This week’s Torah reading begins with the story of Noah, and ends with Abraham setting off on his journey to the Land of Israel—the first explicit reference to this territory in the Hebrew Bible. Judging from the biblical narrative, he lived in the first half of the second millennium BCE. Recent excavations have revealed ancient Canaanite cities even older. JNS reports:

A 5,000-year-old settlement unearthed near the central Israeli city of Beit Shemesh provides a glimpse into the beginning of the urbanization process in the ancient land of Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday.

A three-year excavation at the previously uncovered archaeological site, which was carried out ahead of planned construction work on the western edge of the city, located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, revealed a public building that may have been used for ritual activity, along with a room with about 40 vessels preserved intact, the state-run archaeological body said.

The ancient settlement, known as Hurvat Husham, was first discovered in 2021, the IAA said, although the extent of the site and its importance in understanding the origins of the urbanization process in Israel only became clear during the excavations at the site over the last three-and-a-half years.

“The site uncovered in Hurvat Husham is exceptional not only because of its size, but because it reveals to us some of the first characteristics of the transition from village life to urban life,” the excavation managers said.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.