ABSTRACT
The Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem lay in ruins, soon to be rebuilt as a Roman city. This left the religious leaders—the sages, or rabbis, of the postdestruction period, the heirs of the prophets—with the awesome task of reconstituting the national community despite the people's political powerlessness. The sages sought to mitigate the despair of the people by convincing them that, notwithstanding the catastrophe, there was continuing meaning to their lives as Jews. The sages also began to give clearer expression to the messianic hopes and expectations in which the people had found consolation in times of adversity since the days of the prophets. The sages argued that the Land itself had redemptive attributes that limited the halakhic significance of time spent outside the Land, at least for certain purposes. The sages categorically rejected the popular aspiration for national "normalcy."
