The Jewish Diasporas - how did they differ?

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by klipkap, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    [Continued from the thread: "Are the Palestinians the Jews NOT expelled from Judaea after Bar Kochba Revolt?", so as not to hijack it and go seriously off-topic]

    What is this all about? I am fascinated by this development, because I and interested in how the Western media contributes to the creation of an unlevel playing field in the reporting of ME news.

    So was Ziv's thesis that the 70 AD expulsion of the Jews was only from Jerusalem and not from Israel/Palestine?

    If so, how does this match the oft-quoted forced "Exodus" of the Jews from their homeland as a result of the 70 AD diaspora, and the justification for their return in the 20th century?

    # "The Jewish state comes to an end in 70 AD, when the Romans begin to actively drive Jews from the home they had lived in for over a millennium - http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Diaspora.html - implying an expulsion from all of Etertz Yisrael?

    # "Thus when the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 the period of the second exile began. (Diaspora) The Jewish people were soon to be scattered throughout the earth. For the next 1900 years the Jews would have no authority in the land God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." - http://focusonjerusalem.com/thefallofjerusalem.html

    # "Romans crush Jewish uprising; destroy the Temple; drive the Jews out; rename the area Palestina; Largest Jewish Diaspora - http://thegloriousbattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/JewishDiasporaColor2000.jpg

    The reference above suggests that there have been various Jewish Diaporas. Which were the most dramatic? How did they affect the Jewish populations in Palestine? How were they caused? What were the consequences for the Jewish presence in the Promised Land?

    I think I need to do some research, so if anyone can point me to well-document sources, I would be grateful.

    I will also try to find out more about this controversial documentary.
     
  2. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Well, the Diaspora began much, much earlier ... after the Babylonian exile Ezra insisted that Jewish men get rid of their foreign wives and children.. Many wouldn't do so.. They left. There are Jewish people in Rome, North Africa and Egypt long before the birth of Christ.. and you know Israel couldn't really support a large population .. Its was stony and arid.. That's why the huge numbers are rather ridiculous.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Well, the Diaspora began much, much earlier ... after the Babylonian exile Ezra insisted that Jewish men get rid of their foreign wives and children.. Many wouldn't do so.. They left. There are Jewish people in Rome, North Africa and Egypt long before the birth of Christ.. and you know Israel couldn't really support a large population .. Its was stony and arid.. That's why the huge numbers are rather ridiculous.
     
  3. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  4. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    There has been an short but indipendant period of "Jewish" Kingdom at 132-136 AD so why count from 70 AD ? there were several great revolts on the Romans that were disastorous to the Judeans.
     
  5. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    Gilos, I am interested in knowing how many major diasporas there have been. One gets the impression that they were all caused by anti-Semitism, but I am not sure that that is necessarily correct. For instance, in the current >50% Diaspora, I am almost sure that the anomalously high percentage of Jews living in New York City is not as a result of anti-Semitism. I also question if it reflects the irresistible pull of the Promised Land on the children of Israel.
     
  6. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    I too was incorrectly placed geographically to watch that National Film Board of Canada production, but I could watch the trailer on YouTube:

    [video=youtube;EMe1s3xoPks]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMe1s3xoPks[/video]

    The content seems to be fascinating. Deeper digging is required, methinks.

    And here is the film-maker's commentary - Ilan Ziv himself. Curiouser and curiouser.

    http://ilanziv.com/2013/04/28/the-exiling-of-my-film-exile-a-myth-unearthed-in-the-bbc-2/

    It reads like a spy novel. I am thoroughly intrigued.
     
  7. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    Josephus is VERY pertinent to this thread, so I am curious as to what precisely this “Jewish cause” was in 70 AD that you claim Josephus was traitor to, HB. I have read that the Jotapata 'survivors' killed one another – i.e. did not commit suicide. By being “the last man standing”- was this Josephus’ traitorous deed? Regarding the rest, was Josephus a Muslim?
     
  8. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    The Sicarri were raiding and pillaging the countryside.. robbing other Jews before they were corralled at Masada. Josephus couldn't have been a Muslim.. There was NO Islam at the time.
     
  9. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    I have just finished watching that linked video. Many thanks. It is HUGELY pertinent to this thread. WHAT A STUNNING DOCUMENTARY with its impressive cast of Israeli archaeologists and historians. These are clearly not Islamo-fascists.

    [video=youtube;Ozbt9bfLiYA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozbt9bfLiYA[/video]

    I will post my transcript of the narrative in a separate post.

    Regarding the debate about the documentary 'Exile', I found it here: http://ilanziv.com/ Obviously, to maintain a level playing field, I will need to watch that also.
     
  10. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    As promised:
    The debate raised some valid issues. Did you watch it, Ria?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Absolutely agreed, Gilos. I wouldn't want to exclude any of the Diasporas. The Ziv video - "Exile" - includes the Bar Kochba rebellion.
     
  11. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Yes.. that corresponds what my reading indicates.. The majority of Jews were living elsewhere.. not in Palestine and the area around Galiee was far more prosperous and more cosmopolitan than Jerusalem.
     
  12. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I thought the debate was almost as interesting as the documentary. What is clear is that there never was an Exile of Jews from their homeland. It of course brings into question the whole idea of "right of return". What I find fascinating is that no one really thought this anyway! Well not people who really have looked at the historical record. It certainly goes someway to explain why the majority of Jews do not live in their mythical homeland from which they were never expelled.

    Can anyone seriously argue for the Zionist project anymore, on what grounds? Not surprising that the BBC were "persuaded" against the un-edited version being shown, I would love to see the full version.
     
  13. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    What were the points in the documentary that led you to belive "there never was a diaspora" ? from KK quotes they argued that it started alot sonner than 70AD.

    The "project" ended in 1948 and all in all was very successful.
     
  14. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  15. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    Try to keep politics out of it, when you suggest the Diaspora justifies Zionism - ofc you will pursue every clue and possibility to say it never happend, such review is not objective and worth nothing.

    We know about the Romans from other sources than teh Judean angle, we know how they treat defeated enemies, we know about slavery and we know the Judean reballions failed, historians of the time recorded it, we know throu Arch that a very large Judean communitty lived in Rome at about the same period of time, the Romans say they were shipped there as slaves, YOUR angle is they moved there out of free will - or didnt move there at all - Im not sure what you are saying.....

    In any case, how can it be debated that Jews lived in Exile ?, if what you are really after is what happened to the Jews that remained that's a diffrent story not connected to the Diaspora. one story doesnt cancel the other.


    If I killed Million of Muslims, enslaved many, drove a buldozer over Mecca for example and built a Whore house there, also exploded each and every Muslim sacred worship place, made Islam Illegal under death, and place millions of soldiers to keep an eye over Muslims, would you say Muslims left Mecca out of their own free will ? immigrated ? forefitted their rights in free will ?

    I dont think so.

    To the creation of Israel there is much more than historic right but its not the place, we are talking about the diaspora.
     
  16. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    The problem is that the Romans never expelled defeated people. Many, many Jews lived in Rome long before the birth of Christ.
     
  17. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    They destroyed their way of life and made it illegal, they didnt need to actually tie them to horses and drive them beyond the borders.
     
  18. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Maybe I didn't explain it clearly.. The majority of Jewish people lived outside of Palestine before the birth of Christ..
     
  19. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I never say there is a myth of Diaspora, Diaspora merely means a scattering, I am talking about the myth of Exile specifically the myth of forced exile in ce70 and ce135. A diaspora is not unique to the Jews, even an enforced diaspora is not unique to the Jews. What is unique is the idea that this gives someone the right to return 2000 years later and steal the land from the people living there! What we are discussing here is the Diaspora, what actually caused them, what myths have been propagated by them, such as the Christian idea that the Jews were rejected by God which also led to the Christian justification for the persecution of the Jews and ultimately the Holocaust.

    If the destruction of Mecca were to of taken place as you described, I would not call it an exile from Saudi Arabia, forced or otherwise. I would call it an exile from Mecca similar to the way the Jews were apparently exiled from Jerusalem. Would I then go on to contest that this expulsion 2000 years ago gives a right of return to a religious group (specifically Muslims) to Saudi Arabia, to anyone who is a practising Muslim, not just people who can trace their ancestry back to Mecca and at the expense of the current population of Saudi Arabia? No I would not and if I proposed such a ridiculous idea I would expect to be ridiculed.
     
  20. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    The first temple was destryed 500 years before his birth, I dont know about majurity - you need to give evidance here asd well as exact year, "before the birth of Christ" is not a year.
     
  21. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    I disagree on everything you wrote here, facts and conclusions, but this is not the place for it, not every thread should turn into "does Israel has the right to exsist".
     
  22. RiaRaeb

    RiaRaeb Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    How about we agree to disagree about Zionism. Do you think the Jewish Diaspora was solely the result of forced Exile and if so when?
     
  23. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Its easy enough to read about Jewish communities in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Rome and elsewhere.. When they were established etc..
     
  24. Gilos

    Gilos Well-Known Member

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    ofc not, in helenist times many converted and left Judea out of free will, Jews fought Jews till the revolt, today in any case, Jews mainly refer to the last failed revolt against the Romans that really destroyed practiced Judaism and forced them to adjust worship without permenant place, in contrediction to that, today in Israel a new form of Judaism emerged or re-practiced of "National religouos Judaism" which once again regards the place of worship - with/without building a temple that's diffrent approaches among them.
     
  25. klipkap

    klipkap Well-Known Member

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    As promised, here are the results of my reading about the earlier of the many Jewish diasporas:

    Throughout much of Jewish history, most Jews have lived in the Diaspora.
    Unless otherwise stated the source of the history is the BBC documentary that can be watched here: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozbt9bfLiYA
    Diaspora is used here in the sense of a forced expelling of the People from the Holy Land; ‘diaspora’ or Exile is used where there is no credible historiographic evidence for such a forced removal.

    1) The Abrahimic Exile:
    Israel Yuval (Israeli historian): “The Jewish exile was not born after the destruction of the temple. Jewish exile existed since eternity. The Bible is the product of exile. The first thing that God tells Abraham is to leave the land of his ancestors for the Land He will show him. Abraham is the first person to go into exile.

    2) The Assyrian conquest (722 BCE):
    When the Assyrians, ultimately under Sargon II, conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, the Hebrew inhabitants were scattered all over the Middle East; these early victims of the dispersion disappeared utterly from the pages of history. – “The Lost Tribes of Israel”. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Diaspora.html
    The problem is that these accounts of an early ‘diaspora’ date from a period significantly before written record, and are thus not reliable nor complete – see Sidebar below. Genetic studies of sects claiming to belong to the Lost Tribes usually show them to be invalid.

    [Sidebar: When does the Bible become more factually reliable? As Prof. Israel Finkelstein describes in “The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel” and the editor, Brian Schmidt, summarises, “Finkelstein boldly claims that archaeology is the only real-time witness to events described in the biblical text, particularly those relating to the formative phases of early Israelite history. This is so because the biblical text is dominated by theological and ideological themes of the authors and their times.” The historic validity of the details of this ‘diaspora’ is therefore unclear.
    “Finkelstein proposes that biblical history should be read through the filter of its point of departure, which for him is the period of its compilation in late-monarchic times, most likely during the reign of King Josiah—not the later Persian or Hellenistic periods as the minimalists have proposed, or, for that matter, the earlier tenth century as Anglo-American scholarship has traditionally upheld. As the archaeological evidence seems to indicate, this is the period of Judah’s dramatic growth toward full statehood and widespread literacy and, more to the point, it is from this period of Israel’s early history that the biblical traditions can provide the modern historian with the most amount of socio-historical information.” So, Josiah it is and not Hezekiah.]


    3) Babylonian Diaspora: 586 BCE: - This Diaspora (the only verifiable forced one) began with the 6th century BCE conquest of the ancient Kingdom of Judah by Babylon, 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 the Jews to remain in a unified community in Babylon. While Cyrus the Persian allowed the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BCE, most chose to remain in Babylon . http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Diaspora.html

    Therefore, although this was a forced Diaspora, when the Jews were given the option to return to the Promised Land, the majority chose not to, and from then onwards even this Exile became a ‘diaspora’ of own choice.

    Still to come are the Hellenic, 70 AD, Bar Kochva and the Modern diasporas.

    I am starting to see a trend.
     

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