The Destruction of the Second Temple

Titus reached Jerusalem in the spring, before Passover, when the city was crowded with pilgrims. The siege moved wall by wall. Hunger inside reached the point the Talmud describes with the words of Lamentations: 'The hands of compassionate women cooked their own children.' On the seventeenth of Tammuz the daily offering ceased — there were no lambs left. That same day the Romans breached the wall.

Three weeks of street fighting followed. On the ninth of Av the Temple was set alight. The Mishnah lists five calamities that fell on the ninth of Av, among them the destruction of both Temples and the fall of Betar. The same date, twice.

Tradition tells that the priests climbed to the roof with the Temple keys and said: 'Master of the world, since we did not merit to be faithful custodians, let the keys be handed back to You' — and threw them upward; a hand appeared and took them. The city was burned, its people killed or sold into slavery. The Temple's treasures — the Menorah, the table, the trumpets — were paraded through Rome, and are carved on the Arch of Titus to this day.

Yet that same year the Sanhedrin was sitting at Yavneh. A people deprived of its centre moved that centre into study and prayer.