The word diaspora means dispersed or dispersal -- which is to say, spread out. The Jewish diaspora began with the Babylonian captivity about 2500 years ago when a good chunk of the Jewish population was forcibly moved to Babylon. Not all of them came home when King Cyrus allowed a return to Jerusalem. Under Roman rule, Jewish communities spread out throughout the Roman Empire. The New Testament lists Jewish communities Paul visited in his missionary journeys, but there were more, all the way West to Spain. During the Jewish Wars of the first and second century, Jews were forcibly dispersed by the victorious Roman armies, and by the 8th century, Jews lived from Yemen to what would someday be Germany, and from the Black sea to Spain. The Crusades forced large Jewish populations into Poland, parts of which were later taken over by the Russian empire. There were Jewish communities across North Africa. When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews of Spain, some fled east into the Ottoman empire, others fled west into Portugal and the New World. Baghdadi Jews established trading colonies across south Asia to China. Other Jewish trading colonies followed the Silk Road into Western China. And then, starting in the mid 19th century, Jews began fleeing revolutions and counterrevolutions in Europe, with huge numbers fleeing the United States but a surprising number fleeing to Argentina. Today, any Jew living anywhere in the world except Israel is considered to be living in the Jewish Diaspora. (There are other Disaporas. The most recent big one is made up of Syrians fleeing the Syrian civil war.)