What Archaeology Tells Us about King Hezekiah’s Religious Reforms

In the second book of Kings, Hezekiah, who ruled during the late-8th and early-7th centuries BCE, is one of the few monarchs who comes off as a hero. He defended the kingdom of Judah against the Assyrian onslaught, listened to the words of the prophet Isaiah, and cracked down on idolatry and the bringing of sacrifices outside the Jerusalem Temple. David Rafael Moulis explains some of the archaeological evidence for these reforms:

A large 9th-century horned altar was discovered [in Beersheba]—already dismantled. Three of its four “horns” [rectangular projections on the four corners of the top of the altar] were found intact, embedded in a wall. Their secondary use indicates that the stones were no longer considered sacred. The horned altar was dismantled during Hezekiah’s reign, which we know because some of its stones were reused in a public storehouse that was built when the Assyrians threatened Judah and was destroyed by the Assyrian army in 701. . . .

Next we move to Lachish. The second most important city in Judah after Jerusalem, Lachish was a military and administrative center in the Judean hills. . . . In 2016, an 8th-century BCE cultic place at Lachish was uncovered next to the main city gate. Archaeologists have called this cultic place a “gate-shrine.” In it were found two small horned altars, whose horns had been cut off and embedded in an adjacent wall. Further, a square toilet was found installed in the shrine but was never used. The toilet was more of a symbolic act of desecration (see 2Kings 10:27)—part of Hezekiah’s cultic reforms.

The best candidate for the elimination [of these cultic sites and others] is King Hezekiah, who probably ordered the abolition of all official cultic sites. Only the Jerusalem Temple and small, household shrines were spared.

Read more at Bible History Daily

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Book of Kings, Hezekiah, History & Ideas, Idolatry

 

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