4. The Policy of Hadrian.—Hadrian, when he became Emperor in 117, restored Parthia to the Parthians. He found he had enough to do to keep what he had got. But the Jewish readiness to revolt against Roman supremacy was not lost upon him. He did not forget how quick the Jews had been to fight. East or west, it seemed to him that if but a breath of freedom were in the air, it was fanned among this Jewish race into a perfect whirlwind. Why should they not submit to Rome, and sink their own nationality? Greater nations than they had passed more or less peacefully under theRoman yoke, whilst to subdue this tiny troublesome dependency had tasked a Titus! To conquer Jews was not enough; they wanted crushing. That was this new Emperor’s view of the case, and he proceeded to set about it. He was keen enough to see that there was religion at the root of this dogged Jewish resistance; that the Jews had fought for their convictions as much as for their country; that they were the people of the Book as well as the people of the Land. And reasoning thus, the Emperor Hadrian determined that he would pluck up this Jewish religion by the roots, and not be content to lop away at the branches as his predecessors had done. He would pass the ploughshare over Jerusalem, he would build a new city with a new name on its site, and where the Temple had stood he would erect a shrine to Jupiter. And he did all this, and yet he failed. The heathen Emperor did not know that Judaism was quite beyond the power of his legions. He had never heard ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’ If he had heard, he probably would not have heeded. But he certainly did his best, according to his lights, to effect his object.

5. The Jews in Revolt: their Leader.—No Josephus has left a minute record of the last struggle between the Jews and Rome, and a great many details are altogether absent. We know generally that the Jewish resistance to Hadrian lasted three years, from 132 till 135; and that Julius Severus had to be summoned from Britain before the Roman success could be assured. The Jews fought against Hadrian as, fiftyyears before, they had fought against Titus, with the obstinate courage of men who valued their own lives less than the life of the nation. They were led by a man who, at the beginning of the revolt, they called, in their enthusiasm, Barcochba, son of a star; and at the end, in their despair, Barcosba, son of a lie. His real name we do not know. He fought and he died fighting, and in defence of the truth as he believed it; and so far, and although he failed, he takes his place among the heroes of history, and earns a right to the title first bestowed upon him. His claim to the second is, happily, less clear. Tradition tells of tricks he played to incline the people to believe that his powers were supernatural; and there are tales, too, told to his discredit, which, if true, might make ‘impostor’ a free translation of Barcosba. But the only facts of which we are sure are that he led the Palestinian Jews in their second revolt against Rome, from the year 132 till 135; that for a little while the forlorn hope of the people seemed possible of realisation, and that Barcochba took possession of the ruins of Jerusalem; that he and his followers were dislodged from thence, and that the last stand against the Roman enemy was made at a fortified place called Bither, which fell on the same sad anniversary, the 9th of Ab, which was already so full of fatal memories to the Jews.

6. Akiba: the Romance of his Youth.—There was one good and famous man who believed in Barcochba, and who stood by him to the end. This was Akiba, one of the greatest of the Rabbis, who left his books and his home to share the dangers of the campaign,and to carry the standard by the side of the Jewish leader. And books, and home, meant more to Akiba than to most men, for he had not inherited these happinesses, but had had to work and to wait for them. His was a romantic story. He, like Moses, had been a shepherd. By craggy torrents and by grassy plains he had wandered with his flocks, until one day he had met a fair maiden, and they had walked and talked together, and then the long sweet summer day had seemed unaccountably to shorten. He and the maiden had straightway fallen in love with each other. But she was a rich man’s daughter, and her father, when he heard about it, was extremely angry. He declared she should not marry ‘that beggar,’ which was calling names, and not quite true ones, for Akiba was no beggar. Then the father threatened. He said she should have no fortune if she persisted in her ‘folly.’ The girl was much too much in love to care about money, and Akiba, who might have hesitated, and not thought it honourable to marry a rich girl, gladly took her now that she was to be poor and friendless. So they married, and for a while they were most unreasonably happy. But of course it was not a prudent marriage. They were very poor, they had to sleep upon straw, and to go out into the fields to gather that. Akiba’s wife was a sensible woman as well as a loving one; the sort of woman who would do her husband good and not evil all the days of his life. She saw this could not go on. She knew her husband had talent; she advised him to go away and get admitted to one of the schools, where his talents would be recognised,and he would have the opportunity to study. She would not go with him, she said, to be a drag on him: he must labour, and she would wait. So he went, and the years went on, slowly and sadly for her, for her father was unforgiving; slowly and successfully for him, for strangers were kind. He had not only talent, but perseverance, and when at last he was chosen head of the college which he had entered as a poor student, he travelled back to his native place for his reward. He was a famous Rabbi by this time, and crowds flocked round him in eager welcome. One shabby, large-eyed woman hung back a little, but Akiba saw her and knew her at once, though all the girlishness and half the beauty were gone. He drew her to the front and held her close, and proudly told the story of her patience and of her trust in him to the sympathising onlookers. And as they listened a message came from the rich man, who had not joined in the common crowd of welcome. He desired to consult the famous Rabbi, whose visit was an event and an honour to the place. This rich man must have been one of those Jews who call themselves Jews in their heart; he evidently was not a Jew in his actions or his interests, or he would have surely heard that Akiba was something more than a distinguished stranger. However, Akiba went to him, and found that his advice was wanted. The rich man told the Rabbi of the vow which he had made never to see or help his daughter; he was getting old now—was there any way the Rabbi could suggest in which the vow could be conscientiously broken? ‘Would you have minded your daughter marrying a distinguishedscholar, even had he been poor?’ asked the Rabbi. ‘No,’ said the father, puzzled; ‘but she married a stupid beggar.’ ‘Well,’ said Akiba, smiling, ‘I know not if I be the distinguished scholar that men call me, but I do know I am that Akiba who married your daughter.’ So it all ended happily, and the good, patient wife regained her husband and her father at the same time.

7. Akiba: the Romance of his Age.—That was the home side of Akiba’s life story. In the schools he won a distinguished place, and all his life he was as loyal to his duties as to his affections, and faithful to both even unto death. In the revolt against Rome the scholar turned soldier, and the husband was patriot. Akiba stood by Barcochba to the last, and when Bither fell, he was taken prisoner by the Romans, and by them most cruelly put to death. But his beautiful enthusiasm did not desert him even under torture. There is a Talmudic legend that he smiled at his executioners, and that one of them tauntingly exclaimed to the poor old man slowly dying under their hands, ‘Why, you look as if you rejoice!’ ‘And I do,’ came the unflinching answer. ‘Every day of my life I have repeated the [a]‏שְׁמַע‎]. To-day, for the first time, I feel what it is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my strength. How should I not rejoice?’

8. Hadrian’s Resolve accomplished.—Akiba’s death was the last act in this war, which the Talmud calls ‘the war of extermination.’ Hadrian did what he had proposed to himself to do. A ploughshare was passed over what had been Jerusalem, and the foundationsof a new city were laid, and it was called Ælia Capitolina—Ælia in honour of the Emperor, Capitolina in honour of Jupiter.‘One hundred and fifty years later Jerusalem was a term of ancient geography.’[5] The Jews of Palestine were massacred by thousands. Numbers were sold as slaves at the same price as horses at the annual fair held near Hebron. Judea was left, practically, a desert. Wolves and hyenas prowled about the ruined city, and such of the people as were not sold or slaughtered lived a banished, frightened existence in the caves among the mountains. One right the Roman Emperor conceded to the Jews he had ‘crushed.’ Once a year they were given the opportunity of ‘buying their own tears,’ as the Church historian, St. Jerome, expresses it. Throughout all the long months they were forbidden, on pain of death, to approach the city. But on each anniversary of the sacking of Jerusalem all Jews who wished might come near and look upon what had been ‘the joy of the whole earth.’ The outcasts might come and lean against the bit of broken wall which was all that was left to them of all that had been theirs. They might weep and pray; but if they asked to wait and weep a little longer than the limited time by law permitted, then the Roman guard who watched could fix his own price for the privilege. He could make them ‘buy their tears.’

CHAPTER XIV.
THE REVIVAL OF THE SCHOOLS: THEIR WORK.

1. One of History’s Miracles.—If, shivering in the winter, we stand in a frozen field, full of dry brown trees, all stumps and twigs and branches, looking all alike and all lifeless, we can hardly believe that, six months hence, that bare field will be a blooming orchard, with the sunlight flickering down on it through a canopy of pink and white and green. It seems a miracle, and in a sense it is one. Like nature, history, too, has her miracles, and both sorts of marvels are easy to understand when we remember that ‘kings of the earth and all people,’ like ‘snow and hail and stormy wind’ [a]‏עשָֹׁה דְבָרוֹ‎], ‘fulfil His word.’ Hadrian left Judea a desert, and the life, as he thought, crushed out of Judaism. He was hardly dead—he died on the first day of the year 138—when the seemingly sapless twigs began tremblingly to put out their little tender shoots. What one may call the oak of the forest, the glorious Temple, was hopelessly shattered by the storm, but, to keep up the simile, little cuttings from it were planted, and watered with tears, and they took root and grew. Small meeting-houses for prayer became general throughout the country. And these meeting-houses served, too, a double purpose, showing the intimate practical relation which exists between charity and religion. ‘He prayeth well who loveth well.’ These little buildings were used also as temporaryhomes for poor strangers, who were therein provided with free board and lodging. The recital of the [a]‏קִדּוּשׁ‎] in our synagogues on the eves of Sabbaths and holy days, and of the [a]‏הַבְדָּלָה‎] at the going out of Sabbaths and holy days, is a remnant of this institution. And in these ancient, humble synagogues, as in our grander modern ones, the presence of ten men (minyan) made a sufficient beginning of a congregation. One after another, too, the schools of Palestine reopened, and by the year 175 the Sanhedrin was in active work, with Simon, the sixth president in direct line from Hillel, at its head.

2. The Schools: their Work.—The head-quarters of the schools of the west were fixed at Tiberias, and the centre of the eastern group was at Sura. The [a]‏נָשִׂא‎], or Prince, was the patriarch of the western Jews; and the [a]‏רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא‎], or Prince of the Captivity, ruled the eastern division. But there was a great difference, both of social and of religious position, between the patriarch and the prince. The patriarch in the west was president of the Sanhedrin, and generally distinguished by learning and knowledge of the Law; the prince, in the east, was merely a political vassal of the Persian or Parthian court. Some ‘princes’ acquired distinction in the knowledge of the Law, but it was an accident of their position, and not a cause or a consequence of it. Each eastern school had its own president. The high colleges, or Kallahs, were not always sitting; they met only for some months during the year. The work they did was not quite on the same lines as the university education of these days, although the name Kallahs may possibly bear a likemeaning. Some commentators find the root of the word in [a]‏כל‎], which means all or universal. The teaching was certainly that, in every sense. A week before each of the festivals popular lectures were given, and any one who liked might enter the halls. Tents were often put up to accommodate the extra numbers. One teacher of the period is said to have had 1,200 regular pupils of his own. The professors, however, did not deliver lectures, of which their students took more or less attentive notes. The instruction in these colleges was carried on by means of discussion and debate. Question was met by counter-question, and answers were often wrapped up in a parable or an allegory. The widest digressions were encouraged. The mere mention of some historical personage who had lived somewhere would lead perhaps to a long debate on political geography; this might glide off into a description of the physical peculiarities of the place or the people named, and this again into an animated botanical or even physiological discourse. All sorts of subjects were included in the ‘course’ of study—ethics, metaphysics, jurisprudence, and all the science that the period was capable of. Astronomy was one of the favourite subjects, and a certain famous scholar named Samuel, who died about the year 250, and who was a friend of Shapor, king of Persia, said, ‘The paths of the heavenly bodies are as clear to me as the streets of Nehardea.’

3. The Masters of the Schools.—If the method of instruction differed somewhat from our modern sort, no less different were the instructors. Many of themost eminent ‘doctors’ were only humble tradesmen. Tentmakers or shoemakers often, or carpenters, or weavers, or bakers. One of them, Rabbi Zadok, distinctly taught, ‘Use the Law, not as a crown to shine with, nor as a spade to dig with.’ Their practice gave expression to their belief that labour is one form, and perhaps not the least admirable form, of praise. They hated idleness, and they loved learning. They managed to give full employment to their heads and their hands, and they kept their hearts too in active and healthy condition, since the good of others rather than self-culture was the aim of their studies.The Tanaim[6] did not indulge in writing books, but they made good shoes, and good tents, and good loaves, and they turned out good and fairly educated young Jews by the score. So we, their descendants, may be grateful both for what they did and for what they did not do.