Trying to suss out Jewish history as always been a challenge because of the diaspora and because of the frank lying about their identity that was driven by the failing to integrate into any place they ever went. They formed colonies, did their own thing, and often ended up in conflict with the native populations who got tired of them and kick them out. That's not to say that Jews were always bad, deserved what they got, or failed to contribute. It's obviously more complicated than that, but this particular history means that clean and precise, well-preserved records of their history are hard to find sometimes. You have to rely on their own rabbis' records which are obviously biased.

Anyway, it's important history to know. After the Roman empire, many Jews spread out across the Mediterranean, but a large nexus of them formed among the Khazars, an aggressive trading empire in central Asia and Eastern Europe. These people converted to Judaism (the Ashkenazi ones), so they're ethnically distinct from the Jews of Judea (the Sephardic ones). The ones we're dealing with right now in Ukraine, the ones who came up with Marxism in Vienna, Austria, the ones who fomented communism in Russia and who committed some of the worst atrocities ever seen on this planet where the ancestors of the Khazars. The ones who fled Russia and ended up in New York are also from this group and are predominantly Ashkenazi). Just as a curiosity, Latin America is full of Sephardic Jews with actual genetic ties to Judea. They were driven out of Europe during the Inquisition and became the "conversos" (forced to convert to Catholicism to save their hides), and many ended up in New Spain or pirating around the Caribbean. Yes, many of the famed pirates were Jewish, and so were the ship owners that ran the Atlantic slave trade.

When you hear on this website "we're saving Israel for last," a lot of this hidden history is why. It's an absolutely deadly third rail to talk about with some people.