Though they were ultimately unsuccessful, Bar Kokhba and his rebels did manage to establish and maintain a Jewish state for about three years after beginning the rebellion.

Hadrian sent an army to crush the resistance, but it faced a strong opponent, since Bar Kokhba, as the recognised leader of Israel, punished any Jew who refused to join his ranks.

[15] Two and a half years later, after the war had ended, the Roman emperor Hadrian barred Jews from entering Aelia Capitolina, the pagan city he had built on the ruins of Jewish Jerusalem.

[b] Another part of the Talmudic narrative is that the Romans killed all the defenders except for one Jewish youth, Simeon ben Gamliel II, whose life was spared.

[20] According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed in overall war operations across the country, and some 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed to the ground, while the number of those who perished by famine, disease and fire was beyond finding out.

מעיד אני עלי ת שמים יפס[ד][d] מן הגללאים שהצלכם[e] כל אדם שאני נתן תכבלים[f] ברגלכם כמה שעסת[י] לבן עפלול [ש]מעון ב[ן][g]‎ Simon bar Kokhba is portrayed in rabbinic literature as being somewhat irrational and irascible in conduct.

The Talmud[32] says that he presided over an army of Jewish insurgents numbering some 200,000, but had compelled its young recruits to prove their valor by each man chopping off one of his own fingers.

"[32] It is also said of him that he killed his maternal uncle, Rabbi Elazar Hamudaʻi, after suspecting him of collaborating with the enemy, thereby forfeiting Divine protection, which led to the destruction of Betar in which Bar Kokhba himself also perished.

),[34] including: Another operetta on the subject of Bar Kokhba was written by the Russian-Jewish emigre composer Yaacov Bilansky Levanon in Palestine in the 1920s.

Thus, Bar Kokhba decided to ask simple questions to which the dying man was able to nod or shake his head with his last movements; the murderers were consequently apprehended.

In Hungary, this legend spawned the "Bar Kokhba game", in which one of two players comes up with a word or object, while the other must figure it out by asking questions only to be answered with "yes" or "no".