Over the weekend, the sequel to the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator opened in U.S. cinemas, featuring among its cast two Israeli actors. It does not, however, feature any Jewish characters. Luke Tress examines ancient Jewish attitudes toward Roman bloodsports:

Jews likely had more compunctions about witnessing bloodshed for entertainment than their pagan neighbors due to religious morals. . . . “Jews valued life as something very sacred and that’s why [the ancient Jewish historian] Josephus reports that people were horrified by seeing people thrown to wild beasts for entertainment,” said Richard Hidary, a Yeshiva University professor who published a book on rabbis and the Talmud in the Roman world.

Hidary said rabbis debated watching the games in the Jerusalem Talmud. One rabbi held that watching the games was prohibited due to idolatry because of sacrifices and pagan prayers at the beginning. Another said it was fine to attend if “you come late and skip that part,” while another held that paying an entrance fee contributed to bloodshed, Hidary said.

A 1st-century book describes “a man of the Jewish race who was of greater stature than the tallest German” in a procession ahead of Roman games, but does not state unequivocally that the man was a gladiator. Reish Lakish, a famous rabbi in Judea in the 3rd century CE, may have been a gladiator before turning to Torah.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.