The Ashkenazi Revolution

59emperor. The explanation of this decision was a declaration of war uponRome.It is likely there were two declarations of war: of Rome against Judah, byway of the worship of the emperor, and of the Jews against Rome, by wayof the decision to refrain from offering sacrifices for the peace of theemperor. The Jewish war declaration was clear and unequivocal more sothan that of the Romans. The Roman-Jewish confrontation, which broughton its heels two wars, the war of the destruction of the Temple and the warof Bar-Kokhba, continued some hundred years, extended beyond theboundaries of the Land of Israel and acquired a clear quality of a worldbattle. This was a religious-political confrontation between a nation whosegod is a god of space and a nation whose god is a god of time. The battlewas concluded, as the English historian Kerry notes, in a compromise: TheRomans accepted the existence of the Jewish religion and ceasedinterfering with the Jews in their observance of their faith, however theJews accepted the existence of the Roman Empire and gave up on theexistence of their state, which had presented a political obstacle to theRoman world order.6The decisive side to this development is that exile was not forced upon theJews, but they themselves chose it in order to prevent a worse outcome.The Jewish exile is not a forced decree but the fruit of free choice by theJewish People, and the reason the Diaspora lasted for such a long time ismainly because the Jews chose it for themselves. The option was given tothe Jews, and in a specifically honorable way, to fit into the Roman worldorder, together with 120 million other residents of the empire. Thecondition to all this working together was a foreign religious protocol thatwould imprint its principles upon the Jewish religion. History presentedthe Jews with an ultimatum: to fit into space, that is to say, into the RomanEmpire, and to give up on time, that is to say, on the eternalness of theJewish People, or to maintain Jewish eternalness and to give up on thenormal attachment to space. The Jews decided to give preference to time