For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the fall of Betar (Beitar), see here, here, here, and here, and follow the links.JEWISH MOMENTS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL 135 CE
Beitar in Memory: Rabbinic Lament and the Legacy of the Fall
The fall of Beitar, the Mishnah states occurred on the 9th of Av, passed from history into memory. Rabbinic literature, above all Lamentations Rabbah and the Jerusalem Talmud, recast the catastrophe in theological language: rivers of blood, the unburied dead, the leader slain by a serpent. In doing so, the rabbis transformed defeat into lament, folded Beitar into the calendar of mourning, and read the disaster as both the wages of sin and the memory of a lost sovereignty.
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