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they were permitted to go a
further two thousand cubits
from those provisions. This
way, too, they were adhering
to the Law—whichever suited
them. That trick could not be
employed in Rome, because
any food left out would have
been instantly stolen. The
outside world corrupts the
inner; intensive Jewish society
was wrecked by pantheistic
(hence godless) Roman
society, and lamentations
could be wallowed in on
that account. It was typical
Latin stupidity that their first
emperor was still under the
misapprehension that Jews
eat nothing on the Sabbath,
as if it were a day of fasting!
Even after decades this was
still raising eyebrows among
Rome’s Jews, who prayed on
the Sabbath in their houses
of prayer and listened to
interpretations of the Torah
and the scriptures of the
prophets, but the essence was
nevertheless the communal
meal, the costs of which were
covered by the communal
tax. Festal food could not
be skimpy; there had to be
meat and wine on the menu,
likewise vegetables and fruit,
to say nothing of unleavened
bread. Poor families would
have very little to eat for the
rest of the week, but on the
Sabbath they could eat their
fill, and for free, through the
goodoffices of the community.
The rationale, therefore,
for this singular form of
architecture may have been
primarily religious—to be
more specific, an injunction
against death by starvation—
but neither was the fortified
structure entirely irrational.
When the Emperor Tiberius
decided, fifteen years before,