Place · Italy and Western Europe
Rome
Judah Maccabee sought Roman support. In 63 BCE Judea passed under Roman control.
41.8900°N 12.4913°E · representative coordinate · Pleiades 423025 ↗
Statements linked to this place
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Judah, a skilled guerrilla commander, recaptured Jerusalem and reinstated worship at the Temple, an event commemorated at Hanukkah. He was helped by Antiochus's preoccupation with the eastern part of his kingdom and by Roman support. The book's timeline dates the purification and rededication of the Temple to 164 BCE. Hasmonean rule over Judea lasted until 63 BCE, when the region fell to Rome: Pompey intervened in favor of Hyrcanus II, arrested Aristobulus II and conquered Jerusalem.
Community: Jews of Rome
Jerusalem had no images of gods, but in Alexandria or Rome Jews lived with statues worshiped by their neighbors. They tolerated their presence; what they refused was to venerate them. That was where they parted from Greeks, Egyptians and other peoples, for whom adding worship of the emperor's statue to their practices posed no problem.
The Samaritans today number a few hundred; the Christians, by contrast, grew quickly, and their anti-Judaism weighed more as their influence increased. In the first century they were already in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome (where the agitation caused by Christian preaching led to another expulsion of the city's Jews in the 40s) and were winning African converts; by the second century they were throughout the empire and beyond. Still persecuted in the early fourth century, they then won over the emperor himself: in 312, before a battle, Constantine I had a vision and ordered his troops to put a sign of Christ on their equipment. From then on, nearly every emperor protected the Church.
Jewish uprisings across the first two centuries CE emptied Judea of many of its Jews. Over the course of Roman rule, the hub of communal life moved away from Jerusalem, to a region farther north and to diaspora centers such as Babylon and Rome.
Community: Jews of Rome
The synagogue existed by the third century BCE and developed further once the Second Temple was destroyed. By the first century there were synagogues, or equivalent institutions under other names, all over the eastern Mediterranean: in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and perhaps Italy. Rome alone shows signs of at least 11. Their number, spread and the money spent on them show how central they were to community life. Under Alexander Severus (222 to 235), the dynasty's last emperor, he appears to have maintained a fairly positive relationship with Jews for a Roman synagogue to bear his name. Relations seem to have improved under the Severans.
Community: Jews of Rome, an ancient community confined by the pope in 1555.
In 1555 roughly four thousand Roman Jews were confined beside the Tiber. In Rome five rites shared the building known as the Cinque Scole.