The Diaspora Revolt: What Led to the Forgotten Jewish Uprising?

We have all heard of the 'Great Revolt' against the Romans that led to the destruction of the Temple, and of the Bar Kokhba revolt about sixty years later, which led to the destruction of Betar. But not many know that between these two revolts, there was another, large and terrible one, yet the Bar Kokhba revolt and the destruction of Betar, which happened relatively close in time, overshadowed it, and it is less known in history.

This was the Diaspora Revolt. In the year 115 CE, 45 years after the destruction of the Temple and about 15 years before the Bar Kokhba revolt, a Jewish uprising broke out against the nations oppressing them. The rebellion began in Libya and spread to Egypt, the Land of Israel, Cyprus, and Babylon. Jews throughout the Roman Empire rose against the Roman oppression and Emperor Trajan. The emperor embarked on a military campaign to suppress the revolt.

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It was never fun to be under Roman occupation. Since the destruction of the Temple, the Romans imposed a tax on every Jew called the "Jewish tax." The reasoning was that with the destruction of the Temple, the half-shekel offering was nullified, and now it had to be given to the emperor! The tax was taken to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, forcing the Jews to fund the detested Roman cult.

Initially, the tax was collected in conventional ways, and children or elderly who could not work were not required to pay it. However, with the rise of Emperor Domitian, the Romans began collecting the tax brutally, from Jews of any age, and from anyone close to Jews. It is told that once the Romans stripped a 90-year-old man in the street to check if he was circumcised, and if so, to forcibly collect the tax from him. Domitian was the brother of the wicked Titus, who destroyed the Temple. He also executed his cousin Flavius, the father of Onkelos the convert, and a friend of Rabbi Akiva. Domitian went insane and started executing people on charges of treason, supposedly. He executed 12 consuls without a shred of evidence. In one of his fits of madness, he gathered his people and began reading a list of "traitors" to be executed, among them was the senator Nerva. His people heard this and allowed Flavius' former slave, his enemy, to stab him to death. The Roman Senate breathed a sigh of relief, cursed the madman's memory, and erased his name from inscriptions.

With Domitian's assassination, the Jews also breathed a sigh of relief. Nerva succeeded him, a very social emperor who cared for citizens' rights. He eased the tax burden on the Jews, and it seemed things were returning to normal. However, as Nerva was nearing death, he chose Trajan, the governor of Germany, as his successor, and his entry changed the picture back.

Trajan was a great conqueror. He cared less about the social conditions of the Romans and more about the size of the empire. He expanded westward and eastward, northward and southward. During his time, the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent. His construction projects are remembered for generations, and some still exist today. For example, Trajan's Column, which still stands in Trajan's Forum in Rome; Trajan's Bridge (a bridge built over the Danube on the modern-day Romania-Serbia border. The bridge was 1,135 meters long!); and Trajan's Forum. He paved a 300 km road called "Via Traiana." The Romans loved Trajan very much, and he is considered one of the five good emperors. After his victory over Dacia (today's Romania, where his predecessors failed), he held a three-day gladiatorial festival that was watched by about a million Romans, for whom spilled blood was bread and circuses. They thanked him wholeheartedly, while the Dacian prisoners shed their blood against each other, or at the teeth of lions and tigers. The Jews, however, remember him as a conqueror and oppressor.

Trajan became emperor in 99 CE, two hundred years after Pompey conquered Jerusalem for the first time. He embarked on a round-the-world trip around his empire, to check the borders and strengthen alliances. He began his visit to the Middle East with the Nabataeans, based in the place now known as "Petra," in the Kingdom of Jordan. The Nabataeans cooperated with Titus in destroying the Jewish Temple thirty years earlier. They sent a squadron of a thousand horsemen as part of the agreement with the Romans, and Trajan strengthened the alliance with them. He arrived in Judea with a sour face. On a tour along the land, he arrived at the town of Peki'in, where he met the elder and great sage of the generation, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania, who served in his youth in the Temple, a student of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, and the teacher of Rabbi Akiva. The proud Trajan expressed his disdain for Judaism: compared to the "logical" Roman religion, which worships gods whose images can be seen, the Jews worship someone they do not know at all who he is! Rabbi Yehoshua went out with him from the house where they were staying and pointed towards the sun: "Can you look at it?". "Are you crazy?", asked the emperor, "You can't look at the sun, I'll be blind!". "See," replied Rabbi Yehoshua, "you can't look at a small servant of the Creator, and you want to see Him?".

Trajan left there eastward to the Parthian kingdoms, to subdue them, but he did not forget his negative opinion of the Jews. As he set out on his battle campaign, he passionately addressed his soldiers, saying among other things: "We will storm the Parthian kingdoms and subdue them, we will not forget to subdue also the stubborn Jews sitting there for hundreds of years, so they do not raise their heads, we will continue 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 of them joined the Parthian armies, to repel the wicked conqueror who declared in advance that he would harm them. Trajan faced a dilemma: should he ease the burden on the Jews to avoid inciting a general Jewish revolt, from which the Romans had already suffered enough, or "ignore them." The decision was: we will subdue the audacious Jews. It doesn't matter to us what they do, we will subdue them. Thus began what came to be known as the "Diaspora Revolt".