The 9th of Ab is the day of the national mourning of the Jewish people. As we explained in previous years, the first reason why we fast and mourn this day is that on that day it was decreed that the generation that left Egypt would not enter the Promised Land but would die in the desert.
The second tragic event that we remember, always in chronological order, is the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem in the year 586 before the common era.
In the year 68 of the common era (historians say 70), the second Bet haMiqdash was destroyed, this time by the Romans.
There are two other tragic events that we remember in the 9th of Ab. These two events occurred after the destruction of the second Bet HaMiqdash, and in a certain way they were the direct consequence of it.
The first of these two events is called in Hebrew: חרישת העיר, which means that “the City was plowed”. The city to which we refer here is none other than Jerusalem. This happened in the year 130 of the common era, sixty years after the destruction of the Bet haMiqdash.
Finally, on the day Tisha B’Ab, corresponding to August 4 of the year 135, the city of Betar fell into the hands of the Romans, in Hebrew: נלכדה ביתר, “The city of Betar was conquered.”
This year I would like to explore and explain these last two events in a little more detail.
Let’s start from the beginning:
Historians say that when the Bet HaMiqdash was destroyed, the Romans killed around 1 million Jews: one third of the local Jewish population. In addition, tens of thousands of children older than 7 years were captured and sold as slaves. And thousands of young Jews from 17 years old and up were assigned to die in Roman circuses, where they would be killed fighting gladiators, or being devoured alive trying to escape from hungry beasts, to the delight of the spectators.
Thousands of Jews also escaped to Alexandria (Egypt), to Cyprus or to the coasts of Africa, where they founded important communities, which were tragically destroyed by the Romans around the year 117 of the common era, in what historians call מרד התפוצות, ” the rebellion of Jewish communities in the diaspora. ”
Back to Israel, which was no longer “Israel” but Judea, a Roman province completely dependent on the Roman Emperor. In order to have the right to continue living in the now Roman territory, the Jewish survivors had to pay high taxes to the empire and endure constant humiliations and abuses.
Very impoverished, Jews were resettled in the north of the country, the Galil, and in the center, in cities such as Lod, Bene-Berak, Betar and especially in Yabne. In this last city, from the 70’s was founded an important rabbinic academy under the leadership of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakay and Rabban Gamliel, who tried to maintain the best possible relationship with the Romans. The foundations of the Mishnah, the Midrash and the Talmud came from the Yabne Rabbinical academy, through great luminaries such as Ribbi Eliezer haGadol, Ribbi Yehoshua ben Hananiya, Ribbi Yishmael and Ribbi Aquiba, the most famous of the Sages of that time.
It could be said that during this period of time, from year 68 to 129, the Yehudim slowly recovered from the enormous loss of the Bet HaMiqdash and began to grow again as a people, studying and developing more and more our Tora and the Rabbinic institutions. The situation seemed to be improving, especially with the new Emperor Hadrian, who on one of his trips to Judea assured that he was going to allow the Yehudim to rebuild the Bet haMiqdash … but in the end, everything changed, for the worse.…
To be continued….
