History of the Jews in Europe

The history of the Jews in Europe spans a period of over two thousand years. Jews, a Semitic people descending from the Judeans of Judea in the Southern Levant, began migrating to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire, although Alexandrian Jews had already migrated to Rome, and some Gentiles had undergone Judaization on a few occasions. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was the 63 BCE siege of Jerusalem, where Pompey had interfered in the Hasmonean civil war.
Jews have had a significant presence in European cities and countries since the fall of the Roman Empire, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Russia. In Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, the monarchies forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave and they established offices of the Inquisition to enforce Catholic orthodoxy of converted Jews. These actions shattered Jewish life in Iberia and saw mass migration of Sephardic Jews to escape religious persecution. Many resettled in the Netherlands and re-judaized, starting in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the religiously tolerant, Protestant Dutch Republic Amsterdam prospered economically and as a center of Jewish cultural life, the "Dutch Jerusalem". Ashkenazi Jews lived in communities under continuous rabbinic authority. In Europe Jewish communities were largely self-governing autonomous under Christian rulers, usually with restrictions on residence and economic activities. In Poland, from 1264, under the Statute of Kalisz until the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Jews were guaranteed legal rights and privileges. The law in Poland after 1264 toward Jews was one of the most inclusive in Europe. The French Revolution removed legal restrictions on Jews, making them full citizens. Napoleon implemented Jewish emancipation as his armies conquered much of Europe. Emancipation often brought more opportunities for Jews and many integrated into larger European society and became more secular rather than remaining in cohesive Jewish communities.
The pre-World War II Jewish population of Europe is estimated to have been close to nine million, or 57% of the world's Jewish population. Around six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, which was followed by the emigration of much of the surviving population.
The Jewish population of Europe in 2010 was estimated to be approximately 1.4 million, or 10% of the world's Jewish population. In the 21st century, France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. Prior to the Holocaust, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, as a percentage of its population. This was followed by Lithuania, Hungary, Latvia and Romania.

Ancient period

, originating from Alexandria, was present throughout the Roman Empire even before the Jewish–Roman wars. Large numbers of Jews lived in Greece as early as the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. The first recorded mention of Judaism in Greece dates from 300 to 250 BCE, on the island of Rhodes. In the wake of Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated from the Middle East to Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by the opportunities they expected. As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish author of the third book of the Oracula Sibyllina, addressing the "chosen people", says: "Every land is full of thee and every sea." The most diverse witnesses, such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Cicero, and Josephus, all mention Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean Basin. Most Jewish population centers of this period were, however, still in the Levant, and Alexandria in Egypt was by far the most important of the Jewish communities, with the Jews in Philo's time inhabiting two of the five sections of the city. Nevertheless, a Jewish community is recorded to have existed in Rome at least since the 1st century BCE, although there may even have been an established community there as early as the second century BCE, for in the year 139 BCE, the praetor Hispanus issued a decree expelling all Jews who were not Roman citizens.
At the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus in 27 BCE, there were over 7,000 Jews in Rome: this is the number that escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus. The Jewish historian Josephus confirms that as early as 90 CE there were two Israelite tribes living in Europe, Judah and Benjamin. Thus, he writes in his Antiquities: "...there are but two tribes in Asia Minor and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now and are an immense multitude." According to E. Mary Smallwood, the appearance of Jewish settlements in southern Europe during the Roman era was probably mostly a result of migration due to commercial opportunities, writing that "no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Judean Jews after the revolts of CE 66–70 and 132–135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Pozzuoli attested in 4 BCE, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce."
Many Jews migrated to Rome from Alexandria as a result of the close trade relations between the two cities. When the Romans captured Jerusalem in 63 BCE, thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought from Judea to Rome, where they were sold into slavery. Following the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from Roman forces in 37 BCE, it is likely that Jews were again taken to Rome as slaves. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe. After the enslaved Jews gained their freedom, they permanently settled in Rome on the right bank of the Tiber as traders, and some immigrated north later.
The Roman Empire period presence of Jews in modern-day Croatia dates to the 2nd century, in Pannonia to the 3rd to 4th century. A finger ring with a menorah depiction found in Augusta Raurica in 2001 attests to Jewish presence in Germania Superior. Evidence in towns north of the Loire or in southern Gaul date to the 5th century and 6th centuries. By late antiquity, Jewish communities were found in modern-day France and Germany. In the Taman Peninsula, modern day Russia, Jewish presence dates back to the first century. Evidence of Jewish presence in Phanagoria includes tombstones with carved images of the menorah and inscriptions with references to the synagogue.
Persecution of Jews in Europe begins with the presence of Jews in regions that later became known as the lands of Latin Christendom and modern Europe. Not only were Jewish Christians persecuted according to the New Testament, but also as a matter of historical fact. Anti-Jewish pogroms occurred not only in Jerusalem, Persia, Carthage, Alexandria, but also in Italy, Milan and Menorca, Antioch, Daphne-Antioch, Ravenna, amongst other places. Hostility between Christians and Jews grew over the generations under Roman sovereignty and beyond; eventually forced conversion, confiscation of propertly, burning of synagogues, expulsion, stake burning, enslavement and outlawing of Jews—even whole Jewish communities—occurred countless times in the lands of Latin Christendom.

Middle Ages

The early medieval period was a time of flourishing Jewish culture. Jewish and Christian life evolved in "diametrically opposite directions" during the final centuries of the Roman Empire. Jewish life became autonomous, decentralized, community-centered. Christian life became a hierarchical system under the supreme authority of the Pope and the Roman Emperor.
Jewish life can be characterized as democratic. Rabbis in the Talmud interpreted Deut. 29:9, "your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel" and "Although I have appointed for you heads, elders, and officers, you are all equal before me" to stress political shared power. Shared power entailed responsibilities: "you are all responsible for one another. If there be only one righteous man among you, you will all profit from his merits, and not you alone, but the entire world...But if one of you sins, the whole generation will suffer."

Early Middle Ages

In the Early Middle Ages, persecution of Jews also continued in the lands of Latin Christendom. After the Visigoths converted from more tolerant non-trinitarian Arianism to the stricter trinitarian Nicene Christianity of Rome, in 612 and again in 642, expulsions of all Jews were decreed in the Visigoth Empire. The Catholic Merovingian dynasty decreed forced conversion for Jews in 582 and 629. Under the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toledo, multiple persecutions and stake burnings of Jews occurred; the Kingdom of Toledo followed up on this tradition in 1368, 1391, 1449, and 1486–1490, including forced conversions and mass murder, and there was rioting and a blood bath against the Jews of Toledo in 1212. Jewish pogroms occurred in the Diocese of Clement and in the Diocese of Uzes.
European Jews were at first concentrated largely in southern Europe. During the High and Late Middle Ages, they migrated north. There is historical evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees in the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers from southern Europe, Jewish immigrants from Babylon and Persia, and Maghrebi Jewish traders from North Africa were settling in western and central Europe, particularly in France and along the Rhine River. This Jewish migration was motivated by economic opportunities and often at the invitation of local Christian rulers, who perceived the Jews as having the know-how and capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenue, and enlarge trade.