The story of Kamsa and bar Kam§a and the fall of Jerusalem. A man had company and had invited Bar Kamsa who was his enemy, by mistake. He afterwards turned him out in spite of his offer to pay all the expenses of the feast rather than be put to shame. Then Bar Kamsa went and denounced the Jews to the Emperor as having rebelled and as proof he asserted that they would refuse to accept an offering sent to the Temple. A lamb was sent which he mutilated on the way, in a manner not offensive to the Roman sacrificial laws but contrary to those of the Jews. For the sake of peace the Jews were inclined to offer it up, but Zachariah b. Abqulos prevented it as being contrary to the law. Le-
5*
- 68
gions of Romans came to Jerusalem. The General shot arrows at the the corners and they all fell into Jerusalem. Asking a boy to say his verse the boy repeated the verse Ezek. 25. 14. This so impressed him that he became frightened and resigned the command, turned Jew, and became the progenitor of R. Heir. Then was Aspasianos sent, and the siege lasted for years. There were three rich men in Jerusalem: Nakdimon b. Gorion, Ben Kalba-Sabua, and Ben Sisith Hakaset who would have been able to provide Jerusalem with food during the whole siege but that the revolutionary party burned their stores in order that they might fight to the bitter end. The famine increased terribly and the people died in the streets. Then R. Johanan Ben Zakkai was smuggled by a ruse out of the town. Johanan went to the General who received him harshly. Johanan greeted him as Emperor. Soon afterwards the message of his election came. He was just then putting on his sandals, but he could not get the one on the second foot and he asked R. Johanan the reason, who said the good news had so elated him that his body had swollen up; let an enemy come before him and the foot would soon shrink to its normal size. The Emperor asked him why he had not come before. He replied that the rebels would not allow him to. Then he was asked: “If a snake is wrapped around a cask of honey, • do you not break the cask?" But he did not know the answer which should have been: “One takes pincers and lifts the snake away and so frees the cask without breaking it." The Emperor asked him what favour he could shew him and he merely asked to be allowed to settle in Yabne and that R. Sadok be cured, who had fasted 40 years to avert the destruction of Jerusalem and become a skeleton in consequence. This was granted him. Then was sent Titus the Wicked. He went blasphemously into the Temple and committed an immoral act on the scroll of the Law; then he took a sword and pierced the curtain in the middle of the Temple and by a miracle drops of blood oozed out. He said, “Now I have killed their God." When he re-
69
turned with all the spoil of the Temple a storm arose on the high seas and he said, “The power of their God is only in the waters. He has drowned Pharaoh and Sisera and now He wants to drown me. Let Him come and fight me on dry land/' And a voice came and said, “O thou wicked one! any one of my small creatures will suffice to war against thee." When he landed an insect got into his nostrils and from there to his brain and it gnawed for seven years. One day he passed a smith and the noise of the hammer silenced the insect. Then he called smiths who had continually to hammer; when the smith happened to be a heathen he paid him 400 Zuzim but when it was a Jew he said to him, “It is enough for thee to see the vengeance on your enemy," and paid him nothing. After a time the insect got accustomed to the noise of the hammers and there was no longer any relief. On his death he ordered his body to be burned and the ashes to be strewn over seven seas so that the God of the Jews should not be able to find him.