Oct 28, 2026 · 5 min · 7 segments
On today’s page, Bekhorot 40, we discover that one of the Temple Mount's gates bore the name and image of Shushan, the Persian capital…
Liel LeibovitzHost
When the second temple stood, it had five gates, two on the southern wall and one each on the west, east, and northern wall.
And the one in the east, the Mishnah teaches us, was known as the Gate of Shushan, and it was decorated with a lovely engraving of that famous Persian city we read about every time we read the Megillah, the Book of Esther.
Okay, so now that we know the basic facts, we're back to the question at hand.
The East Gate was known as Shushan Gate, some say, because it's important to remember history and to make sure people know where they came from.
And the Second Temple period, you may remember, began because of a proclamation made by King Cyrus of Persia, allowing Jews to return to their ancestral homeland and rebuild their destroyed temple.
Which means that even after the Second Temple was built, the Jews living in the land of Israel, Eretz Israel, were still part of the Persian Empire until a dude named Alexander the Great ambled into history and began the Greek era.
When the second temple stood, it had five gates, two on the southern wall and one each on the west, east, and northern wall.
And the one in the east, the Mishnah teaches us, was known as the Gate of Shushan, and it was decorated with a lovely engraving of that famous Persian city we read about every time we read the Megillah, the Book of Esther.
Okay, so now that we know the basic facts, we're back to the question at hand.
The East Gate was known as Shushan Gate, some say, because it's important to remember history and to make sure people know where they came from.
And the Second Temple period, you may remember, began because of a proclamation made by King Cyrus of Persia, allowing Jews to return to their ancestral homeland and rebuild their destroyed temple.
Which means that even after the Second Temple was built, the Jews living in the land of Israel, Eretz Israel, were still part of the Persian Empire until a dude named Alexander the Great ambled into history and began the Greek era.
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