Why were the Jews forced out of Israel? How did the Romans manage to force such a huge number of people out of a country? Why did the Jews disperse, rather than uniting in one other area?

The Romans were afraid of uprising. If a group of conquered people were not scattered throughout the empire there was more chnace that they would revolt.

Plus it was a show of power.

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Originally posted by Sarai:
Why were the Jews forced out of Israel? How did the Romans manage to force such a huge number of people out of a country? Why did the Jews disperse, rather than uniting in one other area?

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It followed the revolt of the Maccabees, as I recall, and the Imperial government decided that the Jews were unlikely to reconcile themselves to pagan rule. They left Jerusalem under penalty of death if they remained (I don't know that they were compelled to leave other parts of Palestine). Once determined to go, they had to go to places where they could possibly make a living. This meant that they could not all go to the same place. Some left the empire altogether, settling in the Arabian peninsula where they remained influential until the rise of Islam, even having an independent kingdom in Yemen for a while. Others went to the Persian empire, where they settled with those Jews whose ancestors had never left following the Babylonian captivity. Others were scattered throughout the empire, wherever they could settle and make a living.

Those who didn't go too far were permitted to return to Jerusalem one day each year to visit the remains of the temple. These strictures remained in place until shortly after the Arab conquest.

Alan Moore

The Romans in 70 AD began to activelty drive the Jews out of "Holy Territory" in what becam known as the "diaspora". You can read about it here: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Diaspora.htm. Granted thaqt some dispersion occurred previously but this event marked the first concerted effort that tied into the modern historical events of 1947.

In 60 AD, there were already very large Jewish neighborhoods in Egypt (Alexandria and Elephantine), Libya ("Cyrene" in the New Testament), Caesarea (coast of Israel), Damascas, Antioch, Tarsus, and many cities in Asia Minor.

Before any "expulsion" took place, there was wide-spread anti-Semitism, worse than that of WW II in that half the Jews in the Roman world were killed, probably more than 2 million in Jerusalem alone. During the war between the Romans and Jews within Judea and Galilee (60-72 AD, if you count the cruel procurators and the holdout at Masada), there were also public attrocities against Jews in other cities, like Alexandria, Antioch and Damascas, where tens of thousands of Jews were simply butchered, many by citizens, not by armies of Rome, and with apparent "official" blessing.

So the "expulsion" and "diaspora" were an amalgum of events, you really can't pin them down to any single cause.

If you don't mind very lengthy and difficult reading, find Josephus "Wars of the Jews" on line. Here are two links that I use:

http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/JOSEPHUS.HTM
http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/pseudepigrapha.htm

(Josephus' description of the war, especially in Jerusalem, is lengthy and very graphic.)