The world diaspora was coined to describe the Jewish exile, but I think even "diaspora" isn't enough to conceptualize all the exiles and expulsions and genocides we've endured as a people.
We don't just have one diaspora.
It started with the first Beit HaMikdash being destroyed by the Babylonians. That was the first major diaspora.
Then the second Beit HaMikdash was destroyed by the Romans. That was the second major diaspora.
But that wasn't the end of the displacement of the Jewish people.
For every country that has expelled its Jews, that's another diaspora. Another traumatic event in our great cultural memory.
First there was England. Then all the other European countries followed suit. Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy.....and the middle ages aren't even over yet.
Jews fled to other countries, who tolerated them at best for a few hundred years, and then those countries too expelled them.
Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, centuries of Jewish culture wiped out in years of pogroms.
Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Yemen....once beacons of Jewish life now have barely any Jews left alive to their names.
Jews from around the world expelled and carted around like cattle, wandering from place to place because our homes are constantly taken.
The Wandering Jew doesn't wander because he has no choice, he wanders because nowhere is safe for him to stay.
The Jewish cultural memory is marked by repeated traumatization. We don't even have time to recover before we're struck again and again.
No, we're not just one diaspora. Not just one exile. Not just one traumatic event.
Can you imagine what this kind of repeated trauma does to a person? To a people?
Gentiles like to treat us with suspicion because we're so wary, too slow to trust, but if they spent even a second in our shoes, they would know why we're so scared all the time. Because they made us scared. Our hesitancy is our survival.
