The Forgotten Revolt: A Jewish Uprising Lost to Time

Many of us have heard about the "Great Revolt" against the Romans, leading to the destruction of the Temple, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, sixty years later, which resulted in the fall of Beitar. However, few know that between these two revolts, there was another notable and severe uprising, overshadowed by the Bar Kokhba Revolt due to their relative closeness in time, making it less prominent in history.

This was the Diaspora Revolt. In the year 115 CE, 45 years after the Temple's destruction and about 15 years before the Bar Kokhba Revolt, a Jewish rebellion erupted against the oppressive nations. It began in Libya and spread to Egypt, the Land of Israel, Cyprus, and Babylon. Jewish communities across the Roman Empire rose up against Roman oppression and Emperor Trajan. The emperor embarked on a military campaign to suppress the revolt.

*

Life under Roman rule was never pleasant. Since the Temple's destruction, the Romans imposed a tax called "the Jewish tax." The justification was that with the Temple's destruction, the half-shekel offering ceased, and now the half-shekel must be given to the emperor! This tax was sent to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, forcing Jews to finance the loathed Roman worship.

Initially, the tax was collected using reasonable methods, exempting young children and the elderly who couldn't work. However, with Emperor Domitian's rise, the Romans began collecting the tax brutally, from Jews of all ages, and even from those connected to them. There's a story of how the Romans once stripped a 90-year-old man in public to check if he was circumcised and, if so, collected the tax by force. Domitian, Titus's brother who destroyed the Temple, executed his cousin Flavius, Onkelos the convert's father, and a friend of Rabbi Akiva. Domitian went mad, executing people on supposed charges of treason, without evidence. He executed 12 consuls without a shred of proof. During one of his manic outbursts, he convened his officials and began reading a list of "traitors" to be executed, including Senator Nerva. When his officials heard this, they allowed Flavius's former slave to stab him to death. The Roman Senate breathed a sigh of relief, cursed the madman's memory, and erased his name from inscriptions.

Upon Domitian's assassination, Jews also breathed a sigh of relief. Nerva succeeded him, a very social-minded emperor who cared for citizens' rights. He eased the tax burden on the Jews, and it seemed things were returning to normal. However, near his death, Nerva chose Trajan, the governor of Germany, as his successor, altering the status quo once more.

Trajan was a great conqueror. He cared less about the Romans' social conditions and more about the empire's expansion. He advanced its borders eastwards and westwards, northwards and southwards. Under him, the Roman Empire reached its largest territorial extent. His construction projects were remembered for generations, with some still standing today. Such is the Trajan's Column, standing in Rome's Trajan Square to this day; Trajan's Bridge (a bridge built over the Danube at the Romania-Serbia border). The bridge was 1135 meters long!; and Trajan's Forum. He created a 300 km road called "Via Traiana." The Romans loved Trajan, considering him one of the five good emperors. Upon his return from Dacia's conquest (present-day Romania, where his predecessors failed), he held a three-day gladiator festival, where about a million Romans watched; for them, spilled blood was entertainment. They thanked him wholeheartedly while the Dacian prisoners bled against each other or fell to lions and tigers. Jews, however, remember him as a conqueror and oppressor.

Trajan became emperor in 99 CE, two hundred years after Pompey first conquered Jerusalem. He embarked on a worldwide tour around his empire to inspect its borders and strengthen alliances. He began his Middle East visit with the Nabateans, based in what is now called "Petra," in the Kingdom of Jordan. The Nabateans had cooperated with Titus in destroying the Jewish Temple thirty years earlier. They sent a regiment of a thousand cavalrymen as part of their agreement with the Romans, and Trajan strengthened his alliance with them. He arrived in Judea frowning. During a tour of the land, he came to Peki'in, where he met the sage of the generation, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, who had served in the Temple's youth, a student of Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai, and Rabbi Akiva's teacher. The proud Trajan expressed his contempt for Judaism compared to the "logical" Roman religion, which worships gods one can see. Jews worship an unknown entity! Rabbi Yehoshua took him outside and pointed to the sun: "Can you look directly at it?". "Have you lost your mind?", asked the emperor, "You can't stare at the sun; it'll blind me!". "See," Rabbi Yehoshua replied, "you can't look at a minor servant of the Creator, and you wish to see Him?".

Trajan moved east towards the Parthian kingdoms to subdue them, but he hadn't forgotten his negative view of the Jews. As he set out on his military campaign, he declared passionately before his soldiers, "We will storm the Parthian kingdoms and subdue them. We will not forget to crush the stubborn Jews who have dwelt there for centuries, lest they rise up. We will continue along the path of my great father, Marcus Trajan, who led the tenth legion that subdued Judea thirty years ago." The Jews of Babylon heard these words, and many joined the Parthian forces to repel the vicious conqueror who openly declared his intent to harm them. Trajan faced a dilemma: should he lighten the burden on the Jews to avoid sparking a larger Jewish revolt, which the Romans had suffered enough from, or simply dismiss their concerns? The decision was to subdue the bold Jews. We are not concerned with their actions; we will overcome them. Thus began what later became known as the "Diaspora Revolt."