e Persians permitted the Jews to return to their homeland, but most of them chose to remain where they were instead of returning to Palestine. These Jews were now living in Diaspora, something that had become a voluntary absence from their homeland. The preservation of Jewish ideas became of paramount importance in the Diaspora, the scattering of the Jewish people to other parts of the world, but always with a sense of belonging to Palestine and of maintaining certain traditions as a consequence. This is the problem that faced Jewish intellectuals:
How does one go about preventing the disappearance of a people which has lost its country, which has been fragmentized into thousands of segments, and which has been strewn over vast land masses amidst alien tongues and alien religions? What measures does one take to preserve the identity of such a people, and how does one enforce such measures when there is no political power, no police, no army to make these measures enforceable?
The history of the last several centuries offers many examples of groups which have partly emigrated and then have blended into a different set of people. Poles and italians have been assimilated into the population of France, and the population of the United States shows that white minorities from a variety of countries have almost all blended into the American nation:
The future will determine whether such groups that are today dispersed will be able or want to form diasporas. The desire to endure as an exiled or transplante
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