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The Jews are in Babylonia. They're going to be there for 70 years, and it looks like the Jewish future is really cloudy. Jews settle in Babylonia. There are attempts to remember Zion and Jerusalem. There are attempts to come back. 52 years after the destruction of the Temple is the story of Purim, almost the genocide of the Jewish people. After that story, there arises a Persian emperor who gives permission for the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem.
Now, the Persians had conquered Babylonia. Cyrus the Great was the one who gave them permission to come back. But when the Jews came back under Zerubbabel and others, first of all, very few came back, few in number. There are perhaps half a million or 800,000 Jews in Babylonia, and a very small percentage returned, less than 10%, because the Jews were comfortable in Babylonia, and when you're comfortable you don't want to move. Secondly, when they came back, the country was not empty. The land of Israel is never empty; there are people who are there. The people who were there, especially in Jerusalem, were the Samaritans, who had come there a few centuries earlier and who were semi-Jews. They had Jewish customs, but they also had idolatry within them. It was a very mixed bag. They said, "We're the real Jews. Who are these guys that just came back?" Therefore they opposed the immigration of Jews to the land of Israel, and they took physical, violent, terroristic means to prevent the Temple from being built.
This changed because of two great people in the history of the Jewish people. The first is Ezra. The rabbis say that if the Torah had not been given by Moses, it would have been given by Ezra, so Ezra is like number two on the list of the greatness of the Jewish people. He had an ally, a Jew who was a courtier in the Persian court, a very powerful and influential person named Nehemiah. Ezra sparked the religious revival of the Jewish people and the physical redemption of the Jewish people. He was able to bring an army with him, and he organized that the builders should have security and protection. The Temple was slowly, slowly being built, and the walls around Jerusalem were built for security. The Samaritans were defeated, and the Second Temple rose.
The Second Temple is insignificant in comparison to the First Temple, at least physically. It says that the elders in that generation wept when they saw the Second Temple, because Solomon's Temple was marble and gold and this was wood and tin, but it was a Temple also. Spiritually it was less than the First Temple. Many of the miracles that occurred in the First Temple did not take place in the Second Temple. Nevertheless, the Temple was built, and the Second Commonwealth was established. Ezra and Nehemiah go down in Jewish history not only as heroes but as the people who allowed the Jewish people to continue to return to their homeland and to build once again the house of God. According to Jewish tradition, it's been great talking to you. I'm Rabbi Berel Wein. Thank you for watching. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistory.org.