What a Duck-Head Shovel Tells Us about the History of the Galilee

By the first century CE, the Galilee was one of the major Jewish population centers of Judea. In the following centuries, it became the major cultural and religious center as well, where most of the early talmudic rabbis lived and taught. Archaeologists’ recent discovery of a small shovel with a handle in the shape of a duck’s head, designed to be used for incense, sheds light on the history of this important area of northern Israel. Ilan Ben Zion rights:

Current research indicates [that the Galilee] was settled by non-Jewish peoples when the region was ruled by the Persian and Greek empires between 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. Only at the very end of the Hellenistic period, with the rise of the Hasmonean dynasty (of Maccabee fame) did it come under Jewish rule.

Except for later historical accounts and limited archaeological surveys at sites skirting the Galilee, little is known about the region during the Hellenistic period. How and when the Galilee became a Jewish stronghold in the late Second Temple period has been the topic of scholarly debate for centuries.

Khirbet el-Eika, [where the shovel was discovered], appears to have been a short-lived community. . . . Excavations indicate it was built during the 3rd century BCE. . . . Then, around 140 BCE, it was violently destroyed. Whether or not this was the result of a Hasmonean military campaign remains unclear.

Around the same time Khirbet el-Eika was destroyed, Jewish communities began popping up around the Galilee. . . . “We can’t say for sure, but the hints seem to point to a pagan population” [at Khirbet el-Eika, said the archaeologist leading the excavation]. The duck-headed incense shovel is a key clue. “It may be some sort of a cultic object,” he said. . . [It] is clearly of Greco-Roman design, and duck’s heads appear on an assortment of objects from the ancient Levant.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Archaeology, Galilee, Hasmoneans, History & Ideas, Talmud

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