Solving the Mystery of Biblical Jerusalem’s Water Supply

In 2012, archaeologists excavating Second Temple-era ruins in the City of David—the oldest part of Jerusalem—found a large underground cistern sealed with the distinctive yellow-brown plaster common in the time of the First Temple. On the basis of its size, they concluded that it was built to serve as a public reservoir. Nadav Shragai explains how the discovery helped answer the question of how ancient Jerusalemites got their water:

For five decades, archaeologists . . . searched in vain for evidence to confirm the . . . testimony woven into a biblical speech of Rab-Shakeh, commander of the Assyrian king Sennacherib’s army. Rab-Shakeh tried to convince Hezekiah, then the king of Judah, and the beleaguered inhabitants of Jerusalem, to surrender: “Come out to me; and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig-tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern” (Isaiah 36:16).

For many years, archaeologists searched in vain for the cisterns mentioned by Rab-Shakeh. Many reservoirs were discovered from the Second Temple period, but none from First Temple days. The prevailing assumption, therefore, was that during First Temple times Jerusalem was sustained only by the waters of the Gihon Spring [in the nearby Kidron Valley].

Today, seven years later, Eli Shukron, [the archaeologist who supervised the cistern’s discovery], believes that if he and his colleagues continue searching, they will find other, similar cisterns from that period. The biblical descriptions from the book of Kings of the construction of the Temple by Solomon tell of a “Copper Sea”—a huge water tank made of copper placed in the Temple courtyard—and the ten basins that together had the capacity, in today’s terms, of approximately 120,000 liters (32,000 gallons).

Israel has no plans to dig on the Temple Mount, but it should be noted that the area was mapped and inventoried in the 19th century by Charles Warren, who found 49 cisterns and 42 aqueducts that conveyed water.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Hebrew Bible, Hezekiah, Jerusalem

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