Jewish-Roman Wars

The Jewish-Roman wars were a series of major revolts by the Jewish population of Roman Judaea against imperial rule between 66 and 135 CE, fought to restore the political independence Rome had ended when it absorbed the Hasmonean kingdom. The First Jewish-Roman War, from 66 to 73 CE, culminated in the Roman army's siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE under the future emperor Titus, including the burning of the Second Temple, the center of Jewish religious life, an event that permanently ended Temple-based Jewish worship and scattered much of the city's population. Six decades later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132 to 136 CE, led by Simon bar Kokhba against Emperor Hadrian, was crushed with similarly devastating losses, after which Roman authorities barred Jews from Jerusalem and renamed the province Syria Palaestina. Together these wars transformed the Jewish people from a major population within the Eastern Mediterranean into a dispersed and often persecuted minority, reshaping Jewish religious and communal life for centuries afterward.