In an extraordinary act of symbolic resistance, a small group of Jews gathered beneath the Arch of Titus in Rome on June 11, 2025—exactly 1,955 years after the Roman general Vespasian encircled Jerusalem—to carry out a historic, religiously grounded “nullification ceremony.”

Their aim? Nothing short of reversing the spiritual and legal implications of one of the most catastrophic episodes in Jewish history: the Roman conquest of Judea, the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the Jewish people.

What unfolded that day may sound like the script of a historical drama, but it was real—and deliberate. Participants chiseled the divine image of Vespasian from a rare silver coin, defacing the symbol of the emperor’s divinity using tools forged from the armor of a Merkava tank damaged in Gaza.