Tisha B’av is an observance day that most non-Orthodox Jews are not too aware. Until I became a Zionist and befriended many Orthodox Jews, I had no clue about this solemn day on the Jewish calendar. And still, since 2014 when I became a Zionist, I didn’t pay much attention to Tisha B’av until this year’s – of course, the Jewish genocide of Oct. 7th had everything to do with my sudden interest and participation.
Although the saddest day in the Jewish calendar commemorates numerous atrocities and ominous events that befell Jews, to this day, the destruction of both the First and Second Temples is the focus (from what I experienced anyway at two different shuls). It is completely apropos to deeply mourn those destructions as the Temple was the nucleus of our people; it united Jews in faith, in practice, in culture who lived under two different Kingdoms, who were part of tribes within those Kingdoms.
Even as a secular Jew, I strongly support the building of a third Beit HaMikdash.
From a historical perspective, I feel pride in the wrath the Romans exerted on our people; it means that anything less than destroying our Second Temple and sieging Jerusalem with fiery might, would not have defeated our ancestors. Nor did we fully succumb to the most advanced weaponry and military tactics available to the Romans and their legions at the time; our ancestors moved mainly to the northern edges of Judea (today’s Golan and Galilee regions) and de-centralized, pivoting our people to a rabbinic-focused faith, a shift that allowed the Jewish people to survive and often thrive throughout the Diaspora, while still connecting to the Jews who never left Israel.
It is important to note that prior to the advent of Christianity, Jews were not targeted due to antisemitism. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans hated Jews for being Jews. In some cases, we merely stood in their way of reaching a land ripe with resources (Egypt), and in other cases, it was due to our stubbornness to not submit to foreign rule. Next door in Egypt, the populations there were also being crucified with vengeance by the Romans for rebelling. Just like Jews are not special regarding being killed by Muslims; though Jews are uniquely named as an enemy in the Quran, when it comes to % of populations killed by Muslims, Jews rank fairly low. In India for example, from 650 AD – 1500 AD, close to 400 million Hindus were murdered and many forcibly converted by Muslim rule.
Jewish Civil Wars Brought in Roman Rule
At the time of the First Roman-Jewish War, the land of Israel only comprised Judea & Samaria. Outside of Judea & Samaria were Semitic tribes who were not Judeans. The Assyrian Exile depleted the Kingdom of Israel (though the Assyrians did not kill the Jews whom they captured, but dispersed them widely throughout their Empire) by 722 CE. Jews (Jews & Israelites are the same, just different names of Kingdoms) were a force against the Assyrians as well; it took 20 years to defeat the Kingdom of Israel; it finally fell after a three year intense siege on the capital city, Samaria. An attempt to conquer Jerusalem failed.
The Jews left behind lived under the Kingdom of Judah and simply renamed the entire region of Judea & Samaria to Judea. It would be years later until the Maccabees and then the Hasmonean Dynasty conquered their way across the remainder of Canaan and Judaized the land through conquests and absorption of the other Semitic tribes.
And it was precisely because of the Hasmoneans that the Romans were invited into Judea. The Hasmonean Dynasty was the extension of the Maccabean rule over Judea. Not only were the Maccabees fighting Greek Syrian mercenaries, the Seleucids, but were also with full force fighting the Hellenized Jews; in fact, more battles were launched against the Hellenized Jews than the foreign foe of that time. Entire Hellenized Jewish villages were burned to the ground by the rebels, and the Sicarii vigilante group was formed. This vigilante group would prove useful during the Kitos War or the Second Jewish-Roman War.
Though the war with the Seleucids ended, the Maccabees did not hold on to the Samaria portion of Judea & Samaria, only Judea. And flare-ups continued sporadically with the Seleucids even after that war was deemed concluded. To establish legitimacy, the Maccabees shrewdly decided to reach out to the Roman rulers and signed the Roman-Jewish treaty around 161 BC. Rome at that time was expanding rapidly throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, not only via direct conflict with the ruling Greeks, but also interfering in wars in Syria and Egypt
Though the treaty promised intervention in case of attack, the reality was more favorable – the Romans not interfering as the Maccabees and later, the Hasmonean Kings & Queens expanded their territory.
So what caused the Romans to turn on Jews, the first time?
Rome’s most capable General, Pompey the Great had been invited to Judea to intervene in a dispute between two rival Hasmonean sons – Hyrcanus and Aristobulus – over the inheritance of the Hasmonean throne. Outraged by the perceived insolence of Aristobulus, Pompey’s army marched on Jerusalem and sacked the Jewish capital. It took three months to breach the walls and overrun the Temple. The siege resulted in the death of 12,000 Jews. Treasures were not then stolen from the Temple.
The attack on the Temple and Jerusalem officially terminated the independent Hasmonean rule in Judea. Instead, the Roman rulers installed a Roman puppet, Antipater I (thanks to high-level ingratiation inside Roman military campaigns in Egypt)– who was descended from the Idumean tribe south of Judea (a Semitic tribe defeated by Judeans), who was the father of the coming King Herod the Great (the Roman appointed King of the Jews who reigned for 33 years and battled the Hasmoneans for power).
66 AD was a turning point of souring Roman-Judean relations that would lead to all-out war. That year, the Roman Emperor Nero needed funds and he ordered that those funds come from the Temple in Jerusalem. When his representative in Judea, Gessius Florus, asked Jews for donations, he was not amused when he was met with mockery. Florus had those Jews arrested and crucified (a common punishment in those days).
While there was also tension of faith (the Romans were insistent upon building statues of idols and placing them in the Temple), the Roman governors and the Temple authorities managed to work out issues. Taxation is what truly led to the first Jewish-Roman War. Sixty years of heavy taxation took a toll on the poor Judean peasants, and it was not taxation that benefited Jews; the funds were being spent in Italy and on the border cities. In Jerusalem, many Jews became unemployed when the renovation to the Temple was complete in 63 AD.
It was the peasants and artisans who were ready to fight the Romans. These peasants considered the Temple Priesthood highly corrupt and not trustworthy. The anger towards the Romans also turned inwards and became a class struggle.
When Roman envoys left Judea briefly to aid Emperor Nero, one of the Roman garrisons in Jerusalem was destroyed. Following the attack, Jews raided the fortress of Masada and seized stored Roman weapons. The group that raided Masada was comprised of the Sicarii or Sicarians (dagger men). This group anointed their leader as King of the Jews, marched towards Jerusalem where they laid siege to the remaining Roman garrison. The new Sicarian King had the High Priest executed but was later lynched by the followers of the executed High Priest. The Sicarians fled Jerusalem and returned to Masada which they used as a base for stealth warfare until their infamous defeat in 74 AD.
In the fall of 66 AD, the Romans in Jerusalem surrendered and were lynched. Meanwhile, the leftover Greek inhabitants of the Golan, Judea, and the Galilee attacked Jews, and our people not only attacked back, but expelled the Greeks from those regions (this maneuver echoes what should be done with the Arab occupiers today of Judea & Samaria).
When Gessius Florus was replaced with the Roman governor of Syria, the new Governor attempted to squash the rebellion and led a legion – the Twelfth Legion to Jerusalem. It was reinforced with three notorious legions from around the Roman Empire plus auxiliaries and foreign allies. They succeeded in liberating the pro-Roman capital of the Galilee, Sepphoris, and continued to Jerusalem.
However, the legions were defeated by the Zealot leader, Eleazer, son of Simon. It was thus clear that the Romans would return with a full army.
Fighting continued on where the Romans’ goal at the time was not full defeat of the Judeans, but to quell the numerous rebellions. Jews were not unified; the various Judean generals had differing goals, tactics, and alliances. The pro-Roman king Herod was forced to flee. 6,000 Romans were massacred at the Battle of Beth Horon, the most defiant battle during the First Jewish-Roman War; worse still for the Romans, the legionary standards were lost. To quash the Jewish rebellions further, the Romans called on the experienced general, Vespasian, who had won great battles in Britain.
Vespasian delivered on all fronts: He took control of the Galilee, the ports, both sides of the Jordan River Valley; his soldiers seized crops from the Judean farmers. Vespasian even took breaks in fighting to let the Judean factions tire out from their own ruthless physical infighting and plotting against one another.
Surprisingly, what actually led to a blood-thirsty siege on Jerusalem was the suicide of Emperor Nero. A power vacuum existed as a result that needed to be filled. The Romans were experiencing their own civil wars within their ruling entities. With Vespasian back in Rome, his son Titus was left in Judea to deal with the defiant Jews and he had to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. With that, the Romans led a siege on Jerusalem; the legions the Judeans drove away now came back with a vengeance, along with further reinforcements.
The Romans surprised Jews with siege towers, an unseen war tactic. The use of siege towers brought down the first defensive wall after 15 days of intense fighting; the second wall took a mere 5 days. The third wall was left to conquer and it took the Romans seven months to bring it down. During their attempt, the Romans built siege dams to hasten the defeat, but the rebels and their respective armies destroyed several of those dams. The next goal for the Romans was to attack the Antonia fortress on the Temple Mount. Knowing that the siege on Jerusalem would take far longer than expected, the Romans increased the number of crucifixions of Jews – up to 500 per day.
Even under starvation and a complete blockade, the rebels and their armies kept fighting (and fighting one another). When a wall of the Antonia fortress was breached, it was discovered that Jews built another wall behind that breach.
**Setting the Temple on fire was a desperate move by Titus and against war protocol at the time. The Romans were losing numerous legion fighters and were at a breaking point of what else they could throw at the Judeans. **
The siege of Jerusalem resulted in 115,880 deaths of the Judeans, and close to 100,000 Jews taken as slaves to Italy. Many of the men were used as slave labor to help build the Colosseum (among other slaves who were used to build the trophy funded by spoils from the Second Temple). Other Judean slaves were used as Gladiators, though Christian slaves bore the brunt of those fights to the death. Luckily, most of the Jews taken did not endure slavery in Italy; their freedom was bought by the existing Jews in Italy.
Overall, historical records estimate between 800,000 – 1 million Judeans (including former Idumeans who were Semites) were killed during the First Jewish-Roman War. About 20,000 Roman soldiers were killed.
**Judeans were not done with the Romans.**
Many of the surviving rebels and their communities migrated northward, where there were already established communities of Jews in the Golan and Galilee. For instance, the town of Peki’in in the North is where an abundance of the Priestly class settled and became farmers; they remained there for the next near 2,000 years until the Druze drove most out in 1936. Jews were also living in Akko, Haifa, Gaza, Lod, Hebron, Tsfat, and numerous small villages. Jews were even able to return to Jerusalem. The Romans did need taxpaying subjects.
The Second Jewish-Roman War also known as the Kitos War (115 – 117 CE) was the war of the Diaspora Jews. The Roman Emperor Trajan was distracted by the battles with the Parthians. His legions were caught off guard when Jewish Diaspora communities in Cyrenaica (northern Libya), Cyprus, Egypt, and across Mesopotamia erupted into violence. As the Roman army was advancing deep into Mesopotamia, the Jewish rebels placed themselves behind the Roman legions in the back of the attack fronts. The impetus for the Kitos War was a Jewish revolt in far-off Cyrenaica that soon spread to Egypt and then Cyprus and incited revolt in Judea.
The Judean uprising in Lod, Israel threatened grain supplies from Egypt to the Roman front. The Jewish insurrection spread with fury to the recently conquered provinces. Cities with substantial Jewish populations such as in Nisibis (Kurdish town in modern Turkey), Edessa (Turkey), Seleucia (Iraq) and Arbela (now Irbil, Iraq) joined the rebellion and slaughtered their Roman garrisons.
The brutality of the Jewish rebels was described in detail by the Roman historian, Lucius Cassius Dio:
“Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, they also performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason, no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by the force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.”
And yet, today, we are negotiating with terrorists after a Jewish genocide.
The communities in Libya were so greatly depopulated by Jews, that had it not been for the next Emperor, Hadrian, Libya would have been a lost province of Rome. Emperor Hadrian resettled other populations in Libya to course correct the seismic loss.
The Kitos War set the stage for the final Jewish-Roman War (131 AD – 136 AD), and provided the foundation of the Roman vengeance against Jews, the effects of which is still experienced today, thanks to the KGB’s Operation SIG in 1967.
In the interest of reading length, I will not be going into great detail in this newsletter edition about the Third Jewish-Roman War (aka the Bar-Kokhba Revolt), the war which resulted in the renaming of Judea to Palestina, the Greek term for Judea at the time. It is not shocking that the Romans had to attempt to erase any Judean connection to our land, and administratively joined Judea with Syria. For the next 1,812 years, Jews in Judea were under occupation – not all the occupations were onerous, and the Christian occupations were far worse for Israel than the Muslim ones. In fact, Saladin I of the Ayyubid Dynasty helped Jews in Israel.
After the first Jewish-Roman War, the Jews in Judea were under firm Roman military control, with onerous restrictions placed on Judean daily life. Around 129 AD, Emperor Hadrian ordered a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, be built on the site of the mostly razed Jerusalem. But more inflammatory was the fact that a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter was being erected on the site of the former Judean Temple.
Simon Bar-Kokhba led the rebellion starting in 131 AD, with full force fighting commencing in 132 AD. Bar-Kokhba’s initial force of 12,000 men swelled to an impressive near 400,000 when he summoned the Jews of the Diaspora to join in the fight. Initially, the Judeans were successful in inflicting mass casualties against the Romans, but in 134 AD, the Romans fired their existing general, replaced him with a more seasoned commander, and brought in 12 more legions from around the Roman Empire to defeat the Jews.
The same Roman historian, Lucius Cassius Dio, wrote of the aftermath of the Bar-Kokhba revolts:
“50 of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out.”
Many erroneously assume that the third and final Jewish-Roman War wiped out Jews from Israel. Not the case whatsoever. About 700,000 Jews remained in Israel, far from a total Exile. It is actually antisemitic when the lie of ‘all Jews were exiled’ is spread.
The Romans used the port of Gaza as a Jewish slave market until the 4th century AD; after which, Jews re-took control of Gaza and remade it into an important Jewish port for centuries to come. It was to Gaza that Sephardic Jews escaping the Inquisition came to seek safety.
My firm belief is that Jews should perceive the Jewish-Roman wars through a prideful lens. What other people, small in numbers, rose so valiantly against a world power over the course of around 70 years, and overall survived, in the very land where war was taken directly to occupiers.
For those who are interested in Zionism education classes (TBTN offers classes four times a year), please contact me at : laureen@tbtnisrael.com. It would help to determine when this fall to best teach the classes.
Also, pro-Israel organizations that are interested in Zionism education, are welcome to partner promotionally with TBTN.