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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 BC – 476 AD).
The Jewish community in Rome during the Middle Ages is marked by periods of relative stability interspersed with episodes of persecution and hardship. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine in 312 CE, the status of Jews in Rome began to change.
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.
- 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 Classic Period. The Jewish community in Rome is known to be the oldest Jewish community in Europe and also one the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in the world, dating back to 161 B.C.E. when Jason ben Eleazar and Eupolemus ben Johanan came as envoys of Judah Maccabee.
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 BC – 476 AD).
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.
