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Thus, even in recent years, persecution has favoured the extension of the Moravian Church; but, generally speaking, the Brethren pursue their Diaspora work in peace and quietness.

Doubt was thrown in the last century upon the continuance of the Diaspora in Egypt between the time of Jeremiah and Alexander, but the recent discovery of a Jewish temple at Elephantine and of Aramaic papyri at Assouan dated in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. has proved that these doubts were not well founded, and that there was a well-established community during the interval.

Josephus and the Rabbis agree that the supplies of corn had been burnt by the Zealots during the civil disturbances; and as the arrival of Titus coincided with the Passover, myriads of people, who had come up from all parts of the country and the Diaspora to celebrate the festival, were crowded within its walls. It is estimated that their number exceeded two and a half million.

When interviewed by the French daily newspaper Le Monde of March 23, 1998, Redha Belkhat, chief editor, told: "For the Algerian diaspora, to find in a newsstand of London, New York, or Ottawa an issue of El Watan less than a week old is an achievement. Now the newspaper is here at 6 AM, and at noon it is on the Internet."

The new-comers quickly attained to controlling influence in the Jewish communities, and succeeded in foisting their German idiom upon the older settlers. One of their distinguishing traits was that they pushed the study of the Law to the utmost. The Talmud schools in Poland and the Polish Rabbis soon acquired a reputation unassailed in the whole of the Diaspora.

Along the Rhine, in South and West Germany, in Metz and the Wartebruch, and in Russian Poland, the Brethren opened new fields of Diaspora work; and away in the broadening mission field the energy was greater than ever.

Philo expressly mentions the religious privileges his brethren enjoyed at the heart of the Empire, and save for an occasional expulsion the Jews appear to have been unmolested. The Flavian Emperors, satisfied with the destruction of the sanctuary and the razing of Jerusalem, did not attempt to persecute the communities of the Diaspora.

The first Diaspora, or missionary colony, established by the Moravians in England was in 1728, at the instance of a lady in that centre of intellectual and religious activity, the Court of Queen Caroline. They did not, however, attract much attention.

Side by side with the striving for a transplantation of Jewish centers centers within the Diaspora, another idea, which negatives the Diaspora Diaspora altogether and places in its stead the resuscitation of the Jewish national center in Palestine, struggled to life amidst the birth pangs of the pogroms.

The only historical records that appear to have been regularly kept are the lists of the priests and their genealogy, and a calendar of fasts and of days on which fasting was prohibited because of some happy event to be commemorated. In the Diaspora, on the other hand, and especially at Alexandria, which was the center of Hellenistic Jewry, history was made to serve a practical purpose.