"These were two of the most dramatic and consequential centuries in history. And for the Jewish people in particular, these centuries were cataclysmic." The Jews revolted against the world's greatest empire three different times and paid a heavy price as Rome crushed them, even changing the name of the state from Judea to Palestina. "The Jewish people survived, learning how to become a religion without a state."
In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by Rome. The empire designated Herod as king of the Jews, and he ascended to the throne in 37 BCE. During the reign of Herod the Great, the region prospered, and among his many construction projects, the most important was the building of the Second Temple. He died in 4 BCE. Although the region remained peaceful for the next sixty years, it was never comfortably Roman. There were tensions between the monotheistic Jews and the polytheistic pagans. Local tensions in Jerusalem exploded into open revolt in 66 CE. The Roman response under Vespasian was brutal and led to the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. The city was razed, with only the Western Wall left standing.
Half a century later, in 115 CE, a series of uprisings known as the Diaspora Revolt spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. The fighting ranged from Libya to the Parthian border. Trajan's response was to destroy the Jewish communities of Egypt, Cyprus, and Libya. The great synagogue of Alexandria was destroyed. Two decades later, the Emperor Hadrian provoked Judea when he proposed a colony on Jerusalem's ruins. Simon Bar Kokhba led a highly successful rebellion and gained control of southern Judea. Hadrian assembled a vast army and crushed the revolt. The entire province was destroyed, and its people were either dead or enslaved. It was a complete catastrophe. From then on, the Jews of the diaspora would not rebel but follow a conservative, decentralized rabbinical approach to their lives.
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