'ועל אותה שעה נחתם גזר הדין': על היפוכים מעמדיים וחורבן הבית

In tractate Gittin of the Babylonian Talmud, as well as in Midrash Lamentations Rabbah, there appears a well-known series of stories known as the 'Legends of Destruction'. In these stories, the sages process the trauma of the destruction, the mass of killing and the enormous difficulties that followed. The article seeks to offer a new reading of the last story in the series, 'שוליא דנגרי' [the carpenter's apprentice]. In my reading, I emphasize the analogy, familiar from rabbinic literature, between the destruction of the Temple and the destruction of the home and private space. The story reveals the elite's anxiety about class reversals and the theological and political ramifications of these changes.