What was jewish diaspora

Majorities across the religious spectrum say it is necessary. All Israeli respondents in the survey were asked to name, in their own words, what they see as the single most important long-term problem facing Israel. Pluralities of Muslims, Christians and Druze — roughly four-in-ten among each religious group — name economic problems as the biggest issue facing Israel. Despite the fact that by a variety of standard measures of religious observance, American Jews are less religious than Israeli Jews, Haredim in Israel are somewhat more likely than other Jewish subgroups to see common ground between themselves and Jews in the U.

It is possible Israeli Haredim are thinking of Haredim in the U. Jews , when making this comparison. Overall, Israeli Jews who have visited the U. The differences in opinion between those who have visited the U.

Israeli Jews are largely united by the idea that they share a common destiny with Jews in the United States. Jews and Israeli Jews. Jews have a good influence on the way things are going in Israel.

Jews have a bad influence. There are relatively few differences across Jewish subgroups on this question.

At least half of Haredim, Datiim, Masortim and Hilonim say American Jews have a good influence, while about one-in-ten or fewer say the influence from U. Jews in Israel is negative. There also are relatively few differences among Jewish demographic groups on the question of whether U.

Jews have a good or bad influence in Israel. Left-leaning Jews are somewhat more likely than those in the center or on the right to say U. Overall, Jews who have visited or lived in the United States are no more or less likely than others to say American Jews have a positive influence in Israel. Haredim who have visited the United States, however, are considerably more likely than Haredim who have not visited the U.

Among Haredim who have visited the U. Israeli Arabs are considerably more likely than Jews to say American Jews have a bad influence on the way things are going in Israel. Muslims and Christians have similar views on this question, and Muslims are somewhat more likely than Druze to say American Jews are having a bad influence on the way things are going in Israel.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.

Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. The Ptolemies brought in Jewish soldiers and their families, and other Jews migrated from Judea to Egypt probably for economic reasons.

At its height, Egyptian Jewry in Hellenistic time was highly diversified: There were peasants and shepherds, Jewish generals in the Ptolemaic army, and Jewish officials in the civil service and police. At Leontopolis, an Aronide priest form Jerusalem founded a small temple with a sacrificial cult modeled on that of Jerusalem. The shrine survived for over two centuries until just after 70 CE, but it does not seem to have been an important place of worship for Egyptian Jewry as a whole.

Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies and the intellectual center of Hellenistic civilization, became one of the most populous Jewish communities in the world between the third century BCE and the end of the first century CE, numbering several hundred thousand at least.

Alexandrian Jewry included wealthy merchants, bankers, and shippers at one end of the social spectrum and masses of Jewish artisans and shopkeepers at the other. The Ptolemies also founded Jewish colonies in the cities of Cyrenaica modern-day Libya. The northern diaspora arose when the Seleucids took control of Judea after CE. Within two centuries, large Jewish communities were to be found in Antioch and Damascus, in the Phoenician ports and in the Asia Minor cities of Sardis, Halicarnassus, Pergamum, and Ephesus.

By the turn of the Common Era, Jews lived on most of the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, such as Cyprus and Crete, in mainland Greece and Macedonia, on the shores of the Black Sea, and in the Balkans. Jewish inscriptions from the early centuries CE have been found in the Crimea and in modern Romania and Hungary.

When the Roman presence was felt in the Near East, the growth of Jewish settlement further west ensued. Refusing to dwell upon their homelessness, the Jewish exiles adopted a novel attitude: they assimilated into the culture in which they found themselves, while maintaining their separate identity as Jews and their adherence to Jewish tradition and culture.

This interwoven pattern of assimilation and separatism would persist throughout the history of the Diaspora, a Greek term coined specifically for the dispersion of Jews throughout the Hellenistic Greek-speaking world. Following the Hellenistic conquest of Palestine in BCE, Jews flocked to Ptolemaic Egypt, especially the city of Alexandria, where a flourishing community would later produce the Septuagint the Torah translated into Greek.

By 70 CE, following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Jewish communities could be found throughout the civilized world. Living in such widespread locales, Jews entered numerous occupations, including farming and horse breeding, crafts and manufacturing, business and trade, civil administration and the military.

After the final defeat of Israel at the hands of the Romans in CE, the pace of emigration from Israel quickened, and Jews continued to establish new communities even farther afield.

The communal structure of the early Diaspora set the pattern for later Jewish communities elsewhere in the world: within sovereign states, larger Jewish communities often had their own internal administration. Within sovereign cities, the Jewish community was often assigned a separate status and occupied a special quarter. Hence, the Jews of North Africa developed the communal district called a mellah , whereas the Jews of Central Europe were compelled to live in a confined area called a ghetto , so named after the first of its kind in 16th century Venice.

Still later, the Jews of Eastern Europe created a new form of community, a predominantly Jewish town called a shtetl. Echoes of these diverse communal forms may be seen today in the nationwide Jewish socio-political organizations and in the local ethnic neighborhoods of American and, more broadly, Western Jewry. The communal expansion of the Diaspora also served to fragment world Jewry.