Nadene Goldfoot
There were Jews who had never left Israel, even before 70 CE. They've been here since Joshua brought them into ERETZ YISRAEL or Canaan, it was called. We have this on record: God chose the Hebrew nation as far back as the 17th century B.C.E, making a covenant with Abraham and His offspring via Isaac through the everlasting promise found in Gen. 17:7-8. It would be many years before this promise was fulfilled, however, God is faithful to all His promises .
Jews are direct descendants of Abraham; Abraham and Sarah's son was Isaac and Isaac and Rebecca were parents of Jacob. It's in Genesis part of the Old Testament (Bible). Genesis 15:18 God chose the Hebrew nation as far back as the 17th century B.C., making a covenant with Abraham and His offspring via Isaac through the everlasting promise found in Gen. 17:7-8. It would be many years before this promise was fulfilled, however, God is faithful to all His promises.
On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “to your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates….”Genesis 15:18
Hillel the Elder
Hillel (Hebrew: הִלֵּל Hīllēl; variously called Hillel the Elder or Hillel the Babylonian;born c 90 BCE died c. 10 CE) was a Jewish religious leader, sage and scholar associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud and the founder of the House of Hillel school of tannaim. He was active during the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first century CE. He came from (Babylon, where he was born, to Israel, although he was descended from David. His descendent, Judah haNasi, traced his lineage through both the female lineage of the Tribe of Benjamin and the family of David. Hillel lived in Jerusalem during the time of King Herod(73 BCE-4 BCE) and the Roman emperor Augustus(ruled 31 BCE-14 CE). In the Midrash compilation Sifre, the periods of Hillel's life are made parallel to those in the life of Moses. Hillel is popularly known as the author of 2 maxims:
- "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"
- "That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.
- or
- Hillel's Golden Rule is: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary—go and study it". This version is a negative form of the Golden Rule, and Hillel stated it when a pagan asked him to summarize the entirety of Jewish law. The Jewish law is made up of 613 laws, most of which we do
- after the course of a day.
Before 70 CE, Palestine was a region with a significant Jewish population, but a majority lived in the Diaspora. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish presence in Palestine declined significantly but remained continuous, with the population being a small minority in a region that became predominantly Muslim under various empires (Arab, Ottoman, etc.). The first modern wave of Zionist immigration began in 1881, increasing the Jewish population from a small minority (around 5% in 1880) to about 60,000 by the start of World War I in 1914.
Key rabbis who were active in or moved to Israel after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE include Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who established a center of learning in Yavneh, and Rabbi Akiva, who later became a leading scholar and supporter of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi was another prominent figure who compiled the Mishnah around 200 CE.
Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai
Rabbi Yochanan Bed Zakkai's choice: Jerusalem or the Jewish People?
Shortly before the destruction of the Second Temple, with Jerusalem under siege by the Romans, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai made a very difficult decision, leaving his beloved and holy city behind to its fate. Feeling he could not save it, he decided to try something different in an attempt to keep the Jewish People alive. At the end of the Second Temple era, with Jerusalem besieged by the Roman army, the wealthy of the city donated all the food in their warehouses to the public. In doing so, they hoped the Jews of the city would have what they needed to survive the siege.
The Jewish zealots had other plans, and they set fire to the stocks of food. Comfort and convenience do not maintain the spark of rebellion, and so they needed to be snuffed out. The rebels were seeking hunger, anger, rage. These are the things that nourish rebellion.
As hunger began to increase, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, a leader of the moderate camp, summoned the leader of the zealots, Abba Sikra, to try and find a solution. The Gemara explains that this happened privately. No-one knew about the meeting but the two of them.
Zakkai's home was in Arraba, a village in the Galilee, where he spent eighteen years. Although living among them, he found the attitude of Galileans to be objectionable, allegedly exclaiming that they hated the Torah and would therefore "fall into the hands of robbers." During the outbreak of hostilities, he settled in Jerusalem. A quote from him: If you are holding a sapling in your hand and someone tells you, 'Come quickly, the Messiah is here!', first finish planting the tree and then go to greet the Messiah. He is widely regarded as one of the most important Jewish figures of his time, and his escape from the Roman destruction of Jerusalem which allowed him to continue teaching) may have been instrumental in Rabbinic Judaism's survival post-Temple. His tomb is located in Tiberias within the Maimonides burial compound.
During the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE in the First Jewish–Roman War, he argued in favour of peace: according to the Talmud (Gittin 56a), when he found the anger of the besieged populace to be intolerable, he arranged a secret escape from the city inside a coffin—helped by his nephew and Zealot leader Ben Batiach—so he could negotiate with Vespasian (who, at this time, was still just a military commander). Ben Zakkai correctly predicted that Vespasian would become Emperor and that the Temple would soon be destroyed.
In return, Vespasian( born on November 17, 9 CE, and died on June 24, 79 CE). He was the Roman emperor from 69 CE until his death and was the founder of the Flavian dynasty who granted Yochanan three wishes: the salvation of Yavne and its sages and the descendants of Rabban Gamliel, who was of the Davidic line, and a physician to treat Rabbi Zadok, who had fasted for 40 years to stave off the destruction of Jerusalem.
According to the Talmud, Yochanan ben Zakkai lived 120 years. Upon his death, his students returned to Yavneh, and he was buried in the city of Tiberias; eleven centuries later, Maimonides was buried nearby. As leader of the Sanhedrin, he was succeeded by Gamliel II.
Rabbi Akiva
Akiva ben Joseph, also known as Rabbi Akiva, was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash halakha. He is referred to in Tosafot as Rosh la-Hakhamim. Akiva ben Joseph (written עֲקִיבָא in the Babylonian Talmud and עֲקִיבָה in the Jerusalem Talmud), was of humble parentage. According to some sources, he was descended from converts to Judaism.When Akiva married the daughter of Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ (בֶּן כַּלְבָּא שָׂבוּעַ), a wealthy citizen of Jerusalem, Akiva was an uneducated shepherd employed by him. The first name of Akiva's wife is not provided in earlier sources, but a later version of the tradition gives it as Rachel. She stood loyally by her husband during the period of his late initiation into rabbinic studies after he was 40 years of age, and in which Akiva dedicated himself to the study of Torah.
A different tradition narrates that, at the age of 40, Akiva attended the academy of his native town, Lod, presided over by Eliezer ben Hurcanus. Hurcanus was a neighbour of Joseph, the father of Akiva. The fact that Eliezer was his first teacher, and the only one whom Akiva later designates as "rabbi", is of importance in settling the date of Akiva's birth. These legends set the beginning of his years of study at about 75–80..He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 CE) . He has also been described as a philosopher.
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Simon Bar Kokhba
Simon bar Kokhba or Simon bar Koseba, commonly referred to simply as Bar Kokhba, was a Jewish military leader in Judea. During the revolt, the Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva regarded Simon as the Jewish messiah.
He lent his name to the Bar Kokhba revolt, which he initiated against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. Wikipedia He was killed in action in 135 CE. He did the impossible ! He took Jerusalem and held it for 3 years, held by the strongest army in the world. For 3 years it was back in Jewish hands. The level of hostility and mistreatment of the Jews escalated throughout the Roman Empire to the extent of becoming unbearable.
In response, the Jews revolted several times more. Each time thousands of their number were killed. As a result, the average Roman looked at every Jew as a person hostile to Rome. Jews were officially designated as having "enemy status" ― dediticci in Latin.
Of course, the Jews in the Land of Israel had been crushed in the Great Revolt, and ― at least, right after the destruction of the Temple ― did not have the strength to fight. But we must remember that at this time, a considerable number of Jews were living outside Israel. In fact, historians estimate that there were about 5-7 million Jews living in the Roman Empire and at least 60% of that number were living outside the land of Israel. Places like Alexandria, Egypt (one of the most cosmopolitan cities of that era) alone had a Jewish population of about 250,000 and boasted the largest synagogue in the world.
Resource:
https://blog.nli.org.il/en/ben_zakkai/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbi_Akiva
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/biographies/vespasian/#google_vignette
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