Bar Kochba: The Worst Jewish Hero Ever
Below is the script for a video I wrote at BimBam, a Jewish Educational Media Company.
In the 2nd century, Bar Kokhba led a Jewish revolt against the Romans. The Romans had taken over Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and renamed it Aelia Capitolina. Seventy years later, a popular Geurilla uprising led by Bar Kokhba struck back. Despite an overwhelming opposing force, they managed to reestablish an independent Jewish state. He was heralded by some as a Messiah, who would make the Jewish people independent again. And he was reviled by other Jews who considered this whole thing crazy folly.
It was an inspiring tale when the modern state of Israel was founded: “We’re the last survivors and we see ourselves as again beleaguered by our surrounding enemies, and we will do anything at all costs to survive.”
And while the Bar Kochba rebellion was romanticized by Israelis for a long time, it was a total catastrophe for the Jewish people. The first Roman war, when the temple was destroyed, was bad, but the real bad war for the Jews was the Bar Kochba rebellion. After the successful revolt, there was two and a half years of Jewish rule, and then Rome returned with a vengeance, paved over Jerusalem in salt, killed ruthlessly, and exiled nearly all of the Jews. When the temple was destroyed, the Jewish people could have chosen to live under the Romans, but going the path of the Bar Kochba rebellion ended Jewish sovereignty for 2000 years.
By the 1980’s there were voices that were challenging the Israeli consensus: the Bar Kochba revolt was not a good tale from history to use as inspiration. When we follow Messianic figures into actual political consequences it really ends badly.
The Bar Kochba rebellion seems to be very Jewish. Not just ethnically, but religiously. As a nationalist movement. And the ways that the Rabbis ultimately describe the sequence of the Bar Kochba rebellion is with graphic depictions of death and blood that are unlike anything else that you find in the Talmud. In one story they say, “The Blood ran so thick and deep that it was up to a horses nostril in blood.” An amazing image. And that “The waters of the mediterranean ran with blood all the way to Cyprus.” In other words, they had these insane fantasies of how violent it was. It just lingers really deep in Rabbinic memory of what a disaster this was for the Jewish people.
And while Rabbinic tradition doesn’t romanticize it, 20th century Israeli society did. And that’s the paradox of how Zionism relates to religious Jewish history. It sees itself as continuous with these stories, but in some cases it rejects their ethos. Zionism itself is basically a secular story that sees itself as the total continuous of religious tradition. So the fact that Israelis would claim Bar Kochba as a great last story of Jewish Nationalism, even though religious tradition was like, “Uchh Bar Kochba was terrible and created all these problems,” makes total sense, because they’re still opting in to the story. They just don’t want to opt into what was understood as its theological meaning.
There are a few stories that Zionism took and turned on their head in terms of the theological lesson. For instance, there was a whole group of Zionists in the 40’s and 50’s that called themselves Canaanites. They were a very small group of people, but they called themselves Canaanites because they wanted to depict themselves as “No, we’re not like the Israelites in the bible. Those are the people that came from Egypt and came from the land of Israel. The Canaanites are the indigenous natives. We want to be Canaanites.” It’s totally nuts, because the basic use of the term is you’re basically claiming biblical heritage, but you’re saying “I don’t want the actual biblical heritage. I want a different myth that’s portrayed in the heritage. I want to use it as a political tool.”
Another big example of Zionism taking a tradition and turning it on its head is Chanukah. For most of recorded Jewish history, Rabbinic Judaism de-emphasized the military side of the Chanukah story, and made it much more about the theological miracle of, you know, “we found enough oil to light the temple lights” and the larger idea of light in the darkest time of the year and the spiritual aspect of God providing miracles.
The contemporary celebration of Chanukah in Israel is about a military holiday. It’s about military conquests. And that’s a straight line from “Oh, Zionism encounters a theological holiday…Oh, I don’t have anything to do with that…show me a military holiday of a small number of people who defeat a large number of people. People who are attached to our cultural heritage, speaking our language and fighting against the stranger. Yeah - okay. We can connect to that.”
Israeli children’s Chanukah music is all military marching songs. And if you contrast that to the sweetness of the way that Chanukah is celebrated in America, where it’s more of a spiritual holiday, it’s extraordinary.
Politics is a remarkable prism to understand this holiday. Both of these are part of the story of Chanukah. But part of what’s happened to Jewish history is we curate the versions of our holidays based on our own political realities.
Seeing how Judaism is different in Israel, can work as a prism to think about things you already know about. Think about. History. Holidays. The conditions of the State of Israel and Zionism are leading to these totally different interpretations of the same holidays and a little bit of history that we all share. And it means something totally different because of the context that we find ourselves in.