The assumption in the Roman world was that if you destroyed the metropolis of a people,

you were essentially destroying the people. Once they've destroyed Jerusalem, that will wipe out the Judeans.

They know that they will dissolve, that they will become a new people.

So the assumption is that they will become kind of Hellenized, maybe they'll become kind of Romanized.

But it doesn't because the Judeans have something that no other people have,

which is a collection of texts and scriptures that enable them to retain their cultural and religious identity,

even though their great cult center and their metropolis has been wiped out. It's Unholy, I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.

And I'm Unite-Levy in Tel Aviv.

And it is just hours away as we speak.

The Festival of Pesach of Passover and the voice you just heard there.

Tom Holland, globally renowned historian co-host of The Rest is History.

He joins us as our special guest to reflect on the ancient history of our people.

There's even a whole conversation on E about what we should be called as a people.

It's not been the same name. We're not consistent.

But really diving deep into the ancient history, we've got, it's all there, the first temple, the second temple, the Judeans, the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians. The Persians. You were big on the Persians. In that conversation, I think it will be, you know, a lot of people use the festival, the hug, whatever hug it is, actually, is a time for just unplugging, reading.

A lot of people do that.

Famously, Ben-Gurian would spend religious days, reading Aristotle.

I'm not recommending that necessarily.

But the idea of looking back at the history and the sort of deep history of our people,

stepping away from the kind of current noise of news,

I think is something deep in our tradition.

And so we're doing our own version of that in a way

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