The destruction of the First Temple led to the split of the Jewish people.
A Divided Jewish World The destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE fundamentally transformed the lives of Jews.
It led to their dispersion in different lands and reshaped them as an ethnic group or people.
Since then and up to the present time, Jews have no longer been concentrated in a single location,
but rather are dispersed throughout different countries.Among other things,
the destruction of the Temple led to the formation of a large Jewish community in Babylonia.
That community flourished between the 3rd century CE and 11th century CE,
gradually becoming the most important Jewish center in the world.
The Jewish community in Egypt also flourished following the destruction of the First Temple.
Alexandria – the second most important city in the Roman Empire
– was a large Jewish center between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE.
Both those centers existed in parallel to the Jewish center in the Land of Israel.