The founding story of rabbinic Judaism is a story about abandoning the centre of the religion. With Jerusalem under siege and the zealots inside it burning the food stores to prevent surrender, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai has his students smuggle him out in a coffin, since the zealots permitted no living person to leave. He is brought to Vespasian, greets him as emperor, and news arrives that he has been elected. Offered a request, he asks for Yavneh and its sages — a school, a small coastal town, and the survival of a court. The Talmud itself records a later opinion that he should have asked for Jerusalem to be spared, and that he asked too little. What the story does is transfer the religion from a place to a portable practice: sacrifice becomes prayer, priesthood becomes scholarship, and the calendar and the law can be maintained anywhere. Every synagogue in the world is downstream of it, and so is the tradition's deep suspicion of armed messianic enthusiasm.