Lecture 36. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Lecture 36. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated

Author

Morais, Sabato

Location(s)

United States -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

United States -- Pennsylvania

Format

12 pages on 5 sheets

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?

Language(s)

English

Source

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Sabato Morais Collection, Box 12, Folder 4

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3251g447/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3251g447

Provenance

Transfer of Custody from the Hebrew Education Society, 10 March 1913.

Is Format Of

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx12FF4_16.xml

content

Post Biblical
36

A Talmudical legend tells that the ninth of Ab was doomed, from an early stage in Jewish history, to be conspicuous inauspicious to our race. When ten of the twelve men sent by Moses to explore the Holy Land of promise, exaggerated the difficulties of conquering Canaan, and our people fearing to venture upon a battle, murmured and wept aloud, a superhuman voice spoke. It exclaimed so: "This same night on which you have shed tears without a just cause, will see you in future ages weep because of great disasters." The legend may have had its origin in much later times than the Rabbis claim, still the strange fact remains that even in post-Tal--mudic times ages, sorrowful incidents, affecting Hebrew whole communities of Hebrews, did take place on the ninth or tenth of the month of Ab. None, however, has equalled in its widespread and long continued horrors, the event which happened in the year 70 of the vulgar era.
Immediately after Titus had ordered that the fire which was fast destroying the outer part of the Temple

be put out, a council of war was hastily summoned. Six of the highest officers in the army attended it. They were divided in their opinions as to the final disposition which should be made of the Temple. Some forcibly argued that so long as it was allowed to stand, the Jews would use it as a rallying point and never submit to terms. It is said that Titus opposed those views and prevailed--the grandeur magnificence of the edifice on whose em--bellishment countless treasures had been spent, had excited the ambition of the victor. He would leave it, as the grandest trophy of his conquest, but the Jews had otherwise determined. They would resolved to pro--tect the sanctuary from heathen intrusion, or perish with it. Having recovered from the bewilderment by which they were at first seized at the sight of the conflagration, they attacked the Roman guards, and compelled a precipitate flight. Titus came ran to the rescue and forced the Jews to retreat, but they rushed on again to the bloody struggle. Overpowered once more by a superior number, and exhausted by starvation,

they were thrust by the bayonets driven into the interior inner part of the Temple. The evening of August the 10th, corresponding with the ninth or tenth of Ab, had come on; darkness had put a stop an end to the clank- deadly -ing clang of the wood swords and the whizzing of javelins. Roman guards stationed in the holy House paced it up to and down fro; others were busy in quenching the fire still smoldering in some of the cloisters, when they suddenly felt the sharp steel in the hands of the Jews pierce their bodies. A terrific fight ensued, and with it a shriek that echoed from mountain to mountain. A Roman soldier furious because of the unexpected attack onslaught, had mounted upon the shoulders of another, and thrown a blazing brand into a gilded window, communicating with the interior of the sanctuary. The flames spread wildly, and in their midst Jews and Romans throt--tled one another, trampled upon each other. The defenders and the assailants, stirred by irreconcilable hatred, breathed but revenge. Then forward pressed new destroyers hurling fire brands; madly dashed on fresh legions to hew into pieces women and children,

together they lay swam in rivers of blood with the helpless hoary headed sires. Titus awakened from his sleep, thundered down rushed to the scene of carnage. He commands that order be restored, none hears. He demands that the conflagration be quenched, none obeys. His voice is drowned in the shouts of an infuriated loose soldiery, thirsting for bent upon plunder; in the cries of despairing thousands ghastly with agonized with from terror; in the crash of buildings en--vellopped in volumes of columns of flames. Titus--the delight of mankind--as he has been flatteringly called, would have spared for his own triumph the gorgeous structure, whose golden surroundings spark--ling through sheets of fire, dazzled his vision, but no word of mercy sparing pity for the unarmed lying in heaps round the altar of God, escaped his lips. His favored prisoner, who wrote such a history as might be stamped with an imperial seal, did not feel his hand tremble, and his pen refuse its wonted office, when about to record the last agonies of a dying an expiring nation. Josephus could, without an outburst of Jewish anguish, tell posterity how some priests servants of the Lord plunged into the flaming fire abyss.

With the coldness of a Chronicler of d passing events, he could describe the wanton butchery made by Titus of priests, who, pining with hunger and thirst had trustingly sur--rendered. In the midst of thrilling episd epi--sodes of in the last final hours of our political existence, the Romanized Jew could describe detain us with the notions he entertained about on an inevitable fate, and the about on extraordinary signs of approaching evils, which his people coreligionists did not heed, preferring the prediction good prognostics of false prophets. which occasioned sufferingsand death By a Jew, the pages that narrate the planting of the Roman Eagle where the Shekinah had hovered, the profanity of Roman soldiers cohorts and their abominable sacrifices where Solomon had invoked the visible influence of Israel's God should have been traced in lines breathing the keenest mortification, the most poignant grief.
About six centuries before the catastrophe delineated by Josephus had occurred, a man of his own tribe-- a priest--had witnessed the burning of the Temple, and the dispersion of his people. He also had discovered the impossibility of coping with the foreign a formidable heathen enemy, and had counselled a temporary submission.

He also pictured the downfall and desolation, the affliction and death, but in his protrait, the tears of him who pencilled it are still seen to flow. We may hear yet his groans in his elegies. "Oh that my head were water, and my eye a fountain of tears; I would weep day and night over the slain of the daughter of my people" so mourned the priest of Anathoth--the high souled deeply distressed patriot--Jeremiah. And in his im--mortal book of lamentations: "O wall of the daughter of Zion! Let thy tears run down like a stream river day and night, give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thy eye be still. Rise, cry out in the night, in the beginning of the watches, pour out thy heart before the face of the Lord, lift up towards Him thy hands because of the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger at the corner of every all streets." Josephus could calmly relate that innumerable were his brethren sold as slaves; that the aged and the sick who could not unfit to be so disposed of, the Roman sword cut to pieces; that among the insurgents the youngest and the handsomest were reserved to enhance the triumph, the rest were killed like cattle, that twelve thousand died of starvation,

that during the seige over one million perished, and nearly hundred thousands were made prisoners and scattered through the world. Josephus could insult us,--who must he read his history for want of another--by praising the loving kindness long suffering and magnanimity of Tiutus his patron, telling us in the same breath that Caesar Titus sent multitudes of Jews to work in Egyptian mines, that others he destined for the arena, where they might fight with wild beasts, or kill each other as gladiators for the amusement of brutal spect-ators....
Jerusalem stormed, dismantled, razed to the ground "sitting soli-tary like a widow, she that was a princess among provinces,"--as her true-hearted elegist painted her--Jeru--salem in her utter desolation could not offer any further resistance, yet no mercy was shown to the living; rapacity led a loos soldiery into caves and grottos in search of gold. Woe to those who had sought there a refuge! Still, two men, most prominent in the fatal war, had escaped. They had unhappily headed two opposite functions, and caused untold misery, but they had stood shoulder to shoulder on the day of extreme danger.

John of Giskala and Simon son of Gibras had sworn never to lay down their arms. Jose--hus, who calls theat always chiefs always by the names of "tyrants and robbers," is the ma authority for the report of a proposition which Titus made to them. He The Roman general offered to spare their lives; and be a mild master, if they unconditionally surrendered. They did not accept the terms, and expressed the wish to retire in a desert. Their request being denied, they kept out of sight for a time, hiding underground in deep caverns. But famine forced out John and his few followers. Titus condemned the Galilean chief to life impris--sonment and finally had him transported to Italy, to drag there the chains in a low dungeon. Simon had tried to dig a passage underground, which might carry him beyond the reach of the Romans. His labors were unsuccessful. Then clothed in white and with an upper mantle of purple, he walked in front of the Temple ruins. He looked like a ghostly apparition, but the Roman guards recognized him and bound him in fetters.

Meanwhile Titus, after having munificently rewarded his officers with the riches of rapine and pillage, visited the surrounding provinces and enter--tained their inhabitants with splendid shows in honor of the birth day of his father Vespasian and his brother Dornitian. "The delight of mankind," had a vast number of Jews burnt above at those spectacles to illustrate the manner in which he had finally forced to submission from a city intolerably rebellious to against his power. To add to the public diversions, he had many Jews also thrown to ferocious animals amidst the ribald jests of a savage population. At length, in the spring of the year 71; he left the scene of his greatness, acquired by the horrors of a protracted war, by fire, plunder, and sacrilege, to receive the plaudits of a remorseless people, verging on dissolution, but still craving for military conquests. The glory which awaited Titus at the Capitol was jointly shared by Vespa--sian, and both were saluted Emperors. In the triumphal march, the trophies carried away from the sanctuary of the Eternal Lord,

were borne aloft--the golden table, and the golden candlestick with its seven branches, the silver trumpets and the censer. The scroll and the Law adorned headed likewise the impious procession. The most notable prisoners followed, John of Giskala and Simon of Gioras being conspicuous. Arrived at the capital, the herald announced that the subjection of the most obstinate proudest of all cities was completed by the execution of the most indomitable of her defenders, To Simon son of Gioras had fallen the lot of being dragged by a rope to the Forum scourged and then beheaded. So writes Josephus: "When it was related that there was an end of him, and all the people had set up a shout of joy, they then began to offer those animal sacrifices which they had consecrated in the prayers used in such solemn--ities."....They Strangers who visit the seven-hilled city strain their visions to trace in the triumphal arch of Titus the engravings of the Jerusalem trophies. taken at Jerusalem. Time has blurred them, the Latin inscription may perhaps still be read: Judea Judea devicta, Judea capta. Yes, conquered, but not crushed; in captivity but not self- debased.

Israel has outlived the death of his country, because he draws vitality from the spirit of the Torah--ever quickening, imperishable. Israel conscious of a sublimer possession than that of a trust of land, has not lost his national character. But Rome, that Rome which stole our precious relics to adorn Jupiter Capitolinus is dead beyond resurrection. The silver trumpets of the Jerusalem Temple might sound again, but never will she rise from her sepulchre, Israel alone is everlasting deathless, as his God is eternal.

Identifier

p3251g447

identifier

SMBx12FF4_16