The Temple of Jerusalem seemed an everlasting pledge of safety. Many in Judea believed that since God dwelt here, the city was inviolable — that the very chosenness of the people served as a shield. To Rome, however, Judea was merely one rebellious province in a long list, and the revolt that broke out in 66 was merely another mutiny to be put down. Two forms of pride collided: a faith that had turned the sanctuary into a magic talisman, and an empire for which another people's God meant nothing. Judgment on the first the tradition pronounced upon itself: the Talmud explains the fall of the Second Temple by causeless hatred among one's own — sinat chinam (Yoma 9b).
The catastrophe came in the summer of the year 70. The army led by Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, took Jerusalem after a long siege. In the heat of the fighting the Second Temple — the heart of Jewish worship, where sacrifices had been offered for centuries — was set ablaze and burned. The city was razed almost to the ground, leaving only the towers of Herod's citadel and part of the wall; tens of thousands were killed, enslaved, or executed. Three years later the last stronghold of the rebels, Masada, also fell. The empire had proved its strength with stone and fire.
There began a captivity without deportation — a captivity amid ruins and dispersion. There was no longer any place to offer sacrifice: the very heart of the ancient religion had ceased to beat. The people were scattered and burdened with a special tax levied for the Roman temple of Jupiter. And after the new revolt raised by Bar Kokhba in 132-135, the Jews were forbidden even to live in Jerusalem, renamed Aelia Capitolina. It seemed that everything on which the faith had stood had been taken from it.
But it was precisely here that the return took place — not as a restoration but as a rebirth. Even during the war the teacher of the Law Yohanan ben Zakkai, carried, by tradition, out of the besieged city, obtained from the Romans permission to open a school at coastal Yavne. There Judaism reassembled itself anew — around the Torah, the study of the Law, prayer, and the synagogue, without a temple building and without sacrifices. Thus the ancient rhyme of the Babylonian captivity was repeated: a faith deprived of stone learned to live as a faith of the Word — and in that loss found the power to survive wherever its people might be cast.