18 texts
The picture in the vision swayed. From its left side, a heathen people emerged. They fell upon those on the right side, the people of Abraham's seed, and pillaged them. Men, women,...
The city was already dead. It just hadn't fallen yet. In the twenty-fifth year of King Jeconiah's reign over Judah, the word of God came to Baruch son of Neriah — the faithful scri...
The Chaldean army surrounded Jerusalem. But the real destruction — the kind that shatters heaven — had already begun inside the walls. On the evening before the siege tightened, Ba...
Two men stood in the ashes of the world. Baruch and Jeremiah — the scribe and the prophet — whose hearts had been found pure from sin, who had not been captured when the city fell....
Thirty years after Babylon burned Jerusalem to the ground, a man named Ezra lay on his bed in the city of his captors and could not sleep. His thoughts boiled. His heart raged. Bec...
This is one of the most stunning visions in all of Jewish literature. A grieving woman becomes a city of light. And no one — not even Ezra — sees it coming. God had told Ezra to go...
The kingdom that Josiah rebuilt fell apart the moment he died. Josephus records that when Pharaoh Neco marched through Judah on his way to fight the Babylonians at the Euphrates, J...
"She weeps bitterly in the night" (Lamentations 1:2). The rabbis asked: who weeps? Jerusalem weeps for her slain, and she weeps for the famine — the horror of mothers who boiled th...
Teach us oh, teacher: once the Ninth of Av has ended, is everything permitted? R’ Chiyah the Great taught like this: once the Ninth of Av has ended, one is permitted to do anything...
The destruction of Jerusalem began with a dinner party. According to Gittin 55b, a man threw a banquet and sent his servant to invite his friend Kamtza. The servant brought Bar Kam...
After Bar Kamtza's betrayal, the emperor sent Nero to conquer Jerusalem. According to Gittin 56a, Nero arrived and performed a series of divination tests. He shot arrows in every d...
After Vespasian became emperor, his son Titus completed the destruction of Jerusalem. According to Gittin 56b, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai's famous encounter with Vespasian included ...
Titus entered the Holy of Holies after conquering Jerusalem and committed an act of deliberate sacrilege. According to Gittin 57a, he unrolled a Torah scroll on the altar, brought ...
After the destruction of the Temple, Nebuzaradan, captain of the Babylonian guard under Nebuchadnezzar, found blood bubbling up from the ground in Jerusalem. According to Gittin 57...
The verse calls them "the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold" (Lamentations 4:2). According to Gittin 58a, the Jewish children taken captive to Rome after the Temple's ...
Rabbi Simlai made one of the most ambitious claims in the entire Talmud. He said: 613 commandments were given to Moses at Sinai—365 prohibitions corresponding to the days of the so...
Four rabbis were walking away from the ruins of Jerusalem. When they reached Mount Scopus and saw the destroyed Temple, they tore their garments. When they arrived at the Temple Mo...
Rabbi Pinhas said in the name of Rabbi Hoshaya: There were four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem before the destruction. The number came from a single verse — "filled wit...
