"Our Long Exile Starts"

The magnificent Second Temple went up in flames on the 9th of Av in the year 70 C.E. This started the long and arduous exile that the Jewish people are still mired in to this day. This picture depicts the Arch of Titus (yemach shmo v'zicharon), and in it Jewish slaves and precious Temple artifacts that were carried to rome, and can be found today underneath the vatican. 

According to Josephus, a Roman soldier took a torch and threw it against the beautiful tapestries that Herod had made for the Temple and that hung along its walls. When they caught fire the Romans attempted to put it out, but there was not sufficient water. Somehow the fire was so intense that even the stone took hold and the building collapsed. The Talmud says that the Second Temple burned not only on the late afternoon of the ninth of Av, but the entire day of the tenth. It was just a raging conflagration.


They were unable to put out the fire and the entire Temple burned – along with thousands of Jews, according to Josephus. Many of the distraught defenders jumped into the flames, feeling that if the Temple was going up in flames then the Jewish people were going up in flames. In general, desperation and despair was so rampant that thousands and thousands of Jews committed suicide. This type of suicidal behavior is rare among the Jewish people, and indeed was performed mostly by the Zealots, not adherents of the Pharisees, who followed Rabbi Yochanon ben Zakkai’s lead and were not willing to associate the national death of the Jewish people with the end of the Jewish people.

May Hashem avenge the deaths of our fellow Jews, and may all those tortured souls throughout our history be granted an aliyah in Shamayim.