But now we also have a strong tendency for certain leftists to act like this original diaspora was itself a myth or a lie, erasing the original history of the word and the people for whom it was coined. They claim, falsely, that Judaism were just another universalistic religion that spread around the world via conversion. It’s like people think a bunch of Eastern Europeans got together and were like, “I want to be one of those Christ-killers who everyone gets psyched about murdering every Easter and Christmas and whenever something bad happens. Let’s do it, let’s call ourselves Ashkenazi Jews. Aren’t you so excited to be a pariah and flee from country to country and die at the sword of the Christians while saying the Shema? This is gonna be really fun! I was born a good European Christian, but there’s just something about living in constant fear for my life that I really am just ready to give all that up for. So yeah, this is why we’re converting to Judaism. Dunno how that’s going to happen since there is no diaspora and consequently no one to instruct us in Jewish law, no Jews to live among, no Rabbinic court to decide our conversion is proper, nor any mikva for us to immerse ourselves in, but I guess we’ll all just wing it.”

The diaspora was not a myth. Nor is it the whole story of the Jewish people, either. After being scattered from Eretz Yisroel we interacted with the cultures we came into contact with. We learned their languages, often adding a Jewish twist to them, and over time our pronunciation of Hebrew lost sounds that were no longer familiar to us, or changed them to more familiar sounds. Our food changed. We made art and poetry and music and philosophy, as a diaspora people.

Occasionally people made the decision to join our nation, and they did all the things they were required to do to join it, and became naturalized. This is just like how when we were still living in the Levant, lots of people were migrating in and becoming Jews, which is why even to this day we call converts “foreigners” (גרים). This is natural; migration has always been a huge thing in every area. The only strange thing Jews did was to take our identity with us no matter where we were, and consequently continue welcoming “foreigners” into the fold.