From Wikipedia

The Kingdom Of David
Episode Four

The Gifts Of The Jews

Masada, an impregnable fortress built by Herod, atop a butte overlooking the Dead Sea, became a place of refuge that the Sachari fled to after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. There’s but one narrow trail, called the Snake, leading to the top of the butte and a small garrison can defend the fortress from a much larger army.

The Romans laid siege to the fortress over a two year period of time. Instead of trying to navigate the treacherous trail, they put their engineering expertise to work and built a massive ramp. The day before they were to breach the walls, Elazar ben Ya'ir, the Sachari leader, urged all his followers to commit suicide.

Judea was fast becoming a wasteland. All the Sachari and Essenes were dead and, with no temple, the priesthood was now meaningless. Only one group remained in the Holy Land, the Pharisees. Yochanan ben Zakai, their leader, set up his headquarters and a biblical school in the town of Yavne. In this school Yochanan and his followers slowly rebuilt Judaism from the ashes of the destroyed temple.

His first act was to transformed the synagogue, long a meeting place within the Jewish community to discuss daily living along with religious matters, into a more formal place which now focused exclusively on honoring God. He also revived, or reinforced, a seldom used practice favored by the writer of Psalms - prayer. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his teaching the concept that one can come closer to God through acts of loving kindness and by studying the Hebrew Bible or Torah.
One of the major feasts at the temple was Passover where the participants celebrated their liberation from the Egyptians with an elaborate ceremony. With the temple gone, a new kind of celebration had to be devised - the Seder. Instead of being a mass celebration, it was now done in the home with family and friends.

During the 60 years since the temple’s destruction, an uneasy truce existed between the Jews and the Romans. In 130 AD, a petition to Emperor Hadrian to rebuild the temple had been refused. With tempers rising, Rome next tried to either establish a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ashes of Jerusalem, or issue a decree forbidding circumcision. Whichever one it was, it turned out to be the catalyst that launched a new rebellion within Judea.

Simon Bar Kockba began secretly plotting a guerilla style insurrection. Many Judeans either thought Bar Kockba to be the Messiah or that the Messiah would come forth if they were victorious. Along with the Messiah, a third temple would descend from the sky and settle on top of the previous one. In 132 AD the rebels ranks swelled when the most prominent rabbi declared Bar Kockba to indeed be the Messiah.

The Bar Kockba rebels bided their time until Emperor Hadrian had left the area for a return trip to Rome. Once he was far enough away, the rebellion was launched and they succeeded in having the Romans withdraw from the area.
Emperor Hadrian could ill afford to have Judea break away and set an example for other rebellious regions within the empire. He commissioned Julius Severus to settle the Judean problem once and for all and sent 13 legions to the area, with units coming from as far as the Rhine and Britain. In all, about 600,000 Jews were slaughtered and the remnants were forced to leave the land. In the centuries that followed, whole villages were abandoned with their citizens settling elsewhere within the empire. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia and Judea took on the name of Palestine (in honor of the Philistines - a final insult to the people of David).
In their new homes, the Jews faced a challenge just as daunting as the Romans. This time the threat came from within - a new form of Judaism called Christianity. These Christians didn’t mourn the loss of the temple and its sacrificial ordinances like the Jews did. They believed that God had decided to sacrifice His Only Son once and for all making animal sacrifices obsolete.
In 320 AD, civil war had broken out in the Roman Empire and the victorious Constantine had received a revelation to bind the empire back together under the sign of the cross. Unfortunately for Judaism, the Christian bishops who most influenced Constantine happened to be the ones most hostile to the Jews. These bishops wanted to stamp out any friendship that other bishops felt towards Judaism. John Chrysostom, one of the great preachers of the 4th Century, was enraged when some in his congregation would slip out during during church services to attend the more interesting Jewish High Holy Days festivals. He preached eight sermons against the Judeaizers in which he first coined the term Christ killers. With laws being passed against them, the Jews started looking for new homes in North Africa, Spain and Russia.
This spreading out of the Jewish nation threatened Judaism with disintegration. The laws, rituals and customs of the religion had never been written down. In the 2nd century AD, an illiterate 40 year old shepherd named Akiva taught himself how to read and began to study the Hebrew Bible. Within a few years he became a leading sage and learned there was a vast storehouse of oral traditions from Hillel to Yochanan ben Zakai in addition to the written word. He started to organize and write these oral traditions down. Being a strong supporter of rebellion, he was arrested by the Romans who then flayed him alive as an example to other rebels.
Akiva’s heirs continued with his work and formed the Talmud, which is a set of ethical commandments meant to compliment the ritual commandments set forth in the Hebrew Bible. It’s a how-to book for practicing the religion. With the Talmud, Jewish tradition could thrive in spite of the discrimination it faced.

Invariably, the Christians and Muslims who lived among the Jews discovered they had unique gifts. One of the skills they introduced to country after country was glass blowing. Other gifts included advanced knowledge of medicine and their strong desire to give every child an education.

Undoubtedly, according to the documentary, their most important gift to us is monotheism and the written Word of God as expressed in their Bible, which became the Christian Old Testament.