Jewish history

In the following millennia, the diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (Central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa).

[12][13] Byzantine rule over the Levant was lost in the 7th century as the newly established Islamic Caliphate expanded into the Eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and later into the Iberian Peninsula.

Economic crises, racial antisemitic laws, and a fear of an upcoming war led many to flee from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, to the United States and to the Soviet Union.

In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Final Solution began, an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people, and resulting in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa.

Surrounded by ancient seats of culture in Egypt and Babylonia, by the deserts of Arabia, and by the highlands of Asia Minor, the land of Canaan (roughly corresponding to modern Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, and Lebanon) was a meeting place of civilizations.

[58] The destruction was followed by a mass exile: the surviving inhabitants of the city, including other segments of the population, were carried off to Mesopotamia,[58] marking the onset of the era known in Jewish history as the "Babylonian Captivity".

[citation needed] According to the Book of Ezra, Persian Cyrus the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire, brought an end to the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE,[60] a year after his conquest of Babylon.

Triggered by anti-Jewish decrees from Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes and tensions between Hellenized and conservative Jews, the Maccabean Revolt erupted in Judea in 167 BCE under the leadership of Mattathias.

According to Rabbinic tradition, Yohanan ben Zakkai secured permission from the Romans to establish a center for Torah study in Yavneh, which then served as a focal point for Jewish religious and cultural life for a generation.

[86][87] The Sadducees and Essenes, two prominent sects in the late Second Temple period, faded into obscurity,[82] while the traditions of the Pharisees, including their halakhic interpretations, the centrality of the Oral Torah, and belief in resurrection became the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

These Hellenised Jews were affected by the diaspora only in its spiritual sense, absorbing the feeling of loss and homelessness that became a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much supported by persecutions in various parts of the world.

[97] Driven by messianic fervor and hopes for the ingathering of exiles and the reconstruction of the Temple, these communities may have sought to spark a broader movement possibly aimed at returning to Judea and rebuilding Jerusalem.

[citation needed] The province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina as a punitive act against the Jews, aimed at placating non-Jewish residents and erasing Jewish historical ties to the land.

In 363, not long before Julian left Antioch to launch his campaign against Sasanian Persia, in keeping with his effort to foster religions other than Christianity, he ordered the Jewish Temple rebuilt.

The Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) control of the region was finally lost to the Muslim Arab armies in 637 CE, when Umar ibn al-Khattab completed the conquest of Akko.

The Geonim (Hebrew: גאונים) were the presidents of the two great rabbinical colleges of Sura and Pumbedita, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the worldwide Jewish community in the early medieval era, in contrast to the Resh Galuta (Exilarch) who wielded secular authority over the Jews in Islamic lands.

At about the same time, the Jewish academy at Tiberius began to collate the combined Mishnah, braitot, explanations, and interpretations developed by generations of scholars who studied after the death of Judah HaNasi.

The Muslim Caliphate ejected the Byzantines from the Holy Land (or the Levant, defined as modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few years of their victory at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636.

This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time.

The twelfth century Jewish narration from R. Solomon ben Samson records that crusaders en route to the Holy Land decided that before combating the Ishmaelites they would massacre the Jews residing in their midst to avenge the crucifixion of Christ.

By 1300, the friars and local priests staged the Passion Plays during Holy Week, which depicted Jews (in contemporary dress) killing Christ, according to Gospel accounts.

Perhaps a quarter of a million Conversos thus were gradually absorbed by the dominant Catholic culture, although those among them who secretly practiced Judaism were subject to 40 years of intense repression by the Spanish Inquisition.

In the 16th century especially, the Jews were the most prominent under the millets, the apogee of Jewish influence could arguably be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to Sanjak-bey (governor, a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of the island of Naxos.

[170] At the time of the Battle of Yarmuk when the Levant passed under Muslim Rule, thirty Jewish communities existed in Haifa, Sh'chem, Hebron, Ramleh, Gaza, Jerusalem, and many in the north.

The last ban on Jewish residency in a European nation was revoked in 1654, but periodic expulsions from individual cities still occurred, and Jews were often restricted from land ownership, or forced to live in ghettos.

The emphasis on the Immanent Divine presence in everything gave new value to prayer and deeds of kindness, alongside Rabbinic supremacy of study, and replaced historical mystical (kabbalistic) and ethical (musar) asceticism and admonishment with optimism, encouragement, and daily fervour.

This form of antisemitism held that Jews were a separate and inferior race from the Aryan people of Western Europe, and led to the emergence of political parties in France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary that campaigned on a platform of rolling back emancipation.

Economic crises, racial Anti-Jewish laws, and fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe and settle in Palestine, the United States and the Soviet Union.

[173][better source needed] Following the King David Hotel bombing, Chaim Weizmann, president of the WZO appealed to the movement to cease all further military activity until a decision would be reached by the Jewish Agency.

The war ended in 1949 and Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world, notably Arab countries.