We yell “Never Again” and then do it all over again.

We like to tell the story as if Rome “did this to us.”
Rome destroyed the Temple, Rome crushed our revolts, Rome scattered our people.

All of that is true.

But it’s not the whole truth.

The long road to the Jewish Diaspora did not begin with Titus in 70 CE or Hadrian in 135 CE. It began a century earlier, when a bitterly divided Jewish leadership invited a foreign superpower to step in and “restore order” to a polarized Jewish state.

Once we opened that door, Rome never really left.

And if you listen to some of the voices today proposing to bring in Donald Trump to “solve” Israel’s problems, or to hand demilitarization of Hamas over to Turkey’s army, it begins to sound disturbingly familiar. Different empire, same temptation.

After the Maccabean revolt, the Hasmonean dynasty built something astonishing: an independent Jewish kingdom with sovereignty, a functioning Temple, and regional clout.

But within a few generations, that kingdom was tearing itself apart:

When Queen Salome Alexandra died around 67 BCE, her two sons plunged Judea into a civil war:

This wasn’t just palace drama. Each side weaponized religious loyalties and political passions. Hyrcanus brought in King Aretas III of Nabataea with a large Arab army to besiege his brother in Jerusalem.

The Jewish state was still formally independent. But its leaders were already behaving like clients, not sovereigns.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)