Jerusalem: The Biography

Hadrian received acclamation as imperator, but this time there was no Triumph: the emperor was tarnished and exhausted by his losses in Judaea. When he reported to the Senate, he was unable to give the usual reassurance, ‘I am well, and so is the army.’ Suffering from the arteriosclerosis (flagged by the split earlobes depicted on his statues), swollen with dropsy, Hadrian killed any possible successors, even his ninety-year-old brother-in-law, who cursed him: ‘May he long for death but be unable to die.’ The curse came true: unable to die, Hadrian tried to kill himself. But no autocrat has ever written as wittily and wistfully about death as Hadrian:

Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer,

Body’s guest and companion,

To what places will you set out for now?

To darkling, cold and gloomy ones —

And you won’t be making your usual jokes.

When he eventually died – ‘hated by all’ – the Senate refused to deify him. Jewish literature never mentions Hadrian without adding, ‘May his bones rot in hell!’

His successor, Antoninus Pius, slightly relaxed the persecution of Jews, allowing circumcision again, but Antoninus’ statue joined Hadrian’s on the Temple Mount^* to emphasize that the Temple would never be rebuilt. The Christians, now fully separated from the Jews, could not help but crow. ‘The House of Sanctuary’, wrote the Christian Justin to Antoninus, ‘has become a curse, and the glory which our fathers blessed is burned with fire.’ Unfortunately for the Jews, the settled politics of the empire for the rest of the century discouraged any change in Hadrian’s policy.

Aelia Capitolina was a minor Roman colony of 10,000, without walls, just two-fifths of its former size, extending only from today’s Damascus Gate to the Gate of the Chain, with two forums, the Temple of Jupiter on the site of Golgotha, two thermal baths, a theatre, a nymphaeum (statues of nymphs around pools) and an amphitheatre, all decorated with colonnades, tetrapylons and statues, including a large one of the Tenth Legion’s very unkosher boar. Gradually the Tenth Legion was moved away from Jerusalem as the Jews, no longer a threat, came to be regarded more as an irritant. When the emperor Marcus Aurelius passed through on his way to Egypt, ‘being often disgusted with the malodorous and disorderly Jews’, he jokingly compared them to other rebellious tribes: ‘Oh Quadi, oh Samaritans, at last I have found a people more unruly than you!’ Jerusalem had no natural industries except holiness – and the absence of the Tenth Legion must have made her even more of a backwater.

When the peaceful succession in Rome ended in civil war in 193, the Jews, who now lived mainly in Galilee and around the Mediterranean coast, began to stir, either fighting their local enemies the Samaritans or perhaps rising in support of the ultimate winner of the throne, Septimus Severus. This led to a softening of anti-Jewish policy: the new emperor and his son Caracalla visited Aelia in 201 and seem to have met the Jewish leader, Judah haNasi, known as ‘the Prince’. When Caracalla succeeded to the throne, he rewarded Judah with estates in the Golan and Lydda (near Jerusalem) and with the hereditary power to adjudicate religious disputes and set the calendar, recognizing him as the community leader – the Patriarch of the Jews.

The wealthy Judah, who seems to have combined rabbinical scholarship with aristocratic luxury, held court in Galilee with a bodyguard of Goths while he compiled the Mishnah, the oral traditions of post-Temple Judaism. Thanks to Judah’s imperial connections, and to the passing of time, Jews were allowed, after bribing the garrison, to pray opposite the ruined Temple on the Mount of Olives or in the Kidron Valley. There, they believed, the shekinah – the holy spirit – resided. It is said that Judah won permission for a small ‘holy community’ of Jews to live in Jerusalem, praying in the one synagogue on today’s Mount Zion. Nonetheless, the Severan emperors never reconsidered Hadrian’s policy.

Yet the Jewish longing for Jerusalem never faltered. Wherever they lived in the following centuries, Jews prayed three times a day: ‘May it be your will that the Temple be rebuilt soon in our days.’ In the Mishnah, they compiled every detail of Temple ritual, ready for its restoration. ‘A woman may put on all her ornaments,’ instructed the Tosefta, another compilation of oral traditions, ‘but should leave out one small thing in remembrance of Jerusalem.’ The Passover seder dinner ended with the words: ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’. If they ever approached Jerusalem, they devised a ritual of rending their garments on catching sight of the ruined city. Even Jews who lived far away wanted to be buried close to the Temple so that they would be the first to rise again on Judgement Day. Thus began the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.