Where Jews Lived Before Israel's Founding (1948): The Global Diaspora

Before 1948, Jews were a diaspora people—scattered worldwide for millennia:

Historical Arc

586 BCE: Babylonian exile (first major dispersion)
70 CE: Roman destruction of Second Temple → mass dispersal
Middle Ages–Modern: Communities across Europe, North Africa, Middle East, Americas

Europe: Poland (3.3M), USSR (2.7M), Germany (525K), Romania (750K), Hungary (445K), Czechoslovakia (357K), France (300K), UK (300K), Netherlands (140K), Greece (77K)
Middle East/North Africa: Morocco (265K), Iraq (150K), Egypt (75K), Yemen (55K), Iran (50K), Syria (30K), Lebanon (14K), Libya (38K), Tunisia (105K), Algeria (140K)
Americas: USA (4.5M), Argentina (320K), Brazil (100K), Canada (170K)
Palestine (pre-state): ~600K (Yishuv) by 1947

Holocaust (6M murdered), expulsion from Arab lands (~850K), and aliyah concentrated majority in Israel today (~7M of 15M global).

South Pacific