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The Jewish Diaspora
Diaspora, in the sense not only of a physical scattering of a people far from their original homeland, but also in the sense of a greater or lesser separation of that people from those they lived among, is probably the central experience of the Jewish people. Diaspora begins early in Jewish history with the conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BCE and the forced deportation of Jews to the territory of modern Iran. It continued, alternating between periods of military defeats and forced deportations and voluntary immigration motivated by a search for better opportunities, throughout antiquity until by the beginning of the first century CE. More than five-sixths of the Jewish population lived outside of Judea with large and wealthy communities in Alexandria, Cyrene (Libya), Cyprus, and Rome itself.
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