Ancient Rome and the Jews

Monday, October 12, 2015

An amazing day to start our seminar.  Our first meeting was scheduled for 2:00 PM to accommodate those who flew in overnight last night.  Thus we slept in and after breakfast, with some Melton friends who were already here, we took a walk in our neighborhood, and came upon the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.  What a find.  It is designated as a “Papal Major Basilica” and was overwhelming.

At the main entrance is a statue of King Philip IV by Bernini, very beautiful:

The interior is enormous and incredibly rich:

There is a very large and beautiful mosaic frieze above the altar:

Even the side chapels are beautiful and richly decorated.  Here’s a mass going on in one:

Above the main entrance is a large round stained glass window with two tablets of the Ten Commandments arranged in a strange way, and a menorah:

After touring the Basilica we had a light lunch (fruit salad with wonderful gelato) and at 2:00 we were back at the hotel to meet our group.  We are 26, and we knew most of the others from prior Melton trips.  Our intrepid leader Haim was in rare form, obviously excited to start another adventure, and the first running of this Italy trip which took so much effort to put in place.

Today’s study concentrated on ancient history, and the relationship between the Jews and the Roman Empire.  We started with the following striking letter sent by Roman leaders to Jerusalem, as quoted in 1 Maccabees, Ch. 8:

May all go well with the Romans and with the nation of the Jews at sea and on land forever. May sword and enemy stay away from them…   …if war comes first to the nation of the Jews, the Romans will willingly act as their allies.

After beginning the study thus, we took a quick tour of Rome, and disembarked at the site of the Forum.  We began our walk through the ancient city and the forum:

 We stopped multiple times to read from our syllabus, following the story of Rome and the Temple in Jerusalem.  Julius Caesar, as quoted by Josephus, sent the following letter to the magistrates overseeing Jerusalem:

I permit these Jews to gather themselves together, according to the customs and laws of their forefathers, and to persist therein. It will be therefore good for you, that if you have made any decree against these our friends and confederates, to abrogate the same, by reason of their virtue and kind disposition towards us.

 Of course what happened after Caesar’s assassination was the destruction of the second Temple.  Vespasian, ruler over Jerusalem, was brought back to Rome to rule, and sent Titus to destroy the temple, which he did.  From the Babylonian Talmud:

Then Titus took the curtain, folded it to serve as a sack, fetched all the vessels of the Temple, packed them in it, and put them on board ship to accompany him at the triumphal procession in his city.

We sat at the foot of the Arch of Titus which I posted on yesterday, and read primary sources including the following from Josephus:

Rome gave [Titus] as warm a welcome as it had given his father; but it was a more glorious occasion for Titus because his father himself came out to welcome him... Notice was given in advance of the day appointed for the victory procession, and not one person stayed at home out of the immense population of the City: everyone came out and, although there was only standing room, found a place somewhere, so that there was barely enough room left for the procession itself to pass. 

And of course the victory procession with slaves and the booty, including the menorah, can be seen on the inside of the arch.  From the syllabus: “In 1948, on the night that the State of Israel was declared, Roman Jews made their way to the Arch of Titus and stood under it as an act of completion, having avoided the shame of going under the arch for two thousand years… “

So that’s a summary of four study sessions on site.  By now it was close to 7:00 and we departed for dinner at the Pitigliani Community Center hosted by Dr. Ambra Tedeschi.  We had a short presentation on the center which started life as an orphanage after WW I, and is now the equivalent of our JCC with many programs of many sorts.  We had dinner there while we spoke with members of the local Jewish community, and, exhausted, finally arrived back at our hotel at10:15 PM.  Haim is giving us a break in the morning—the schedule has us on the bus at 8:00, but he’s delayed that to 8:15.