Jews I

Ethnogenesis

History

Who Were the Jews?

The Jews of this period were a people undergoing the most profound transformation in their long history. In 70 CE, Roman legions breached Jerusalem's walls and burned the Second Temple — the center of Jewish worship for over five centuries, the place where heaven touched earth. What had been a nation with land, capital, and sanctuary became something unprecedented: a people defined not by territory but by text, not by a temple but by study and observance, scattered across the known world yet maintaining a distinct identity that neither distance nor persecution could dissolve. The rabbis who emerged from this catastrophe created something new — a Judaism that could survive anywhere, needing only a quorum of ten men, a Torah scroll, and the will to remember.

Homeland and Way of Life

After 70 CE, and especially after the failed Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, the Jewish presence in Judea dwindled. Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina, banned Jews from Jerusalem, and attempted to erase Jewish connection to the land. Yet Jewish communities persisted in Galilee, where the Mishnah was compiled around 200 CE, and flourished in Babylonia, where academies at Sura and Pumbedita produced the Babylonian Talmud — the vast compendium of law, legend, and debate that would guide Jewish life for millennia.

Diaspora Jews settled throughout the Roman Empire and beyond: Alexandria, Antioch, Rome itself, the cities of Mesopotamia, trading posts along the Silk Road. They worked as merchants, artisans, farmers, physicians. In each place they established synagogues — houses of prayer and study that replaced the lost Temple's functions. Community life centered on these institutions, on Sabbath observance, on dietary laws that set Jews apart from neighbors, and on education that made literacy nearly universal among Jewish men. A Jew from Rome could find hospitality and familiar practice in any Jewish community from Spain to Persia.

Warfare, Power, and Limits

The catastrophic revolts against Rome — the Great Revolt of 66–73 CE and Bar Kokhba's rebellion sixty years later — demonstrated both Jewish military capability and its limits. Jewish fighters held Jerusalem for years against the empire's finest legions; Bar Kokhba's forces briefly established an independent state. But Rome's resources were inexhaustible, and defeat brought devastation. After Bar Kokhba, the rabbis turned decisively away from armed resistance. Survival now meant accommodation, negotiation, and the cultivation of relationships with whatever power ruled.

This was not passivity but strategy. Jewish communities learned to navigate imperial politics, securing privileges through petition, payment, and usefulness. They could not field armies, but they could offer skills rulers needed: commercial networks spanning hostile borders, literacy in multiple languages, medical knowledge preserved from Greek sources. Influence replaced force; the ability to absorb losses and rebuild replaced the ability to inflict them. It was a formula for survival in a world where Jews would rarely hold political power.

Beliefs, Customs, and Society

Rabbinic Judaism transformed catastrophe into continuity. The Temple's destruction, the rabbis taught, was punishment for sin — but also opportunity for a more intimate relationship with God. Prayer replaced sacrifice; the study house replaced the sanctuary; every Jewish home became a small temple, every table an altar. The elaborate system of halakha — Jewish law governing everything from business ethics to bedroom conduct — created a portable framework for holy living that required no sacred geography.

The Talmud preserved debates rather than conclusions, teaching Jews to argue, question, and find multiple valid interpretations in sacred text. This culture of disputation sharpened minds and created flexibility — the same law could be applied differently in Babylonia and Palestine, among Aramaic-speakers and Greek-speakers, without shattering unity. Women managed households according to intricate purity laws and raised children in tradition; men gathered for prayer and study. The rhythm of Sabbaths and festivals, observed identically from Britain to Persia, maintained community across impossible distances.

Contacts, Conflicts, and Legacy

Jews lived as minorities everywhere, their status varying with the tolerance of rulers. In Sasanian Persia, they enjoyed relative autonomy under their own exilarch, a recognized community leader. In the Roman and later Byzantine Empire, they faced periodic restrictions, forced conversions, and violence — but also long periods of peaceful coexistence. They traded with everyone, served as intermediaries between hostile empires, and transmitted knowledge across cultural boundaries.

When Arab armies took Jerusalem in 638 CE, Jews had been barred from the city for five centuries. The new Muslim rulers permitted their return — a small mercy that marked the beginning of a new chapter. The period from 70 to 638 had accomplished something remarkable: a people had lost everything that defined ancient nationhood — land, temple, king, army — and emerged not destroyed but transformed, carrying their civilization in books and memory, ready to rebuild wherever fate allowed. This diaspora model would sustain Jewish existence through medieval persecutions, modern horrors, and into the present day.

Abilities

Jews I

Once per turn you may spend 1 to change the price of any one good by one step

Your religion is Judaism (you cannot change it
or choose new as a main action). Each with your fortifications also has your

You cannot add experience / voting cubes into the bag

Before an opponent deals any amount of damage to your objects, you may spend 5 to ignore 1 damage

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