A People Tested: The Roman Cruelty Towards the Jews

The Torah contains two main sections of admonitions: one in Parashat Bechukotai and the other in Parashat Ki Tavo. At first glance, they seem similar: blessings and prosperity when the Israelites follow Hashem's path and horrific curses when they stray from it.

However, Ramban explains that these sections address two different historical periods. Parashat Bechukotai concerns the first exile and the destruction of the First Temple, whereas Parashat Ki Tavo adds circumstances that occurred only during the destruction of the Second Temple.

The descriptions of the prophecies' fulfillment are shocking and sorrowful, yet they are also extraordinary evidence of Hashem's word coming to life.

The Torah states: "You shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, and your carcass shall be food for all birds of the sky and beasts of the earth."

Indeed, one of the Romans' gruesome methods of punishing their subjects was to leave bodies unburied for extended periods, as Josephus recounts: "The dead were piled on all the king's roads... They went to such lengths in their cruelty as not to grant burial even to those who died within the city or on the roads, as if they made a pact to nullify the laws of nature along with those of their forefathers, adding impurity towards the Divine to their atrocities against people. Those who buried their relatives were subject to the death penalty as if they were fugitives" (Wars of the Jews IV, VI). The Talmud also recounts that the casualties of Betar were not given a burial for a long time (Baba Batra 121a).

The curses state: "You will be oppressed and robbed all your days, without a savior... You will build a house but not live in it, plant a vineyard but not enjoy its fruit, your ox slaughtered before your eyes but you will not eat from it, your donkey stolen from you but not returned, your sheep given to your enemies and you have no savior, your sons and daughters given to another nation as you watch with longing eyes, yet your hands are powerless."

Josephus similarly describes: "In those days, the Samaritans abused the Israelites greatly, robbing them of their fields and taking their husbands and lands, plundering their fields and capturing their owners to lead them away" (Antiquities of the Jews).

"(Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator) was the most brutal of men where shame was appropriate, yet there was no one with greater brazenness than him. No one like him devised more effective evil plans; he kept entire cities trembling, destroyed entire populations. All that was left was for him to proclaim throughout the land that robbery was permitted provided he received his share of the loot. His greed carried him so far that many cities and citizens abandoned their beloved lands and sought refuge in foreign provinces" (Wars of the Jews II, IV, II).

The curses state: "The foreigner among you will rise higher and higher, while you sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail."

Indeed, the rise of foreigners towards the end of the Second Temple era was one of the primary causes for the destruction of the nation and the land. Herod, the foreigner, tormented and suppressed the Jewish people in a way the people never knew before—a king, though foreign, who was supposed to be of the nation, acting as a terrifying oppressor rather than just a conqueror from afar.

The Torah says: "Hashem will bring you back to Egypt in ships, on the journey of which I told you that you shall not see it again; there you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy."

Indeed, the return to Egypt for the sale as slaves with no buyers is described in Josephus's writings: "Anyone over the age of seventeen was sent to labor in Egypt in chains, and Titus gave multitudes as gifts to the provinces to die in the theaters by sword and by beasts, while those under seventeen were sold" (Wars of the Jews XII, IX, II).

"And those who were not sold there were placed on ships and taken to Egypt," (Historian Minter, quoted in Early Generations, Vol. B, p. 519).

"The number of slain was enormous, and even greater were the captives who filled the slave markets in the land and distant places. Particularly notable was the slave market north of Hebron, where Jewish slaves from Hadrian's capture were sold, and according to one account, a Jewish slave was sold for the price of a horse's food allowance" (History of the Jewish People in Ancient Times, p. 321).

How tragic is the state of a slave for whom no one is willing to pay, what value does his life hold? Indeed, "but no one will buy."

More than three thousand years after these curses were written, English scholar John MacGregor pitched his tent on the banks of the Jordan (MacGregor traveled in the Land of Israel in 1868 and documented his journey in the book "Rob Roy on the Jordan," Hebrew edition, Ministry of Defense Publications, 1982), and wrote: "My irritable guide shouted, 'Oh dogs like you, savages, swine, Jews!'. In the Land of Israel, Arabs use the term 'Jew' as the most degrading insult. Yet, remembering that the Jews in this land—their own land—were once the chosen of all nations, and today, across the entire globe, they are among the richest, bravest, wisest, and most decent of people, some of the best in music and song, poetry and painting, art and science, literature and education, philanthropy, warfare, commerce, and finance. In fact, there is no field where Jews are not found, and one cannot help but recall the prophetic words spoken ages ago, that the name Jew would become 'a byword and an object of ridicule' even in their own land" (p. 161).