ROME (VINnews) — Israel’s new ambassador to Rome, Dr. Dror Eidar is a well-known historian and publicist and author of a number of books on Israeli religious poetry. On Tisha B’av he visited the Arch of Titus in Rome and recorded a clip in which he described the historic background of the arch and the message of hope which can be derived from the symbolic site.
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It should be noted that for many hundreds of years Jews did not go through the Arch of Titus as they saw it as a place where the vessels from the Temple were defiled by gentiles and could not bear to see them. However on the day the state of Israel was proclaimed the Jews, led by Chief Rabbi David Pratto, marched through the gate in the opposite direction from which the Jewish exiles came 2000 years previously in order to demonstrate that the Jews had defeated Titus and returned to their home country.
Rabbi David Pratto
Later the Ponovezher Rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Cahanaman, expressed similar sentiments when he visited the arch:
“Titus! Evil Titus! Take a good look at what has occurred. You dragged my hapless people out of our land two millennia ago and led them into an exile from which they were never to return. You went home to Rome – the most powerful nation on earth – in glory and triumph. But Titus, where are you? What has become of the glory that was Rome? What has become of the infallible empire that was supposed to last forever? The Jewish people however are still here and continue to flourish. Titus, Mir Zenen noch do…Avu Bist Du? (We are still here! Where are you?”)
The arch of titus is ten times as imhuman as a Robert E lee or columbus statue. Tear it down
The Ponevezher Rav did not express similar sentiments to those who marched through the arch.
The Ponevezher Rav said that, of course, Klal Yisrael will exist forever, while the marchers distorted that fact with Zionism implying that the Zionist invasion of the holy land was somehow a reversal of their exile.
In fact, of course, the exile under Zionism is far worse than the exile that came before Zionism. Since Zionism started over a century ago, millions of Jews were not only murdered (with the never-mentioned perfidious Zionist actions and inaction during WW II) but the Zionists themselves intentionally and specifically shmaded millions more after WW II.
Not to mention that the Jews did not suddenly in 1948 somehow defeat Titus but, in fact, it was the successors of Titus who gave permission to the Zionists to fraudulently claim to represent the Jews and to establish their State in part of the Holy Land. The successors of Titus are still the most powerful political forces on the planet and the Zionists are still required to listen to those successors, never mind that the Zionists, in reality, don’t even represent the Jewish people in the first place.
What a sad joke.
I visited the Arch of Titus with the Zamir Chorale of Boston and I felt a sense of triumph and victory when they sang in front of it. We are still here!
B’H, we are the Ohr HaOlom. As the Rebbe said evil (darkness) can only be countered with Light. The light of our beautiful Torah, each of us who has emunah make it our task to shed the light, the beauty of Torah to all. We have the power to bring Moshiach and show the current iteration of Jew haters, including the venerable Titus AM YISROEL CHAI, LEOLOM VOED!
(MARK TWAIN) The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? Our unwavering belief in TORAH.
I didn’t know that the Colosseum that has as its greatest accomplishment the killing of 50,000 men and animals in one day is what was built from parts of the Bais Hamikdosh. Some yerida l’tzoiraich aliyah that was. Can’t wait to see the aliya.
titus died with a bird in head .
Thank you “anonymous” for your eloquent words. In any case, Israels ambassador shldnt offer words of any sort being that he’s clueless in Jewish history. All he knows is that Zionism “ibber alles”.
Zionism is a calamity forKlal Yisrael as Titus was. Zionism does not represent us in any way, nor do their philosophies of any kind.
So interesting how different people can look at the same Arch and see different things. Some see another chance to say something stupid and irrelevant, some see hatred for fellow Jews, some see triumph and hope, and some an eternal message for our people.