Quotes from David N. Myers

But the Jews were, for much of their existence, a diaspora people. Accordingly, we have to modify our guiding image of Jewish history to include multiple sites scattered over time and place, enabling a wide array of cultural expressions but at the same time mandating the cultivation of an ongoing network of communication and mutual aid.

in the year 1096, European Christians heeded the call of Pope Urban II to liberate Palestine from the hands of the Muslim infidels. On their way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders encountered Rhineland Jewish communities and, without Church warrant, set about to destroy those whom they held responsible for the crime of deicide (the murder of Jesus). A number of Jewish communities (Speyer, Worms, and Mainz) were destroyed, and perhaps as many as thousands of Jews

Related to the trend of expulsion was a third event, the "Black Plague" of the 1340s, the devastating contagion that killed tens of millions of people, diminishing Europe's population by as much as 50 percent. Jews were not only among the victims of the plague. They were also falsely accused of spreading the plague by various means, including by poisoning wells.

In the wake of the Black Death, Ashkenazic Jews pushed eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. It is this large region that would become the heartland of a pious, Yiddish-speaking population, growing from thousands of Jews in the fourteenth century to more than 6 million in 1900 and making it by that point the largest Jewish community in the world several times

Spanish Expulsion and its ripples One of the great disruptions experienced by Jews prior to the modern age occurred in Spain with the Edict of Expulsion in 1492.

yet, the sense of despair did not prevent a large number of Jews from taking leave and creating a new Sephardic diaspora. Initially, the largest group of exiles, perhaps 25,000, made their way to neighboring Portugal, where they stayed until the Portuguese king, son-in-law of Ferdinand and Isabella

Propelled to search for pockets of religious freedom, the Spanish exiles made their way to various corners of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, including Constantinople, Salonika, and Sarajevo. By the mid-sixteenth century, Constantinople had 50,000 Jews, a mix of Spanish exiles, native Jews known as Romaniot, Italians, and Ashkenazim who were organized into scores of religious communities

Spanish exiles also made their way to the northern Palestinian city of Safed, which they transformed into the most populous city in Palestine (with some 7,000 Jews). It was in Safed

One such Protestant setting was the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. It was there that Spanish exiles made their way in the sixteenth century, creating a rich cultural and commercial center. In fact, it was from Amsterdam that Jewish representatives of the Dutch West Indies

Saul's successors, David and Solomon, took two key steps in the tenth century that would leave an indelible imprint on subsequent Jewish history: the creation by King David of a capital for the Israelite tribes in the city known as Jerusalem; and the construction by his son, Solomon, in the mid-tenth century of a Holy Temple, home to worship of the God of Israel and the Ten Commandments

kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, had been united under King Solomon in the tenth century bce, but split apart under his son Rehoboam. This division rendered them vulnerable to attack, as when the Assyrians laid siege to Israel in the late eighth century and the Babylonians to Judah in the early sixth century bce.

openings for regional powers intent on gaining power over the land of Canaan. The Assyrians attacked and laid waste to the northern kingdom in the late eighth century, followed in the sixth century by the assault of the upstart Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar on Judah. In the midst of that later attack in 587–586 bce, Jerusalem and the Holy Temple were destroyed.

538 bce, Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylonia and liberated the exiles. He also permitted the rebuilding of the Temple in 520, a date that inaugurates the Second Temple period in Jewish history. From this point forward, the group once known as Israelites may have been designated as "Jews," a term drawn from the

had been the case with the previous Temple, Jews who were unable or even unwilling to come from distant parts to Jerusalem practiced sacrifice in their own locales. Several hundred years later, in the third century, the first evidence emerges of institutions in which a new form of devotion—prayer—appears. These sites where prayer was practiced were called "synagogues" (Greek for assembly).

scientists, often Jewish themselves, to aver that Jews possess deeply rooted genetic affinities that distinguish them from other groups. These unique properties lead, they claim, to a Jewish proclivity not only toward certain kinds of mental and physical ailments, but also toward a higher-than-average IQ. One of the most prominent researchers of Jewish genetics

They might even speak colloquially and unscientifically of a Jewish "gene," for example, when expressing a measure of pride at the high percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates.

Jews have managed to hold on to a shared sense of history and fate that finds few parallels in history.

amounting to .2 percent of the world's population. Although Jews have been around for thousands of years, they have the same number of members as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which was founded in the nineteenth century. Their survival may well be impressive, but the fact that they have so few members

explanation. Why didn't they accumulate a much larger population?

the core of Jewish biblical scripture are the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy); these books are complemented by nineteen books of prophetic and other writings to round out the Hebrew Bible. The centuries-long process

twin factors that help explain the Jews' survival—antisemitism and assimilation—have also served as constraints on their growth. Over the course of millennia, Jews married into, converted to, and joined other groups, sometimes through coercion and sometimes not, to the point of disappearance.

The sacred text became, as one modern observer noted, a "portable fatherland" for the Jews, especially when there was no Temple standing or when Jews lived far away from the Temple.

shortly after reaching their greatest demographic heights, in 1939, their numbers were tragically reduced by the genocidal Nazi assault from approximately 17 million to 11 million. Today's world Jewish population overwhelmingly

Jews according to the Chief Rabbinate. These debates recall once again the dynamic nature of Jewish identity, so variable because of the constant movement of Jews from locale to