That famous and sacred complex had been reduced to rubble after a siege in a.d. 70, when the Roman general (and future emperor) Titus came to Jerusalem to put down a Jewish rebellion and instigated a clash of arms and arson that entirely razed the city. The loss of the temple was a near-apocalyptic disaster for the Jewish people: its destruction had broken the back of the rebellion, scattered the Jewish people far and wide across the Middle East, and left a permanent black mark on Jewish cultural memory.
