Second Temple

About

The Second Temple, in Hebrew Beit haMikdash haSheni, was the rebuilt House of God on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, raised after Solomon's sanctuary was razed during the Babylonian siege of 587 BCE. The new edifice was completed around 516 BCE under returning exiles, then dramatically enlarged by Herod the Great from roughly 18 BCE, after which it was also remembered as Herod's Temple.

For close to six centuries this sanctuary stood as the chief place of korban, ritual sacrifice, and of communal gathering for the Jewish people. Three times each year, at Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot, pilgrims streamed up to Jerusalem from across the Land of Israel and the wider Diaspora to keep the Shalosh Regalim festivals.

The age framed by this building, the Second Temple period, gave its name to Second Temple Judaism, the religious world in which prophetic, priestly, scribal and apocalyptic currents took the shapes from which later rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity would emerge. The Sanhedrin convened in its chambers and the priestly courses served according to ordered rotations.

In 70 CE the temple was burned by Roman legions during the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt, and the loss of the sanctuary reshaped Jewish life around prayer, study and the home. The Western Wall, a surviving portion of Herod's retaining structure, remains the closest accessible point of veneration and one of the most sacred sites in Judaism.

History

Following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Achaemenid king Cyrus permitted exiled Judeans to return and rebuild their sanctuary, and the modest restored temple was completed around 516 BCE. Centuries later Herod the Great undertook a vast architectural expansion, doubling the size of the Temple Mount platform and clothing the courts in white stone and gold. Resistance to Roman rule culminated in the revolt that began in 66 CE; in 70 CE Titus stormed Jerusalem, the temple was set ablaze, and within a generation the priestly sacrificial order had given way to the synagogue-centred life that defines Judaism to this day.

Significance

The Second Temple stands as the pivot of Jewish religious memory between the era of monarchic worship and the rabbinic age. Its rites, festivals and pilgrimages shaped the cycle of Jewish life, and the longing for its restoration permeates daily prayer, liturgical poetry and the calendar. The Western Wall continues as an enduring focus of devotion drawing worshippers from every continent.