117 CE), and under Hadrian the same fate befell the attempt of the Jews of Israel to regain their independence (133–135 CE). From this time on, in spite of unimportant movements under Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus, the Jews, reduced in numbers, destitute, and crushed, lost their preponderance in the Jewish world. Jerusalem had become, under the name "Ælia Capitolina", a Roman colony and entirely pagan city. Jews were forbidden entrance on pain of death, except for the day of Tisha B'Av, see also Anti-Judaism in the Roman Empire. Despite the decree, there has been a continual Jewish presence in Jerusalem for 3,300 years, and 43 Jewish communities in Israel remained in the 6th century: 12 on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan, and 31 villages in Galilee and in the Jordan valley. Yavne on the coastal plain, associated with Yochanan ben Zakai, was an important center of Rabbinic Judaism.^[7]

Dispersion of the Jews in the Roman Empire[link]

Following the 1st century Great Revolt and the 2nd century Bar Kokhba revolt, the destruction of Judea exerted a decisive influence upon the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world, as the centre of worship shifted from the Temple to Rabbinic authority.

Many Jews entered the Diaspora as slaves, after the destruction of the Temple. Evidence for Jews in the Diaspora is scanty, until the fourth century. Presumably, many of these slave populations served as the basis of later communities.

While more Jews lived outside Judea than in,^{[citation needed]} the Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of Judea. They collected an annual temple tax, thereby treating all Jews as a distinct ethno-national group. Communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete revolted in 115–117 CE, which likely decimated the Jewish Diaspora population. The Christian empire continued the punishment, by which time the church fathers and imperial law argued that, not only were the Jews a distinct, reprehensible ethno-national group, they were a group largely exiled or dispossessed of temple, city and land, for their rejection of Christ, a state it was deemed in which they were to remain in perpetuo.

This notion evolved even though substantial numbers of Jews lived in the land, now under increasingly harsh imperial Roman Christian law, further alienating and marginalizing Jews, and favouring the settlement of largely gentile Christians, of culturally pagan Greco-Roman or Aramaic provenance. It was in this period that Judea became normatively known as Syria Palestina, a name reflecting both the large scale killing of the suppression of the 2nd Jewish revolt, and a Roman policy, pagan, then Christian, to further alienate Jews from the land, ensuring that no Jewish temple, Jerusalem or state ever rose again. During this time the Talmudic thesis of a Jewish people in exile evolved, even as Imperial Christian degrees laid further burdens of taxation, discrimination and social exclusion on Jews in the land and without.

Over the centuries, rather than a few individual events, Jews were eroded into a minority in their historical patria, while the rabbis "Judaized" Judaism, by prescribing only the Hebrew Bible as authoritative, and Hellenistic-Jewish literature, culture and discourse declined sharply from the 2nd century, not only from Imperial Roman suppressions, but also Christian appropriation of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, as its authorized version. Through internal and external pressures, the two communities, Greco-Roman and Jewish, diverged, the former becoming universally Christian, and, in time, self-defined as "Roman", when the emperor granted citizenship to all, and "Greek" became in patristic discourse synonymous with "pagan".

It would enter Arabic, Islamic discourse as "Rumi", the Quranic term for "Roman" or "belonging to the Roman Empire". In the meanwhile, the meme of a Jewish people in exile entered normative mediaeval Jewish, Christian and, in time, Islamic thought and discourse, when Muhammed would address the Jews of Makkah and Madinah as though they themselves had been expelled from the land, twice, by the servants of Allah, as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.^{[citation needed]}

Post-Roman period Jewish populations[link]

During the Middle Ages, 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 Sephardic Jews of Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East. These groups have parallel histories sharing many series of persecutions and forced expulsions.

By 1764 there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population was estimated at 1.2 million.^[8]

The "Negation of the Diaspora" by Zionism[link]

According to Eliezer Schweid, the rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in all currents of Zionism.^[9] 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.^[10]

In this matter Sternhell distinguishes two schools of thought in Zionism. One was the liberal or utilitarian school of Herzl and Nordau. Especially after the Dreyfus Affair, they held that anti-Semitism would never disappear and saw Zionism as a rational solution for Jewish individuals.

The other was the organic nationalist school. It was prevalent among the Zionists in Palestine and saw the movement as a project to rescue the Jewish nation rather than as a project to rescue Jewish individuals. For them Zionism was the "Rebirth of the Nation".^[11]

Contrary to the Israel-centric Zionist view, acceptance of the Jewish communities outside of Israel was postulated by those, like Simon Rawidowicz (also a Zionist), who viewed the Jews as a culture evolved into a new 'worldly' entity that had no reason to seek a return, either physical, emotional or spiritual to its ancient Land, and could remain a one people even in dispersion.

It was argued that the dynamics of the diaspora which were affected by persecution, numerous subsequent exiles, as well as political and economic conditions created a new Jewish awareness of the World, and a new awareness of the Jews by the World.

A critical post-colonial account of the diaspora is given by Ilan Pappe who argues that "a journey to the moment of transubstantiation, wherever it occurred, would dim the claim for uniqueness [of the Jewish tragedy]--a claim that has been abused and exploited..."^[12] Pappe goes on to conclude that there is no justification for a Jewish state and that Jews should live together with Arabs under the model of the "one state solution".

The Diaspora in Contemporary Jewish life[link]

As of 2010 the largest numbers of Jews live in Israel (5,703,700), United States (5,275,000), France (483,500), Canada (375,000), the United Kingdom (292,000), Russia (205,000), Argentina (182,300), and Germany (119,000).^[13] 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."

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast continues to be an Autonomous Oblast of Russia.^[14] The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city.^[15] Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations."^[16] The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934.^[17] An estimated 75,000 Jews live in the vast Siberia region.^[18]

Metropolitan areas with the largest Jewish populations are listed below, though one source at jewishtemples.org,^[19] 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."^[13]

1. Gush Dan (Tel Aviv and surroundings) – Israel – 2,979,900.
2. New York – U.S. – 2,007,850.
3. Buenos Aires – Argentina – 1,165,000.
4. Jerusalem – 705,000.
5. Los Angeles – U.S. – 684,950.
6. Haifa – Israel – 671,400.
7. Sao Paulo – Brazil – 565,000.
8. Miami – U.S. – 485,850.
9. Be'er Sheva – Israel – 367,600.
10. Santiago – Chile – 365,000.
11. San Francisco – U.S. – 345,700.
12. Paris – France – 284,000.
13. Chicago – U.S. – 270,500.
14. Philadelphia – U.S. – 263,800.
15. Boston – U.S. – 229,100.
16. Mexico City – Mexico – 225,000.
17. Washington, DC – U.S. – 215,600
18. London – United Kingdom – 195,000.
19. Toronto – Canada – 180,000.
20. Porto Alegre – Brazil – 165,000
21. Caracas – Venezuela – 162,500.
22. Quito – Ecuador – 160,000.
23. Atlanta – U.S. – 119,800.
24. Moscow – Russia – 95,000.
25. Montevideo – Uruguay – 91,400.
26. San Diego – U.S. – 89,000.
27. Asuncion – Paraguay – 83,900.
28. Phoenix – U.S. – 82,900.
29. Cleveland – U.S. – 81,500.
30. Montreal – Canada – 80,000.

See also[link]

References[link]

Footnotes[link]

• Immigration to Israel from North America hits 22-Year High CNSNews.com, December 30, 2005

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jewish diaspora

• Jewish Diaspora at the JewishEncyclopedia.com
• Livius.org: The Jewish diaspora in Rome
• How ALL ISRAEL will be saved, about Paul's apostleship to the diaspora (including the Gentiles)
• The Diaspora and Israel – Rich Cohen
• Research and articles about the diaspora experience and Israel-Diaspora relations on the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner

A Persian miniature, Dhul-Qarnayn with the help of jinn, building the Iron Wall to keep the barbarian Gog and Magog from civilized peoples. (16th century Persian miniature).

Gog and Magog (Hebrew: גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג‎‎ Gog u-Magog; Arabic: يَأْجُوج وَمَأْجُوج‎ Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj) are names that appear primarily in various Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures, as well as numerous subsequent references in other works. Their context can be either genealogical (as Magog in Genesis 10:2) or eschatological and apocalyptic, as in Ezekiel and Revelation. They are sometimes individuals, sometimes peoples, and sometimes geographic regions. The passages from Ezekiel and Revelation in particular have attracted attention due to their prophetic descriptions of conflicts said to occur near the "End times".

Etymology[link]

The etymology of both the names Gog and Magog remains uncertain. The ma- at the beginning of Magog may indicate a land, or it may mean "from", so that Magog means "of the land of Gog" or "from Gog". Gog may originate as the Hebrew version of the name of Gyges of Lydia, who made his kingdom a great power in the early 7th century BC, but this explanation, although common, is not universally accepted.^[1] A different theory is that "Magog" might be a reference to Babylon, by turning BBL ("Babylon" in Hebrew script, which originally had no vowel-signs) into MGG (Magog), but this account, like the others, has problems.^[2]

Texts[link]

Genesis and Chronicles[link]

Chapter 10 of the Book of Genesis, commonly called the "Table of Nations", names some 70 descendants of Noah from whom "the nations spread out over the earth after the Deluge." Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and Magog is one of the sons (the second) of Japheth:

This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.^[3]

1 Chronicles begins with a list of genealogies repeating that in the Table of Nations but continuing well beyond. In chapter 5, among the many descendants of Reuben, first of the twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob, it mentions an individual named Gog.^[4]

Ezekiel[link]

The two names first appear together in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, but here Magog is a place and not an individual:^[5]

Son of man, direct your face towards Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy concerning him. Say: Thus said the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal.^[6]

Ezekiel lived in the first half of the 6th century BC, and the earliest possible date for the prophecy is c. 585 BC.^[7] Scholars disagree, however, as to whether Ezekiel 38-39 was part of the original text (compare, for example, Joseph Blenkinsopp, who believes it to be a late addition,^[8] and Daniel Block, who argues for its original status).^[9] Its prophecy of a savage foe from the north is based on Jeremiah 1:3-16, where Jeremiah is talking about the Babylonians;^[8] Ezekiel turns this into an eschatological enemy who will come "in the latter years," an apocalypse at the end of time.^[1]

Gog's allies - Meshech and Tubal, Persia, Cush and Put, and "Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north" - are all, with the exception of Persia, taken from the Table of Nations.^[8] Meshech, Tubal, Gomer and Beth Togarmah can be identified with real 8th and 7th century peoples, kings or kingdoms of Anatolia, modern Turkey.^[10] "Why the prophet's gaze should have focused on these particular nations is unclear," says Daniel Block in a recent study of Ezekiel 25-48, but suggests that their remoteness and reputation for violence and mystery "made Gog and his confederates perfect symbols of the archetypal enemy, rising against God and his people."^[11] Cush (Sudan or Ethiopia) and Put (Libya) are sons of Ham according to Genesis 10, while Persia is located to the east, and is not mentioned in Genesis 10 at all. Since Ezekiel insists on a northerly situation of Gog and his allies, many commentators believe that these three names were added later, although this too is disputed.^[12]

Intertestamental period[link]

Around the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Sibylline Oracles mention the "land of Gog and Magog" as "situated in the midst of Aethiopian rivers", but in a second mention links it with the "Marsians and Dacians", in eastern Europe; in both cases they are about to receive "woe," and according to Boe, "there can be little doubt about the direct use of Ezekiel's oracles" in their composition.^[13]

The Book of Jubilees, known from about the same time, mentions Magog as a son of Japheth to whom land is allocated, while Gog is a region on Japheth's borders.^[14] 1 Enoch tells how God stirs up the Medes and Parthians (instead of Gog and Magog) to attack Jerusalem, where they are destroyed; an indebtedness to Ezekiel 38-39 has also been asserted.^[15] In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Messiah will rule "over all the peoples and Magog,"^[16] and Magog is allocated land next to Gomer, the first son of Japheth.^[17] The sole fragment where the two names are combined as "Gog and Magog" is too small to be meaningful.^[15] The 1st century Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum is notable for listing and naming seven of Magog's sons, and mentions his "thousands" of descendants.^[18]

The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, made during this period, occasionally introduces the name of Gog where the Hebrew original has something else. Thus at Numbers 24:7 it replaces Agag, a mysterious but clearly powerful figure, with Gog, and at Amos 7:1 the Greek has Gog as the leader of a threatening locust-like army.^[1] The Greek translation of Ezekiel takes Gog and Magog to be synonyms for the same country, a step which paved the way for the Book of Revelation to turn "Gog from Magog" into "Gog and Magog."^[2]

Book of Revelation[link]