This Shabbat, the one that follows Tisha B’Av, Jews around the world will hear one of the most beloved passages in the Hebrew Bible: “Nachamu, nachamu ami,” “Comfort, comfort My people,” says your God. (Isaiah 40:1).

Shabbat Nachamu does not ask us to forget destruction. It asks us to refuse to let destruction have the final word. That message has carried the Jewish people through every empire and enemy that believed it had written our ending.

Nearly two thousand years ago, Rome erected a monument to exactly that belief. The Arch of Titus, which still stands in the Roman Forum, commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Carved into its marble is one of history’s most recognizable Jewish images: Roman soldiers carrying the seven-branched menorah looted from the Second Temple.

The relief is more than a work of art. It is Roman imperial propaganda. The Roman Empire was not “antisemitic” in the modern sense of the word. Rome crushed many peoples who challenged its authority. But in celebrating the destruction of Jerusalem and displaying the Temple’s menorah as a trophy of conquest, it created one of history’s most enduring images of Jewish defeat and exile. The Arch proclaimed that Jerusalem had fallen, the Temple had been destroyed, and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)