Quotes from David N. Myers

Accounts of how many residents were sent into exile in Babylonia diverge. The Book of Jeremiah (53: 28–30) writes of 4,600 men, making for an estimated total of 18,000; meanwhile, the Second Book of Kings refers to 8,000 to 10,000 men, for a total population of 40,000.

Judah were settled in Babylonia in 586, where they developed new rituals that allowed them to survive the absence of the Temple. In fact, because of their rapid absorption of Babylonian culture, only a minority of the exiles opted to return to Jerusalem when afforded the opportunity

establishing fixed racial hierarchies, such as the German composer Richard Wagner in Judaism in Music (1850) and the French diplomat Arthur de Gobineau in Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855).

purity of blood" statutes introduced in the city of Toledo in 1449. The intent of these statutes was to separate "Old Christians" from "New Christians" (i.e., converted Jews), who were rendered ineligible for public office.

Thereafter, however, the rabbis, in response to the rise of Christianity, adopted a skeptical view of conversion; they now insisted on ascertaining the sincerity of the prospects' desires to join Judaism, as well as on warning them against the risks of belonging to a small and often persecuted people. In related and characteristic fashion, they rewrote the

The Hasmonean practice of conversion expanded the Jewish population of the kingdom significantly during an eighty-year reign that ended with the Roman conquest of Palestine in 63 bce. The capital, Jerusalem, grew rapidly as the city gained new stature as a bustling urban environment.

that the two key factors converge. Assimilation, understood in the idiosyncratic sense above, ensured ongoing cultural vitality, allowing Jews to survive for millennia in a variety of settings beyond their homeland. Antisemitism, meanwhile, guaranteed that the path of Jews to full integration was frequently blocked. Unlikely as it may seem, these two forces have interacted, allowing Jews to persist, when many other groups faded.

Already in antiquity, Jews had developed a romance with cities, whose size offered them a range of religious, economic, and social opportunities that smaller rural locales did not. In the Middle Ages, Jews played an important role as agents sent by host

romance continued well into the modern age, during which Jews have exhibited a hyper-urban tendency, making their way to major cities both to escape from and to affirm their connection to fellow Jews. The proclivity of Jews for cities was grounded in a mix of factors: the presence of diverse commercial opportunities, the sense of

Alexander the Great established the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which become the world center of Hellenistic culture. It was also the site of the largest Jewish urban concentration in the world in antiquity; estimates range from 500,000 to 1 million Jewish residents in the first century ce. Alexandria was not only significant in demographic terms. It was also a site

the behest of the Roman Empire, Jews commenced a migratory movement westward from the Middle East to Europe that continued over the first millennium of the Common Era. A particularly notable community of Jews arose in the imperial capital of Rome. The first-century Jewish historian

Josephus writes of a delegation of 8,000 Roman Jews—out of a likely total Jewish population of 40,000—who received an audience with the Emperor Augustus in 4 ce.

Jerusalem, as the site of the Second Holy Temple, had grown dramatically since Hasmonean times, boasting a Jewish population of perhaps a half million out of an overall population in Palestine that ranged between 1 and 2.5 million. Josephus reported that the

the Temple's destruction did not end a Jewish presence in Palestine, neither did it create the Jewish diaspora. Communities had been developing outside of the land of Israel for centuries, especially in the Middle

One noteworthy source of distinction is that the Jewish population declined precipitously from around 1 ce to 1500 ce; the decline, which may have reduced the Jewish population from 4.5 million to 1 million people, was due to a mix of factors; disease, war, mass persecution, and forced conversion.

Christianity and declare it a tolerated religion in 312–313 ce. At that point, the growing theological animosity with Judaism became official imperial policy. What followed were centuries of tense relationships among Jews, Christian rulers, priests, and the general populace, with real consequences

The second key event was the rise, in the first third of the seventh century ce, of Islam. Similar to the case of Constantine, the fledgling Islamic movement both married religious and political interests

From the seventh century, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish world, some estimates are as high as 90 percent, resided in Muslim lands.

Hitler formalized the racial distinctions between Aryans and Jews at a Nazi Party meeting in Nuremberg in 1935, which produced a highly detailed scheme of racial classification that became a platform for mass murder. In light of this history, one approaches claims of racial

northern France and Rhineland Germany that may or may not have reflected an actual encounter. In any event, it was in this part of Europe that, according to most scholars, Ashkenazic Jewry originated. It is somewhat mysterious

too is the precise path of Jews to this region of Europe. In all likelihood, the forebears of medieval Ashkenazim began their path in the ancient Middle East, most likely Palestine (but perhaps also Babylonia)

journeying over the course of a millennium through North Africa and Italy before ascending to Germany.

genetic researchers have formulated the rather startling thesis that while Ashkenazic males likely derived from the Middle East, Ashkenazi women came from Europe. This suggests that Jewish men migrated to Europe, where they married local women who were not born Jewish but converted and

In 1700, the largest number of Jews in the world, more than a half million out of 1.1 million, lived in eastern Europe. From this point forward, the Jewish population in eastern Europe would grow exponentially over the next two and a third centuries until the Holocaust.