An Ancient Factory Discovered in Israel Produced the Roman Empire’s Favorite Sauce

In ancient Roman cuisine, garum, a nonalcoholic fermented fish sauce, was a staple of every kitchen and a necessary ingredient of countless recipes. Archaeologists recently discovered a Roman-era factory for the condiment near Ashkelon on the Israeli coast, as Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

At the 2,000-year-old site, located a mile and a quarter northwest of the city of Ashkelon, [the Israeli archaeologist] Tali Erickson-Gini’s team uncovered several installations that, when taken together, left the archaeologist with little doubt that she was looking at a rare Holy Land garum-production center, or cetaria. Though there are few examples in the eastern Mediterranean, . . . in the Iberian Peninsula, specifically Malaga, there are several installations that mirror what she has uncovered in Ashkelon. . . .

In addition to evidence of fish pools, the team uncovered giant plastered vats, jars used for storing liquid, and what appears to be a large receptacle to hold the strained goopy substance.

While fish pools have been found elsewhere in the region, there is only one other identified location in Israel that may possibly have produced the garum, said Erickson-Gini. According to what has so far been excavated, the Ashkelon site was not a major factory, and was possibly mainly for local use. . . .

There are several types of garum, and even a strictly kosher version called garum castimonarium that was guaranteed to be made only from kosher fish.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Ancient Israel, Ancient Rome, Food, Kashrut

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