Ancient Rome was a cutthroat world where murder was the accepted means of gaining power. Amidst this savagery lived the Jews, who espoused and lived according to principles of peace and justice. While the Roman rulers destroyed each other, a faction of Jews believed that Rome would inevitably fall. Seizing on this perceived opportunity, they arose to fight for the cause of Jewish liberation. The nine-year war that followed led to the destruction of the Temple and the worst carnage the Jews have suffered until the Holocaust.

• Claudius, Nero, and their legacy of murder
• the great yeshiva of Yavneh - an island of mercy and justice
• the Jewish zealots - who they were and what they did
• the traitorous Josephus Flavius
• sinas chinam - the internal conflicts that led to the ultimate tragedy