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The Famine Devoured the Child and Rome Took the Sages

Rome sealed Jerusalem until a starving mother ate the child she once weighed against silver, while the sword took Israel's greatest sages.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Gold That Could Not Be Eaten
  2. The Child Once Weighed Against Silver
  3. The Lots Drawn in the Roman Yard
  4. The Head Cradled Against a Living Chest
  5. One City, Two Deaths, One Falling

The bread was gone first. Then the dogs. Then the leather from the sandals, boiled until a man could chew it. By the time Rome's legions had drawn their lines tight around Jerusalem and cut every road that ran out from her gates, the people inside were pulling grass from between the paving stones and eating it where they crouched.

Gold That Could Not Be Eaten

Doeg ben Josef had been one of the richest men in the city. In peacetime his name opened doors and his coin filled storehouses. Now he stood in the street with a full measure of gold in his hands, enough to buy a house when houses still meant something, and he begged for a single handful of food. No one would take the metal. There was nothing left to buy. Gold does not soften in the belly. He held his fortune until his arms could no longer hold anything, and he died of starvation with the heap untouched beside him.

His wife outlived him. That was the worse fate.

The Child Once Weighed Against Silver

She had a son. Every year, in the days when the gates still opened and the altar still smoked, she had brought him to the Temple and weighed his small body against precious metal, paying his weight in coin as her thanksgiving offering. She had measured him against silver because there was nothing she would not give for him.

Now hunger had hollowed her out and grief had taken the rest. The child cried and there was nothing. He cried and she had nothing to put in his mouth, nothing in her own, nothing in the whole ruined quarter. What she did then the prophets had set down in writing long before her grandmother was born, the curse that warned how the most tender and delicate woman in Israel, a woman who would not set the sole of her foot on the ground for softness, would turn at last against the children of her own body when the siege closed and the famine came.

She killed the child she had carried to the altar. She ate him. The infant who had once been measured against silver was now devoured by the mouth that had kissed him. The natural order did not break in some far heaven. It broke in a doorway, in the hands of a mother, while Rome waited outside the wall for the city to finish dying on its own.

The Lots Drawn in the Roman Yard

While the famine did its quiet work in the alleys, Rome did its loud work in the open. The leaders of the people were taken, the men whose voices had held Israel together under occupation. Among them stood Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Patriarch of the Jews, and Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest. The Romans made them draw lots to decide which of the two would feel the sword first.

The lot fell to Rabban Shimon.

They did not delay. The sword came down on his neck while his friend stood close enough to feel the air move, and the Patriarch's head left his body and rolled in the dust of the yard.

The Head Cradled Against a Living Chest

Rabbi Ishmael was still alive. They had left him so, for a moment. He bent and lifted Rabban Shimon's severed head from the ground and pressed it to his own chest, the way a man holds something he cannot bear to set down. His tears fell into the dead man's hair, and he spoke to the head as though it could still answer.

"Mouth that poured out Torah," he said, "how did the dust silence you? Tongue that argued the law, how has the earth swallowed you? Head that rose above all Israel, oh, Shimon, my friend, how have they laid you so low?"

Then his voice changed, and he comforted the dead. "You went first," he told the head against his chest. "That was the kinder lot. You did not have to watch them kill me. I will have to watch it. But soon I will come, and we will be together."

The Romans did not let him wait long for the reunion he had promised. A moment later they took Rabbi Ishmael too.

One City, Two Deaths, One Falling

So the capital came down in two motions that never saw each other. In a doorway a mother bent over a child and did the thing no mother should do, while in a courtyard a priest bent over a friend and did the thing every friend would hope to do. The famine took the small and nameless behind the walls. The sword took the great and named in the light. The same siege held them both, the woman with the empty arms and the scholar with the borrowed head, and pressed them down together into the same ruined ground.

Outside, Rome waited, and the city finished falling.

JerusalemSiegeFamineTen MartyrsTemple DestructionRomeMidrash Aggadah
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 69Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

When the Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem and cut off every supply route, the famine inside the walls became unspeakable. People chewed leather. They ate grass from between the stones. The wealthy offered fortunes for a single loaf of bread and found no one willing to sell.

Doeg ben Josef was one of the richest men in the city. He offered a full measure of gold, enough to buy a house in peacetime, for a handful of food. No one would take it. Gold meant nothing when there was nothing left to buy. He died of starvation with his fortune untouched beside him.

His wife, driven mad by hunger and grief, committed the most horrifying act recorded in the siege narratives. She killed and consumed her own child, the same child whose weight in gold she used to bring as a yearly offering to the Temple. The infant who had once been measured against precious metal was now devoured by the mother who had cherished him above all things.

The Talmud in Yoma (38b) and Lamentations Rabbah preserve this account not as sensationalism but as a fulfillment of the curse in (Deuteronomy 28:56-57), which warned that during a siege, even the most tender and delicate woman would turn against her own children. The prophets had foretold exactly this. The destruction of the Temple was not merely a military defeat. It was the unraveling of the natural order itself, a world where mothers became what no mother should ever become.

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Gaster, Exempla no. 76The Exempla of the Rabbis (1924)

Among the Ten Martyrs whose deaths Jewish tradition recalls on Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av were Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the Patriarch of the Jewish people under Roman occupation, and Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest.

The Romans forced them to draw lots to decide who would be executed first. The lot fell to Rabban Shimon, and the sword came down on his neck before the eyes of his friend.

Rabbi Ishmael, left alive for the moment, picked up Shimon's severed head and cradled it against his own chest. Tears ran down his face into the hair of the dead man, and he spoke to his friend as if still alive: "Mouth that poured out Torah, how did the dust silence you? Tongue that argued the law, how has the earth taken you? Head that rose above all Israel, oh, Shimon, my friend, how have they laid you so low?"

Then he comforted Rabban Shimon, even in death. "You went first," he said. "That was the kinder fate. You did not have to see them kill me. I will see it, but soon I will join you, and we will be together."

Moments later the Romans took Rabbi Ishmael too.

The Exempla preserves this scene not to dwell on cruelty but to show how Jews die when they must. Even in the last seconds, Rabbi Ishmael was teaching, teaching that the love between chavrutot, study partners, is stronger than fear, and that Torah scholars comfort one another even past the edge of life.

(From The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster, 1924, no. 76, drawing on the Ten Martyrs traditions.)

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