ABSTRACT
Past Crises and the People’s Response In 721 B.C.E., the Northern Kingdom of Israel was defeated by the Assyrians, and its population ultimately assimilated to the point of disappearance. In 586 B.C.E., the Southern Kingdom of Judea (by then comprising only two of the original twelve tribes of Israel) was defeated by the Babylonians. The vanquished went into exile in Babylon, where defeat was reconceived as part of a divine plan and religious practice was redefi ned as scriptural study, intense prayer life, and heightened ethical behavior, disconnected from the traditional priestly-sacrifi cialcultic system of their homeland. In 70 C.E. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and forbade Jews even to enter its precincts, initiating the scattering of the Jewish people that would continue for 2,000 years-the diaspora. The primarily Western and European trek as a minority people would be subject to the whims and caprices of the dominant, and later Christian, majority. The Jews were an exiled people forever dreaming of a return to their homeland.
