For over 2000 years the history of the Jews has combined external dispersal with internal cohesion. The decisive dispersal of the Jewish people took place under Rome. Although the Jewish revolts of AD 66 – 73 and 132 – 5 and their vigorous supression by the Romans, as well as Hadrian’s measures to de –Judaize Jerusalem, caused rapid deterioration in the position of the Jews in Judaea, elsewhere in the Roman world their legal and economical status and the viability of their communities remained unaffected.
This stimulated a constant flow of migration from Palestine, Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the western and northern shores of Mediterranean. Consequently, widely scattered by internally cohesive Jewish communities developed all over the west and north of the Roman empire: in Italy, in Spain and as far north as Cologne. The Cairo community was a major element in Mediterranean commerce and has left its detailed records (the Cairo ‘Genizah’) of life there during the Middle Ages.
