ABSTRACT
In studying a complex theme like the history, rebirth, development and proliferation of diasporas, one has to start somewhere. For over 2,500 years, one notion of the word ‘diaspora’ had been overriding – it was one that highlighted the catastrophic origin, the forcible dispersal and the estrangement of diasporas in their places of settlement. As I have shown in Chapter 2, this interpretation of diaspora may have strong biblical support but it is, in any case, too narrow an interpretation even of the experience of the paradigmatic case, the Jewish people.
