‘Legend of Destruction’ Carries Modern & Ancient Message
Tale of divisions between Jews that led to the destruction of The Temple 2,000 years ago carries a modern warning.
The recent photographs and video showing a half million Israelis jammed together as far as the eye can see to protest the policies of their present government is nothing new. As the newly released film from Israel, “Legend of Destruction,” dramatically underscores, Jews were doing much of the same thing 2,000 years ago, when The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
Then, an incipient revolution against Roman imperialism, coupled with the rivalries ignited by religious extremism, set off a debilitating civil war that ended in monumental upheaval for the Jewish people.
It has taken three years for this remarkable film to reach America in an English language version after winning a warm critical welcome in 2021, and four Ophirs, the Israeli Academy Awards. The world premiere of this newly created version came early in June on the opening night of the 12th annual Israel Film Center Festival at the Meyerson JCC on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The Atlanta premiere was somewhat more low key. It was shown, last month, just before Maariv, or the evening service on Tisha B’Av, at Congregation Beth Tefillah in Sandy Springs. No red carpet, no paparazzi, no scantily clad starlets, just a sparse crowd sitting on hard back chairs who gathered on this saddest of Jewish observances that marks the Temple’s demise.
Some, like Ari Sollish, the Chabad rabbi who briefly introduced the film, came with the hope that this film might shed some important light on an event that arguably ranks right up there with the Exodus in its influence on our lives as modern Jews.
“We, as Jews, can withstand threats from the outside,” Rabbi Sollish said. “So long as we are cohesive on the inside, as long as we stand together within, we can withstand challenges from without. But when we are fractured within, then it takes only a little bit of pressure from the outside to allow the whole structure to crumble. This is a truth of history.”
According to tradition, The Temple was destroyed by sinat chinam, or in English, “mindless hate.” It was a condition not unlike what exists today, where divisions between Jews are often so deep and intractable that we actively work to undermine those with whom we disagree. In a thoughtful interview with Mizrachi, the online journal of the religious Zionist movement, the director of film, Gidi Dar, who is a secular Jew, is quick to point out the modern-day parallels.
“In the movie,” Dar says, “we also try to depict how all the different groups have some truth to them, but they were right all the way until the destruction. For society to function, groups have to be able to compromise to work together.
His creative partner in the project, Shuli Rand, who is observant, co-wrote the script and says that the tragedy they portrayed is rooted in how Jews 2,000 years ago were riven with hatred, made even more bitter by economic and religious differences.
“The message is how we destroyed ourselves from within,” Rand emphasizes. “We include that in the movie, that at one point the Romans delayed their attack, because the Jews were weakening themselves from within!”
Despite its rather prosaic title, “Legend of Destruction,” or in Hebrew, Agudat Churban, tells its story of ancient Israel coming apart in an epic cataclysm. It’s a spectacular downfall created through an imaginative mix of art and sound. The story is told through 1,500 monumental works of art, created by the same team that brought to life the critically acclaimed 2008 Israeli animated documentary, “Waltz With Bashir,” about the war in Lebanon.
During the eight years the film was being assembled, they Photoshopped and edited together their compelling narrative largely from the classic first century works of Flavius Josephus. He was a Jewish general of the period who befriended the Roman occupiers and convinced them to underwrite a history of what was called The Jewish War. It survives to this day as a Roman inspired view of history and is generally accepted as an accurate, if somewhat biased, view of the period.
For the director, Dar, though, the theme of his film is not bound by geography or time. It is not just Jews who need to think seriously of where the divisions in their society are taking them
“The story of different groups arguing, of not being able to work together, and tearing society apart from within, definitely applies to many Western countries. How did this happen? How did some of the most successful societies become so divided, their politics so extreme, and the center so weak? The story of the Churban of the Destruction is a cautionary tale not only to Israel, but to the West as a whole.”
comments