Nonetheless, Talmudic study can lead any person, Jewish or not Jewish, into a rich philosophical tradition, where law and daily living are continually negotiated, and where one learns how questions are more important than answers. The focus on Talmudic study, learning, and wisdom is how the Jewish religion transformed from a land-based religion to a universalist humanist religion after the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple and cast out many Hebrews after their unsuccessful Jewish revolt against the Romans in what the Romans had named Palestine. The rabbis who developed this change in the religion's structure also intuitively understood Jesus' philosophically humbler message in changing many "don't's" of refraining from bad conduct to the "do's" of kinder conduct (EXAMPLE: Hillel said, "Don't do anything to another that is hateful if done to yourself." Jesus said, more directly and positively, "Do unto others as you would want done unto you.") In this historicist understanding of the Jewish religion, the idea of returning to Jerusalem became more of a metaphor representing an ending to human suffering rather than an exhortation to return to political power in what was then already seen as Palestine.
I have long believed that if the rabbis intended a physical return to Jerusalem and restoring political power through rebuilding the Temple, the Jews who had been scattered would have begun their return in the 430s CE/AD after the Roman empire fell apart. However, the expelled Jews did not return and those Jews who remained in Palestine did not try to rebuild the political power Jews once had there and certainly did not rebuild the Temple. The reason this did not happen is what the rabbis began to say after the dispersal: The only way for "the" Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple is if the Messiah leads the Jews there. This is a very different apocalyptic vision built not built on violence and chaos, and may show Christians why there has long been a strong thread in Christian thought that rejects the validity of the Book of Revelations.
This is why I have come to agree with the Jewish Reform movement's early criticism of political Zionism as a heresy against the rabbinic tradition, and why political Zionism should be recognized from the start (meaning the late 1890s) as a colonial, and ultimately racist, endeavor that reifies other late 19th and early 20th century European nationalisms.
As the UCLA Jewish Studies professor, David Meyers, has said, and I have long believed, the sooner the Israeli and US flags come down from the bimahs, the faster the practice of Judaism can return to its rabbinic traditions post-Roman dispersal.
