Diaspora
The term diaspora (in Ancient Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering or sowing of seeds") refers to any people or ethnic population who are forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such people, and the ensuing developments in their culture.
Initially the term diaspora meant "the scattered" and was used by the Ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of a dominant city-state who emigrated to a conquered land with the purpose of colonization, to assimilate the territory into the empire. The current meaning started to develop from this original sense when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the word "diaspora" there being used to refer to the population of Jews exiled from Judea in 586 B.C.E. by the Babylonians, and from Jerusalem in 136 C.E. by the Roman Empire. Probably the earliest use of the word in reference specifically to Jewish exiles is in the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy 28:25, "thou shalt be a dispersion in all kingdoms of the earth."
It subsequently came to be used to refer interchangeably to the historical movements of the dispersed ethnic population of Israel, the cultural development of that population, or the population itself. The term was assimilated from Greek into English in the mid 20th century, and an academic field of diaspora studies has been established relating to the wider modern meaning of 'diaspora'.
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora(Hebrew: Tefutzah, "scattered," or Galut גלות, "exile"), was the result of the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Israel, voluntary migrations, and, to a lesser extent, religious conversion to Judaism in lands other than Israel. The diaspora is commonly accepted to have begun with the conquests of the ancient Jewish kingdoms from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.E., when the Israelites were forcibly exiled first from the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria and then from the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon. Even after the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem and the return of many Jews from Babylonia, Jews continued to settle elsewhere in the during the periods of the Greek and Roman empires. Major centers of Jewish culture emerged in such places as Alexandria, Egypt and Asia Minor, and Baylonia as well as Jerusalem and its environs.
A second major expulsions of Jews from the Holy Land took place as a result of destruction of the Second Temple in the wake of the Jewish Revolt of 70 C.E. and the [[Bar Kokhba}} revolt, of the mid second century during the Roman occupation of Judea.
Pre-Roman diaspora
In 722 B.C.E., the Assyrians under Shalmaneser V conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and many Israelites were deported to the Assyrian province of Khorasan. Since then, for over 2,700 years, the Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran.
After the overthrow in of the kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon beginning in 588 B.C.E. and the subsequent deportation of a considerable portion of its inhabitants to Mesopotamia, the Jews had two principal cultural centers: Babylonia and the land of Israel.
Although a majority of the Jewish people, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence it led there, under the successive rules of the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, was obscure and devoid of political influence. The more pious elements among the exiles returned to Judaea during the reign of the Achaemenids. There, with the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem as their center, they reorganized themselves into a community animated by a remarkable religious ardor and a tenacious attachment to the Torah, which thenceforth constituted the focus of its identity.
After numerous vicissitudes, and especially owing to internal dissensions in the Seleucid dynasty and to the interested support of the Romans, the cause of Jewish independence temporarily triumphed. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then also kings, the Jewish state prospered and even annexed several territories. Soon, however, discord in the royal family and the growing disaffection of the pious made the Jewish nation an easy prey to the ambition of the Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 B.C.E., Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.
As early as the middle of the second century B.C.E., the Jewish author of the third book of the Sibylline oracles, addressing the "chosen people," says: "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.
Alexandria was by far the most important of the diasporan Jewish communities, with the Jews in Philo's time (d. 50 C.E.). He gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as 1 million one-eighth of the population. The number of Jewish residents in Cyprus and in Mesopotamia was also large. Based on tax records, it has been estimated that there were about 180,00 Jews in Asia Minor in the year 62/61 B.C.E. . In the city of Rome, at the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus, there were well over 7,000 Jews, since this is the number that reportedly escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Herod Archelaus (reigned 4 B.C.E. to 6 C.E.).
King Agrippa I (d. 44 C.E.), in a letter to Caligula, enumerates communities of Jewish diaspora in almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient. Except for the Land of Israel and Babylonia, the Jewish population was densest in Syria, according the first century Jewish historian Josephus, particularly in Antioch and Damascus. Some 10,000-18,000 Jews were reportedly massacred at Damascus during the Jewish Revolt of 70 C.E.
Post-Roman diaspora
The complete destruction of Jerusalem ins 70 C.E., followed by 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. Jews sought to establishe commonwealths in Cyrene, Cyprus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. These efforts suppressed by Trajan during the persecutions of 115-117). The attempt of the Jews of Palestine to regain their independence during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135) was even more brutally crushed.
From this time on, the Jews of Palestine—reduced in numbers, destitute, and crushed—lost their preponderance in the Jewish world. Jerusalem, renamed as "Ælia Capitolina," had become a Roman colony, a city entirely pagan. Jews were forbidden entrance, under pain of death, and some, like Rabbi Akiva, suffered martyrdom as a result. Nevertheless, in the sixth century, 43 Jewish communities in Palestine, scattered along the coast, in the Negev, east of the Jordan, and in villages in the Galilee region and in the Jordan River valley.
The destruction of Judea exerted a decisive influence upon the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world, as the center of worship shifted from the temple priesthood to rabbinic tradition in the local synagoues.
Some Jews were sold as slaves or transported as captives after the fall of Judea. Others joined the existing diaspora, while still others remained in Judea. Jewish communities were thereby largely expelled from Judea and sent to various Roman provinces in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Jews in the diaspora, they were generally accepted into the Roman Empire, but with the rise of Christianity, restrictions against them grew. With the advent of Islam, Jews generally fared better in Muslim lands that Christian ones. The center of Jewish intellectual life thus shifted from Palestine to Babylonia, which had already been development a strong academic tradition at the great yeshivas of Sura and Pumpedita. These centered developed the Babylonian Talmud, which came to be seen as more authoritative than its Palestinian counterpart.
During the Middle Ages, Jews gradually moved into Europe, settling first in Muslim Spain and later the Christian areas of the Rhineland. The Jewish diaspora thus divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two groupings: the Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) and Sephardic Jews (Spanish and Middle Eastern Jews). The Christian reconquest of Spain led ultimately to the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula in the late fifteenth century. By 1764, there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population was estimated at 1.2 million.
The difficulties of Jewish life in the diaspora is a key factor in the advent Zionism. Underlying this attitude was the feeling that the diaspora restricted the full growth of Jewish national life, coupled with the messianic current of Jewish religious thought, which looks to the Messiah as a Davidic descendant who will restore Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land.
The diaspora today
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948 meant that henceforth, living in the diaspora became a matter of choice for many Jews, rather than of necessity. However, until the fall of Communism, Jews living in the former Soviet bloc were often forbidden to immigrate to Israel, faced economic obstacles.
While a large proportion of Holocaust survivors became citizens of Israel a, the number of Jews in the United States was much larger than the number living in Israel until about 2006, when the Jewish population in Israel reached 5,309,000) compared to 5,275,000 in the US, followed by France (492,000), Canada (372,000), and the United Kingdom (297,000).[1] An estimated 70,000 Jews live in the vast Siberia region.
Non-Jewish diasporas
The term diaspora can also be applied to various non-Jewish ethnic, national, or religious groups living away from their country of origin. The term carries a sense of displacement, as the population so described finds itself for whatever reason separated from it national territory. Often, such groups express a hope to return to their homeland at some point, or at least a sense of nostalgic connection to their place of origin.
Colonizing migrations are not generally considered as diasporas as migrants eventually assimilate into the settled area so completely that it becomes their new homeland. Thus the modern populations of Germany, often distant descendants of the Gothic tribes, do not feel a serious connection to the eastern lands they left 16 centuries ago, and the English descendants of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes do not yearn to reoccupy the plains of northwest Germany. However, it is possible to speak today, for example of a "Chinese diaspora," a "Vietnamese diaspora," or a "Muslim diaspora," involving people with continuing connections to their countries of origins while living abroard.
The twentieth century saw huge population movements, some due to natural disasters, but some involving large-scale transfers of people by government action. Examples include Stalin's policy to populate Eastern Russia, Central Asia, and Siberia; and the transfer of millions of people between India and Pakistan as a result the 1947 Partition of India. Other diasporas have occurred as people fled ethnically directed persecution or oppression: for example, over a million Armenians forced out of Armenia by the Turks, many settling in Syria, European nationalities moving west away from Soviet Union annexation and from the Iron Curtain regimes after World War II, tens of thousands of South Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1975, and large numbers of Hutu and Tutsi escaping the Rwandan Genocide in 1994.
During the Cold War era, huge populations of refugees left various areas of conflict, especially from Third World nations. Large populations Africans have been dislocated by tribal, religious, and political strife. In South America thousands of Uruguayan refugees fled to Europe during the military rule of the 1970s and 80's. In many Central America, Nicaraguans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Costa Ricans, and Panamanians) were displaced by political conflicts. In the Middle East, large numbers of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes to settle elsewhere and many Iranians fled the 1978 Islamic revolution). In Southeast Asia, millions fled the onslaught of Communism in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Many economic migrants may gather in such numbers outside their home country that they form an effective diaspora: for instance, the Turkish Gastarbeiter in Germany; South Asians in the Persian Gulf; and Filipinos and Chinese throughout the world. And in a rare example of a diaspora in a prosperous Western democracy, there is talk of a New Orleans, or Gulf Coast, "diaspora" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina of 2005.
List of notable diasporas
History provides us with many examples of notable Diasporas.
- Displaced person
- Ethnic cleansing
- Slave trade
- Immigration
- Refugee
Notes
- ↑ Population data from a 2006 Study by The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Retrieved December 6, 2008.
External links
- 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)
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