Essay on The History and Hardships of the Jewish People

In A.D. 70 the Romans ransacked Jerusalem and burned the temple to the ground. The Romans gathered valuable Jewish artifacts and took the items back to Rome as a sign of victory. The rebellion sputtered on for three more years and finally ended in A.D 73. As a result of the struggle many Jews were killed and taken as slaves. The slaves were sent to Egypt to work in mining

Every religious group has suffered a time when their religion was not considered to be popular or right. Out of all of these religious groups that have suffered, no one group has suffered so much as that of the Jewish religion. They have been exiled from almost every country that they have ever inhabited, beginning with Israel, and leading all the was up to Germany, France, Spain, England, and Russia. Not only have they been exiled but also they have suffered through torture, punishment, and murder. Thus, because of the history of the religion, the Jewish people have become a very resilient people. They have survived thousands of years carrying their religion with them from one country to

Under the headship of Zerubbabel who was a offspring from the House of David. Less than century later the Second journey would take place to Israel, with Ezra the Scribe being the leader. The subsequently four centuries also saw Jews of unstable degrees of self-rule under the Persians, and the Hellenistic over lordship (Ptolemaic and Seleucid). Under Ezra’s brilliant guidance they saw the repatriation of the people as they began the erection of the Second Temple on the same site as the First Temple. This would also include the refortification of the walls of Jerusalem a longer with the establishment of the Great Assembly known as Knessel Hagedolah as the judicial body and the ultimate religion of the Jewish people, which highlighted the Second Temple period. In the course of the rule of the Persian Empire, the leadership of the inhabitants of Judah was entrusted to the high priest, with the support of the ruling body of elders in Jerusalem. The Land also remained a Jewish theocracy under the Syrian-based Seleucid leaders, as it was a part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great of Greece

Early modern Jewish history is filled with depth and knowledge that captivated and cultivated the religion into what it would become. An important part of the history were the ideologies and philosophies of Moses Mendelssohn. Considered the first modern Jewish philosopher and a shaper of Judaism, Mendelssohn was the start of what would become the Jewish Enlightenment. Being the first person to translate the Bible from Hebrew to German, he opened up the door for Jews to rediscover and enhance their knowledge. A writer and philosopher, several of Mendelssohn's writings were highly successful and considered a herald to a new way of thinking. While many of his writings received praise from people of different parts, critiques arose, including

We know from the accounts given by Josephus, that Jewish captives were brought back to Rome at the conclusion of the Jewish revolt in 66-70 CE1. Emperor Vespasian told Titus to stop the Jewish revolt and he did. Titus destroyed and looted the temple. Vespasian made

In 70 AD the second temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, hence solidifying the Roman rule over the Jewish Kingdom for the next 254 years. But first lets go back a couple of years and see how the Jewish people where living before the Roman ruled. In 198 BCE the Seleucids integrated the Jewish kingdom into theirs when the lands where divided. The Jews were pleasant at first, however later on the relationship between the hellenized Jews and the religious Jews fell apart. So the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to prohibit certain Jewish religious rites and traditions. As a result this created a national rebellion led by Judas Maccabeus. These rebels became known as the Maccabees, or Hasmoneans. The Maccabean Revolt lasted from 174–135 BCE and the story of how the Maccabees purified the temple of Jerusalem when they took it back was the start of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. For this part the story goes like this. Once the Maccabees had regained control of the kingdom they returned to the Temple in Jerusalem. To their dismay they had found that there temple had been defiled by being used for the worship of foreign gods and the sacrificing of pigs. The Jewish troops where going to burn ritual oil in the Temple’s menorah for eight days to cleanse the temple of the unholy acts that had happened in there. However they discovered that there was only one day's worth of oil left but they lit the menorah anyways and to their surprise the small amount of oil lasted

Many religious and ethnic groups have been oppressed throughout history. This oppression typically occurs out of conflict between different people groups and their opposing cultural values. One of the people groups that succumbed to oppression are the Jewish people who follow the monotheistic Judaism and strict laws of the Torah. The Jews have always been an oppressed group, especially during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In the Hellenistic era, Syrian-Greek Antiochus IV raided the temple of Jerusalem in 169 BC, and rededicated the temple to Zeus and Ba'al between 168-165 BC. During the Roman Empire, Jews were segregated and lived in harsh conditions under Flaccus in 38 AD, and had their temple destroyed during the infamous Jewish-Roman

After the Romans destroyed the Jewish temples and the city of Jerusalem, a group of Jewish people called the Zealots, captured and took over the Masada. The Zealots were the first Jewish people to revolt against Roman rule. This is the first revolt of its kind. Based on prophecies from the bible, if the Jewish people didn't follow Gods word, bad things would happen. In Luke 19: 41-44 it states “Jesus prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed because of the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah”.

Jews are perhaps the greatest race to grace the earth. The Jews have overcome a lot of challenges in their time on Earth as a civilization. Perhaps, their biggest challenge came in 70 A.D. against Rome. The Jews were living under The Roman Empire, and for the most part, they coexisted under Agrippa I, but when he died, their differences started showing. The Romans no longer understood the Jews and their status in the community, and the Jews felt like the Romans did not understand. In 66 A.D., revolts started breaking out in Jerusalem. These rebellions scared the Romans because other Roman cities might’ve rebelled as well. So, they had no choice but to react. In 70 A.D., they broke through the walls of Jerusalem, massacred the Jews, and tore down the temple. Despite being 2000 years old, the siege of Jerusalem and post war Diaspora directly influenced the Jewish communities in the modern era.

Imagine that you move to a new place where nobody is like you. Everyone sees your differences and hates you for it. They give you heavy taxes, make you live in a separate section of town and fabricate all kinds of lies about you. Judaism, the world’s first monotheistic religion, has been persecuted in many similar ways since its beginning to present day and yet, it still lives. The persecution began with the Romans, who burned down the Jews’ most sacred place and expelled them from their homeland, Israel. Since that time, Jews have been persecuted and expelled from many countries, leading to small Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and Spain. In fact, Judaism is so resilient that it survived the Holocaust, in which more than 6 million Jews were killed. To survive, Jewish communities have used many survival strategies. Although the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and Spain both used the tactic of going to places they were protected to keep their religion alive, they also used tactics unique to their communities.

Upon analysing the evidence, one could argue that the Jews were severely oppressed due to their resistance against Roman occupation. Hence, from the fierce persecution of Jews by Flaccus in 38 AD, and the witnessing of a truly horrifying event – the destruction of their sacred temple,

Throughout the history of Judaism, Jewish people have faced ongoing persecution and discrimination. Despite these conflicts, the faith remains alive, strong, and continuously growing. Like many religions faced with adversity, Judaism has had to assimilate its faith to survive in an ever-changing world. One significant moment of change in the Jewish history, the fall of the Second Temple, had the opportunity to destroy Judaism, but the Jewish people bonded together and reformulated their religion in order to save their faith. The falling of the Second Temple marks a distinct change in the Jewish faith through the modification of ritual practices to accommodate their new mobile lifestyle. This change would forever impact the Jewish

I learned a lot of facts about Judaism that I had previously been ignorant to. I had no idea that we (Christians & Jews) maintained the same bible (The Old Testament) but that we interpreted certain events differently, such as Adam and Eve. “In Judaism, each and every human being is free to choose good or evil because each person stands before God in the same relationship that Adam and Eve did” (Esposito 77). I was unaware that Judaism did not believe in “original sin.” I had no knowledge of the fact that Jews did not believe that Christ was resurrected from the dead. I found it interesting how Jews have split into separate groups – Reform Jews, who believe that Judaism is a cultural inheritance and that neither the laws nor beliefs are

“According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites established a united kingdom beginning with Saul” (Spielvogel 33). David, one of Saul’s lieutenants, was able to continue building upon what Saul had started and reunited the Israelites. This unification led to the Israelites being a power on the battlefield, which gave them ability to claim large amounts of land. One area in particular was the city of Jerusalem. Soloman, David’s son, expanded the Empire further by developing more trade routes with other Israelite settlements. He also was the one behind the creation of the temple in Jerusalem. This temple represented all the Israelites worshipped and believed, thus making Jerusalem a central hub for their empire. As time went on tensions increased

Jerusalem was the heart of the kingdom of Judah. With its destruction the country lost its political and religious centre. The city had a population of tens of thousands of people at that time, after its destruction and the exile of the urban elite the pattern of settlement completely changed. Jerusalem and its close vicinity has been erased, but other parts of Judah, especially the Benjamin region, the Northern highlands, the Repha’im valley and some parts south of Jerusalem continued to exist.