let us now turn to the persian period which basically covers the period between the persian
conquest of israel towards the end of the 6th century taking over from the babylonians until the
greeks under alexander conquered the era about 200 years later the background to the persian conquest
of israel is within babylonia you'll recall that nebuchadnezzar invaded and destroyed jerusalem in
586 and the situation for the jews in remaining in the region although a certain proportion of
them were exiled to babylonia the situation for the jews remaining was definitely poor
this was especially so under the reign of nabonidus who was the king of babylon also known
as king of the universe i find that title rather amusing and he reigned from the years 556 to 539
of before the common era he was an extremely pious sun worshiper and as you can see in this
particular steely he's shown worshipping various planets there and he actually was you know a bit
of a zealot and he wanted to try and impose this kind of uh worship throughout his entire empire
he was known as the proponent of the cult of sin i also think that's a rather ironic term although i
imagine sin is a translation of something else although it is kind of funny in english but at
any rate he was much more you know we would say in hebrew macbeth he was much more insistent on
promoting his religious view throughout the babylonian empire and that turned out to be
a disastrous phenomenon because the persians could then adopt the opposite much more tolerant
worldview and receive a lot more support as a result one more note about nemo nidus who actually
vacated from the central capital for an a decade uh leaving his son belshazzar in charge and this
is a scene from rembrandt's famous painting the belshatsar's feast which is uh featured
in the book of daniel the chronology of the book of daniel and the chronology of the book of esther
are within this period but somehow difficult to tease out but at any rate this famous scene shows
uh nabonidos's son who is the regent who is technically in charge of the country at this time
receives some kind of divine visitation which then writes some hebrew letters on the wall
this is where we get the english expression the writing on the wall it's a kind of an acrostic
puzzle which is fairly faithfully represented here by rembranzan his well-known association
with the jews of holland was definitely something that stood him in good stead when
he painted these biblical passages but basically the the the message was that you are doomed your
empire is going to be taken over by a foreign power and in fact that is what would happen
the persian empire would swallow up the babylonian empire and uh that would include of course not
only israel but even egypt and libya north africa this map shows you the extent of the persian
empire under darius the first or yavish in hebrew and there's actually some numbers
attached to the specific names because of a famous verse at the beginning of the book of esther which
describes 127 provinces and that is in fact the uh distribution of the provinces in the persian
empire the one that's especially important to us is within this region called beyond the river
which is beyond the euphrates river of course uh you'll recall way way back we talked about the
the word ivory meaning from the other side of the river that's the name that was used for the jews
when they were in israel because they came from the euphrates river in this context beyond the
river means from the perspective of the capital way to the east this is beyond the river at any
rate beyond the river five provinces here and one that's especially important is the province
of yahood yehud obviously related to judah yehudi and the word jew this is the aramaic term used by
the persians to describe the central region of the old kingdom of judea you'll notice that samaria
is a distinct population many jews living there as well uh also samaritans who are in conflict
quite frequently with the local population uh but to the south you see idimaya very important
developments there uh the nearby [ __ ] took advantage of some of the power vacuum to expand
their uh hold over this province during this period and even included cabron which was you know
a very very important his city in jewish history it's the burial place of of sarah for example and
abraham and the maharasama in the center of qaran but it was actually in under itunes control
non-jewish control uh we will see how later the maccabees the dynasty of the makhabis the
hashmonaem would eventually expand into edumaia as well with disastrous consequences but at any
rate here's yahood and this is technically part of the persian empire at this point
uh we're talking about the uh the later third the last third of the 6th century now as i mentioned
earlier one of the policies that was advanced by the persians under cyrus and darius in particular
was the opposite of the late babylonian policy of religious intolerance rather cyrus promised to all
the denzians of his vast regime that they could worship as they pleased this is recorded in a lot
of documents like the cyrus cylinder and a version of this tolerance of faiths is expressed in the
hebrew bible in the book of ezra which describes cyrus essential blessing to the jews to return
to jerusalem to rebuild their destroyed temple and to resume their worship there out of gratitude by
the way the jews instituted a daily worship on a daily service a sacrifice on behalf of the
emperor which has retained its presence in the modern day liturgy in terms of the little
paragraph that's inserted on the sabbath prayers that is a public blessing for the government
meaning for the diasporic rulers in which jews find themselves at any rate the jews are very
happy to return to jerusalem at least some of them and to rebuild the temporal as a result of cyrus's
tolerant approach the two major figures who really stand out as society builders at this time are
ezra and nehemiah both of whom have books in the tanakh which are named after them there's a lot of
really interesting scholarship on the relationship between these two books and the relationship
between these two people which it would take us too far afield of where i want to go but so let's
just deal that with them as one unit for the time being uh the books of ezra and nephamia which are
quite unusual stylistically as well in the tanakh they are much more like first person memoirs in
the way they read they describe how ezra nakamiya came to israel in the uh the the fifth and
the sixth centuries in order to try and you know restore jewish society there there were two major
priorities the first was of course the rebuilding of the temple the reconstruction of it physically
and the reinstitution of the daily worship that went on there also related to that was a concerted
effort to consolidate the modality of worship so much so that all heterogenous types of worship
were strictly banned and some scholars say that you know the persian period is especially
important in defining the future trajectory of judaism as a whole because under ezra nehemiah
the jews really rejected a lot of the foreign worship and they concentrated on a particular
way of understanding the torah as a whole lots more to say here but once again very brief videos
it is important to note that you know as the sages say if there is no flower there is no torah
meaning there has to be some financial support to allow this to happen the persian royal treasury
underwrote much of this activity underwrote the reconstruction of the temple provided tax
exemptions to all the functionaries in the temple the levites in particular which gave them a huge
advantage in uh in terms of their social status and their personal wealth so there was like a uh
real support for the effort of building the temple that came straight from the persian
empire at least towards the beginning of this period uh just to show you some interesting
coinage from the period this is a ma uh those of you who study the talmud we'll
see this term comes up with some frequency and on the right in paleo hebrew is the term yehud
which means of course this province this is a very early coin from the sixth century before
the common era you can see on the right there is an eagle there which has links to persia and on
the left is i've seen it described as a lily which is interesting but this to my mind does not have a
huge connection with jewish thought i believe this is rather a representation of a lulav uh the palm
tree which has huge significance uh we may come back to this later especially when i learned a
little bit more about coinage and maybe i correct myself but for the time being here's one coin uh
from yahoo and here's another one dated from the 4th century i think this one is just fascinating
this one has a direct facial representation rather a resting startling facial representation
of jachezkel the governor but as the medieval commentator rashi says call haskalos kasos
all beginnings are difficult and so the return to israel was marked with some very very difficult
issues right at the very beginning the first is for example it was relatively limited enthusiasm
for the return to zion under ezra in fact when you look at the numbers listed it's
less than 50 000 people returned hard to estimate an exact percentage but it's clearly a fraction of
all the jews who were living in babylonia by this time now to be fair you know the babylon exile
is already you know it's been there for several decades and they're well established we have some
archival evidence from some family records that suggest that jews were involved in a whole series
of types of economic activities this time and it's hard to simply uproot and move to a place that is
uh it has been destroyed you know several decades earlier why would you want to do that uh you know
my family all comes to lithuania but i am not you know burning with desire to move back there
i would like to move back to canada i really enjoyed growing up in canada but to go back
to my grandparents actually my great-grandparents homeland i don't have the same kind of enthusiasm
for it and so i can understand the thinking of the babylonian jews also very serious especially in
yahood itself was that ezra and nehemiah mounted some social legislation that was intended to in
particular curb the widespread intermarriage that was taking place they felt that the intermarriage
with local populations non-jewish wives in particular would dilute the social in glue
that held the jews together and so they they wasted no effort on a very controversial policy
of uh banning intermarriage altogether uh ezra is associated in the talmud with a whole series
of takanote of decrees that are aimed to try and improve jewish family life as a whole
intermarriage was kind of like the other side of the coin in that regard
so this period basically extends for about 200 years until alexandra the great will
invade the region and this will mark a phenomenal impact on jewish history because he will bring
with him a series of ideas which we collectively call hellenism that will have a major impact
on jewish history okay let's return to that in the next video thank you very much for watching