When Shlomo died his son Rehoboam became king. At this time the Taxes were already getting higher and stricter from Solomon, so the people were already getting mad. When they went to Rehoboam about the taxes he told them he was going to make the taxes even higher. After all this, the United Monarchy gets split up, and only 2 out of 12 tribes stay with Rehoboam. (Yehudah, and Benyamin)

The Assyrians are an empire around the Seven Hundreds who conquered the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They treat the people they conquer horribly, they torture and kill people so everyone is afraid of them. They also hung up pictures they made of times when they tortured people to prove they would do it to you. The Assyrians for the second time attacked the kingdom of Israel and this time they moved them all around the world. They did this to forget their homeland, language, culture, and religion. So you won’t rebel and so you will start to think of yourself as an Assyrian. This changed Jewish History forever because so many Jews lost their religion. 

The kingdom of Judah gets prepared before they rebel against the Assyrians. They have to run and hide inside the walls of the city. King Hezekiah makes tunnels because he is very worried about not having water when the Assyrians attack so he makes water tunnels secretly. The Assyrians tried to capture Judah but Hashem saved them. It was a miracle and thats where we are all from nowadays. 

“Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit.” This quote is saying that the Jews should build a house and plant because they will be there for a while. The Jews shouldn’t be wasting away their lives waiting to leave. They should continue with their lives and make a family and home to stay in.

The picture shows a stadium where Jews were forced to fight against a huge animal in front of everyone and die. This relates to the topic of the Roman Revolt because it was the Jews's Punishment for rebelling.

During the Great Revolt, two groups of Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire, the Zealots and the Saccari. The Zealots and Saccari believed that the most important thing to being a Jew was to be independent in Israel. Since they believed this they felt they needed to rebel because they couldn’t be under Roman Rule. The only difference between the Zealots and the Saccaris was that the Saccaris also thought that if you weren’t on their side you were wrong. So they decided to force people to rebel by terrorizing them. Two huge things that made them rebel were that the Romans decided they got to choose who their Kohanim Godol was and the Emperor Caligula decided he wanted a statue of himself in the Beit Hamkidash. 

The Accommandationists were the Jews who didn’t rebel against Rome. They didn’t rebel because they thought that the most important thing about being a Jew was to do all the Mitzvot. Rome didn’t stop them from doing the Mitzvot so they didn’t need to rebel. However, after the Zealots and Saccaris have all been captured and killed the Rabbis start to worry about how Judaism will survive. The rabbis were also part of the people who believed doing all the Mitzvot was the main part of being a Jew. “Ben Zakkai called his nephew who was the leader of the Jewish terrorists, and asked him how he could continue to destroy the people. The nephew replied that he would like to stop, but the other zealots would never permit him.” Rabbi Yochanan was the leader of the Rabbis so he also didn’t rebel. However, to the Romans, it didn’t matter if he helped rebel or not either way he would end up dead. So Rabbi Yochanan decided the only way to save his people was to go and talk to the Roman general himself. He snuck out of Jerusalem and asked for 3 different things. First, he asked to save Yavneh to make sure the Jews would still have a Jewish education after the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed. Second, he asked to save the children of Rabban Gamliel so there is a potential for Mashiach to eventually come in the future and have a third Beit Hamiksash. Third, he asked for them to heal Rabbi Zadok. 

The picture is of the Torah, it relates to this topic because Judah HaNasi had to write down the Oral Torah during the war because it was in danger of being forgotten.

After all the destruction Jews rebuilt life in exile starting by creating a group called the Zugots. They were rabbinic pairs of Rabbis who held the position of Nasi and Av Beit Dim. Their main mission was to learn all the Torah for the future generation. Including showing their opinions about how strict Halachas should be. The Tannaims were also a huge part of rebuilding Jewish life. They were teachers, and they were so important because after the Beit Hamikdash Jews relied on them and their study of Judaism to keep Judaism alive. They continue to pass down oral law to the Jews. However, one thing that got in their way was when a guy named Borkauchua thought he was Mashiach. He rebelled against the Romans and Emperor Hadrian was super angry that the Jews rebelled for a second time. So he banned the Jews from Jerusalem and renamed Israel to Palestine, he also bans the study of the Torah. Since Torah is banned again now they had to do something to make sure Oral Torah wouldn’t die out. Judah HaNasi is the official representative of Jews to the Romans and he replaces the Kohan Godol. Since he is the new Nasi the Jews are allowed to learn Torah again. Judah Hanasi decides to write some of the Oral law down because if he didn’t they would all forget it. Everything changed, it changed from Israel to Bavel, Kohanim to Rabbis, Karbonot to learning Torah, and father-son learning to Gemara and Mishnah. It was a whole different community for the Jews.