Alexandria אלכסנדריה
The largest Jewish community of the Greek world, where the Torah was first translated into another language.
Founded by Alexander in the Nile delta, Alexandria became within a few generations the intellectual capital of the world — a museum, an immense library, and a Jewish community occupying two of the city's five quarters. Its great synagogue, the Talmud says, was so large that an attendant waved a cloth so the back rows would know when to answer amen.
Here, under Ptolemy II around 3515, seventy-two sages translated the Torah into Greek — the Septuagint. Tradition is ambivalent: a miracle, since all produced identical texts including identical deliberate departures; and «a day as hard for Israel as the day of the golden calf», because the Torah left its own language.
Alexandria also produced Philo. The community was destroyed in the revolt under Trajan.