The Jewish Diaspora
If there approximately twice as many Jews living outside Israel as in it should they be the ones to be considered as the pattern of world Judaism
The word Diaspora comes from the Greek and refers to scattering, as of seeds, although it is sometimes translated as exile. It probably originated with the Septuagint version of the Jewish scripture into Greek. This renders Deuteronomy 28 v 25 as Thou shalt be a diaspora in all kingdoms of the earth according to Diaspora Definition. Dictionaries give the word four slightly different meanings - the dispersion of Jew after the conquest of Palestine, first by the Persians and then later by the Romans. This was added to after HYPERLINK httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiBar_Kokhba27s_revolt o Bar Kokhbas revolt Bar Kokhbas revolt against Roman rule in 135 C.E. Simon Bar Kochba had been hailed as a new Messiah. He was able to etablish, for a short period, an indepenent Jewish state, but this was eventually overrun by Roman legions. This was the third time Jews had revolted against their Roman masters and the failure of the revolution after two year. brought to an end the Judo-Roman wars, after which many Jews were sold into slavery throughout the Empire. Even before the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. there were more Jews outside Israel than in it. The same word refers to both individual Jews living outside Israel and the Jewish communities they belong to. Finally it is used to describe the extent of Jewish settlement beyond the borders of Israel. The word is used frequently when referring to concerns, particularly of Zionists, about a loss of Jewish culture and identity. However living in the Diaspora merely means living away from the land of Israel and does not necessarily refer to any loss of Jewish identity or faith. The idea of seeds scattering could refer to a planting of the faith rather than a dilution of it.
Where are they now
According to these 2001 figures there is no one country in the world wide Diaspora where the Jewish population comes as high as 2.5 of the population, so although Jews do tend to live in clusters, as for instance in parts of London where thy may appear to be numerous, they really are scattered around the world. The majority though live in just six countries, with a 21st century world population distribution very different to what it was before World War II. In recent years there has been a counter trend, with many Jews from the former Soviet Union have now settled in Germany. But wherever they live they share a common unique heritage that is essentially different to that of the peoples around one in particular of a race that has suffered simply because of who they are, whether or not they fully share in the faith of Israel.
Not all members of the modern day Diaspora practice their inherited religion, and by far the majority have never lived in Israel. According to the paragraph The State of Orthodoxy on the Jewish Temple web page , there are Jews who are Orthodox while . others would say they belonged to the Reform or the Conservative groups or are merely Jewish by blood not faith.. In France and Argentina it tends to be the poorer Sephardim, that is Jews descended from those who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before the expulsions late in the 15th century, who are the more involved with their historic religion. The Ashkenazim from central and eastern Europe, tend to be are more assimilated into the local culture, in some cases because they have been forced to in order to survive. There are also Mizrahi or Middle Eastern Jews, such as those Kurdish Jews who lived in Iraq until recently. Many of them fled to Turkey when Saddam Hussein was in power and there are large numbers of Kurdish Jews now in Israel.. Yet, what ever their shade of Judaism, every year at Passover many of them will join in the cry of Next year in Israel even if they are quite happy, settled and comfortable where they are and have no intention of moving. Israel is the Promised Land of the Old Testament, that referred to in Gods promise to Abram in Genesis 12 v 7, and in theory is where Jews should be.
History
The ancient state of Israel ceased to exist in 70 C.E. when the Romans, fed up with the difficult province, destroyed the Temple and much of Jerusalem and actively tried to get the Jewish people to leave the land of their religious heritage. From that time until the creation of the modern day State of Israel in the mid 20th century the main history of the Jewish people is the history of the Diaspora, and from that same period far more Jews lived outside Israel than in it, some remaining strongly true to ancient traditions and other less so. Opposition seems to have strengthened both positions the traditionalists sticking firm and others allowing themselves for the sake of expediency to fit in with the surrounding cultures.
The removal of Jews from their homeland in this forced way wasnt the first something like this had happened. In 722 B.C.E the Assyrians had invaded and carried off captives, not all of whom had returned. Richard Gottheil and Theodore Reinarch, writing in the Jewish Encyclopedia, state that it was poorer Jews, who were often fervent in their religion, who chose to return to their homeland when the opportunity came. When Nebuchadnezzar began to remove Judeans in 597 B.C.E. they were allowed to stay together as a group in Babylon (modern Iraq). So began the Diaspora. In 538 B.C.E. Cyrus allowed many of the Jews to return, but lots preferred to stay where they were. In most cases the Jews concerned, certainly in the early years, retained their religious identity. St Paul for instance describes his upbringing in Tarsus in his letter to the Philippians (3 v 5) Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews in regard to the law, a Pharisee. Whether under the rule of Greeks, Romans and Persians Jews were allowed to follow their own customs and live according to their own rules and laws. Philo of Alexandria for instance has described how the Jews in Rome had their position guaranteed under the emperor Augustus who allowed them Roman citizenship, and at the same time allowed them to study Jewish rather than Roman law. On the other hand the water available to the Jewish quarter in Rome was of very poor quality. This half way house is typical of many Jewish communities around the world throughout history. Not all were prepared to make any compromises at all and continued to live as distinct Jewish groups with their own language, schools, shops etc. Gottheil and Reinarch describe how, 40 years after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans, several Jewish groups, faced with the reality of not being able to return to Israel, formed what are described as Commonwealths in Cyprus, Cyrene, Mesopotamia and in Egypt. Their efforts came to naught under Trajan in 115-117 C.E. and were further suppressed by the emperor Hadrian who, in 1333- 135 C.E., finally put paid to ideas of independence within the province of Palestine.
I f the Jews concerned had a real faith in God they believed him to be beyond place and knew he was more concerned about a mans inner soul than whether or not he had made the right sacrifice at the temple. (Bible) Psalm 24 v 4-
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive a blessing from God his Savior.
The Diaspora and Christianity.
Ironically the dispersal of the Jewish people throughout the Empire led to the rapid spread of Christianity. Shaye Cohen remarks upon the fact that Christianity spread fastest in places where there was already a Jewish presence. This was probably because the early missionaries, such as Paul and his various companions, went first to those they knew, as in Acts 13 v14 where Luke records how the travelers arrive in Antioch and go to the synagogue.( Bible) Jesus had predicted the end of the temple as recorded by Mark in the New Testament (Bible , Mark13 v 2. Matthews gospel records him telling his disciples to take the Gospel (the good news) throughout the world ( Bible, Matthew 28 v 19). Soon, Christian or otherwise, there were Jewish groups in every city in the Empire. In Rome there were at least ten Jewish congregations, each with their own synagogue. Jewish cemetery inscriptions of the time, tell us that they were a very mixed group of people, with some speaking Aramaic, a few who were Latin speakers, but that most spoke Greek. L.Michael White tells how in some cases such people were able to fit easily into local situations, whereas elsewhere they met opposition and so tended to distance themselves from the culture around them. Mostly though the Jews of the Diaspora absorbed a lot from the local people, including the Greek language which many of them used. It was among Jews of the Diaspora that the scriptures were translated into the vernacular Greek from the Hebrew original. So it could be said that Judaism moved on in the Diaspora. Whether or not this was a positive move is still up for debate.
Synagogues
The word synagogue means a bringing together. It is similar to the English word church in that it can be used to refer to a building or the congregation that meets there. Its origins lie during the period of the Babylonian exile. From the time that Solomons temple was destroyed until the restoration headed by Zerubbabel two generation or more later there was no where else for Jews to gather together in a religious way and so there came about what is now the center of Jewish community life - the synagogue. As well as places for worship they were schools, courts, libraries as described on the web page The Synagogue History, Origin. Although Israel is a small country it would have been impossible for most Jews even there to have visited the temple on more than rare occasions even before it destruction. The synagogue has been the means of keeping the faith alive in communities world wide.
The Modern Day Diaspora
According to the My Jewish Learning web page The Jewish Diaspora Around the Globe there are currently about 13 million Jews of whom 8 million are living outside Israel. The majority of these live in the Americas, mostly in Canada and the United States. The web writer talks about the problems facing these particular populations with intermarriage, and with relatively few children of these mixed marriages taking on a Jewish identity. There has been a decline in the number of conversions to Judaism and the Jewish population is aging.
He speaks about Argentina where most of whose Jewish population live in the capital city of Buenos Aires. In 1994 the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center was bombed and there have been many other acts of antiSemitism, which the writer says, have acted as a catalyst for change , with many of the countrys Jews integrating more than they might have done, into the majority culture of the local society. This would have ben at least in part as a means of self preservation. In neighbouring Brazil, a much bigger country with far fewer Jews, there have been very few such problems and so presumably less need for integration.
In Europe there are about 1.5 million Jews. The majority of these live in the west with one third in the east. The problems they face are partly demographic, with a much higher death rate than the number of births recorded. When Soviet Union collapsed many Jews moved west and so France now has a large population,.These are mostly Askenazi Jews who are a politically active group, standing up for itself in a country which has a strong right political wing. In earlier centuries Jews had fled from persecution in the east and settled in Britain and the Americas. London still has a large Jewish population, although this has mainly moved from its earlier working class settlements in the East End.
In central Europe, in both Germany and Poland, the My Jewish Learning web writer reports that there has been a Jewish resurgence with young people actively seeking to learn more about the faith and culture. In part this may be because they are taught about what happened to their families becasu of their faith, yet t the same time they feel relativly safe to declare themsleves as Jewish.
In the Middle East the picture is patchy. In some cases it is difficult to obtain statistics When the state of Israel became a reality in 1968 many Jews formerly living in Arab lands migrated there. In more recent times, with the easing of emigration laws, Jews from the Yemen and Syria have travelled back to Israel. Is it because of hopes of a better lifstyle or because of an urge to return to the ancestral land
In Africa most Jews live in one country South Africa. There they seem to have a well organised society with a network of Jewish welfare, educational, political organisations. Zionism is strong, with its active promotion of the Jewish national state, and there is little intermarriage which makes the Jewish positionthre strong. There is however migration which cuts down numbers in the country.
In India the three main Jewish groups reflect the kind of waves of Jewish migration tha there have been elsewhere over the centuries. There are the Jews of Bnei Israel, who are said to be descendants of Jewish settlers who arrived in the sub-continet in the second century B.C.E.. The Jews of Malabar, who center on Cochin, have ancestors who arrived in India about 1,000 years ago from various places, both in Europe and the Middle East. The Baghdadis are descended from Iraqi Jews who began to arrive in India about 200 years ago. There are many other small Jewish communities all over Asia and Australasia, but these are relatively isolated and so are less likley to be understood by their neighbours.
In other places changes have been dramatic as when, in 1991, the Ethiopian Jewish community was the center of an international rescue . The vast majority of Ethiopian Jewry, some 20,000 people , were evacuated to Israel in an airlift most of them on the same day.This was for the most part a humnitarian gesture as the people were living in camps under terrible conditions.Many others were left behind despite claims of Jewish ancestry, but for them immigration would be on the same terms it was for those from all other countries. It remains unclear whether the Ethiopians, known as Falash Mura, are descended from Christian converts or whether they had just abandoned their Jewish roots. Some claim that their ancestors had been forced to convert according to the Zionism and Israel Encyclopedic Dictionary entry by Ami Isseroff. Many of them are related to those who had already migrated to Israel and wished to join up with relatives there. The name Falash Mura is sometimes considered to be derogatory. It means an invader who converted and some in Israel are not prepared to accept such people, despite their apparant Jewish ancestry, as up to the point of arrival, they had not practised the Jewish faith. In other countries the Jewish Temple web page World Jewish popultion report that for instance in both Argentina and France
The Law of Return
The Law of Return was passed by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in the earliest days of the modern Jewish state in July 1950. Many of those who passed this law had experienced first hand anti-Semitism in Europe and saw this law as the solution to their problems. At it simplest it says that every Jew, from wherever place they come, has a right to migrate to Israel. The whole point of the creation of the modern Jewish state was for the repatriating of Jewish people from the Diaspora. Every Jew was offered the opportunity to return to the land of his ancestors.
There were some problems with the law in that it did not include a definition of Jewish. An amendment passed in 1970 gives the right to immigrate to Israel to those who are non-Jews, but who are either the children or grandchildren of a Jew, are married to a a Jew or are married to a child or grandchild of a Jew. The amendment was meant to take account of the many families, in the main from Eastern Europe, where there had been inter-marriage. There were a number of exceptions terrorists for instance were not allowed to come and nor were others considered to be a risk to the state, neither were Jews who had converted to another religion. Other non-Jewish people who wanted to settle in Israel, must first meet the requirements set out in the Law of Entry to Israel (1952) and the Law of Citizenship (1952) which are similar to the entry requirements from many other lands. These laws are perceived by some as being anti-Arab, but are seen, especially by Zionists, as in keeping with the explicit purpose of setting up a Jewish homeland once more. There is a tension between Israel being a modern democratic state and the idea of being a state made up of a particular people with a common religious and racial heritage. The Beit Hatfutsot page of the Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv describes the story as unique and ongoing. But if the majority of Jews are settled in the Diaspora, and there is room in Israel why can not these other children of Abraham live there alongside the Jewish majority
Conclusion
The Jewish diaspora is obviously a very mixed grouping spread right around the world and at all levels of society as well as at various stages of interaction with their religion and wioht th culture around them. This is especially so because over the almost two millenia that have passed since the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, there have been many changes as well as absorbtions and of course anti-Semitic opposition. The story of the Diaspora and the people it contains is a very varied one. Even in one city such as London, it is possible to see Jews from many diverse background in various stages regarding their relationship with the society around them and with their Judaism. Some are non-believers, while others attend worship occasionally, and then there are those to whom their religion is extremely important. They represent various waves of migration north and west, too often because of periods of persecution, forced expulsion and even attempts at the total annihilation of the Jewish race such as happened in the German Reich in the mid 20th century. Some have migrated relatively recently with the fall of the Soviet Union, others are descended from those who fled from Hitler in the 1930s and 40s and there is a yet earlier group who fled from pogroms in the 19th century. There are those who would pass unnoticed in the street and those who stand out with their large hats, long coats,prayer shawls and side curls. They have their differences, but in many ways are still united as the children of Abraham. Zionist Simon Rawidowicz has been quoted as saying that the Jews as a culture have evolved into a new worldly group with no reason to look for a return, whether a physical one, or just emotionally or spiritually to the land of Israel, and could remain united as one people dispite such dispersion. For this reason he had advocated a double center for Judiasm , one in Israel and one in the Diaspora, as described by Jeremiah Haber ( a nom de plume)in his review of David Myers 2009 book Between Jew and Arab. It is however a sad indictment on non-Jews that the majority of Jews are now living where they do, however happy and settled and successful they might be there, because of anti-Semitic feeling and opposition at some time in the past.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment