With his army, bar-Kokhba started his attack, capturing control of the country piecemeal: he would take over fortress after fortress, city after city. The Jews were once again independent! In Jerusalem an altar to God was erected on the place where the magnificent Bet Mikdash had once stood. Also the building of a wall around Jerusalem had begun. Despite this new joy for the Jews, bar-Kokhba knew that the Romans were planning a counter attack so he kept training his army. Of course, bar-Kokhba was right. Hadrian brought a world renowned general all the way from Britain to lead his army against the Jews. Thus Julius Severus was removed from the task of keeping the Picts and the Scots out of England and transferred to the task of subjugating the Jewish revolt in the Middle East.
13:
The Romans launched their counter-attack. They followed the same tactics they had used to quell the previous rebellion sixty years previously: they didn’t attack in one big battle, but reconquered the country one town at a time. They defeated little bands of rebels independently defending their cities. The Romans took back Galilee and Judah, and eventually the Roman army forced bar-Kokhba into a small fortified city called Betar. On the Ninth of Av (4th August) 135 CE Betar fell to the Romans. The Talmuds assert that about a half a million Jews were found dead in and around Betar; doubtless this is an exaggeration. Thousands of Jewish men were sold as slaves or fled to other countries. Bar-Kokhba himself was found dead on the front.
14:
Hadrian realized that the Jews would never see Rome as a mother country, but would always see the Romans as tyrants. He completed the construction of the city called Aelia Capitolina, where Jerusalem had once stood. The Jews were forbidden to go near the city. Furthermore, Hadrian issued further prohibitions against Judaism: these prohibitions retained the ban against circumcision, and added the prohibition against keeping Shabbat and maintaining the Jewish Calendar. He also prohibited studying and teaching Torah. In short, Hadrian prohibited Judaism.
15:
It was this last prohibition that brought about the death of Rabbi Akiva. The aged sage - he must have been in his 90's at this time! - could not imagine a Jewish world in which there was no circumcision, no Shabbat and no Torah. So even though the penalty for infringement was death he refused to stop teaching Torah publicly. Well known is the conversation reported in the Gemara [Berakhot 61b] with a prominent Romanophile:
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