- The Great Revolt,
as the first Roman-Jewish war came to be known,
was the first of three major conflicts
between the Jewish people and Imperial Rome.
After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE,
they razed the Temple to the ground,
expelled the Jews from Jerusalem,
forbade Bible study and ritual circumcision,
and even changed the name of the country
in an attempt to destroy its Jewish identity.
But the creativity and courage
of Israel's scribes and warriors
ensured that Judaism would thrive
and that hope would not die.
Outstanding leaders such as Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai,
Rabbi Akiva, and Shimon Bar Kosiba, known as Bar Kochba,
not only guided the people through that challenging time,
they continued to serve as role models for Jews
throughout the millennia and have forever changed the way
Jews think about themselves.
Jewish sovereignty in Judea, the southern part of Israel,
existed uninterruptedly after the Hasmoneans
overcame a mighty Greek enemy 100 years earlier.
But the independence of the Jewish state
had been steadily eroding during Roman rule over the region,
and by the beginning of the first century CE,
the Romans were exercising direct control
over most of the affairs of Judean society.
In the year 70 CE, after five years of brutal warfare
between the Roman army and the Judean militia,
the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem,
and with it, the Holy Temple, the religious, legal,
and social heart of the Jewish people.
But the destruction of Jerusalem did not end the revolt
against the Roman occupation.
A group of Jews held out for three years on Masada,
a fortress situated on a rock plateau in the Judean desert.
According to the historian Josephus,
when the Romans were finally able
to overcome the last of the defenders,
the Jews drew lots to determine
which one would kill the others and then take his own life.
The account of what happened was given support in the
20th century by the work of archeologist Yigael Yadin,
although the evidence is inconclusive
and other explanations may be more plausible.
To punish the Jews and prevent further resistance,
the Romans dispersed them around Judea,
forcing them to leave Jerusalem
and live in mainly non-Jewish areas along the coast,
such as Ashdod and Yavne.
Yavne became home to an academy run
by the great sage Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai.
During the Great Revolt, Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai
had argued for a peaceful approach.
He was in Jerusalem at the time of the Roman siege,
and he only survived by arranging an escape out of the city
in a coffin, feigning death.
This allowed him to meet the Roman commander Vespasian.
Rabban Yohanan correctly predicted
that Vespasian would be named emperor
and that the Temple would be destroyed.
This got him on Vespasian's good side,
and according to the Talmudic account,
he had a special request for the new emperor:
to spare Yavne and its sages.
Vespasian agreed not to destroy the academy at Yavne,
which grew to become a new Sanhedrin,
a body of respected and authoritative scholars
who would fulfill most of the legislative
and judicial functions of the now-destroyed
supreme court in Jerusalem.
It was here that the Rabbis kept Jewish scholarship alive,
maintained the transmission of Jewish learning,
values and ethics, and adapted Judaism
to a world without a Temple.
This allowed Jewish spiritual life to be preserved
despite the loss of its core.
From Yavne, great sages such as Rabban Gamliel II,
taught Jews in the diaspora
and answered religious questions that were sent to them.
It was at this time that the title rabbi,
which means teacher, came into use.
Yavne functioned as a center of Jewish life
from about 70 to 135 CE.
A main goal of the rabbis at Yavne was to end sectarianism
while creating a tolerant society
in which vigorous debate was encouraged.
And in this they were quite successful,
the polarized sects that existed
before the destruction of Jerusalem,
the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes,
and many smaller ones, are never mentioned afterwards.
In their place we see individuals;
authoritative scholars such as Hillel and Shammai
who argue with each other passionately and vigorously,
but without resorting to personal attacks.
Regardless of their disagreements,
they have no objection to socializing with
and even marrying into each other's families.
In fact, we see that rabbinic literature
routinely mentions minority opinions,
the views of the people who lost the argument.
These people are accepted
so long as they honor the majority decision,
and their rejected opinions are even treated with respect.
Could today's politicians and religious leaders
learn something from the rabbis of Yavne,
almost 2,000 years ago?
The second Jewish war against Rome
occurred in the year 115 CE.
It was really a lower-level conflict
waged in various places in the diaspora.
Jews rebelled against Roman and Greek rule
in places such as Egypt, Libya, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia.
Their goal was to attain freedom to practice their religion.
Only 17 years later, however,
a much larger war broke out, again in Judea,
again to break free of the Roman occupation,
and again on a massive scale.
Its leader was Shimon Bar Kosiba, known as Bar Kochba.
Bar Kochba was a dynamic military leader
who inspired the confidence
of both the masses and the Sages.
He quickly drove the Romans from Jerusalem and minted coins
to mark the years of Jerusalem's liberation
and Israel's redemption.
We should note here that the tumultuous events
of the first and second centuries of the common era
produced a lot of desperation.
People were looking for a leader
who would bring about the redemption of the Jewish people
and their restoration in Jerusalem.
At the time of the Bar Kochba revolt,
some, including Rabbi Akiva, thought that Bar Kochba himself
would fulfill that role,
the next king of Israel who would bring peace
to the Jewish people by fighting necessary wars,
rebuilding the Temple,
and teaching Torah to Israel and the nations.
Unfortunately, as events bore out, this was not to be.
The Roman response was fierce and devastating;
the emperor Hadrian sent 35,000 Roman soldiers
to quell the uprising.
According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio,
approximately 580,000 Jews died in the fighting alone;
many more died of starvation and disease.
Communities throughout Judea were annihilated.
Bar Kochba died in 135 CE
in defense of the stronghold Beth Tor, also known as Beitar,
in the Jerusalem hills.
According to Jewish tradition,
that town fell on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av,
a date already infamous for the destruction
of both the first and the second Temple in Jerusalem.
As a punishment for this rebellion,
Hadrian expelled almost all Jews from Judea.
He closed Yavne's academy
and turned Jerusalem into a heathen city,
renaming it Aelia Capitolina.
That name didn't stick, but another one did:
Hadrian renamed the entire province of Judea,
calling it Palestina after the Philistines,
an ancient, non-Semitic people who likely traveled to Israel
across the Mediterranean from their home in Greece.
Since the Philistines were foreigners
whom the Israelites had battled
many hundreds of years earlier,
that name was about as un-Jewish as it came.
And that was the whole point.
Hadrian's goal was clear:
he wanted to eradicate all Jewish connection to the land.
The Romans also banned core practices
of the Jewish religion.
Brit milah, Jewish ritual of circumcision, was outlawed,
and teaching Torah was a crime punishable by death.
After Bar Kochba's defeat, Rabbi Akiva defied the ban.
He insisted on teaching publicly,
because he knew from his own experience
the value of learning for each individual Jew
and for the preservation of the community as a whole.
Rabbi Akiva grew up as an illiterate shepherd.
He did not even know how to pronounce
the letters of the alphabet until he was 40.
Rabbi Akiva's wife Rachel encouraged him
to get an education,
and sacrificed much along the way to help him.
The Talmud relates that Rabbi Akiva was cautioned
by another sage not to teach Torah in public.
Rabbi Akiva responded with a famous analogy:
A fox comes to a body of water
and tries to convince the fish to come out
and live with him on dry land.
After all, every moment the fish remains in the water
he is in danger of the fisherman's net.
But the fish was too clever for this argument.
He told the fox, "If I remain in the water,
"I am surely at risk.
"But if I leave the water, I cannot live."
In rabbinic literature,
water is frequently used as a metaphor for Torah.
The fisherman represents the Roman.
Teaching Torah might at times pose a danger to one's life,
but living without Torah
is a form of spiritual death that's even worse.
Rabbi Akiva's commitment to teaching led to his arrest.
He was tortured, the Romans flayed his flesh
with iron combs, and killed, while reciting the Shema,
the central affirmation of a Jew's belief
in the unity and sovereignty of the one true God.
As he was dying, he explained:
"Now I realize why it says in the Shema
"to love God with all of one's soul;"
that is, I should love Him
even though he is taking away my life.
Ever since Rabbi Akiva's time,
it has been customary for Jews
to recite the Shema on their deathbed.
The challenges faced by the Jewish nation
in the aftermath of the Great Revolt
can't be overestimated.
On a theological level, Jews had lost what they saw
as the spiritual center of the universe.
The Temple with all of its sacred objects,
the physical representation of God's protective,
spiritual presence, had been destroyed and looted.
Even before the destruction of the Temple,
the Romans had forcibly imposed upon the Jews
the worship of the Roman pagan gods,
including worship of the emperor,
who was regarded as a deity from the first century on.
With the Temple now gone,
the very public display of the power of Rome and her gods
carried with it the suggestion that
Israel and her God were powerless.
Economically, the destruction and confiscation of land,
deprived the nation of essential resources.
Politically, Jews had lost
the central institutions of statehood.
And how can we even begin to calculate
the human and social cost from the enslavement and massacre
of perhaps a million people in the siege of Jerusalem?
The Bar Kochba revolt of 132-135 CE
resulted in the annihilation of entire communities
on a scale not seen again,
perhaps until the Holocaust of the 20th century.
The pressures placed upon the Jewish people were so great
as to be existential.
But outstanding individuals, some religious leaders,
others military figures, rose to the fore
and ensured that Jews and Judaism
would survive for many more generations.
Bar Kochba's desire to see Jewish self-determination
would inspire Zionists in the 20th century,
who sought to combat the image of Jews as powerless victims,
a stereotype that had become entrenched
during the lengthy exile and persecution of 2,000 years.
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