AHC - have a majority Jewish state outside of Israel

How can we have a majority Jewish state outside of Israel survive independently. I'd especially like to see getting it to last to the present-day. I think the only one I know about is the Kingdom of Himyar in Yemen.
That they were Jewish majority is debatable, though clearly Judaism had made major inroads there, especially among the elites. However, it's a very good starting point. In a no Islam TL, it is very plausible to imagine Yemen, or a significant part of it, as a permanently Jewish area in the long run, with one or more Jewish majority political entities surviving to this day. Or it may become the springboard from where Judaism is established elsewhere (most likely somewhere in East Africa) doing the same (there's a group in South Africa OTL whose traditional practices, myths of origins and, possibly, genetics seem to point to a connection to early Yemeni Judaism; and the Beta Israel of course).
 

trajen777

Banned
WW2 avoided -- Germany negotiates with France to do Madagascar plan. Or Germany wins in France and GB settles after beating up Germany in the B of Britain. Germany moves Euro Jews to Madagascar --- they declare independence from France in 1950
 
WW2 avoided -- Germany negotiates with France to do Madagascar plan. Or Germany wins in France and GB settles after beating up Germany in the B of Britain. Germany moves Euro Jews to Madagascar --- they declare independence from France in 1950

Why was Madagascar chosen?
 

trajen777

Banned
Why was Madagascar chosen?

Was actually a pre WW2 plan put forward by Poland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

The Madagascar Plan was a proposal by the Nazi German government to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the German government, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the French surrender terms.

The idea of deporting Polish Jews to Madagascar was investigated by the Polish government in 1937,[1][2] but the task force sent to evaluate the island's potential determined that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could be accommodated, or even as few as 500 families by some estimates.[a] Because efforts by the Nazis to encourage the emigration of the Jewish population of Germany before World War II were only partially successful, the idea of deporting Jews to Madagascar was revived by the Nazi government in 1940.With Adolf Hitler's approval, Adolf Eichmann released a memorandum on 15 August 1940 calling for the resettlement of a million Jews per year for four years, with the island being governed as a police state under the SS. They assumed that many Jews would succumb to its harsh conditions should the plan be implemented.[4] The plan was not viable due to the British naval blockade. It was postponed after the Nazis lost the Battle of Britain in September 1940, and it was permanently shelved in 1942 with the commencement of the Final Solution,
 
The Pale of Settlement is instead condensed into either what counts as modern day Lithuania or modern day Moldova rather than spread along Russia's European border. This would mean that in the aftermath of WW1, its possible one of these states would be considered a "Jewish" one and pushed for independence by Wilson at Versailles.

Perhaps Russia decides instead to try to depopulate Poland after one of the rebellions with expulsions and transfers to Siberia and the like and instead, moves their Jews in and uses their mercantile skill to develop the region into a tax base for them.

Basically, the best idea I can see as feasible include using the massive amount of Jews in Eastern Europe and finding a way for them to eventually have a state. The Jewish populations of the Ottoman Empire were large, but never large enough to have a state be a possibility or concentrated enough. Same in North Africa. But Russia? It had Jews, and they were both urban and rural in orientation with a developing language and culture to their own. They were spread out across the Eurasian landmass from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and composed about 10-20% of the population of each border province depending on the area, with higher concentrations in Lithuania and Eastern Poland than anywhere else. If you get them into one national area, they could be a majority.

The Holocaust would be far worse than IRL, assuming this condition lasted for a while...yikes
 
It's a really really old POD and it might not survive until modern day, but if you keep Himyar stronger than Axum in Late Antiquity and avoid the Great Dam of Marib breaking down until the 600s (or even better, not at all), you might manage to pull off a Jewish Arabia.
 
Jewish city state in Kerala? It would spend most of history as a vassal of other powers, yes, and could easily end up as a European colony, but maybe in the long run it gets independence recognised by the world community and thus you'd have a majority Jewish city state in India, probably speaking Judeo-Malayalam.

It's a really really old POD and it might not survive until modern day, but if you keep Himyar stronger than Axum in Late Antiquity and avoid the Great Dam of Marib breaking down until the 600s (or even better, not at all), you might manage to pull off a Jewish Arabia.

It's worth noting that outside of the first few centuries of the Caliphate, no state ever ruled the entire Arabian peninsula, and the center of power in the Caliphate was outside Arabia, so it would definitely be pretty difficult, especially since Arabia was religiously diverse pre-Islam.
 
It's worth noting that outside of the first few centuries of the Caliphate, no state ever ruled the entire Arabian peninsula, and the center of power in the Caliphate was outside Arabia, so it would definitely be pretty difficult, especially since Arabia was religiously diverse pre-Islam.

It would be interesting to see a wanked Himyar control all of Arabia and managed to expand into the Levant, parts of Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia west of the Euphrates.
 
It would be interesting to see a wanked Himyar control all of Arabia and managed to expand into the Levant, parts of Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia west of the Euphrates.

Wouldn’t even be that implausible, just have it centralize and it can ride the demographic expansion wave that caused the OTL Arab conquests.
 
It's worth noting that outside of the first few centuries of the Caliphate, no state ever ruled the entire Arabian peninsula, and the center of power in the Caliphate was outside Arabia, so it would definitely be pretty difficult, especially since Arabia was religiously diverse pre-Islam.

Well yeah, that's why I didn't say a Himyarite Arabia. But Judaism was already influential, IIRC, both in Yathrib and in the Kindah tribe, so having it spread with a third powerful pro-Jewish force is not that impossible I'd think.
 
Well yeah, that's why I didn't say a Himyarite Arabia. But Judaism was already influential, IIRC, both in Yathrib and in the Kindah tribe, so having it spread with a third powerful pro-Jewish force is not that impossible I'd think.

But you also had several flavours of Christianity, Persian-inspired faiths (Zoroastrians and Manichaeans), indigenous Arabic paganism, and the Ebionites represented in Arabia. A lot of this was indeed based on tribal loyalties, so it would be very difficult to have a Jewish polity with the success the Muslims had OTL, and even seizing all of Arabia would be questionable since Axum, Byzantium, and Persia might have something to say about that.

A Jewish Yemen is definitely interesting though. I bet it would help foreign Jewish communities like the Cochin Jews and that hypothetical Keralan city state I mentioned. If you had enough Keralan Jews (and Keralan Christians remain a minority), then you might be able to have the Maldives convert to Judaism based on the influence of the Yemeni and the Keralans. I also wonder what influence on Ethiopia and Somalia a Jewish Yemen might have.

Now what I wonder is how "Jewish" this Judaism might be. Might they be more akin to the Karaites than to Talmudic Judaism? A strong Jewish state is of course going to change how Judaism develops.
 
Now what I wonder is how "Jewish" this Judaism might be. Might they be more akin to the Karaites than to Talmudic Judaism? A strong Jewish state is of course going to change how Judaism develops.

Looking at the posts, I think this is the main problem with spreading Judaism, that it isn't a prosetlysing religion and many rabbis discourage converts. I think we would have to change the fundamental aspect of the "chosen people" mythology to allow Judaism to spread.
 
Maybe the Tsars carve out a slice of the Empire to stick the Jews in. Vilnius and Central Lithuania would be an interesting spot.


Alternatively, what if the Zionists opt to colonize a slice of the American West? Wyoming was a pretty empty place before it was incorporated and would only require a hundred thousand or so Jews.
 
Maybe the Tsars carve out a slice of the Empire to stick the Jews in. Vilnius and Central Lithuania would be an interesting spot.

You'd have to do something with the Lithuanians of course, although Tsarist Russia didn't much like the Lithuanians either. But the Vilna Governorate had tons of Orthodox Slavs, and putting the Jews in any sort of position over them would be alien to the mindset of Tsarism.
 
There's the plot from The Yiddish Policemen's Union involving a Jewish district in Sitka, Alaska (based on an actual plan to settle Jewish refugees there). In the novel it's under US suzerainity, but you could probably change that without too much difficulty.

I was thinking something like that, in which Europe enacts pogroms or anti-Jewish decrees en masse right after the Industrial Revolution, and Jews migrate to America by the millions. Overwhelmed and fearful that Jews will “take over,” they crowd as many Jews immigrants into one of the territories, which eventually attains statehood in the 20th century.
 
The problem with an American state being "Jewish" is that you would need some major and fundamental changes in the US Constitution. What prevents non-Jews from moving in, or Jews moving out? The reason it "worked" in Yiddish Policeman's Union is because the refugees were settled in a region that was remote, very scantily populated and a territory not a state. Additionally the Jews were sort of like the "DACA" kids OTL, allowed to stay there but not given immigrant status but residence permits that could be revoked at any time and also only good for Alaska. In the 1940s the bureaucracy to manage/enforce this, in the 1800s no way - you can't surround Montana with a "wall".
 
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