After King Solomon’s death, the kingdom was divided into two: To the south, the kingdom of Judah continued under the dynasty of the House of David and to the north the kingdom of Israel which had several dynasties until the Assyrians destroyed it in 722 BCE. The kingdom of Judah lasted 136 more years until the Babylonians conquered it in 586 BCE, forcing most of its inhabitants to go into exile in Babylon itself.

By then, in Eretz Israel, the entire sacrificial ritual had already been centralized in the Temple of Jerusalem. The small altars were destroyed and the Jews became accustomed to the fact that they could only worship God in the Temple. This condition forced the Jews in Babylon to find new ways to serve God, as they could not make sacrifices in exile, although they did not lose hope of returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple.

The leaders of the Jewish people – the priests, royalty and nobility, wise men and elders – had been exiled to Babylon. It was their task to preserve identity and religion with new rituals and rules of observance. Reading the Torah was one of those new ways.

The prophet Jeremiah said that the exile would only last 70 years. Around 539 BCE, Cyrus the Persian emperor conquered Babylon and encouraged the Jews to return to Judah and reestablish the worship of God. Still, many stayed in Babylon where they felt at home. Some returned to Judah, including the priests who hoped to rebuild the Temple and with it their livelihood. In 515 BCE the Temple was rebuilt in a modest manner, though over the years it was improved til it surpassed the first in beauty.

Ezra and Nehemiah were the two great leaders who led the rebuilding of Judah. ​​Nehemiah was an officer in the Persian government, who asked permission to return to Judah and rebuild the country. His request was granted and he rebuilt the walls, established an honest government and defeated his enemies, especially the Samaritans. Ezra was a priest, a religious leader. He returned from Babylon with the mandate of reestablishing religious worship. He imposed very strict rules for observing the Sabbath, just as the Jews already did in Babylon, where observing the Sabbath was central to the religious ritual. He was the one who introduced the reading of the Torah on the holidays. On his first Rosh Hashanah he read from the Torah, as it is written in chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah: “Ezra blessed God and everyone answered amen, and he read from God in the Torah scroll, translating it and giving it meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.”

Reading the Torah in public is the last event narrated in the Bible. The Jews of biblical times did not have a Bible, as they themselves were the actors in the biblical narratives. Their stories would eventually become the Bible. When the Bible was canonized, the Jews ceased to live in biblical times. The Bible went from being an era to a book.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jews in the Time of Jesus by Rabbi Stephen M. Wylen.