**While NVHC’s building is closed, this class will take place online. Please see your daily email or email info@nvhcreston.org for more information.**
When they speak of communities outside the Land of Israel, historians of the Jewish people distinguish between the “Diaspora” (a Greek word meaning dispersion), and the forced exile of the Jews from their homeland (Galut or Golah in Hebrew), such as after the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE, or after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Regardless of the term we use, for most of the past two thousand years the vast majority of Jews in the world have lived outside of the Land of Israel—a pattern that is now changing, with more Jews now in the modern State of Israel than any other country. This course will take an in-depth look at a number of Diaspora communities from the Middle Ages to the present, under both Islam and Christianity: Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland, Russia/the USSR, Brazil and Argentina, as well as a brief discussion of the Jews of China and India. We will look at demography/migrations, religious life, and the intersection of Jewish history/culture/languages with the national cultures, societies, economies and politics of the lands they have inhabited.
