Jewish diaspora (Ajax)

The Jewish diaspora refers to the dispersion of the Jews from their homeland in Yisrael over the millennia. The first major diaspora was the enslavement and dispersion of the ten tribes in the 1st millennium BCE by the Neo-Aradian Empire. This was followed by the next major upheaval during the Latin destruction of the Second Temple and the subsequent uprisings in the first century CE. Starting in the early modern period and escalating during the Era of Great Nationalism globally (1850-1950), there was a mass immigration to Yisrael. In the 1960s, statisticians estimated that well over a majority of world Jewry resided in Yisrael versus the diaspora.

In contrast, Jews who have lived continuously in the succession of states before and up to Yisrael (or subsequently permanently moved to Yisrael) are referred to as "Yisraeli Jews."

History

Era of Great Nationalism

Main articles: Law of Return (Yisrael), Pan-nationalism in West Scipia, and West Scipian Contention

List of Jews by country and region

Northern Belisaria and Ghant

Ottonian Jews

Main articles: Ottonian Jews, Schism among Allamunnic Jews, and Liberal Reformed Judaism

Jewish merchants and traders are reported to have reached Ottonia in the early-mid medieval period, settling in many coastal cities and eventually establishing communities throughout what would become modern Ottonia. Conditions in Ottonia were varied, as Jews often faced hostility from Fabrian Catholic regions while they faced a more welcome but theologically-challenged entry in majority-pagan areas. Some scholars believe Ottonia was the setting-off point for Jews making their way to nearby Ghant.

Trade in the Sea of Ghant and the Nordic Sea was often very profitable in the medieval and early modern eras, and many mercantile Ottonian Jewish families gained tremendous wealth in the process. This tended to garner jealousy from Allamunnic elites and commoners alike, especially in the Christian south. Jewish communities faced some scrutiny from Ottonian leaders and occasional violence. This subsumed to a degree during the 18th and 20th centuries, as Ottonia itself underwent a pagan revivalism in the north, nationalist ferment, and modernization. In the 19th century, Liberal Reformed Judaism, influenced by pagan and Fabrian concepts, emerged from more liberal quarters of urban Ottonian Jewry, sparking the Allamunnic Jewish schism.

In the decades following this as the turn of the century hit, generations of internal religious strife among Ottonian Jewry over these theological matters, coinciding with decades of general conflict and political tumult as Ottonia unified into a single country, eventually prompted an exodus of many traditionally-religious Ottonian Jews to Yisrael, brought back by worsening conditions in Ottonia and convinced by nationalist campaigns sent by the Kingdom of Yisrael. After the first half of the 20th century, many traditionalist Ottonian Jews made common cause with the royalists and moved to what is now South Ottonia and Sudmark while the mainstay of the Jewish community, most of whom embraced Liberal Reformism, stayed rooted in North Ottonia.

Ghantish Jews

Ghant has a small Jewish community of under 20,000, including an expatriate community of Yisraeli Jews in Ghant. It is largely centered in Ghish, with several smaller communities in Dakmoor and some of the northern regions. Owing to the nearby inter-religious squabbles, the Ghantish Jewish community is split between more secular liberal Liberal Reformed Judaism (approximately 60%) and the more traditional Orthodox Judaism (40%). The Liberal-Reformed Jews have prompted interfaith dialogue with Ghantish pagans in recent decades, often admiring Old Laws (pagan)-influenced notions of honor, chivalry, and environmentalism.

Jews have resided in Ghant since at least the 12th century, according to Imperial Family records. Private Jewish financiers have appeared to fund at least in part many Ghantish royal dynasties for centuries. More modernly in 1890, the Ghantish Imperial Family took a large loan from the Royal Bank of Yisrael, after seeking advice from Ghantish Jewish courtiers.

Although Ghantish public life is largely free and open, there have been incidents by some Ghantish of far-right Catholic persuasions who are pro-Sydalene Christian terrorists in Yisrael and have used political violence on their fellow Ghantish Jewish citizens. The Ghantish government has vowed to put an end to these occasional incidents.

Western Belisaria

Arthuristan Jews

Main articles: Arthuristan Jews and Arthurista-Yisrael relations

Latinic world

There have been a continuous set of long-lived of Jewish communities in south-central Belisaria in areas which have historically have been politically and culturally under the dominance of Latium. These areas saw their maximum Jewish populations in the first several centuries CE after the Latin destruction of the Second Temple and the enslavement and dispersion of Jews from ancient Yisrael in the decades after that cataclysmic event. By the early medieval period, Jews in these regions (particularly in Garza) often came under prolonged attack by Fabrian Catholic authorities and allied figures and movements, being targets for conversion, common uproar over the Jewish allowance of usury to non-Jews, being specially taxed or restricted, among other actions. Many of these communities hollowed out as Jewish families, whether with resources or without, fled north and east.

A notable exception to this trend has been Gelonia, where the Christian population was usually more tolerant of its Jewish communities, especially in the modern period. After its independence in 1950, anti-semitism has been few and far between, and those events or rhetoric critical of its Jewry has been routinely denounced by Gelonian political and social leaders.

For centuries, there has always been a deep-seated Jewish community in Latium, with a number of wealthy families in politics, commerce, finance, and industry. This population was viewed with some mistrust and extra scrutiny during the West Scipian Contention as the government and many Latins perceived these Jews as potentially disloyal fifth-columnists, leading to occasional abuse or violence. However, in the post-Yarden period, Jews throughout the Latin world, including Latium and Garza, have see their position solidify and many of their numbers utilized by their governments to inform thinking on relations with Yisrael and other matters.

Hellenic world

There have been a continuous, albeit smaller number of Jewish communities in south-central Belisaria in areas who historically have been politically and culturally under the dominance of Lihnidos and its greater Hellenic influence. In antiquity, the region held much more numerous Jewish populations.

Kulpalnitsan world

Consisting of central and eastern Belisaria centered around civilizations and polities around Lake Kulpalnitsa; in late medieval period and early modernity, the region featured one of the largest Jewish populations in Belisaria at its time and influenced major Jewish religious thought and religious movements, several of whom persist to this day in Yisrael.

Polnitsan Jews

A border region which has been ruled by varying empires and kingdoms for centuries (currently apart of Garima), the first Jewish presence in Polnitsa was recorded as bring a Jewish cemetery in Modbrjoh dating to the late 9th century CE. An oral history from a prominent Jewish family with ties to the Polnitsan Grand Dukes recounts that a group of Jewish refugees fleeing from Garza in the mid-9th century found refuge and safety under the protection of an unnamed local lord. Unlike in many other areas, besides pursuing commerce and trade, many early Jewish residents engaged in agriculture and wine-making.

The High Middle Ages was a violent and dangerous time in the western Kulpalnitsa, with the area of modern Polnitsa switching back and forward as a border territory among several powerful kingdoms, as well as increased intra-religious fervor and conflict between Fabrian Catholics and Docetic and Alban Christians. Jews faced numerous campaigns of suppression and pogroms, many times from Fabrians, other times from Alban or Docetic powers who feared that the Jewish communities were not sufficiently loyal.

The Polnitsan Jewish population peaked in the 16th century, having been in a long decline in the centuries since. The emergence of the Grand Dukes led to the development by local Jewish leaders of politically-savvy rabbis and businessmen who became known as "court Jews," who became trusted advisors of friendly Grand Dukes, who in turn personally ensured the protection of the Jewish community from other domestic forces.

In the early modern period of the 16th through 18th centuries, the major theological schools of modern Jewish religious thought emerged in the Greater Polnitsa area. The Litvaks or Litvish and the Chassidim, rival philosophies, both emerged in close proximity in what is modern Polnitsa, northeastern Garima, and far southwestern Ostrozava. Jews in northeastern Garima, especially the regions of Tungria and Milcenia, faced brutal pogroms and restrictive policies historically for centuries, causing long-term despair. The Litvish emphasized sitting and learning in yeshivos to understand and perfect the observance of halacha as the ideal Jewish pursuit. In opposition to this strict and insular yeshiva legalism and in reaction to the emotional turmoil of frequent Tungrian Fabrian attacks and massacres, the Baal Shem Tov and his movement spread like wildfire at the turn of the 18th century, sparking vehement reactions from the Litvish rabbinic leadership. Many of the Jewish common folk, especially farmers in Tungria-Milcenia, joined the Baal Shem Tov movement and his growing ideas of Chasidus. At various times, the Yeshivish and their baalebatim (working businessmen) allies drew in the Polnitsan Grand Dukes and other local lords to suppress the growing Chassidish movement, leading to more intra-Jewish strife and even occasional violence between the followers of both movements.

The Litvish were centered in yeshivos in what is modern-day Rheigen in Ostrozava, with the major yeshivos established in Wittenburg and Bettingstatt. The Litvish dominated Jewry in far southwest Ostrozava and parts of northern and eastern modern-day Polnitsa. The Chasidim were more strong in western and southern modern Polnitsa as well as in Tungria-Milcenia. Between the 1690s and 1810s, both hashkafic (religious-philosophical) camps remained largely apart and at odds, except during anti-Semitic attacks by gentiles. As the Arthuristan Illumination made its way eastward across Belisaria, these ideological differences faded as both the Litvish and Chassidim started to unite in reaction to modernity and its anti-religious and nationalistic tumult. Numerous Jews in the Greater Polnitsan area became to be impacted by such new thinking, and many joined non-Jewish political and social movements, especially in Ostrozava.

In the late 19th century, many Polnitsan Jews, like other Kulpalnitsan populations, made aliya to Yisrael. A population under 200,000 was recorded around the year 1900. The 20th and early 21st century saw the continued exodus of Polnitsan Jewry, with many in what was considered "South Polnitsa" pre-2005 increasingly sending their children to learn in Yisraeli yeshivos, and later following their children to live in and emigrate to Yisrael. The last major emigration was in the aftermath of the 2005 Polnitsan War, whereas a population of 80,000-100,000 chassidish Jews living ghettoized and insular from the Polnitsan non-Jewish community in North Polnitsa made mass aliyah to Yisrael.

Ostrozavan Jews

The lands of modern-day Ostrozava were first settled by Jewish traders and refugees from western and southern Belisaria by the 10th century. The fertile and wide expanse of these lands attracted many farmers and small businessmen. The first centuries were uneven in terms of Jewish settlement, as the Christian Wars of Religion between Fabrians and Albans and Docetics often uprooted communities in the midst of wars, regime change, and changing early-modern borders among the northern Kulpalnitsan polities.

During the Eastern Renaissance, the Jewish population had swelled to several million, the largest concentration of Jews in Belisaria at the time. During this period of general tolerance and economic prosperity, Ostrozavan Jews became wealthier, established multi-generational businesses and properties, and entered Ostrozav Christian society through business and finance. As time went on, shifting Kulpalnitsan geopolitics and religious populations sparked a turn away from tolerance and Ostrozavan Jewry increasingly faced increased taxes, expulsions from certain cities and towns, ghettoization within permitted cities, forced conversions (usually in Fabrian-majority areas such as southern Rheigen), and hostility from local and regional rulers. This increased significantly during the rise of Vykopal dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Vykopal era saw intra-Jewish relations between Litvaks and Chasidim paper over and unify, as the Vykopal Ostrozavs steadily forced Karminian Christianity and, desperate for new funds for its wars and royal court opulence, specially taxed Jewish communities more and more heavier. After the establishment of the Kingdom of Yisrael in the 1710s, a number of wealthier Ostrozavan Jews risked long voyages to emigrate to the new state through ships departing from Drevstran.

By the early 1800s, repression by the Ostrozavan state was sufficient that at least 1.3 million Jews emigrated to Yisrael between 1790-1840, the last major wave of aliyah before the 1850s. Between 1850-1875, another 2.8 million Ostrozavan Jews made aliyah and left, transiting Drevstran or Garima. In the late 19th century, facing a brain drain of Jews, most of them taking their wealth and their skilled labor with them, the Vykopals faced some financial difficulties as the taxable base of Jews shrunk significantly as well as the loss of favored Jewish financiers and other "court Jews." Paring this with geopolitical needs, Vykopal Ostrozava established relations with Yisrael and as part of the normalization between both states, the Ostrozavans significantly reduced their restrictive anti-Jewish policies. However by this point, the Ostrozavan Jewry had been hollowed out and was a shadow of its former self, with a census registering a mere 600,000 Jews in 1900 from estimated nearly 6 million in the period of 1350-1500 CE.

A smaller wave of Jews left during the Crimson Revolution, although at least one leader of Karsko University Drinking Club was Jewish and had promised equality and more freedoms under revolutionary rule. Many of the remaining Jews secularized and assimilated into general Ostrozavan society, and Jewish life dwindled precipitously. A trickle of Jews kept emigrating to Yisrael until the 1980s, with a final small boost of some of the remaining Orthodox traditionalists who left after the post-Yarden peace in the mid-late 1970s.

In the 2000 census, the Jewish population numbered under 100,000, and many of these are nonpracticing and only identify ethnically as Jewish.

Drevstranese Jews

(WIP)

It is suspected that communities of Kulpanitsan Jews settled in the Alban Pentapolis during the late 9th century and early 10th, around the same time as communities established themselves across the lake's shores by following regional trade networks. The Barbellon Jewish ghetto is documented to have existed by the time the city became a protectorate of the Kingdom of Getmaria.

In 1294, Saul I, the Lushyodokorran, conquered the Pentapolis. Governance concerning Jews in the five cities would not be changed until the Emendatic Wars. The Barbellon Vespers of 1318 notably targeted both the Docetics and Jewish communities of the Pentapolis. Many of the survivors fled to the Lushyodorstag for protection. At the end of the war, only a fraction of the Jewish population would return to the abandoned ghettos. Many instead participated in the 6th wave of settlement of the Mrenzentag organized by the Lushs. Of the dozen of settlements created during this campaign, four were recorded as having been built centered around a synagogue instead of a Docetic school.

Agricultural Jewish communities would remain a feature of the Lushyodorstag northern regions for centuries to come. Multi-generational vintners and distilleries have produced a range of kosher fruit brandies such as plum brandy, apricot brandy, and cherry brandy for at least five centuries until the present; fruit brandy exports account for a sizable share of modern Drevstran's imports into Yisrael.

Norumbia

Belfrasian Jews

The small Jewish population of Belfras.

Other populations

Small Jewish communities exist in Wazheganon, Moxaney, Enyama, and elsewhere, many of these being expatriate Yisraelis.

Oxidentale

Large parts of western Oxidentale have extremely small Jewish populations. In Kayahallpa, a theocratic divine monarchy, there is no known, permanent Jewish community.

West and North Scipia

Sydalene Jews

Main articles: Sydalene Jews, Yarden Accords, and Sydalon-Yisrael relations

The Sydalene Jewish population numbers about 300,000, and is perhaps the oldest and most continuously-settled diasporic population of Jews in the world. This population, because of its longevity, has seen wide swings in its numbers and fortunes over the millennia. In ancient Yehuda, a sizable percentage of the then-Jewish population converted to Christianity and joined its ranks, thinning the community at that time. The population rose during proto-Sydalon's unification with pre-Yisrael in the Medina Yehuda, but fell precipitously during the Crusades in the 14th century.

It recovered until the 20th century, when the West Scipian Contention destabilized it again until the 1973 Yarden Accords. Currently, Sydalon has 293,900 Jews, about 2% of its population.

Jews of Talahara

Main articles: Protectorate of New Tarshish, Talahara, and Talahara-Yisrael relations

Jews of Tyreseia

The inside of the Muzar Synagogue

Tyreseia possesses a substantial Jewish population, with 16% of its population identifying as "culturally and/or religiously" Jewish on the 2020 Census. This equates to around 5 million people, and is one of the largest non-majority Jewish populations in the world outside of Yisrael. Culturally, this group finds its headquarters in the Jewish Quarter, a neighborhood in the capital of New Tyria. This quarter, along with much of the rest of the national community, has faced many drastic turns in its fortunes throughout the centuries. Another location of Jewish cultural significance is the town of Muzar. The oldest survivor of its kind in Tyreseia, the local synagogue was constructed for the tochavim community and, according to tradition, contains a piece of the great door to the Second Temple. Jews in Tyreseia have two distinct origin points. The first group, the tochavim, have existed on the Rubric Coast since antiquity. This group was viewed with suspicion by gentile authorities in the region, but received lighter treatment from Coptic religious forces than they would have from Fabrian Catholics elsewhere in the Latin world. These circumstances allowed the tochavim to thrive and, incidentally, created pull factors for new Jewish communities to move there. These Jews are called sephardim, and were driven from places like Garza and Latium by a virulent rise in anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages. Those with sufficient capital would frequently establish contact with both gentile and Jewish communities in modern-day Tyreseia, thanks to its connections to Periclean trade and populations of both Hebrew- and Latin-speaking peoples. The sephardim received mixed receptions depending on the polity into which they immigrated, but over time, these communities found room to grow. In the intervening centuries, some Jewish-led statelets would even come to be on the Rubric Coast, though these were often small and short-lasting, quick to be re-absorbed into their neighbors. Historically, alongside Garzan, Hebrew and Latin, the sephardim spoke Ladino, a language that came to the brink of extinction over the course of the 19th century. In the modern day, significant efforts are being made to preserve the language, and some 20,000 speakers now exist in Tyreseia.

Jews in Tyreseia have spent much of their history being ruled by governments representing other religious groups. Following this, the united Tyreseian government pursued a strict policy of religious neutrality and state secularism starting in the 1870s. Consequently, the idea of a "secular Jewish culture" has developed in a way that is not seen in communities like the Yisraeli Jews. Their relatively large numbers mean that Tyreseian Jews play a far more outsized role in the wider national culture than in other countries of the diaspora. This increased contribution has conversely meant that Tyreseian Jews are much more assimilated into the wider national culture than in other cultures. In Tyreseia, the Jewish people are seen as the third of four main ethnic groups that make up the country (the others being Tyrian, Latin, and the Kel peoples). In contrast with Yisrael, the majority of Tyreseian Jews are considered chiloni, or nominal practitioners. Groups of more Orthodox and dati communities exist in Tyreseia, and are often viewed with suspicion by the wider populace due to their stronger disdain for secular life and general withdrawal from the secular-socialist system.

As a gesture of goodwill dating from the 1960s, Jews wishing to make the aliyah to Yisrael are granted an expedited process by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

Ochran

Uluujol

In addition to a more conventional diasporic community (as well as more recent expatriates from Yisrael), Uluujol plays host to two ethnic groups which are historically Jewish, the Dahti and the Qavar, who both reside in the mountains of western Uluujol and are remnants of the historical Qavar Khanate.

[More details to be worked out.]

See also

• Yisraeli Jews
• Yisrael