Diaspora

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The dispersion of Jews outside of Israel from the sixth century BC, when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time.
• noun The body of Jews or Jewish communities outside Palestine or modern Israel.
• noun A dispersion of a people from their original homeland.
• noun The community formed by such a people.
• noun A dispersion of an originally homogeneous entity, such as a language or culture.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The dispersion of the Jews; among the Hellenistic Jews and in the New Testament, the whole body of Jews living scattered among the Gentiles after the Babylonian captivity: also used by the Jewish Christians of the apostolic age for their fellow Christians outside of Palestine (rendered “the strangers” in the authorized version of 1 Pet. i. 1, and “the Dispersion” in the revised version).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Lit., “Dispersion.” -- applied collectively: (a) To those Jews who, after the Exile, were scattered through the Old World, and afterwards to Jewish Christians living among heathen. Cf. James i. 1. (b) By extension, to Christians isolated from their own communion, as among the Moravians to those living, usually as missionaries, outside of the parent congregation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• proper noun The dispersion of the Jews from the land of Israel.
• proper noun The Jews so dispersed, taken collectively.
• proper noun A similar dispersion.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the dispersion or spreading of something that was originally localized (as a people or language or culture)
• noun the dispersion of the Jews outside Israel; from the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 587-86 BC when they were exiled to Babylonia up to the present time
• noun the body of Jews (or Jewish communities) outside Palestine or modern Israel