Bar Kochba

For other uses of the term, see Bar Kokhba.

Simon bar Kokhba (Hebrew: שמעון בר כוכבא, also transliterated as Bar Kokhva or Bar Kochba) was the Jewish leader who led what is known as Bar Kokhba's revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 C.E., establishing an independent Jewish state of Israel which he ruled for three years as Nasi ("prince," or "president"). His state was conquered by the Romans in 135 C.E. following a two-year war.

Originally named Simon ben Kosba (Hebrew: שמעון בן כוסבא or ben Kosiba, בן כוזיבא), he was given the surname Bar Kokhba (Aramaic for "Son of a Star," referring to Numbers 24:17, "A star has shot off Jacob") by his contemporary, the Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva.

After the failure of the revolt, many, including rabbinical writers, referred to Simon bar Kokhba as "Simon bar Kozeba" ("Son of the lie").

Second Jewish revolt

Despite the devastation wrought by the Romans during the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 C.E.), which left the population and countryside in ruins, another Jewish rebellion took place 60 years later that re-established an independent state lasting three years. The state minted its own coins and was called "Israel." Bar Kokhba ruled with the title of "Nasi." The Romans fared very poorly during the initial revolt facing a completely unified Jewish force (unlike during the First Jewish-Roman War, where Flavius Josephus records three separate Jewish armies fighting each other for control of the Temple Mount during the three weeks time after the Romans had breached Jerusalem's walls and were fighting their way to the center). A complete Roman legion with auxiliaries was annihilated. The new state knew only one year of peace. The Romans committed no less than twelve legions, amounting to one third to one half of the entire Roman army, to reconquer this now independent state. Being outnumbered and taking heavy casualties, the Romans refused to engage in an open battle and instead adopted a scorched earth policy which decimated the Judean populace, slowly grinding away at the will of the Judeans to sustain the war. Bar Kokhba took up refuge in the fortress of Betar. The Romans eventually captured it and killed all the defenders. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. Jerusalem also was razed, a short-lived attempt was made to prevent Jews from living in the area, and a new Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, was built in its place. Yet so costly was the Roman victory that the Emperor Hadrian, when reporting to the Roman Senate, did not see fit to begin with the customary greeting "I and my army are well," and is the only Roman general known to have refused to celebrate his victory with a triumnphal entrance into his capital.

In the aftermath of the war, Hadrian consolidated the older political units of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria into the new province of Syria Palaestina (Palestine), a name that has since passed into most European languages as well as into Arabic.^{[citation needed]} The new provincial designation, derived from the ancient sea-faring Philistine people who anciently occupied the coastal plain, had long been current as a geographical term, but had possessed little if any political connotation.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in his commentary on Deuteronomy 8:10 states that the mandatory fourth blessing of the Birkat HaMazon was instituted after Bar Kokhba's revolt to remind the Jews to not try to take possession of the land of Israel without God's involvement — presumably the Messiah. This background gives understanding to Rabbi Hirsch's and other Orthodox leaders' pre-WWII anti-Zionist stance (and that of some Orthodox groups today).

Over the past few decades, much new information about the revolt has come to light, thanks mainly to the discovery of several collections of letters, some possibly by Bar Kokhba himself, in the caves overlooking the Dead Sea. These letters can now be seen at the Israel Museum.

Bar Kokhba in the arts

Bar Kokhba was the subject of an operetta, Bar Kokhba, written by Abraham Goldfaden some time between 1883 and 1885. It was written in the wake of the pogroms following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia as the tide turned against Jewish emancipation. Another operetta on the subject of Bar Kokhba was written by the Russian-Jewish emigre composer Yaacov Bilansky Levanon in Palestine in the 1920s.

John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensemble recorded an album called Bar Kokhba, showing a photograph of the Letter of Bar Kokhba to Yeshua, son of Galgola on the cover.

The Bar Kokhba game

According to a legend, during his reign, Bar Kokhba was once presented a mutilated man, who had his tongue ripped out and hands cut off. As he was unable to talk or write, he wasn't able to tell who his attackers were, so Bar Kokhba decided to ask simple questions to which the dying man was able to nod or shake his head with his last movements, thus they were able to apprehend the murderers.

In Hungary, this legend spawned the "Bar Kokhba game," in which one of the two players comes up with a word or object, and the other one has to find out by asking questions only to be answered with "yes" or "no." The verb "kibarkochbázni" ("to Bar Kochba out") became a common language verb meaning "retrieving information in an extremely tedious way".

In English speaking countries, this is known as Twenty Questions.

Bibliography

• W. Eck, 'The Bar Kokhba Revolt: the Roman point of view' in the Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999) 76ff.

• David Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick and Daniel Schwartz: Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to the Bar Kohkba Revolt In Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Boston: Brill: 2001: ISBN 90-04-12007-6

• Richard Marks: The Image of Bar Kokhba in Traditional Jewish Literature: False Messiah and National Hero: University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press: 1994: ISBN 0-271-00939-X

• Leibel Reznick: The Mystery of Bar Kokhba: Northvale: J.Aronson: 1996: ISBN 1-56821-502-9

• Peter Schafer: The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: Tubingen: Mohr: 2003: ISBN 3-16-148076-7

• David Ussishkin: "Archaeological Soundings at Betar, Bar-Kochba's Last Stronghold," in: Tel Aviv. Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University 20 (1993) 66ff.

• Yigael Yadin: Bar Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome: London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 1971: ISBN 0-297-00345-3

External links

• The Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132-135 C.E.) by Shira Schoenberg (Jewish Virtual Library)
• Bar Kochba with links to all sources (livius.org)

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