Nadene Goldfoot
The 1st significant Migration we have experience was the Exodus. Jacob's family of 70 had migrated to Egypt during a dry famine year and stayed. Their sheep multiplied and so did their numbers, enough to have scared the Egyptians who took them all as slaves. They left 400 years later with the Prince of Egypt, Moses, who discovered his birth mother was an Israelite, so at the age of 80, he became their leader back to Canaan where Jacob had come from. It's like they had been in a time capsule. Things had changed over the 400 years and they needed such a leader. It took the 40 years to arrive back home by moving 600,000 former slaves. The older ones had died out and the younger ones did not have the slave mentality. They wanted to see their new world. (Ten Commandments, movie, is an oldie but the best to watch.)
Probably the very first migration was probably in 1900 BCE; but could just be classified as a very long hike by 4 people. Migrations are usually done with a lot of people. Remembered in our Torah was Terah, Abram, Sarai and Lot traveling from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran of 700 miles, and even at that they hadn't settled down. However, at this point the group was not classified as Jewish. That would happen later, with Jacob's 12 sons, of which one was called Judah, because Abram was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father of Jacob, and they were all a part of the tribe of Judah. People of Judah were later called Jews. A man of today actually made this trip but alas, it cannot be repeated today because of the present political and terrorist position of the Middle East. Yes, Abram and Sarai probably had their own brand of backpacks. I do hope they hiked with a camel or mule for the tents.
The Assyrian kidnapping of the 10 Tribes of Israel, the northern part of Israel, must have been the very first migration. We hadn't known what had happened to them, and are just now discovering that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India were from this group of Israelites following the laws of Moses. The kingdom of Judah remained after the civil war divide after king Solomon's death in 933 BCE was the name the people took; the Jewish people. Some Benjaminites were in the mix, too.
3. Therefore, the first mass migration of the Jewish people was the wholesale deportation to Babylonia from Jerusalem at the close of the 1st Temple Period, followed by the voluntary return from exile about 70 years later.
4. In 2nd Temple times, perhaps starting in 538 BCE; (515 BCE-70 CE), there was a considerable movement of Jewish population, partly compulsory and partly voluntary, from Mesopotamia into Asia Minor and from Eretz Yisrael to Egypt, where a great Jewish settlement was built up. They dared to return. Why? They were no longer slaves. Now, maybe just business could take place.
Arch of Titus in Rome showing Jewish prisoners from Jerusalem in 70 CE carrying goods from 2nd Temple for Romans. Romans had also burned down Jerusalem.
5. Later, when Judah, the southern part of Israel, came under Roman rule, the deportation of prisoners of war and the voluntary migration of merchants resulted in the establishment of an important Jewish center in Italy. Rome had a large Jewish population. Many Romans were converting to Judaism. The first ghetto was created in Venice, Italy. (In 1516, on a swampy Venetian island, originally the site of a foundry, the Ghetto Nuovo was established 505 years ago).
A. From Palestine in Jerusalem to Southern Italy, and thence over the Alps into France and Germany
B. From the Byzantine Empire up the valley of the Danube into Central Europe
C. From Mesopotamia and Egypt under the Arabs, through Morocco into Spain.
It was then that between 500 and 1000 CE that the balance of the Jewish population was gradually transferred from the Middle East to Western Europe.
Later, the attractions of trade on the one hand and persecution and, ultimately, expulsion on the other, drove the mass of Western European Jewry eastward again from Northern Europe into Poland; and from Spain mainly from 1492 largely to the Ottoman Empire.
7. The Chimielnicki massacres in Poland in 1648-1649 coinciding in date with the emergence of more favorable psychological and economic conditions in Western Europe, resulted in large-scale westward migration which, to a great extent, conditioned Jewish history in the 17th-18th centuries. The insurgency was accompanied by mass atrocities committed by Cossacks against the civilian population, especially against the Roman Catholic clergy and the Jews.
Jewish migrations differed from that of other peoples in its motivations and its proportions which far exceeded those of general migratory movements in the modern world.
In other national migrations, economic factors have generally been decisive, but Jewish migration has generally been that of refugees.
More recently, the voluntary return to Zion has been a new factor.
There have been 3 main epochs of migration in our history. 
1. From the destruction of the 2nd Temple until the 19th century, when Jews moved under the pressure of persecution and expulsion.
2. From the 1880's to world War I; a period of free migration, chiefly to the USA caused by anti-Semitism and economic factors.
3. From the 1920's onward, characterized by western restrictions on immigration and its consequent global dispersal, contrasting with the migration to Israel, now the chief country absorbing Jewish migrants .
Table 1 Total Jewish Migration from 1881 to 1951
1881--1914 2,370,000.
1919--1932 759,970. End of WWI, beginning of WWII
1933--1951 1,551,440 WWII, HOLOCAUST to regaining families
Table 2 Immigration to Palestine/Israel
1881--1914 50,000 (5 Aliyot movements to Palestine) caused by pogroms, etc.)
1919--1932 125,250
1933--1948 389,055
1938--1951 678,116
The major migration of Jews since 1970 has been from the USSR from where some 600,000 migrated. About 75% of these went to Israel and most of the remainder to the US. I was in Hebrew classes with many in 1980 in Haifa, Israel.
The chief results of recent Jewish migration have been the shifting of the center of gravity of Jewish life from Eastern Europe to the American continent and the state of Israel. Israel's population is now 9,291,000 where 6, 870,000 are Jews which is 74% of the population. Remember, it was created to be a Jewish state. The USA's Jewish population is about 7 million, so the 2 countries are about equal.
When considering the enlarged Jewish population – that is, including individuals with partial Jewish heritage – the order of these nations changes a bit. Based on estimates from 2017, the United States has the largest enlarged Jewish population with an estimated 10 million people. Israel comes in second with an enlarged Jewish population of 6.8 million. Again, these are the only two nations with populations that exceed 1 million. Estimates show that almost 10 million Jewish people live in the United States, with a majority living in New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey. Jews in the USA make up 2% of the population .
Other nations with significant Jewish populations include:
- France
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Argentina
- Russia
- Germany
- Australia
- Brazil
- South Africa
- Ukraine
- Hungary
- Mexico
- World-wide,, we Jews make up about 1/2 of 1% of the world population, about 14 million to 16 million of us.
Right now we're looking at an abundance of anti-Semitism in the States.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-it-welcomes-in-2021-israels-population-numbers-9291000/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/jewish-population-by-country
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/03/understanding-the-venetian-ghetto-from-a-historical-and-literary-perspective/#:~:text=In%201516%2C%20on%20a%20swampy,was%20established%20500%20years%20ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment