This is kind of a duh question but I really don’t know and it’s kinda basic: how did the Jews, who were a clan of middle easterns 2,000 years ago, also become european? As in, how did Judaism make the jump, or I assume it was when Rome- never mind, just tell me.
For the most part, after the Jewish revolt was put down and Jerusalem was destroyed, a lot of Jews dispersed themselves throughout the Roman Empire, but even before the Jewish revolt, there were large Jewish communities in Egypt, Rome, Asia Minor, and Greece. One of the advantages of having a large, unitary state, like the Roman Empire, is that it makes migration a lot easier. Somebody could travel from Judea to Germany or Gaul without having to worry about crossing borders, just like today, you could move from Maine to California easily.
Oh, also, just so you know, the first big historical migration of the Jews took place after Babylon took over the Southern Kingdom. At that point, a lot of Jews were forcibly resettled in Babylon. In Hebrew, this is called the Galut…the exile. Even after the Persians conquered Babylon, and let the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, a lot decided to stay in Babylon, where they had built a community. The Jewish community in Babylon was the first big Jewish settlement outside the Holy Land, and the Jewish community in Mesopotamia thrived until very recently.
Captain Amazing pretty much hit it on the head.
About the fifth century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians, who forcibly removed the majority of the residents to Babylon. About seventy years later, some of the descendants of those Jews who were exiled were permitted to return to the area and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple stood for about four hundred years until destroyed by Titus in 70CE. It should be noted that even though Jews were permitted to return to Israel while the Second Temple was standing, a large portion of the Jewish community remained in Babylon.
After the second Temple was destroyed (and again after Bar Kochba’s failed revolt), the Romans exiled the Jews to other portions of their empire. Large Jewish communities ended up flourishing in Spain, France and Italy, among other places.
Zev Steinhardt
It’s important to remember, though, that neither in the case of the Babylonians or in the case of the Romans, were all the Jews exiled. In both cases, some managed to stay where they were, and there are Israeli Jews now whose families have lived in Israel since the time of the Kingdom.
I have to disagree with both Zev and Captain Amazing. There may have been small Jewish communities in Europe during Roman times, but not large ones. Babylon and points East were the main repositories of exiled Jews until the advent of Islam. Roman Spain did not beget Ramban and Abarbanel; Roman Gaul did not bring forth Rashi.
The driving force in the migrations was money. When Islam arose in the seventh century, the Muslim Caliphs had respect for the diplomatic and mercantile abilities of the Jews in Babylon. As Islam pressed westward, Jews followed, sometimes in the direct service of the new Muslim governors of North African states and eventually Spain, and creating trading networks that grew properous communities in these new lands.
North and East of the Pyrenees, Jews were invited into France-Germany by either Charlemagne or one of his close successors (perhaps Charles the Bald), also because their presence was seen as economically advantageous. A wealthy Jewish family called Kalonymous, based in Italy (and probably there since Roman times) offered incentives for Jewish scholars to settle in Charlemagne’s realm.
Until the tenth century, the center of Jewish scholarship was in Babylon. After that point, though, the European (and North African) Jewish communities, from whom wealth was collected to help support the Babylonian yeshivos, decided to just import the Babylonian scholars and begin local yeshivos. As the Yeshivos in Europe and North Africa grew in scholarship, Jews emigrated from there in even larger numbers to join those communities until they grew to become the giant centers of Jewry in the pre-Renaissance.
Is the Babylonian diaspora verified by other historic records?
Further to the idea that Jews were exiled after 70 CE, who exactly exiled whom and to where? I’m not necessarily doubting this, but the answers given so far sound rather like hand waving arguments. What documentation exists that groups were exiled and how was this accomplished?
Captain Amazing:
Possible, but pretty unlikely. Between the Roman Christian persecution of the fifth century and the bloodbath of the First Crusade, I’d be very surprised if there was any genuine continuity of settlement that dates back to Roman times and before.
John Mace:
There was no formal exile at that time. A very large Jewish community still existed in Palestine well into the fifth century. However, Roman persecution of the Jews was very heavy and this led to much emigration (not to mention much slaughter).
As far as I know, the only really big slaughter of civilians in the first crusade in Israel (not counting, of course, the slaughter of Jewish communities along the Rhein) was in Jerusalem itself, when the city fell. Do you know if there were massacres elsewhere?
Isn’t there also some question as to how thorough the persecution of the fifth century was? Even though a lot of anti-Jewish laws were passed, there was too much internal unrest for active persecution. So, for example, in spite of the laws against the building of synagogues, they’ve found the ruins of a synagogue at Beit Alpha dating from the beginning of the 6th century:
Captain:
They managed to eliminate the post of Nasi (Prince) and disrupt the operation of the Yeshivos…that’s why the Jerusalem Talmud is so much less complete, and considered less authoritative, than the Babylonian one. Jews fled in very large numbers.
It wasn’t an organized extermination campaign in the Nazi sense, but the persecution was very much an active one.