#the great revolt

[thatsbelievable]

[todaysjewishholiday]

7 Menachem Av 5784 (10-11 August 2024)

Shabbat Chazon concluded with the havdalah ceremony and we’re now in the final countdown to Tisha B’Av. If you are fasting this week, remember to hydrate heavily across the next 48 hours. Get what rest you can, and stay out of the sun. If fasting would be dangerous to your health, please remember that Judaism is a religion of life, and that we are commanded to choose life and not to afflict ourselves in harmful ways. There are other ritual ways to remember the sadness brought about by the two burnings of the Beit haMikdash and the resulting periods of communal exile and spiritual turmoil that do not involve self-harm. Fasting is one specific form of mourning for those for whom it is medically safe.

The years of rebellion against the Roman Empire were long difficult years. Factional conflict within the Jewish community and rebel leadership did not make it easier. And as is often the case the most extreme factions were often just as willing to target their own people as they were to attack the enemy they claimed to be fighting.

The Qanai’im (Zealots) and Sicarii (Dagger Bearers) had been advocating the overthrow of Roman occupation long after Nero’s excesses persuaded the rest of Judaean society to join the cause. Deeply aware that their views remained unpopular with the majority of Jews, they sought to force the majority into alignment with them through campaigns of terror. The Sicarii were so known because of their campaign of assassination against Jewish collaborators with the Roman authorities. The Qanai’im had taken their own name from the biblical word for zeal (as in the pasuk “the zeal of your dwelling has consumed me”) but were called Biryonim (Hooligans) by the authors of the Talmud, who blamed them for the revolt’s failure and the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash.

According to tradition, the wealthiest men of Jerusalem had pledged stockpiles of food and fuel to help the residents of the city survive an extended Roman siege. The Qanai’im encouraged a more aggressive campaign of attack against the Roman army, but were rebuffed by the other factions, who were convinced that Jerusalem’s strong defensive position was one of the rebellion’s greatest assets, and that a direct onslaught against the larger and better armed Roman forces was doomed to failure. The story goes that on the 7th of Av 3829, the Zealots set fire to the stockpiles of food and fuel that prepared the city for a siege, convinced that if the residents of Jerusalem had no choice but to fight than the revolt would succeed. When the majority still balked at a direct attack on the Romans the Qanai’im then seized control of the city and took retribution against those who disagreed with them, plunging wartime Jerusalem into civil war. Within a year, the city was in ruins and the Beit HaMikdash destroyed. The zealots has barricaded themselves within the walls of the temple in the final days of the siege, and while the Romans may have destroyed it under any circumstances in their revenge upon the city, the Talmudic sages were certain that the presence of rebels in the sanctuary using it as a fortress was a Jewish desecration which preceded and helped bring about the foreign desecration of the holy place.

[bunabi]

I wanna believe things will get better in our lifetime but this shit is a mess with literally no end in sight 🧍🏾‍♀️

[naffeclipse]

Thank you so much for all the kind birthday wishes! I'll try and respond to them soon! You guys are so sweet and I love all of you <3

[mostlyghostlyy]

I can't stop thinking about Dale Kobble desperately dry humping my leg while I stare down at him with a repulsed sneer on my face.

[swordmaid]

think cannibalism should be a thing in menzoberranzan actually, or maybe it is and I haven’t known about it, but it should be a thing amongst the nobles where they eat rival lolth priestesses since they’re lolth’s fave sacrifices anyway. like if we’re all constantly vying for lolth’s approval, and you have these people who actually has her blessing (which is rare) why not….eat them….😳. like eating the priestess of a rival house would be a ritual after you’ve succeeded in bringing their house down as a way to consume lolth’s blessing, and its def an intimidation tactic and def one of the plenty weird shit nobles have done for the sake of playing their power games. maybe they eat males who are in power too if they’ve overstepped their position to remind them of their place in the hierarchy, or maybe matriarchs/nobles eat their favourite bed mate/partner so no one else can have them, kind of like actual spiders. anyway. if menzoberranzan is this immoral lethal and ruthless place cannibalism should def be a thing lol

[cid5]

World War I. Arab Revolt of 1916-1918. Dhari ibn Tawala of the Aslam Shammar and his Tribesmen on Horseback.

[havaniero]

"Бег созвездий. Мороз. Светящимся мелом Обведенные выси. Мерзлой грязи кайма. Пар над тощей верблюдицей, галоп оголтелый, Иа-Оренс. Аравия. Полночь. Зима.

Узкий шорох полыни. Холмов вереницы. Сон в седле. Почернелых сугробов разбег. И с разлета верблюдица мордой ложится, Зарывая наездника по уши в снег.

Он встает и верблюдицу тянет. Над ними Одиночество ночи. Стальная луна. Шесть мешков до отказа полны золотыми В кровь изранены ноги. Пустыня. Война.

Одиночество! Что перед ним непогоды? В неизвестной стране, в неизвестном году Как во сне видит крепость, бойницы и своды, Босиком он идет по звенящему льду."

Н.Тихонов "Лоуренс Аравийский" 1935-1936

[clandestinegardenias]

Look, I understand the desire for a revolution. I do. And it’s possible I might be convinced that we need one, at some point. I am open to the idea that I might be wrong!

But…literal Marxist theory posits that the way you get to a communist society is by working your way through a democracy. That’s the first STEP. Then you move to democratic socialism, then socialism, then communism. Anything that moves us away from a democracy (as I’m concerned another Trump presidency would, that man wants to be a dictator so bad) is a step AWAY from a leftist agenda. Because sure, maybe you get your ‘glorious revolution’ if Trump is president because he literally makes living conditions so unbearable that it triggers widespread revolt but from a critical Marxist standpoint you’d be revolting to get back to a democracy so you can start at that step all over again! This is a big reason theorists posit socialism/communism in the Soviet Union fell apart; too big a change too quickly and skipping steps in between.

We also have to consider that getting to the point of full blown revolution would mean catastrophic levels of suffering for people with lower socioeconomic power—POC, the queer community, folks in poverty, people with disabilities, etc.

AND any US dictatorship or similar government has an entire industrial military complex to back it up. A successful revolution would necessitate either getting that military complex on board, in which case you often end up with a military dictatorship (you can imagine how well THAT goes) or beating it which…I’m sorry, even the entire civilian population of the US cannot do. The military is light years more advanced than it was in Marx’s time, rebellion is so so so so much more complicated. It also sets a precedent for violent exchanges of power that tend to set countries up for a decades/centuries long tailspin of military coups in which the people with the most gun power (again…usually not vulnerable groups) win control.

I’m not trying to be a fatalist, here. I actually think fatalism is a tool of the oppressor and we have to fight against it tooth and nail. I’m just trying to logic out what will happen if Kamala/Walz lose and Trump/Vance win. What does that really look like? What is the next step, the next outcome that will lead us to a better place? And I just cannot, for those reasons above, see a Trump presidency leading us anywhere good. That IS what we will get if people hold out on voting for Harris as a form of protest. I’m all for protest!!!!! But it needs to be in a different avenue, because you have to consider the real life repercussions not voting will have.

I mean, what are the options? What happens if people protest by not voting? (...this assumes you don't start from the position that Harris and Trump will be literally NO different in office, which, well, that's another post)

1. Harris wins regardless, but a signal is sent that people to the left aren’t appeased and democrats need to do more. How effective this would be in moving actual policy is debateable, and it also puts the moral onus/responsibility conveniently on others just so you can feel like your hands are clean while simultaneously risking a worse outcome. Not cool.

2. Trump wins. Far more likely because, as we saw in 2020, the country was nearly evenly split on Trump vs. Biden. Current polling shows more or less the same with Trump vs. Harris. If the left stays home, the likelihood Trump wins skyrockets. So, what happens next?

2.A. Trump wins, but the world doesn’t end. He doesn’t do anything too terribly awful. The left has ideally signaled they will only vote for a Dem if they are liberal enough. I seriously doubt Trump won’t do anything too terribly awful though—look at what his first presidency did!!! Look at Project 2025!!!!! So. Other option.

2.B. Trump wins and the world is on fire. He strips away womens’ rights, queer rights, he tanks the working class and worker protections, starts a war, starts a dictatorship, whatever. He already started a lot of this during his first presidency. In this case, either…

2.B.1. This is still not enough to trigger a revolution. Vulnerable people are hurt and die at a far greater pace than under a Democratic presidency. We go on as before, fighting to regain key protections. Perhaps the Dems put forward a more liberal candidate to try and beat him next time, if democracy still exists, but likely? We end up with a conservative centrist anyway.

2.B.2. Trump does trigger a revolution. All I can see is how many vulnerable people would suffer and die. The military HAS to be involved and either takes control of government (terrible start to socialism!!!!!) or kills revolutionaries en masse and the rebellion fails. If civilians somehow defeated the US military, which is an astronomically low possibility, then we set up a more liberal democracy...how, exactly? With all the conservatives and moderates still in our country? Honestly, HOW. Kill them? Try and make them ‘see the light’? That happens via education, not a civil war. We could try and go straight to communism but theory and history show us that doesn’t work—you have to work your way towards it through democracy.

It is SO much more efficient and would put so many fewer vulnerable people in grave danger to start by keeping the democracy we already have by voting in Harris and THEN working on our protests to shift the needle towards democratic socialism. We’ve seen that these protests CAN WORK!!!!! They got us Biden dropping out!!!!! Harris picked a VP far more appealing to a liberal mindset than many of her other top options! WE ARE ALREADY SHIFTING THE NEEDLE. Keep it shifting, don’t give in to fatalism, and remember that you have to go through the steps to have an actual, stable, reliable socialist or communist republic. Vote.

[flopsy-art]

[bedlamsbard]

the 2010 film Centurion is deeply frustrating to me because it desperately wants to be about the Varian Disaster, every single beat in this movie would fit near-perfectly for the Varian Disaster, you could relocate this film temporally and geographically to Germania and not change literally anything except some of the names, and yet because Hollywood considers Britannia way sexier and more exotic than Germania it is set in Britain. this movie should be about the Varian Disaster! in every way but geographically including the drawback of the frontiers this movie is about the Varian Disaster! and yet. it is not about the Varian Disaster.

(the movie itself is fine. like, it's Agricola slander and Tacitus is rolling over in his grave, but my tolerance for historical inaccuracy is pretty high these days. don't go out of your way to watch it, but like, it's fine. if I had a nickel for every time Olga Kurylenko has played a Roman-hating British woman warrior I'd have two nickels, which is not a lot but it's weird it's happened twice etc.)

[todaysjewishholiday]

17 Tammuz 5784 (22-23 July 2024)

The Roman siege of Jerusalem in 3830 brought a brutal end to four years of rebellion against the Roman occupation of Judaea and Galilee. Eretz Yisroel had been under some form of foreign occupation for almost the entire period since the end of the Babylonian captivity, from the Persians to the Seleucid Greeks to the Romans, and had the history of the successful Maccabee Rebellion to look back on, which had ended with the closest thing to Jewish political autonomy during the whole second temple period.

The rebellion began in 3826, one of several rebellions against the excesses of Nero’s reign, including others led by Roman provincial governors. It combined Jewish religious objections to being governed by a polytheistic empire with widespread rage at the brutality of Roman military occupation and excessive taxation. The rebellion brought together nearly all classes of Judaean society and all the major socioreligious factions of Jewish life, with even the staunchly apolitical Pharisees throwing their support behind the rebellion. However as the conflict raged on the ideological and class differences of the Jewish combatants led to brutal internal strife which weakened the effort to cast off Roman tyranny.

The chaos throughout the Roman Empire during this period led to hope of Roman withdrawal and retrenchment to smaller imperial borders, especially when Vespasian, who had been leading the Roman assault on the rebels, took a large portion of his forces back to Rome to seize imperial power at the end of the bloody year of the four emperors in 3829. But the Romans were determined not to lose any of their subjugated territories, and Vespasian soon sent reinforcements back to his sons Titus and Domitian. The tide then turned against the rebels.

The seige of Jerusalem began just before Pesach in 3830, when the city’s population was swelled by Jewish pilgrims from across the Roman and Parthian empires. These visitors were trapped within the city’s walls with its permanent inhabitants, severely straining the city’s stockpiles of food and water. Disease and hunger were as deadly in the siege as the foreign army, and Jerusalem’s defenders soon turned on each other as tensions and rivalries reached the breaking point and every faction sought to blame the others for the horrible situation.

It was on the seventeenth of Tammuz that the Roman armies broke through the third and final defensive wall around the city. By the end of the month Jerusalem had been almost entirely leveled in a series of fires that broke out during the Roman massacre of much of the surviving population. Nearly a hundred thousand Jewish survivors were forced into slavery and taken elsewhere in the empire. Scholars estimate that less than ten percent of Jerusalem’s pre-war population remained in the area by the end of the year. The revolt’s suppression had brought untold horrors upon Judaism’s holiest city.

The seventeenth of Tammuz soon replaced the ninth of Tammuz, which was the anniversary of the Babylonian army’s breach of Jerusalem’s walls at the end of the thirty month siege of the city, as a sunrise to sunset fast day. Because the Roman destruction of the Beit haMikdash occurred on the same Hebrew date as the Babylonian destruction of the temple built by Solomon, there was no need to change the date of that observance.

The period from the seventeenth of Tammuz to the ninth of Av is known as the Three Weeks, and is observed in many Jewish communities as a mourning period for the physical and spiritual exile created by the destruction of both temples. Communities that consider post-exilic rabbinical Judaism to be a superior development to the sacrificial order and which celebrate the cultural vibrancy of diaspora Judaism over the longing for return are correspondingly less likely to emphasize the Three Weeks.

[vessels-for-good-intent]

stop making nick carraway some innocent little twink he’s clearly NOT

[techramonic]

marxism is a neat theory and all since even after more than 167 years, it is still influential because the social realities that were portrayed are still prevalent, making it a critical voice against forms of oppression relating to economics and power and a philosophy that influenced many—but when the practical implementation of it in politics emerges into communism, yea. that's where everything gets complicated.

how can you ensure equality if you lead under an authoritarian rule and trample on human rights? i thought you were fighting to achieve the opposite.

how can your bridge the divide by making everyone more divided? trying to convince the people to snap out of their false conciousness of being controlled, then you follow the footsteps of becoming the controller? it's like saying that the ruling class oppresses laborers, and those laborers will eventually and inevitably turn themselves into the same opressors they despise. that's insane

plus, marx’s idea of historical materialism is pretty limiting. some critics argue that societal development takes place not only through material changes but also through ideas, culture, and other aspects of society. the main proponent of change is not strictly confined to economic progress but through the entirety of human experience

[blueiscoool]

Very Rare Half-Shekel Coin From Year Three of the Great Revolt Discovered

Recent excavations by archaeologists from the Hebrew University in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mount uncovered the remains of a monumental public building from the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 CE.

Numerous Jewish coins, the majority of which were bronze, from the Great Revolt (66-70 CE) were discovered in the destruction layer. This collection also contained a particularly uncommon and rare discovery: a silver coin with a half-shekel denomination that dates to around 69/70 CE.

The Great Revolt was the first of several uprisings against the Roman Empire by the Jewish population of Judea.

The revolt was in response to the Romans’ increasing religious tensions and high taxation, which resulted in the looting of the Second Temple and the arrest of senior Jewish political and religious figures. A large-scale rebellion overran the Roman garrison in Judea, forcing the pro-Roman King Herod Agrippa II to abandon Jerusalem.

A coin discovered in the ruins of a Second Temple-era building was most likely used to pay an annual tax for worship at the site; most coins of this type are bronze.

The dig was carried out by a team from the Hebrew University, led by Prof. Uzi Leibner of the Institute of Archaeology, in partnership with the Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, Oklahoma, and with the support of the East Jerusalem Development Company, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The rare coin was cleaned at the conservation laboratory of the Institute of Archaeology and identified by Dr. Yoav Farhi, the team’s numismatic expert and curator of the Kadman Numismatic Pavilion at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

“This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations,” said the researchers.

During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt. Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, “Israel Shekel,” “Half-Shekel,” or “Quarter-Shekel.” The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in ancient Hebrew script, “Holy Jerusalem.”

Throughout the Roman era the authority to produce silver coins was reserved solely for the emperor. During the Revolt, the minting of coins, especially those made of silver, was a political statement and an expression of national liberation from Roman rule by the Jewish rebels. Indeed, throughout the Roman period leading up to the Great Revolt, no silver coins were minted by Jews, not even during the rule of King Herod the Great.

According to the researchers, half-shekel coins (which had an average weight of 7 grams) were also used to pay the “half-shekel” tax to the Temple, contributed annually by every Jewish adult male to help cover the costs of worship.

Dr. Farhi explained, “Until the revolt, it was customary to pay the half-shekel tax using good-quality silver coins minted in Tyre in Lebanon, known as ‘Tyrean shekels’ or ‘Tyrean half-shekels.’ These coins held the image of Herakles-Melqart, the principal deity of Tyre, and on the reverse they featured an eagle surrounded by a Greek inscription, ‘Tyre the holy and city of refuge.’ Thus, the silver coins produced by the rebels were intended to also serve as a replacement for the Tyrean coins, by using more appropriate inscriptions and replacing images (forbidden by the Second Commandment) with symbols. The silver coins from the Great Revolt were the first and the last in ancient times to bear the title ‘shekel.’ The next time this name was used was in 1980, on Israeli Shekel coins produced by the Bank of Israel.”

The precious silver coins are thought to have been minted inside the Temple complex, according to a Monday statement from the Armstrong Institute.

[lornacrane]

hey fuck the 4th of july I’m now only celebrating the 3rd of july which is emancipation day in the now-US Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, & St. Croix) celebrating when in 1848 my ancestors started burning the plantations and shops and everything bc the Danish monarchy told them they were going to be freed gradually over a couple of years and the formerly-enslaved people said absolutely not we’re gonna be free NOW