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What is left of the echoes of the battle and the cries of the fallen? What is left of the heroes who protected the walls of the Second Temple and stood up to our enemy? What is left of the masses, besieged in Jerusalem, starving and longing for redemption? What is left of the mighty Roman Empire, which invested tremendous military and economic efforts to exert control over Judea and suppress the repeated revolts of the Jews?
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On this day, Tisha b'Av, we remember Jerusalem and what has happened to its since the destruction of the temple. This week I told my children that the memory of Jerusalem is what kept the Jewish people alive during the long years of exile, as we remembered where we came from and where we wanted to return.
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Ever since I arrived in Rome, after having been appointed Israel's ambassador to Italy, I have found myself drawn to the Arch of Titus. I asked to go there on my first day on the job, and have visited the site several times since then. There is something in that triangle, between the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus and the Arch of Constantine, that makes me tremble every time.
The Colosseum was built ex manubis, from the spoils of the war; the Arch of Titus was built after Titus' death, in memory of his triumph over Jerusalem, which for our people was a humiliation; and the Arch of Constantine was built in memory of his victory over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 CE. Before the battle, Constantine saw a cross in his dream, and ordered his soldiers to replace Roman signs with the cross. Following his victory, he began to support Christianity, later converting the entire Roman Empire into the Christian faith. And the rest is history.
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The victory/humiliation procession that took place in Rome in 71 CE was led by Titus and his father, Emperor Vespasian. They were followed by the nobles of Rome, soldiers and officers of the Roman army, and the captured prisoners of Judea. The vessels from the temple were also transported to Rome, as symbols of robbing Jerusalem of its independence.
One side of the arch is engraved with Judean war prisoners and Roman soldiers carrying the temple vessels and the menorah to Rome. The other side, with Titus, in his victorious chariot being crowned with a laurel wreath by Nike/Victoria, the goddess of victory, while goddess Roma leads the four-horsed chariot. The figures engraved on both sides of the arch are facing west, with their backs to the east. In other words, facing away from the ruined land of Israel/Judea towards victorious Rome.
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Since the temple's destruction, for centuries, Jews in Rome held the tradition not to pass under the arch. They made sure to walk around it, for it was a testament to their tragedy. This was their practice for many years, until November 29, 1947, when, for the first time since the destruction, the United Nations approved the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, back then called Palestine (named so by Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century). The UN resolution was rejected by the Arabs. They launched a war, which for us was a war for liberation and independence.
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For the Jews of Rome, whose family history dates back to the Hasmonean state, and to the delegation sent by Judah, the Maccabee in 161 BCE to the Roman Senate calling for a mutual defense covenant – the UN resolution was a declaration of redemption that echoed the story of the entire community, the great suffering they had been through and the humiliation that had been their lot for the last 2,000 years.
They were still healing from the wounds of the Holocaust and the racial laws enacted by the fascists and the Nazi regime, and then they heard about the redemption of the Jewish people in their homeland and the decision to finally establish an independent Jewish state in its ancient homeland. Truly Messianic times.
For the first time, generations of Jews could walk under the Arch of Titus. They made sure to do so in the opposite direction: eastward, to the land of Israel, where the Jewish people have always looked to, towards Zion.
The chief rabbi of Italy at the time, David Prato, gathered the Jewish community and together they marched beneath the arch, towards the east, reciting Plasm 17 ("On the rivers of Babylon") which includes the ancient oath of those exiled by Babylon: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning," and ends with a song of hope, that we never lost hope of becoming a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem. What a historic and tremendous chord. Circles open and circles close. In the rebuilding of Zion, we were comforted and may we be comforted. Am Yisrael Chai!
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