EMPEROR HADRIAN, THE 10 RABBIS, AND ANTISEMITISM

Matthew 7:6
"Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."

Until this day, we Jews are persecuted for our stubborn adherence to the tenets of the Torah. We always hope that if we could get people to understand It better, they would understand, so we try to teach it to them. Ironically, our Master used the Biblical Instruction of feeding ritually unclean meat to dogs (Exodus 22:31) to give us a warning about the dangers of teaching Torah to the spiritually ignorant. In the following words Yeshua said, "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you (Matthew 7:6).

Nowhere is the Master's warning better illustrated as in the story of the ten second century Jewish sages who, traditionally, were tortured and martyred on the orders of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The account is based on the medieval Midrash Eleh Ezkerah. According to the Midrash, the Roman ruler asked rabbis what the Jewish law prescribes as punishment for one who kidnaps and sells a fellow Jew. The rabbis informed him that the Bible stipulates that the criminal be put to death. The emperor then brought up the case of Joseph, who was kidnapped by his ten brothers and sold as a slave to Egypt. He argued that since the brothers were not sentenced to death, ten sages of Israel must be put to death in their place. The problem is that the Roman Emperor, being ignorant of the Torah could not wisely balance Its commandments. He did not know the verse that says … nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin (Deuteronomy 24:16).

Hadrian's rhetoric for anti-Semitism has remained within Christianity at large. Today many people still blame the tragic History of the Jewish nation on a accusation of deicide by Jews in the first Century C.E. This accusation resonates the same way as one who would decide to hate all white Americans for the decisions of one white American President many years ago. This comfortable rhetoric though, helps the Christian world to shirk responsibility for 2,000 years of cruel persecution of Jews and provides the water needed to wash their bloody hands saying with Pilate, I am innocent of this man's blood (Matthew 27:24).

Yes, the Father visits the sins of the parents on the children, but only to the third or fourth generation (Exodus 34:7), and even then, God said that children shall not be put to death for the sins of the fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16). So even if by the wildest stretch of one's imagination it were true that Jews were nationally responsible for the death of Yeshua, the Inquisitions and the Holocaust are no justifications for it.

What remains now is the fact that people need to realize that the only reason for bigotry of any kind is man's unregenerate heart. May the world think on these things as again it is faced with very serious decisions concerning the fate of Israel and of the Jewish nation in the world.