Rabbi Dunner looks at the return of Jewry to the Land of Israel, and at the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great of ancient Persia took over the Babylonian Empire and absorbed it into his ever-expanding Persian Empire. Shortly afterwards, as recorded in the Book of Ezra, he issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to return from Babylon to Jerusalem, to rebuild the Temple that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed just a few decades earlier.

Rabbi Dunner begins with an introduction to this series of lectures on the Second Temple period, and then compares the biblical text of Cyrus’ declaration with the text of famous Cyrus Cylinder, which is housed at the British Museum in London.

This lecture took place at the home of Dr. Hillel Laks and Dr. Eva Hogan in Beverly Hills, California, on Thursday, January 9th, 2014