Maccabean-Era Arrowheads Found in Jerusalem

Just in time for Hanukkah, experts at the Tower of David Museum in the Israeli capital discovered a cache of bronze and iron arrowheads dating roughly to the time of the revolt the holiday celebrates. Melanie Lidman writes:

[T]he stunningly preserved artifacts weren’t hidden under meters of dirt and carefully excavated by veteran archaeologists. Instead, they were sitting in a dusty cardboard box behind an old air conditioner in one of the guard towers at the Tower of David, which is undergoing a massive renovation. . . .

[O]ne of the foremost archaeological experts who excavated the Tower of David in the 1980s, Renee Sivan [believed] that some of the archaeologists must have put [the artifacts] aside in hopes of publishing a future paper on the intricate markings of the Greek letters epsilon and beta on some of the bronze arrowheads.

On a sunny winter day, the Tower of David stands sentinel at the entrance to the Jaffa Gate in the Old City. . . . The site’s geographic importance made it a crucial place for every passing conqueror. Therefore it’s no surprise that the arrowheads are just part of a collection of war detritus that littered the area next to the ancient Hasmonean walls at the Tower of David, including slingshot bullets inscribed with winged lightning icons and more than 100 ballista, or carefully carved stone balls that were flung from the walls as projectile missiles.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Jerusalem, Maccabees

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