For the First Time, Remains of a Crusader Encampment Found in Israel

The most significant impact of the Crusades on Jewish history likely came in the form of the orgies of violence they unleashed on Jewish communities in France, England, and Germany. But in the 12th and 13th centuries these attempts to reclaim Christian holy sites from Muslim rule led to the establishment of European kingdoms in the Land of Israel, at a time when the Jewish community there was at its nadir. Near the Tzippori Springs, in the Galilee region, archaeologists have for the first time discovered the remnants of a Crusader camp. Rossella Tercatin writes:

For a certain period, [the Crusaders] placed Jerusalem under Christian rule, a period documented by a vast corpus of historical sources as well as massive structures such as castles and fortresses left by the Crusaders in the region. However, very little remains to testify moments of transitions, such as battles and encampments. In recent years, while workers were expanding Route 79 that connects the coast with Nazareth, the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists Nimrod Getzov and Ianir Milevski . . . conducted the required salvage excavation [and discovered the encampment].

According to chronicles from the time, the Christian army was stationed in the area of the Tzippori Springs for around two months before the crucial battle that allowed the troops led by Sultan Saladin to reconquer much of the region, including Jerusalem.

The archaeologists unearthed hundreds of metal artifacts, and were able to study their relations to the landscape. . . . The majority of artifacts the archaeologists uncovered were horseshoe nails, both of a local type and of a more sophisticated European type, which were prevalent closer to the springs.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Archaeology, Crusades, Middle Ages

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