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The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire (Latin: Iudaeorum Romanum) traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire (27 BCE – CE 476).
On 16 October 1943, the SS conducted a massive raid on the Roman Ghetto, seizing Jews from their homes and taking them to a military college in the center of the city. Over the following days, more than 1,000 Jews were deported Auschwitz-Birkenau. The German occupation of Rome lasted for nine months.
- Their Oldest Synagogue Is From the Second Temple Era. Jews were already living in Rome before the exile of 70 C.E. In 1961, ruins of a synagogue were uncovered on the outskirts of Ostia Antica, the port city of Imperial Rome, near contemporary Ostia.
- Great Scholars Lived Among Them. During its long and storied history, the Jewish community of Rome produced many great scholars. Here are two of the most well-known
- The Original Roman Jews are Neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi. For millennia, Rome’s Jews lived under the shadow of the Arch of Titus, which celebrated the conquest of Judea and the destruction of Jewish life in the Holy Land.
- They Were Joined by Spanish Exiles. Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century (Sephardim) made their way to various parts of Italy, including Rome.
The Great Synagogue of Rome. The history of the Jews in Italy spans more than two thousand years to the present. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to the pre-Christian Roman period and has continued, despite periods of extreme persecution and expulsions, until the present.
Judaism - Roman Period, 63 BCE-135 CE: Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in Palestine. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish state. They were also zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the Torah.
Jews became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century CE, with some estimates as high as 7 million people; however, this estimation has been questioned. The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire.
The dispersion of the Jews was begun by the Exile of the Old Testament, which caused large Jewish communities to be formed in Mesopotamia and Babylonia, lands that later lay on the fringe of the Roman empire.
