Archaeologists Find a Twelfth Dead Sea Scroll Cave—Without Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are called that because they were discovered in caves in the Negev desert, not far from the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of the ancient community of Qumran. For some time, eleven caves have been known to have contained Jewish parchments from the Second Temple period. Now archaeologists have found one more, but believe the scrolls in it were taken by Bedouin in the middle of the last century. Ruth Schuster writes:

The cave lies in the stark desert cliff west of Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. . . . If [the archaeologists] are right, it is the first new “scroll cave” to be identified in over 60 years. Evidence that the cave once housed scrolls is indirect. A number of lidded pottery jars of a type typical of the Second Temple period (between 530 BCE and 70 CE) were found concealed in niches along the walls of the cave and deep inside a long tunnel at its rear, say the archaeologists. But the jars were all broken and their contents were removed.

Why accuse modern Bedouin? Because the archaeologists also found two iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s that had been left inside the tunnel, presumably for reuse. Cave 8 had been the same—scroll jars, but no parchments, were found. At least none with writing. One jar in Cave 12 did contain a rolled up parchment, but it was blank. . . .

Aside from the shattered jars and scroll debris, the archaeologists found an elaborate stamp seal made of the semi-precious stone carnelian, and evidence that prehistoric man had also once dwelled in these cliff-side desert caves.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Archaeology, Bedouin, Dead Sea Scrolls, History & Ideas

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