Sublime

Luckily for the rabbis, the Romans torched Jerusalem and its temple

The Jewish community in the United States, the largest in the world, is disappearing faster than any other since the Lost Ten Tribes vanished from the pages of history more than two and a half thousand years ago.

Conquest and consequences

He ranked truth above custom, and justice above the law.

In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest — this man desires an advocate, this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another.

He founded a new religion, which was the opposite of the city religion. He was justly accused of not adoring the gods whom the state adored.

In 216 BCE the authorities in Rome performed what Livy calls ‘a very un-Roman ritual’. They buried alive in the city centre two pairs of human victims, Gauls and Greeks. It was the closest to human sacrifice that the Romans ever came, and Livy’s embarrassment in telling the story is evident. Yet it was not the only time they did this: the same ritu

Toward the end of the second plague, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria wrote a pastoral letter to his members, extolling those who had nursed the sick and especially those who had given their lives in doing so: Most of our brothers showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they to