All language subtitles for empires.david.e04-sprinter

In 70 AD,

after a siege marked by starvation
and terror crucifixions,

the Roman army broke through
the walls of Jerusalem.

Not only did they kill
thousands of Jews,

they laid waste to the Temple...

the only place on earth,
according to biblical law,

where Jews could worship God.

It was the death of the religion
of priests and sacrifices

described by the Hebrew Bible.

But it would not be
the death of Judaism.

In the years ahead, some of
the greatest religious minds in history

would struggle to reinvent
the religion of Moses and David.

But they would be forced to work

during a period of almost
inconceivable bloodshed and turmoil.

They would watch their people be expelled
from Jerusalem on pain of death

and see the name of their homeland
changed from Judea to Palestine.

There would also be
a monumental challenge from within...

a breakaway form of Judaism
called Christianity.

But amidst these epic struggles,
Judaism would be reborn

and the gifts of the Jews would be
preserved for all humankind.

(DARK MUSIC)

When the Romans laid waste
to the Temple

they destroyed
far more than a building.

The Temple had been the economic,
political and religious heart and soul

of Judea and of Judaism.

The despair that filled the land
after its destruction

was captured by the poet Baruch.

"Blessed is he who was not born.

"Or he who, having been born,
has died.

"But as for us who live,
woe unto us...

"because we see
the afflictions of Zion

"and what has befallen Jerusalem.

"Do thou, O sun,
withhold the light of thy rays?

"And do thou, O moon,
extinguish the multitude of thy light?

"For why should light rise again,
where the light of Zion is darkened? "

MAN:
Jews looking at the destroyed Temple

must have felt
terribly, terribly depressed

that their entire ability to worship God,
to connect with God,

had just been so severely compromised.

They'd been totally defeated by the Romans,
many of them led off into captivity,

and this was really a period
of tremendous mourning

and the need to begin somehow
to deal with this terrible destruction.

The Romans now had Jerusalem
and almost all the rest of Judea

under their iron fist.

All except for one tiny plot of desert
south-east of Jerusalem

on the shore of the Dead Sea.

At Masada, a fortress built by King Herod
atop a butte overlooking the sea,

one rebel group was still holding out
against Rome.

They were the Sicarii,

who were named after
the long, thin daggers they carried.

At the beginning of the rebellion

they had taken the fortress
in a surprise attack.

Herod had designed Masada

so that a small force could hold it
against an enormous army.

The historian Josephus
described the trail

that was the only way
to reach the top.

"This trail was called the 'Snake',

"as resembling that animal
in its narrowness and its windings.

"There is also nothing but destruction,
in case your feet slip,

"for on each side
there is a deep chasm. "

Because the Snake was so narrow,

a handful of Sicarii

had for years been able to beat back
every attack by Rome's legions.

But then the Romans
began to build a ramp

that would enable them
to reach the top of Masada.

For two years
the Romans built their ramp.

And for two years
the Sicarii waited.

On the day before
the ramp was completed

the leader of the Sicarii,
Eleazar ben Yair,

told his men
they faced an awful choice.

If they surrendered
the Romans would crucify them

as an example to the would-be rebels
throughout their empire.

Or they could die fighting

and leave their wives and children
to rape and slavery.

Then he proposed
a third alternative.

Josephus learned what took place
from two women

who managed to slip away
from the fortress.

"To avoid the miseries
that were to follow from their enemies,

"they resolved on the necessity
of doing their own execution. "

"Miserable men, indeed,

"were they whose distress forced them
to slay their own wives and children

"with their own hands.

"The husbands
tenderly embraced their wives

"and took their children
into their arms

"and gave the longest
parting kisses to them

"with tears in their eyes.

"Yet at the same time,

"they did complete that
which they had resolved on.

"Not able to bear the grief
they were under for what they had done

"and esteeming it an injury
to those they had killed

"to live even the shortest time
after them,

"they then chose ten men by lot
to slay all the rest.

"And they offered their necks

"to the stroke of those who executed
that melancholy office.

"And when these ten men
had without fear killed them all,

"they made the same rule
for casting lots for themselves-

"that he whose lot it was
should first kill the other nine

"and, after all,
should kill himself.

"Now, for the Romans,

"they expected that they should
be fought in the morning.

"But when they made their assault
upon the fortress

"they saw no enemy,

"but a terrible solitude
on every side. "

MAN: It is here that that tradition
of self-imposed martyrdom

reaches its most poignant expression.

And that is the very eloquent
if heartrending statement

that when I can no longer choose
whether or not to die

I can still choose how to die.

And that's what inspired the martyrs
at Masada to take their own lives

rather than to submit to slavery
and death under Rome.

In just a few years

most of the groups that had dominated
Judea and Judaism for centuries

had vanished.

The Sicarii and their fellow rebels
were all dead.

The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
the Essenes,

had also been butchered by the Romans.

And with no Temple,
the priesthood had become meaningless.

Just one group remained...

The Pharisees.

According to the Jewish book
of law and tradition, the Talmud,

one of the leaders of the Pharisees,
Yohanan ben Zakkai,

had escaped the siege of Jerusalem
by pretending to be dead.

Afterward, Yohanan journeyed
to a town near the sea called Yavneh.

In a vineyard there
he set up a primitive school

for studying the Hebrew Bible.

Eventually,
Yohanan and the other teachers

would be given a new title...

Rabbi.

It was at this point
that the Pharisees

effectively evolved
into what we call the rabbis,

that is, this group of lay teachers

which essentially directs
the religious activity

and the religious study
of the Jewish people.

And this transition
from priest to rabbi, one might say,

in terms of the leadership
of Jewish life,

is one of those things that marks Judaism
in the period after the Temple.

The Talmud says
that Yohanan's greatest challenge

in keeping Judaism alive

was his fellow rabbis' despair
over the loss of the Temple.

"Woe unto us"
Rabbi Joshua cried out,

"that the place where the iniquities
of Israel were atoned for

"is laid waste. "

"My son" Rabbi Yohanan said to him,
"be not grieved.

"We have another atonement
as effective as this. "

"And what is that? "

"It is acts of loving kindness.

"For, as it is written,

'I desire mercy,
and not sacrifice. '

According to the story,
Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai says

that now that the Temple
has been destroyed,

it's in acts of loving kindness,

in actions such as burying the dead,

caring for the homeless,
feeding the hungry,

it is in those kinds of actions

that the very same goals
that were achieved in the Temple-

of relating to God,
of being in God's presence-

THAT'S the way
one's in God's presence.

By seeing the presence of God
in the needy person

and reaching out and helping them.

Yohanan had found his answer
to the loss of the Temple

by studying the prophets
of the Hebrew Bible.

He was following
in an ancient tradition,

for ever since
the long-ago days of exile in Babylon

men eager to learn about God

had been discussing the stories
and laws of the Bible

in meeting places called synagogues.

With the Temple gone,
the rabbis began to rebuild Judaism

around the study of the Bible
in the synagogue.

Here they debated how biblical law
could be applied

to living an ethical
and compassionate life.

With the destruction of the Temple

the synagogue is thrust
into this tremendous vacuum

and it has to pick up the slack

of lack of access to God
through a temple process.

That's where the synagogue
really takes off.

Through the medium of prayer,

the synagogue will be everything that
the Temple had to be, but much more.

(Rabbi prays in Hebrew)

In the Temple, only the priests had been
allowed to communicate with God,

through sacrifice.

Now, in the synagogue,

rabbis and common people alike
talked to God through prayer,

a previously little-used practice

favoured by the writers
of the Book of Psalms.

"Lord, I am calling. Hurry to me.

"Listen to me. I am invoking you.

"My prayers rise like incense,

"my hands like the evening offering.

"Lord, set a guard at my mouth,
a watcher at the gate of my lips,

"to let me feel no impulse
to do wrong.

"To snare the godlessness
of evil-doers. "

GAFNI: What emerges is
a spiritualised version of Judaism-

prayer instead of sacrifice,
rabbis instead of priests,

synagogue instead of temple.

And the great question is, how much
of this was consciously organised,

formulated, by Yohanan ben Zakkai
and the people of his generation?

It could be that part of this
is a retrojection of a later period

back onto Yohanan ben Zakkai.

But I am convinced
that Yohanan was aware of the dilemma

of the post-Temple period

and very, very keenly
tried to set up alternatives

without ever calling them alternatives.

In other words, you have to project
a sense of continuity

while in practice and in fact

you are innovating and setting up
alternative lifestyles.

(CROWD NOISES & MEDITATlVE MUSIC)

But there was one thing
that seemed impossible to replace.

The great Temple festivals

that for centuries had kept people
deeply connected to stories from the Bible.

One of the most important festivals
had been Passover

which commemorated Moses leading
the lsraelites out of slavery in Egypt.

Then the rabbis who followed
in Yohanan's footsteps

created a new kind
of Passover celebration

called a Seder.

It was celebrated not in the Temple
with tens of thousands of others

but at home with family and friends.

MAN: When the Temple is gone,
how do you observe Passover?.

It's there that the Seder was created...
which means 'order'.

Out of the chaos of not having the animal
and its blood to celebrate Passover

comes the order
of the echo of that event.

Of telling the story.

And so the text that they developed,

which is still in use
in every Jewish home on Passover Eve,

is called the Haggadah
which means 'the telling'.

In order to tell the story of Passover

Jewish families used a lamb bone
to represent the lamb

whose blood their ancestors had
painted on their doorposts in Egypt

so that the Angel of Death
would pass over.

And they used unleavened bread

to represent the matzo
the lsraelites had eaten

as they fled
toward the Promised Land.

At the table during the Seder

one of the adults read the story
of the Jews' exodus from Egypt.

Then everyone present
ate the different Passover foods,

each of which symbolised
a part of the story.

NETTER: The great achievement
of the sages of Yavneh

is that they understood

that if you no longer had
the fires of the altar in Jerusalem

what you had was the story.

The Temple was no longer,

the physical sacrifice
was no longer.

But the story is eternal.
And that's what we kept.

Slowly, in a process that would take
hundreds of years,

the rabbis were reinventing Judaism.

But even as they worked

the world around them
was becoming threatening once again.

During the 60 years
after the fall of the Temple

the Romans and their Jewish subjects
lived in an uneasy truce.

Many Jews moved to the fertile area
around the Sea of Galilee

to try and rebuild their lives.

But for some, the rebuilding
only brought on painful memories

of the building they longed
to reconstruct most-the Temple.

In 1 30 AD,
anger at the Roman emperor Hadrian

for refusing to allow
the rebuilding of the Temple

reached the boiling point.

Rumours of a new revolt
began to spread.

GAFNI: Many Jews continued to consider
Roman presence in the land of Israel

to be illegitimate.

This was the evil empire,
it had no business here.

Clearly, however, there must have
been immediate stimuli to this war.

We're not sure what they were.

According to Roman historian
Cassius Dio

it was Hadrian's attempt at building
a pagan city in Jerusalem

to be called Aelia Capitolina

that threw, as it were,
the Jews over the edge

into the abyss
of military uprising.

Another Roman source claims
it was an attempt by Hadrian

to prohibit circumcision
of Jewish children.

We cannot know.

But that would have been,
at the very most, the final push

into what must have been
a popular resentment of Rome

that needed
some sort of stimulation.

The rebellion began
among a band of outlaws

Iiving in the countryside.

Their leader was called
Simon bar Kokhba.

The Romans had long considered
Bar Kokhba merely a thief

but to many of his fellow Jews

he was another
in a long line of freedom fighters

who had refused to accept
Roman rule.

Bar Kokhba was a Jew,
like the Zealots,

Iike the defenders of Masada,

who was willing to take up arms
against Roman occupation,

and was willing to fight
for Jewish sovereignty,

and, in fact, for a limited period of time
achieved sovereignty.

We can hold in our hands the coinage

that Bar Kokhba
issued in his own kingdom,

the last kingdom of Jewish
sovereignty for another 2000 years.

Rather than confront
the mighty Roman legions

from a great city like Jerusalem,
as in the last uprising,

Bar Kokhba came up with a plan
for a guerrilla war.

A Roman historian described
Bar Kokhba's preparation for the revolt.

"They occupied caves
in the countryside

"and strengthened them in order that
they might have places of refuge

"whenever they should be
hard pressed.

"And they pierced subterranean passages
from above at intervals

"to let in air and light. "

As plans for a rebellion
began to leak out,

rumours raced through the region

that Bar Kokhba was the messianic
leader foretold in the Bible

who would lead the Jewish people
to freedom.

"His name meant 'star'

"and he claimed to be a luminary
who had come down from heaven

"and was magically enlightening
those who were in misery. "

SCHIFFMAN: Simeon bar Koziba, as we now
know his name to have really been,

is called Bar Kokhba -
'son of a star' -

because there was
a prophecy in the Bible

that spoke of a star as a symbolic name
for a messianic figure.

Now this fellow, Bar Kokhba,
was a tremendous military leader

who between 1 32 to 1 35 AD
almost kicked the Romans out of Judea

and, in fact, caused many Roman soldiers
to be killed

in the prolonged battles
of the revolt he had brought into being.

But the key point to realise
is that the Bar Kokhba revolt

was a messianic revolt
that people entered into

believing firmly that the Messiah
would come if they were victorious.

Bar Kokhba's charismatic leadership

appealed to not just peasants
and craftsmen

but also scholars and sages.

Their fervour was stoked
by certain prophecies in the Bible

which they believed said
this was the precise moment in history

God had chosen
for the Temple to be rebuilt.

NETTER: Just as the First Temple
at one point lay in ruins and was rebuilt,

so too would the Second Temple.

And they were, in their minds,
God's agents.

They were going to defeat the Romans

and the Third Temple was going to descend
from the sky like a pre-fab,

completely built,
right on that same spot.

And that was in a sense
its messianic mission.

That they were doing God's will
to throw off the evil empire.

That's what God wanted.

In 1 32 AD,
the most prominent rabbi in Judea

publicly declared that Bar Kokhba
was indeed the Messiah.

The ranks of the rebels
swelled even more.

With hundreds of thousands
now ready to follow him

Bar Kokhba nevertheless
remained patient.

In order to lull Hadrian and his legions
into a false sense of security

he counselled his followers
to pretend to be happy and peaceful.

"So long, indeed,
as Hadrian was close by in Egypt,

"the Jews remained quiet...

"except that they made the weapons,

"which the Romans
demanded of them as tribute,

"of such poor quality
that the Romans rejected them.

"By this ruse, they were able to have use
of these weapons themselves. "

In a strategic masterstroke,
Bar Kokhba bided his time

until Hadrian was well on his way
back to Rome.

Then suddenly
he launched the revolt.

In the early days of the rebellion

the rebels inflicted tens of thousands
of casualties on the Romans.

KIRSCH:
In the ancient world

Jews were not known
as bookish and prayerful and pious.

They were known as ruthless
and ferocious fighters,

they were highly prized
as mercenary soldiers

and they showed
in the uprising against Rome

exactly how effective they were
on the field of battle.

The stunning success of the rebels

forced the Romans
to withdraw from the region.

Bar Kokhba then declared Judea
to be an independent kingdom.

But the Romans were merely waiting
to counterattack

until they had assembled one of
the greatest armies in their history.

They had sent three legions
against Jerusalem

in the rebellion 60 years earlier.

Now they sent 1 3.

"Hadrian sent against the Jews
his best general, Julius Severus,

"who was dispatched from Britain.

"Hadrian ordered him to put to the sword
all who stood in their path. "

GAFNI:
Rome responds to Bar Kokhba

by throwing masses
of its military force into the fray.

Legions would be brought in,

not only from Judea, from Egypt,
from the surrounding countries,

but as far as
across the Danube River.

A commander would be brought in
from Britain.

There was absolutely no way
that Hadrian could allow

even partial success
to this uprising.

"Severus did not venture
to attack his opponents in the open,

"in view of their numbers
and their desperation.

"Instead, he isolated them
in small groups.

"They dispensed with the rebels
who were hiding in their caves

"by filling them with smoke
and guarding the exits.

"Then they surprised and killed
all who came out to fight.

"580,000 men were slain
in the various raids and battles.

"And the number of those that perished
by famine, disease and suffocation

"was past finding out. "

With the rebellion crushed,

the people of Judea faced
even worse retribution from the Romans

than after the uprising
60 years earlier.

For the Romans now set themselves
the goal of wiping the Jews from Judea.

The Bar Kokhba rebellion...

was known, really,
as the most disastrous single event

that ever happened to the Jewish people,
before the Holocaust.

In fact, when we look
at the three literary accounts,

we find that they all agree.

Nearly 600, 000 Jews were killed.

Over 900 Jewish villages
were destroyed.

And for one small moment
in Jewish history, again,

it looked like Jewish history
might have been over.

In the aftermath of the uprising,

the Romans changed the name of the region
from Judea to Palestine.

Then they banned all Jews
from Jerusalem.

"The emperor then commanded
by legal decree

"that the whole nation of the Jews

"should be forcibly removed
from the district round Jerusalem,

"so that not even from a distance
could they see their ancestral home.

"Thus the city came to be bereft
of the nation of the Jews,

"and in honour of the emperor
Aelius Hadrian

"the name of the city became Aelia. "

The outcome of the Bar Kokhba revolt

is a much more serious policy
on the part of the Romans

prohibiting Jews
from even going to Jerusalem.

And they plough over the Temple Mount

and build a temple to their gods
on that spot,

thereby showing

'You have no place here.
We clearly are the winners. '

In the centuries that followed

whole villages of Jews
began to leave Judea

in search of a new life.

They headed for the Jewish communities
that had been flourishing for centuries

in Babylon, in Greece, in Rome,
and many other places.

But in their new homes

they would soon face a challenge
to their survival

every bit as daunting as the Romans.

This threat would come not from outside,
but from within...

from a new kind of Judaism
called Christianity.

Jesus of Nazareth had called
his Jewish followers 'fishers of men'.

Since his death in 33 AD

they had been telling
all who would listen

that Jesus Christ
was the Son of God

who, after his crucifixion,
had risen from the dead.

These 'Christians'

did not mourn the loss of the Temple
and its sacrificial rituals,

for they believed God had decided
to sacrifice His only son

once and for all.

The Christians preached
to Jews and Gentiles alike

but their message that a messiah
had come to set the world right

was at its heart a Jewish message.

WOMAN: For centuries,
Christianity was a type of Judaism.

For example,
in the Gospel of Matthew,

one of the ones
that's in the New Testament collection,

that Jesus gives instructions
to his followers

on where they should stand
when they pray in the synagogue,

on how long their 'tzitzit',
their prayer fringes, should be,

on what they should be like
when they fast.

I mean, it's all this Jewish stuff.

And when you think of it, that makes sense
because Christianity is a Jewish movement.

Like many other Jews,

the Christians believed
the Hebrew Bible was the word of God

and therefore
told the absolute truth.

But unlike other Jews,

they believed that its most
important stories and prophecies

foretold the coming of Jesus.

Churchill once said

that the Americans and the English
are divided by a common language.

In the same way, the early Christians
are divided from other groups of Judaism

by a common Bible.

They're engaged in competition

for the interpretation
of this sacred scripture.

As the Christians
won more and more converts

the competition with other forms
of Judaism intensified.

Churches sprang up
alongside synagogues

in Jewish communities
throughout the Roman Empire.

And yet,
because of their common roots,

most Christians and Jews
felt a kinship with one another.

But then Christianity gained
perhaps the most important convert

in its history...

a man who was about to become
the Roman emperor.

In 320 AD
an army marched to war

for the first time
beneath a Christian cross.

The Roman Empire was in the middle
of a civil war between two generals

over who would be the next emperor.

According to an historian
from the time,

one of the generals, Constantine,
was inspired by a vision

to send his legions into battle
carrying a cross.

"A most marvellous sign
had appeared to him.

"He saw with his own eyes
a cross of light in the heavens

"bearing the inscription
'Conquer By This'.

With the cross at their head

Constantine's troops were victorious.

The story of the battle of the cross was
spread far and wide throughout the empire

to win support for Constantine

from the rapidly growing
Christian movement.

FREDRIKSEN: There's nothing like
a voice from heaven to clarify ambiguity.

And in the confusing political situation
Constantine finds himself in,

he and the bishops
who were working with him

clear up some of the political ambiguity

by beginning to talk about voices
from heaven, or signs from heaven

which at crucial moments
in Constantine's political career

have indicated
who heaven wants to be emperor.

For Jews throughout the empire,

the new emperor's alliance
with Christianity

would prove disastrous.

The bishops who allied themselves
with Constantine

were part of the one branch
of Christianity

that was hostile toward Jews.

FREDRIKSEN: One edge
of gentile Christian culture

itself becomes
extremely anti-Jewish.

And, unfortunately
for later history,

that particular edge
of gentile Christianity

wins the patronage
of the Roman Empire.

The anti-Jewish Christian bishops

became determined
to stamp out the friendship

that many Christians
felt toward Judaism.

MEEKS: Take John Chrysostom,

one of the great preachers
of the 4th century.

He had trouble because
people in his congregation

thought that the festivals of the Jews
were ever so much more interesting

than the things
that the Church put on,

and so they would trot off during
high holy days to visit the synagogues.

This infuriated John.

So he preached a series of eight sermons
against the Judaisers,

in which he first, as far as I know,
coined the term the 'Christ-killers'

in order to label those people

that he didn't want
his congregation associating with.

Obviously this term then is going
to have very fateful after-effects

in the history
of Christian anti-Judaism.

In the centuries ahead,

this new prejudice
of Christians toward Jews

would lead to anti-Jewish laws,
violent attacks and mass evictions.

And so the Jews began to search
for new homes in North Africa,

in Spain, in Russia.

As the Jews became further and further
spread out from one another

Judaism was threatened
with disintegration.

The laws that now governed
how a Jew should live,

from rituals
to social relationships,

had never been written down.

They existed
only in an oral tradition

passed from one generation
to the next.

MAN: In order to have
an ongoing oral tradition,

you have to have a stable community.

How did you know you needed
a driver's licence at 1 6?

It's not because you read it
in your particular state code,

it's because somebody told you
you needed a driver's licence at 1 6.

But that kind of oral tradition
requires a stable community.

And if the community is disintegrating,
as the Jewish community was in Judea,

from the Bar Kokhba revolt in 1 35
until the end of the 2nd century,

there was a strongly-felt need

for editing that oral tradition
so that it might be preserved.

(WlSTFUL ACOUSTlC GUlTAR)

The monumental work of genius that
would enable Judaism to survive anywhere

began to take shape
in the 2nd century AD

in the countryside

in the mind of an illiterate shepherd
named Akiva.

As Akiva spent day after day

observing the natural world
around him,

questions began to flood
into his mind

about where it had all come from
and what it all meant.

And so he taught himself
how to read

and began to study the Hebrew Bible.

According to the Talmud

he was awestruck
by the power of the Bible

to help him see the world
in a whole new way.

"Akiva noticed
how the stone at a well

"had been hollowed out
by drippings from the buckets.

"He thought, if these drippings
can penetrate this solid stone,

"how much more can the study
of the word of God

"penetrate the human heart? "

Akiva was a simple shepherd...
illiterate.

Didn't know an 'alef' from a 'bet' -
an 'A ' from a 'B'.

At the age of 40, discovered
that he needed to learn Torah.

And so he began to study
with 5-year-olds.

And he learned
'alef', 'bet', 'gimel', 'dalet'

and then he learned the entire alphabet.

Then he learned the Book of Leviticus,
and then the entire Torah.

And in a few short years

this illiterate shepherd
became the leading sage of his age.

Akiva learned
that in addition to the Bible

there existed a vast collection
of oral traditions,

passed down to scholars like Hillel
and Yohanan ben Zakkai,

and passed on by them
to Akiva's generation.

These teachings about justice, mercy

and how to make them real
in one's own life

comprised the greatest
of all the treasures of the Jews.

But because these teachings had been
handed down only by word of mouth

they were so disorganised

that they were in danger
of being lost entirely.

Then Akiva began using
his remarkable mind

to organise the centuries
of Jewish tradition and law

that had been inspired by the Bible.

GAFNI: Akiva, we are told,
may have been the first rabbi

to take this enormous mass
of oral tradition

that had accrued
over hundreds and hundreds of years

and to systematise it.

To create some sort of a thematic
structure to this material.

We're actually told that Akiva
is like a person going to the marketplace

and buying these vegetables, those fruits,
putting everything in his basket

and then coming home
and sorting everything out.

And similarly, we are told,
Akiva sorted out oral tradition.

I think what we have here
is a brilliant legal mind

who realises that if this material
is to last many more generations,

some sense must be made of it,
it must be put in order.

But Akiva lived during difficult times

when Rome and the Jews were battling
over the rebuilding of the Temple.

As a strong supporter of rebellion,

Akiva was arrested by the Romans.

According to the Talmud,

the Romans
then condemned Akiva to death.

But not just any death.

Aware of his fame
as the greatest of all sages,

they decided
to make an example of Akiva

to all who would rebel against Rome.

They sentenced him
to be flayed alive.

"As Akiva was given
into the hands of the executioner,

"it was just the time
to recite the evening prayer.

"Though suffering agonies,
Akiva recited his prayers calmly,

"full of devotion.

"And when he was asked
whether he was a sorcerer,

"since he appeared to feel no pain,

"Akiva replied 'I am no sorcerer.

'But I rejoice at the opportunity
now given to me

'to love my God with all my life,

'seeing that I have hitherto
been able to love him

'only with all my means
and with all my might. '

"And with that word, he died. "

He's being taken out to be executed

and his last words are words of faith.

"Hear O Israel, the Lord is one

"and one should love God
with all his heart and soul. "

And the beautiful Talmudic description
has his disciples asking him

"Akiva, how can you maintain that faith
in these circumstances? "

And he responds by saying
"I've been preparing for this all my life.

"I've been reciting scripture all my life,
wondering will I ever have to put up?

"Will I ever have to actually perform
these ultimate acts of faith

"in a real world?

"Now that I have the chance,

"how can I refrain from not
giving up my life for my faith? "

Akiva was dead.

But the work he had done

to make the teachings of the Jews
accessible to anyone anywhere, lived on.

Beginning in the 4th century AD,
Akiva's heirs made his work

the basis for an ongoing collection
of law and tradition,

called the Talmud.

It contained the teachings
of scholars down through the ages

on how Jews should practise Judaism.

SCHIFFMAN: For a Jew to live
a proper life and a good life

meant that on the one hand there was
a set of rituals to be observed.

But along with the commandments
that are ritual commandments

there came a set
of ethical commandments.

And these ethical commandments
were as important or more important,

whether it's the obvious ones,
"Thou shalt not kill or steal",

or the not-so obvious ones,

"Love your neighbour as yourself",

probably the hardest one to do
that most of us never really attain.

All of these types of beautiful ethics,

family relations,
relations with husband and wife,

with children, with other people,
with non-Jews,

all of these ethical laws,

when taken together
with the religious commandments,

and with the theology of Judaism,

constitute the life
the Jew was and is called on to live.

But the T almud was not just
a book of commandments.

It was also a record
of great debates between sages

about how to apply the eternal values
of the Hebrew Bible

to living here and now.

GEREBOFF:. Abraham was not a person
who was just dead for them.

Abraham was a living presence.

They read the story of Abraham
in comparison to the story of Noah.

Noah, when he was told
the world was going to be destroyed,

they said,
in reading the biblical text, they saw

that Noah didn't talk to anybody,
he just kept to himself.

But Abraham, when he heard
Sodom was going to be destroyed,

Abraham went out and argues with God.

"Will you do this if there are
really 50 righteous people there

"or 40 people? "

And from their way of looking at things,
these provided-Noah and Abraham-

provided two different models
of how to live as a human being.

Do you just hear a message
and keep it to yourself?

Or if you hear a message
that doesn't make sense

do you have the willingness
to ask for a clarification,

or say "That doesn't make sense? "

Above all,
the T almud was a how-to book

for practising Judaism.

Any community of Jews anywhere
could study the lessons of the Bible

and then debate among themselves
how to apply its laws and traditions

to their own time and place.

In synagogues from Spain to Russia
to North Africa,

Jews who were isolated in ghettos

could still maintain their connection
to their culture and their God.

For instance,
a community in Spain,

which already existed
in late Roman times,

on the one hand isolated,

hundreds of miles removed
both from the land of Israel

and from the other centre
of rabbinic knowledge, Babyblonia.

But slowly, this Talmudic material
in book fashion, as it were,

makes its way to Spain.

And these Jews
can now plug into this culture.

They can plug into this tradition.
They can interpret it.

They can use what is applicable
to their own lifestyles.

So in many ways,
it's a mobile tradition.

The Talmud would become in many ways
the mobile tradition

that reaches all corners
of the Jewish world.

Nobody now is isolated
from the focal point

of Jewish religious activity.

You have the Talmud,
you can study it.

You can elaborate, interpret,
ask others what it means.

The Talmud now would be
the walking Bible, this living Bible,

for Jews throughout the world.

(SOLEMN MUSIC)

With the T almud
to bind them together

Jewish communities
around the world

thrived in spite
of the discrimination they faced.

And invariably
their Muslim and Christian neighbours

soon discovered that the Jews among them
possessed unique gifts.

One of the skills Jews introduced
to country after country

was glass blowing.

Their neighbours also benefited

from the Jewish community's
advanced knowledge of medicine

and were inspired by its practice
of giving every child an education.

But most important of all,
the Jews brought spiritual gifts.

KIRSCH:
Among the many contributions

that the Jewish people
have made to world civilisation

is this idea that what God demands
of ordinary human beings

is not merely
the observance of a ritual

or the holding
of a particular belief or credo.

It's simply a fierce pursuit of justice.

Moses says
"Justice, justice shalt thou pursue. "

That's one of the credos
of the Bible and of rabbinical Judaism

and it is one of the moral gifts
of the Jews to posterity.

And it finds its expression
in both Christianity and Islam

and in the world we live in today.

The importance of compassion
for the less fortunate,

of personal ethics,

of laws that applied
to everyone equally...

these were just some of the gifts
of the Jews.

DORFF:. I think the Jewish tradition
has given the world

a sense of appreciation
for family and for education.

A sense that we should not only be
for ourselves, but also for others,

as the rabbis themselves say.

And that we have to therefore
make sure that we do our bit

in making this a better world.

These eternal truths,

communicated first through
the stories of the Hebrew Bible,

had become the unshakable foundation
of Judaism.

A tiny insignificant people,

seemingly destined to be destroyed
by the Assyrians, the Babylonians,

the Egyptians, the Greeks
and the Romans,

had instead survived and flourished.

Not through
the power of their weapons,

Iike other great empires,

but through the power
of their beliefs and their ideas.

And in the end,

they would have as much impact
on who we are and what we believe

as any empire in history.