Remnants of a World War I Battle Found in Israel

While archaeologists working in Israel usually expect to come across objects from the biblical and talmudic eras, an excavation in the central part of the country uncovered something far more recent but still significant. Yori Yalon writes:

Remnants of a World War I battle between British and Turkish forces were discovered recently in an archaeological dig near [the city of] Rosh Ha’ayin. The findings, which include dozens of bullet casings, mortar shells, and military paraphernalia, were uncovered during an Israel Antiquities Authority dig carried out ahead of the paving of a road connecting Rosh Ha’ayin to the nearby Afek Industrial Park. . . .

The discovery that a battle had taken place at the site was made after a broken piece of insignia from a British beret was found. Bullets and casings from an Ottoman rifle were soon found nearby. . . .

Yossi Elisha, the director of the dig, [said], “These findings are evidence of one of the major battles that occurred in the land of Israel between British and Turkish forces in World War I.”

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Archaeology, History & Ideas, Ottoman Empire, World War I

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society