Ankelos ben Kalinikos, nephew of the Roman Emperor Titus, was searching for truth. Despite being born into the most powerful family in the world, he felt a spiritual hunger that Roman religion could not satisfy. He turned to necromancy, summoning the spirits of the dead to ask them a single question: where does true honor lie?
He conjured the spirit of his uncle Titus, the man who had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. "What nation is most honored in the world to come?" Ankelos asked. The spirit of Titus — the great conqueror, the destroyer of the Holy of Holies — gave a startling answer: "The Jews." But he warned his nephew not to join them, for their commandments were too numerous and impossible to keep.
Ankelos was not satisfied with one testimony. He summoned other spirits and asked the same question. The answer was always the same: "Great is the honor of the Jews in the world to come."
The words struck Ankelos to his core. If even the enemies of Israel acknowledged Jewish honor in the afterlife, then the Torah must be the path of truth. He abandoned Rome, abandoned his inheritance, abandoned the name of the most powerful dynasty on earth — and converted to Judaism.
He went on to produce one of the most important translations of the Torah ever written, the Targum Onkelos, which remains a standard companion text to the Hebrew Bible to this day. The nephew of the man who destroyed the Temple became one of its greatest champions.