Restoring the Roman Basilica in Ashkelon National Park

The Ashkelon basilica, a large public building that is believed to have been built during Herod’s rule in the 1st century BCE, was destroyed in an earthquake in 350 CE. Its approximately 50 marble columns, each weighing over seven tons, were later sawed up and used as building supplies. As Judith Sudilovsky reports, conservationists have painstakingly collected the remaining marble material from the original structure and put the pieces together “like a puzzle.” The project of excavation and restoration, which began over a century ago, is scheduled to conclude within the next year.

Excavations of the site were first carried out between 1920 and 1922 by the Palestine Exploration Fund based in London under the direction of John Garstang and, in addition to the pillars, also uncovered five large marble statues. After completing his excavation, Garstang decided to establish an open-air museum in the apse area to exhibit the main marbles and statues.

Over the years the museum fell into disrepair and by 2008, the walls of the open-air museum were collapsing, and the statues were in poor condition. The statues were removed for conservation.

During the years 2016 to 2021, the main hall of the basilica and its northern part were excavated by the Israeli Antiquities Authority, under the direction of Rachel Bar-Nathan with Saar Ganor and Federico Kobrin. “Now, one hundred years after they were excavated, (the columns and statues) are being returned to their place,” said the park manager Ronit Rozen.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Herod

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