c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the senior interreligious adviser of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) The current film “Gladiator” is set in the year 180, and in the opening scenes a Roman legion attacks armed Teutonic adversaries encamped in a forest somewhere in “Germania.” The Romans commence their assault with catapults that hurl 55-pound flaming boulders about 700 yards, the forerunner of modern artillery. That barrage is followed by archers who unleash hundreds of flaming arrows that set the enemy positions on fire, not unlike today’s rocket attacks, and finally Roman foot soldiers advance with iron-plated mobile shields to protect the attacking force. The terrified Germans are quickly routed and once again the powerful Roman Empire has achieved a glorious victory.

The rest of “Gladiator” is filled with crucifixions, a Roman form of capital punishment; ugly court intrigue; attempted imperial incest; battles between doomed gladiators and man-eating tigers in the famed Colosseum; and the hideous debauchery so much a part of the Roman Empire.

Although the film’s story is mostly fiction, its depiction of Roman military prowess and the brutality the empire inflicted on its foes is not. Indeed, in the summer of 70, just 110 years earlier than the events of “Gladiator,” four Roman legions, numbering about 80,000 soldiers, encircled Jerusalem and began a siege of the Holy City. After years of bloody rebellion and guerrilla warfare carried out by Jews against the hated Roman occupation army, the empire decided to demolish the Jewish capital city, including the Holy Temple.

Roman leaders were confident that once Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed, the harassing Jewish attacks against imperial rule would end. In the decades prior to 70 Rome had dispatched some of its cruelest governors to Jerusalem in vain attempts to control rebellious Judea. The best-known governor is, of course, Pontius Pilate, but he was only one of many incompetent and bloody procurators.

Being assigned to defiant Jerusalem was not a cushy job for Roman governors or one that strengthened job resumes. During most of the first Christian century, Judea was a tumultuous, chaotic land with bands of Jewish assassins stabbing to death fellow Jews who were considered Roman sympathizers or collaborators. Apocalyptic messianic visions were common currency among many Jewish preachers of the time. Members of the corrupt priestly class fought with each other for positions of authority inside the Temple, while ardent Jewish nationalists publicly called for armed resistance to the hated Romans.

And the bitter feelings were mutual. Author Chaim Potok has correctly noted that “of all the conquered peoples in her vast empire, she (Rome) understood the Jews least.” It’s likely Rome never tried. Tacitus summed up a prevailing anti-Jewish attitude of the Roman elite: “Things sacred with us, with them (the Jews) have no sanctity, while they allow what to us is forbidden. … The Jewish religion is tasteless and mean.”

A modern anti-Semite could not surpass the venom of the ancient Roman historian.

Following the Babylonians’ example of 586 B.C. in destroying Judaism’s First Temple, the Romans of 70 A.D. captured Jerusalem and utterly destroyed the Second Temple.

However, a section of a rampart wall was somehow left intact, and that remnant became Judaism’s holiest site, the famous Western Wall.

In typical imperial fashion, the victorious Romans took the great Temple menorah, or seven-branched candelabrum, back to Rome as a war trophy along with many Jewish prisoners who became slaves. Roman coins were specially minted with the Latin words “Judea caput” (“Judea is no more”).

Of course, the Romans were totally wrong. Jews and Judaism survived because a new institution, the synagogue, emerged to replace the Temple as a center of Jewish life.

Because both Temple destructions took place on or about the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av (Tisha B’Av in Hebrew), the twin catastrophes are commemorated each year with a day of mourning and fasting along with dirges that are recited in synagogues. This year Tisha B’Av falls on Thursday, Aug. 10.

The biblical book of Lamentations, written by Jeremiah, has a prominent place in the Tisha B’Av liturgy. Following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the Hebrew prophet wept when he thought of the Holy City “suddenly widowed. Though once great among the nations, a princess among provinces, (Jerusalem) is now reduced to vassalage.”

But rest well, Jeremiah. The story is not ended. In May 1948, Jerusalem became the capital of the modern state of Israel _ 2,534 years after the Babylonians and 1,878 years after the Roman conquest.

“Judea caput?” Not quite.

DEA END RUDIN