Page 26 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

I General Questions

Diaspora

To waste words on the nature of the Jewish question even
loday should really be superfluous, but phrases which take root seem
to possess an invincible power and vitality. It is still believed, even
among people who have taken a position on the Jewish question,
that the Jews had been forced to leave their homeland, that they
were first displaced to Babylon, and later to Rome. These two
instances are completely right, but are the only ones that are. For,
already long before the destruction of Jerusalem and long before
the birth of Christ, we see the Jews living scattered throughout all
the lands known at that time. (Already before the Exile, for example,
Jewish banking houses are detectable in Mesopotamia). From
Babylon they wandered on their own initiative ever farther to the
east; at the same time they already lived in the Ionian islands, in
Asia Minor and, if one should believe the prophet," in Spain, where
they arrived along with the Phoenicians.
But the reports from this age are nevertheless sparse; in
later times, however, several reports show that the Jews preferred
to leave, in the thousands, their homeland where they had to
somehow occupy themselves with tilling and wine-growing and
pursue lighter and more profitable trades. On this later; here it may
just be stated that the Jews first founded among the Phoenicians
lasting colonies, that is, in Tyre and Sidon. And they spread through
the rest of Syria and lived especially numerously in Antioch,
Seleucia, Laodicea and Damascus. They were attracted farther afield
to Asia Minor, where they looked for accommodation on the caravan
routes as well as in the coastal cities of the peninsula. In this way
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did they live in Cappadocia, in Phrygia, in Tarsus, Tralles. In Ionia
they were particularly numerous in Smyrna, Ephesus, Miletus, as
well as in Halicarnassus and Krridos. Their colonies also spread
"Isa 66:19
12
[Ionia is the western coastal region of Anatolia that is centred around Smyrna
(Izmir).] [N.B. All notes in box- brackets are by the translator.]