In 70 C.E., according to the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem, and petitioned the Roman authorities to establish a center of learning in Yavneh, a small rural village by the coast.
At the time, it must have seemed a defeatist move. Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed, though it was under siege, and Ben Zakkai’s appeasement of the Romans must have seemed like an act of cowardice, or perhaps naivete. You can’t trust the Romans.
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