at this point it makes sense to pause and sort of think a little bit about a major transition
that happens in jewish history that really colors the experience of jews and the globe really and
that is of course the diaspora the term diaspora is greek and origin and it means something like
scattering and it refers to the the spreading out of jews into the mediterranean basin and
mesopotamia and eventually throughout the world this has been the jewish experience for the last
2 000 years it's only been dramatically altered with the establishment of the state of israel
in the middle of the 20th century so really we're speaking about the biggest chunk of uh jewish
history in the post-biblical period has been all in diaspora and jews negotiated their reality
politically socially economically and so on as a minority in majority cultures and that certainly
had a lot to say about what kind of people the jews would become now we should note of course
that the term that was used internally within the jewish world at least until the 19th century in
particular was not diaspora which has kind of like a neutral connotation but the word exile
in hebrew galut or in a ashkenazic pronunciation gullis that jews were thrown out of their land
and this is a little bit of a misnomer because although there was tremendous devastation
and suffering in the wake of the destruction of the temple and there was an expulsion of jews
from jerusalem particular they were not actually expelled from the land in the first century like
they were with the uh al so limited population transfers that happened under the assyrians and
the babylonians um they were let's say highly encouraged to leave by the desperate conditions
in some cases there were tens of thousands taking off into slavery but the concept of expelling all
the jews from their land is something that really wasn't you know considered reasonable in the
ancient world at all so there was always a jewish presence within the land of israel sometimes an
incredibly small population but nevertheless jews always did maintain some kind of physical presence
in the land of israel throughout the long two millennia of diaspora however the majority of
the jewish population soon found themselves outside of the boundaries of traditional israel
hence the experience as a galut as an exilation it's worthy pointing out not in this particular
series but just in one sentence that the concept of exile on a theological
level pertains even when the jews have returned to their land and have a state meaning theologically
jews consider themselves still in exile even if they're still living in jerusalem today there is a
concept that until the messiah comes there will be a a diasporic or an exilic condition pertaining to
jewish existence but at any rate let us take some of our time and look at the diaspora in antiquity
both before the destruction of the temple and maybe a little bit after the destruction of
the temple before we move into the medieval period here's a map that gives you a sense of
the diaspora after the barkakba rebellion you'll recall that you know the first roman jewish war
in the year 70 resulted in the destruction of the temple in that year uh and ultimately followed
masada and as we shall see there was a definitely dispersion of jews within israel itself but
the process of jews settling throughout the mediterranean basin and mesopotamia had begun
centuries earlier on this map you see the kind of hatched lines that encircle the mediterranean
refer to the greatest extent of the roman empire which would have been in the early 2nd century
and every dot that represents a city indicates that there was a jewish population
uh after the barakah rebellion in the second century have a look at israel closely here
and you can see that the hatching shows that there was a jewish settlement along the coast
um a little bit towards the northern negev and heavily based in the galil to the north
and also a little bit in the jordan valley on both sides of the river in the perea region as well
but conspicuous by its absence of course is the region around judea which is emptied of jews
because of the roman attacks on the barca rebels and the destruction of jewish villages there a lot
of jewish population moved in particular north to uh to the where the new center would exist
and and jews were in fact banned from jerusalem at this time as well the romans also changed the name
of the land this is when it received the latin term palestina which was intended to refer to the
biblical enemies of the jews in the land of israel the philistines pleased him in hebrew and so
renaming the region palestine was meant to try and you know in terms of cartography wipe israel off
the map so to speak it is ironic of course that the term has been revived as a political term it
has always been a geographic term since the roman empire though jews were also living in mesopotamia
that is this region here framed by the flow of the tigris and euphrates rivers into the persian gulf
we'll look at that in the next lecture and then there's a certain amount of jews who are living
in the italian and in the greek peninsulas and in asia minor as well in the eastern mediterranean
we also have jews who are living in the coast of north africa we looked at one of those
communities in the context of the quitos rebellion a little while ago and there are even jews as far
west as the iberian peninsula and the south of france as well so we're going to look at
all of these however briefly in the next couple of lectures but the main center of the jewish
diaspora at this period of time was undoubtedly egypt a very very important place where jews had
been living literally for centuries there was a long connection between israel and egypt after
the exodus the bible describes many relations between egypt and israel quite often hostile and
quite often not hostile for example king solomon marries an egyptian princess and isaiah refers
to communities in lower egypt jeremiah spends some time there unwillingly as it happens after the
assassination of godalia for whom there is a fast day after rosh hashanah every year since then
this the the jews were primarily concentrated in the southern region in the uh earliest period
um that is down at the bottom you'll see the town elephantine now i always pronounce that by the way
elephantine until i looked a little more carefully and i think it's supposed to be pronounced
elephantine maybe someone in the comments will correct me if i get that wrong this is known as
the upper nile even though it is on the bottom of the map as i think i mentioned to you earlier
the nile of course flows to the north it empties into the mediterranean sea and so therefore
upriver which is south is called the upper nile and down river is the lower nile where you have
you know the cities of cairo and alexandria and so on so there is a very important military a jewish
military colony in elephantine and we're going to look at that in just a second and it may go back
the the roots of that settlement are somewhat under dispute but it may go back as early as
the seventh century before the common era when king monash of judah had relations with egypt and
sent a colony there so let's look a little more carefully at that particular settlement here's
a satellite view of the nile river you can see the green represents obviously the the tremendous
irrigation power of the nile and down at the very south where you see that little red part
there are some cataracts which means that the the river constricts and it it loses its depths and
ships moving toward the north have to find a way to unload their cargo or negotiate the rapids or
put it on the land in a kind of portage situation and so that's a really dangerous spot for
any kind of transition and that's where robbers would lie in weight and so on hence it makes sense
to have some kind of military outpost there now we know a little bit about this community because uh
the records were preserved in papyri and in austria right those clay bits of clay shards
we know that the jews had a temple there uh and it's interesting that that they would have some
kind of temple because after all the bible is pretty clear about you know prohibiting
any other temples outside of jerusalem but there were actually three other temples in existence
in the pre-destruction the second temple period we have one in shechem which is nablus
and modern terminology and in samaria that would be the samaritan temple of course which regular
judahite jews would not consider um of course valid the arakalamir in jordan and leontopolis
which would be in egypt under uh chonya this is he's referred to as chonya in the talmud
uh onais the fourth so there what is going on in those temples is fascinating but a little bit
beyond our area of exploitation today uh we have in these records some interesting records of women
for example uh here's my chance to to fill in the blocks and check off the kranjac test uh we have
one very wealthy woman who uh owns several homes and things like that her name is mibtakia which
seems to be related to the word batach meaning to to trust to have faith in god she was married
three times first to a jewish soldier and then apparently to two type of construction engineers
or maybe architects they're called builders maybe there were local quarries or something in the
region not clear another fascinating archive refers to a man named ananya who was a temple
official jewish who married an egyptian slave named tamut tamut is definitely not a hebrew name
because in hebrew the word tamut means she will die right that's probably not a good name for
your daughter so the fact that he's marrying an egyptian slave is in itself bizarre but you
also see from the documents that in fact he wasn't even completely married to her in a jewish sense
uh that it was certainly does not follow any of the uh the laws as described in the
talmud because she was simultaneously owned by a different man her master someone named mushullam
which is also a jewish name um and he in fact owned their son whose name was pilti if ananya
were to default in the relationship and ask for a divorce then mushullah the owner of the slave
woman will get the child the whole thing is really bizarre also interesting though again
pretty much in contradiction to jewish law tamut could just start a divorce on her own which is
something that rabbinic law does not permit lots more to say about that i hope to come back to it
in maybe the medieval period when we look at women and jewish law
at any rate fascinating details about families and existence in elephantine and there's even
some fascinating archaeological discoveries of the actual site of the temple itself
another major center of jewish settlement in egypt and the early diaspora is alexandria
which of course is a big city today in the western part of the nile delta you can see
where it is here right on the coast the jews of alexandria go back centuries and centuries
in the third century before the common era jews were involved in translating the bible into greek
making it available to the broader mediterranean society this had an incredibly influential
role in promulgating the ideas of judaism and was especially influential in the early church
you know there's a funny story about the how the septuagint was written according to the legend um
70 rabbis were brought in and they were all put in 70 different rooms and given the bible and
and told to translate it and they all came out and compared what they had done and they had
all written the exact same translation they had all essentially agreed with each other
rabbi hutner who was a very important roshiva in america he liked to joke that you call that
a miracle that's not a miracle if you get 70 rabbis together and you put them in one room
and ask them to agree on anything that's a miracle right anyways i thought that was fine by the first
century jews were quite numerous in alexandria and they had one neighborhood which was specifically
the jewish neighborhood and they had a second one out of five neighborhoods that they were
populating as well but there was a significant amount of controversy with the local greek
population you recall that you know alexander the great has swept through the entire region and had
established all kinds of new norms and new cities alexandria alexander that's not a coincidence
and uh there are a lot of people who had privileges under the greek regime under tome
but when the romans came uh they were not happy with the displacement that occurred as a result of
uh new management jews on the other hand saw it as a potential for them to increase their status and
their privileges in a new society and so jews actually welcomed the roman armies when they
arrived in the middle of the first century before the common era we have a fascinating description
of a major upheaval against the jews in the year 38 which some have called actually the
first pogrom this was recorded by the philosopher philo very important jewish thinker of the era who
you know approached the bible primarily in the greek sense with the septuagint
filo was extremely important in introducing a new philosophical way to understand the bible
he did not get that much traction in the jewish tradition he did not write in hebrew he wrote
in greek and many of his ideas were really quite contrary to much of what the rabbis were talking
about but nevertheless extremely influential once again on the christian tradition uh not so much
on the jewish tradition at any rate he describes this first upheaval as the result of the tensions
between the greek and the jewish populations in the city that were exacerbated in particular
when king agrippa the first you remember him he ruled in the uh the middle of the uh
the first century for a few years and he visited the region jews locally asked him if he would
maybe intercede with his friends in rome on their behalf um he chose unwisely to have a kind of a
gaudy parade through the town of alexandria and the greek rivals of the jews actually mounted
sort of like a mock counter parade in which they openly made fun of a grip of the first
and uh sure enough it eventually translated into violence against the jews the local procurator
who had his own issues with rome even though he was a roman official there was a change of of the
guard in rome and he was concerned about his own position and he decided to take the side of the
greeks and he ordered among other things that the jews should be limited to one neighborhood
not the two and the the forced concentration of jews into one of those two neighborhoods which
some would argue actually constituted the the world's first ghetto interesting idea um was also
occasioned by significant anti-jewish violence and attacks on synagogues which was really an
unusual thing for the ancient world synagogues were generally considered you know places where
you should not transgress and you should respect the um the various ritual worship of other groups
but this was one of those occasions where that was ignored the new emperor however laid down the
law and established the status quo ante where the jews were you know um mollified but there would be
yet again violence in the year 66 probably in connection with the roman jewish war
that exploded in that year so that's just a look very quickly at alexandria and as a
whole egypt played a very important role in the early diaspora thank you very much for watching