Who We Jews Are Who Have Returned To Our Ancient Land Part 2

                            Synagogue in Algeria or Morocco  at one time
Nadene Goldfoot

Synagogues sprang up as ever since the First Temple was destroyed, these came into being as a place to pray.  They have last for the past 2,500 since then as a house of prayer, meeting and study.  Synagogues have also served as a model for Christianity and Islam to develop their  own houses of worship, the church and the mosque.                                              

The Persians were defeated by Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) of Macedonia,  a ruler particularly kind to his Hebrew subjects.  Alexandrian Jews adopted Greek as their language and their children grew up without Hebrew.  Our Torah was translated into Greek called the Septuagint (Seventy) because of the story of 70 rabbis doing the translating.  We still find errors. 

We didn't agree with all things Greek.  Jews believed that every person is basically good and can improve the world by positive action and righteous living.  Greeks thought of human life in a gloomy and hopeless way.  

Greeks taught that truth can be found only by a few people through long study while Judaism said that truth is open to everyone in the Torah, the word of G-d. Yet rabbis got together, like in Worms, Germany, to study and debate points to get clarity of the Torah. Our famous rabbis have devoted their whole lives to long study. 

 Many Jews gave up Judaism to enjoy the comforts of Greek conquerors. These became hellenized.   Greek ways of religion were totally foreign to Jewish traditions, however. 

Egyptian and Syrian successors of Alexander were the worst, especially Antiochus IV, king of Syria controlled all of Israel.  He had feelings of grandeur bordering on insanity, thinking he was a god and took the title Epiphanes meaning the manifest G0d.  People called him the madman, Epimanes.  

Roman armies kept him from conquering Egypt so he vented anger against the Jews.  Keeping the Sabbath was now a crime.  Honoring the G-d of Israel was a crime.  They had to offer sacrifices to the gods of Greece and eat the pig. To disobey these laws meant death.  A revolt naturally started with Mattathias, leader of Hasmonean family and priest in the town of Modin.  Chanukah was created. Judah Maccabee led their forces.  On the 25th of Kislev, 165 BCE, they rededicated their Temple to the service of G-d and was a great victory of human freedom .  To get to this point in time, our people faced many crises.  At each point, a small group had been willing to risk all to see the children of Israel survive.  A minority returned to Israel from Babylon.  A minority took up arms against the armies of Antiochus. Their dedication and determination proved justified.  After 400 years of rule by others; Babylonians, Persians and Greeks, Jews were again masters of their own country.  With this victory of Maccabees over the armies of Antiochus, the biblical Period came to a conclusion.       

At this time, the Talmud was written and it was the age of the Rabbis. In fact, we have two;  The Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds.   We were surrounded by laws, opinions, legends, sayings, stories and debating.  There was this thirst for logic and clarity and analytic truth that continues today but on a different path.  They said, the more you study the Holy Scriptures, the more we learn from it, and the same thought was also about the Talmud   The Talmuds were the collected records of academic discussion and of judicial administration of Jewish Law by generations of scholars and jurists in many academies and in more than one country during several centuries after 200 CE.  In other words, they were the notes about the Jewish laws. Because the Talmud was so valuable to Jews, they were taken from them and burned in their anti-Semitic rants by anti-Semites, usually a whole town of people against Jews because they were different. 

If we were just left with laws, they would last no longer than the town or the people. Knowing these laws were special from G0d, made them a holy law to follow. Discussing them and commenting about their importance was the human part.   

And then the Romans came along, occupying Jerusalem long before they burned it down in 70 CE. In 63 bce the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem. The Romans ruled through a local client king and largely allowed free religious practice in Judaea.                                          

 The Arch of Titus in Rome, their own bragging about the loot they took from the Temple of the Jews and how they forced their citizens into slavery and carry it all back to Rome....How many Jewish tourists have noticed this and didn't know its meaning today?  

 First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem, the center of Jewish rebel resistance in the Roman province of Judaea. Following a five-month siege, the Romans destroyed the city and the Second Jewish Temple.  On April 70 CE, three days before Passover, the Roman army started besieging Jerusalem.  Romans allowed pilgrims to enter the city but refused to let them leave—thus strategically depleting food and water supplies within Jerusalem. 

Within the walls, the Zealots, a militant anti-Roman party, struggled with other Jewish factions that had emerged, which weakened the resistance even more.                              

Josephus Flavius (Yoseph ben Mattityahu ha-Cohen (38-100 CE) , a Jew who had commanded rebel forces but then defected to the Roman cause, attempted to negotiate a settlement, but, because he was not trusted by the Romans and was despised by the rebels, the talks went nowhere. The Romans encircled the city with a wall to cut off supplies to the city completely and thereby drive the Jews to starvation.  It lasted so long that people were driven to the point of cannibalism according to Josephus.  

Josephus was looked upon as a traitor to the Jews.  In 64 he had been sent to Rome on a mission.  When Romans attacked Galilee in 67, he directed the resistance and was besieged in Jotapata, also called Yodfat, which was a 47-day siege by Roman forces of the Jewish town , but on capture of the city went over to the Romans and took the name of Flavius.  It was the 2nd bloodiest battle of the revolt, surpassed only by the Siege of Jerusalem, and the longest except for Jerusalem and Masada. The siege was chronicled by Josephus, who had personally commanded the Jewish forces at Yodfat and was subsequently captured by the Romans.  He painted a picture with his words of Roman butchery and Jewish bravery which even today stands as a monument to the courage of the Jews.   He himself had chosen to become a Roman but could not forget his Jewish heritage, as the looting went on right and left and all caught by the Romans were put to the sword.  

There was no pity for age, no regard for rank, little children and old men, laymen and priests alike were butchered;  every class was held in the iron embrace of war...reminding us of October 8, 2023's attack by the Palestinian's  Hamas terrorists to happen 1953 years later in Israel.  

Jews have been the brunt of every maniacal implement against mankind, and yet they still demand the law and fairness in the land. They are the first to see the differences.   The worst they have been treated, the more they expect out of our human civilizations of today.  Is it no wonder?  How many times must they be disappointed?  

Resource; 

Abba Eban's My People;  History of the Jews, volume I 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia