A Servant Delivers the Wrong Invitation, and Jerusalem Begins to Fall

The Talmud tells this story with almost no rhetorical dressing, and the plainness is the point. A wealthy man in Jerusalem had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He was throwing a banquet and told his servant to bring Kamtza. The servant brought Bar Kamtza.

The host walked into his own dining room, saw his enemy at the table, and demanded he leave. 'I'm already here,' Bar Kamtza said. 'Let me stay. I'll pay for what I eat.' The host refused. 'I'll pay for half the party.' Refused. 'I'll pay for the whole party.' Refused. The host pulled him to the door and threw him into the street.

The great sages of Jerusalem were seated at that table. The Talmud lets fall one terrible line about them: they watched the whole thing, and said nothing.

Bar Kamtza went into the street burning. If the rabbis had watched him be humiliated and stayed silent, he reasoned, they were complicit. He went to the Roman authorities and reported that the Jews were on the verge of rebellion.

To prove it, he suggested Caesar send an animal to be offered on the Jewish altar. Bar Kamtza took the animal, and along the way he made a tiny nick in its lip — some versions say in its eye — the kind of blemish that made an animal unfit for a Jewish offering but perfectly acceptable for a Roman one. He handed it to the priests knowing exactly what would happen. The priests were trapped. Offer it, and violate the Torah. Refuse it, and insult the emperor. Some Sages argued for offering it anyway; the nation was at stake. Rabbi Zekharyah ben Avkulas objected: people would then think blemished animals were permitted. Some proposed killing Bar Kamtza before he could return to Rome. Rabbi Zekharyah objected again: people would think you could be killed for blemishing an animal.

The offering was refused. Bar Kamtza returned to Rome and told the emperor his gift had been rejected. The emperor sent an army.

Rabbi Yochanan, looking back at the whole chain, gave the diagnosis in a single sentence: 'The humility of Rabbi Zekharyah ben Avkulas destroyed our House, burned our Sanctuary, and sent us into exile.' Elsewhere the Talmud puts it differently. The First Temple, it says, fell for idolatry, murder, and forbidden relations. The Second Temple, in a generation full of Torah study and mitzvot, fell for one thing only: sinat chinam — baseless hatred between one Jew and another. The kind of hatred that lets a servant bring the wrong man to the door, and lets a whole room of rabbis watch him be thrown out and keep silent.

This is the story that runs beneath every dispatch to come. Rome would do the physical work. But the reason there was anything for Rome to walk into was set in place the night the host said no for the fourth time.