Sound the Great Shofar of Our Freedom

Here in Jerusalem the days are getting shorter.  The children are back at school.  The summer sun has lost its ferocious heat and the evenings are cooler now with a soothing breeze.   We are approaching autumn (fall) - what the English poet John Keats called “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”- and with autumn come “the chagim” – a succession of Jewish festivals that include Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succot and Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.

Go to the synagogues or to the Kotel (the Western Wall) around midnight or early in the morning and you will hear selichot being recited, or sung if you choose a Sephardi minyan.  Ashkenazi Jews start reciting selichot on the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah.  Sephardim begin a whole month before.  These are prayers of repentance, asking for forgiveness and mercy as we approach the annual day of judgement. 

Yemenite Jew blowing shofar

The clarion call to repentance is the sound of the shofar, a ram’s horn.   It is blown every day during the month before Rosh Hashanah, on Rosh Hashanah itself and at the end of the Yom Kippur fast.  As well as calling the people to repentance the shofar echoes events in Jewish history and heralds our hopes for the future.  Hearing its piercing notes recalls for us the binding of Isaac, the giving of the Torah and the destruction of the Temple and speaks of the coming of the Messiah, the ingathering of the exiles and the resurrection of the dead at the end of days. 

Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Segal was a Chabad-Lubavitch Hassid.   Born in the Ukraine in 1904 he and his family made Aliyah in 1920.  He was one of the first members of the Beitar youth movement in Eretz Israel.  He served in the Haganah defending Tel Aviv during the Arab riots of 1929, became a member of the Irgun high command and later joined Etzel (popularly known as the Stern Gang).   He was the first to defy the British prohibition on blowing the shofar at the Kotel.

Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Segal

In 1930, in response to the 1929 riots the British Mandatory authorities decreed that, although Jews may be allowed to pray at the Kotel, they may not pray loudly or read from a scroll of the Torah or blow a shofar there for fear of upsetting the local Muslim population.  They placed policemen there to enforce the decree.  That year, as the Yom Kippur prayers came to an end at the Kotel, the young Moshe Segal turned to a rabbi and asked for a shofar.  The rabbi indicated that there was one in a nearby stand.  Segal found the shofar and shrouded himself in a borrowed tallit to conceal it.  As the closing prayer finished he blew a resounding blast.  He was immediately arrested by British police and imprisoned in the Kishle near the Jaffa Gate.  He was given no food or water.  On hearing of Moshe Segal’s arrest, Rav Kook, the Chief Rabbi, had immediately contacted the High Commissioner’s office and refused to break his own fast until Segal was released.  He was released at midnight without a word. 

The Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue

In 1967 following the Six Day War Rabbi Moshe Segal left Kfar Chabad where he lived and became the first Jew to return to live in the Old City.  He led the first minyan in the only synagogue found intact there - Tzemach Tzedek, a Chabad synagogue that sits above the Cardo.  At the end of the war he heard a young soldier blow shofar at the Kotel.  “What do you know about blowing shofar?” he asked.  “I was the last to blow in 1947” said the soldier.  “And I was the first in 1930” replied Rabbi Segal and embraced the young soldier.  Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Segal died on Yom Kippur 1984 and was buried on the Mount of Olives.

For 17 years from 1930 until the Old City of Jerusalem fell into Jordanian hands in May 1948 a different young man risked arrest and imprisonment each year by blowing a shofar at the Kotel at the end of the Yom Kippur prayers.  In the summer of 2010 six of the seventeen men who had defied the British decree were still alive.  They gathered for a reunion at the Kotel and told their story in a video film made by Toldot Israel.  Rabbie Moshe Tzvi Segal and each of those who followed him can truly be said to have fulfilled what we say in the Amidah prayer every weekday:

"תקע בשופר גדול לחרותנו"
“Sound the great shofar of our freedom”

May you have a sweet, healthy and happy New Year.
לשנה טובה תכתבו ותחתמו.
תזכו לשנים רבות.

Of Kings and Queens and Jubilees

Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee 1897

I spent a few weeks in England recently and was inevitably caught up in the four day public holiday marking Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee - the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.  Elizabeth is one of only two British monarchs to have reached their Diamond Jubilee.  Only her great-great-grandmother Victoria reigned for that long a time.

Thames Pageant. Photo: John Pannell

The celebrations were spectacular and reflected Britain’s love of ceremonial splendour mixed with a warm and genuine affection for the Queen herself.  They included a pageant of 1,000 ships on the River Thames and a huge concert ending in a stunning firework display outside Buckingham Palace.  Street parties were held across the country.  Thousands of beacons were lit creating a river of fire that linked all the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations.  The finale was the appearance of the Queen and the Royal Family on the palace balcony to acknowledge the cheers of the many thousands of people who had gathered there and to watch a fly past by planes of the Royal Air Force.
 
Nowadays in the world at large a jubilee has come to mean something quite straightforward - the celebration of a special anniversary.  The original concept from the Torah is at once more specific and more complex.

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and you shall return every man unto his possession, and you shall return every man unto his family.  Leviticus 25, v10..

The Torah details laws relating to agriculture, to the ownership of property and to the ownership of Israelite slaves in the jubilee year.  It was a year in which the earth itself rested, in which real estate was returned to its ancestral owners and in which those who had sold themselves into slavery to pay off their debts were granted their freedom.  The last jubilee was celebrated in the time of the prophet Ezekiel. 
 
No king of Israel or Judah during the biblical period reigned for as long as Elizabeth.  Two kings of Judah, Uzziah son of Amatzia and Menashe son of Hezekiah, ruled for more than 50 years and so reached what in modern terms would have been their Golden Jubilees.  They each came to the throne whilst they were still young.  Uzziah was sixteen years old at the start of his reign and Menashe only twelve.  Menashe’s grandson Josiah, however, was even younger - just eight years old when he began to rule over Judah.

Rembrandt's Uzziah

 
Uzziah started out well.  He “sought G-d” and took advice from the prophet Zechariah.  He became financially and militarily successful and developed Jerusalem and the whole of his kingdom.  His fame spread far and wide.  His great success, however, made him proud and his pride led him into a transgression that was his downfall.  He entered the Temple and offered up incense there on the golden altar – a task reserved for the priests.  Whilst the chief priest Azariah upbraided Uzziah and he was full of anger, for no king likes to be criticised, he was struck with tzara’at, an affliction that resembled leprosy.  He spent the rest of his life in isolation.

Menashe by Guillaume Rouille

 
In contrast to Uzziah, Menashe began his reign by doing “that which was evil in the sight of the Lord”.  He reversed the religious reforms that his father Hezekiah had instituted.  He reintroduced pagan worship, built altars to pagan gods and set up an idol in the Temple.  The Book of Chronicles relates that because of Menashe’s transgressions the Lord brought the hosts of Assyria against his kingdom.  Menashe was taken off in chains to Babylon.  There, in captivity, he repented and humbled himself and prayed to the Lord.  He returned to Jerusalem a changed man.  He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and strengthened the defences of the cities of Judah.   He removed the strange gods and the idol from the Temple and tore down the pagan altars.  He repaired the altar in the Temple, sacrificed offerings on it and commanded the people to serve the Lord. 
  
Walk through the streets of the Greek Colony in south Jerusalem and you will come across the names of the kings of Judah – not all of them, only those who “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord”.  Uzziah just makes it because he started out doing good even though he transgressed in his later years.

The Uzziah Tablet

In the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is an ancient inscribed limestone tablet.   It was found in 1931 amongst the collection of the Russian convent on the Mount of Olives by Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, the archaeologist who first recognised the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The Aramaic inscription reads:

“To here were brought the bones of Uzziah King of Judah. Do not open.”

We don’t know whether this tablet really marked Uzziah’s burial place.  There is no record of how it came to be in the convent’s possession.  The archaeologists tell us that it dates from the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE.  Uzziah died centuries earlier in about 740 BCE and was buried in “the field of burial that belonged to the kings” in a grave that was set apart.  It is likely, however, that at the end of the Second Temple period when Jerusalem was expanding, his bones were moved for reasons of ritual purity to a place outside the city boundary.  This tablet then could have formed part of their final resting place. 
 
To find Menashe Street you have to cross the railway tracks from the Greek Colony into Baka but in this neighbourhood the streets are named for the tribes of Israel.  This street is not named for Menashe the king but for Menashe son of Joseph, the grandson of Jacob and the brother of Ephraim.   It’s just as well that his name found a home here.  King Menashe would not have qualified to have a street named for him amongst the righteous kings of Judah.

“Boney was a warrior...” - Napoleon in the Land of Israel and his Proclamation to the Jews

 

“Boney was a warrior...”

Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul

“Boney was a warrior...” go the words of the old sea shanty and indeed Napoleon Bonaparte was a warrior.  He was such a great military commander that even today his campaigns are studied in military academies in many countries.  His expedition to the Middle East which brought him to the Land of Israel was not, however, his finest hour.  He failed to achieve his objectives and suffered defeat at sea, frustration on land and the loss of much of his army.  Despite this, within two months of his return to France he became First Consul and within five years was proclaimed Emperor.

 

 

Napoleon’s campaign to the Middle East

 

Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar

In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte set out for Egypt.  His major objectives were to establish a French presence in the Middle East and to disrupt Britain’s important trade route to India.   After initial victories in Egypt he suffered a major setback when the British fleet under Horatio Nelson captured or destroyed all but two ships of the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile.

To the north lay the Holy Land ruled from Acre by Ahmad Pasha “al-Jazzar” (the butcher).  Napoleon reasoned that without at least a truce with al-Jazzar it would be hard for him to maintain his hold on Egypt.  He made the approach but did not receive a reply.  He felt that he had no option but to set out on an expedition to defeat al-Jazzar.

Somehow the fate of this expedition was already sealed by the time it reached the coastal town of el-Arish in northern Sinai.  The French military intelligence was badly flawed.  Napoleon expected a town without any defences.  He found a fortress there held by al-Jazzar’s troops.  He took el-Arish only after a twelve day siege.   It gave al-Jazzar valuable time to prepare the defence of his headquarters in Acre.  In the course of the siege the bubonic plague that had broken out amongst the Turkish troops also infected the French camp.  It was to have dire consequences.

The Siege of Jaffa 

Napoleon visits plague victims

Napoleon took his army north to the port of Jaffa.  By the time he arrived some 4,000 Turkish soldiers had gathered there.  He prepared for a siege and sent two French officers to offer a last chance for the town to surrender.  The defenders’ answer was to seize the officers, kill them and display their heads on the walls of the city.  When the French forces breached the walls they massacred every man, woman and child that they found.  And when after some 30 hours the slaughter of civilians had stopped Napoleon ordered the execution of the thousands of Turkish soldiers who had surrendered to his forces.  They were marched out to the sand dunes south of Jaffa and taken off in groups to be shot.  When the French ran out of cartridges they killed them with knives and with bayonets.

By now the plague had really taken hold in Napoleon’s camp and had begun to spread through the town.  Dozens of his soldiers were falling sick every day.  He had the infected troops quartered in the Armenian Monastery and visited them there before pressing on to Acre, al-Jazzar’s capital, with the remainder of his army.

Failure and retreat

Armenian Monastery, Jaffa. Photo Ori~

Napoleon attempted a direct assault on Acre.  When this failed he laid siege to the city.  Al-Jazzar was supported by a British fleet commanded by Sir Sidney Smith.  The British bombarded the French army and prevented them from mounting an effective attack.  The plague continued to spread amongst them and their morale collapsed.  After a two month siege Napoleon was forced to accept defeat.  His campaign in the Middle East had come to an end. He began his retreat towards Egypt.

Napoleon worried that the Turks would overtake his retreating army.  In Jaffa a number of French plague patients remained in the Armenian Monastery.  Napoleon did not want to leave them to the mercy of the Turks.  Nor was he willing to take the risk that they would slow down the retreat.  Overriding the objections of his chief medical officer he gave orders that they should be poisoned.

What to see today

 

19th century cannon on wall of Acre

Jaffa and Acre are port cities, thousands of years old. They are fascinating places to visit.  Each one bears the marks of Napoleon’s campaign.  The room where Napoleon stayed in Jaffa is now incorporated into St Peter’s Church. The Armenian Monastery where his plague infected soldiers were billeted still stands by the sea.  The place where his soldiers breached the walls is noted in the alleys of the Old City.  In Acre you can find the remains of the city walls and cannons that helped to resist Napoleon’s siege as well as a cemetery where some of his soldiers were buried.  It also has a Napoleon Bonaparte Street.  Nearby is Napoleon Hill where he and his army camped.  The archaeological museum at Kibbutz Nahsholim has weapons and ammunition that his troops abandoned during their retreat.

Napoleon’s proclamation to the Jews

Napoleon grants freedom to the Jews

In May 1799, during the siege of Acre, the main French newspaper of its time, Le Moniteur Universel, published a brief statement:

“Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem.  He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo.”

The plan was never carried out and historians argue as to whether the proclamation was indeed made and, if so, whether it was ever more than mere propaganda.  In 1940, however, the author Franz Kobler claimed to have found a detailed version of the proclamation that Napoleon had prepared.  His version, replete with quotations from the Prophets, claimed that Napoleon had established his headquarters in Jerusalem, described the Jews as “rightful heirs to Palestine” and invited them to re-establish there a Jewish state. Whether this document is genuine or, as some have claimed, a forgery there is no doubt that Napoleon had tremendous influence on the emancipation of the Jews of Europe and on the course of Jewish history.

Ezrat Israel: An Undiscovered Neighbourhood, the Coming of the Messiah and the Resting Place of Many Prophets

It’s not very often that I come across a whole Jerusalem neighbourhood that I have never seen or heard of before.  But that’s just what happened as I was preparing a tour of the Jaffa Road for Yom Ha’atzmaut.

The Ezrat Israel Neighbourhood
Photo by Ranbar

Ezrat Israel is a small neighbourhood tucked away between the Jaffa Road and Rehov Hanevi’im near to the junction of Jaffa Road and King George Street.  The whole neighbourhood consists of one narrow alley with a row of houses, originally two-storey buildings, on either side.  It was established in 1892 on the initiative of Rabbi Ya’akov Meir the Hacham Bashi – the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.  He was supported by a group of notable Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbis; Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel who succeeded him in as Hacham Bashi, Rabbi Nissim Elyashar, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi David Kantorowitz, Rabbi Yaakov Mann and Rabbi Joseph Rivlin.  

Nabi Okasha Mosque
Photo: Yoninah

Cabbalists considered a hill just to the north of the site of this neighbourhood to be “Patcha DeKarta”, the entrance to the city, the seat of the Mashiach ben Yosef who would herald the arrival of the Messiah.  Before the neighbourhood was built a group of cabbalists, students of the Vilna Gaon, set up a tent there (the tent of Mashiach ben Yosef) and prayed there fervently for the coming of the Messiah.  In 1908 the International Evangelistic Church was built at the end of the neighbourhood facing Rehov Hanevi’im where the cabbalists’ tent had been.  The tent was moved to Nabi Okasha Park on Rehov Strauss.

When the neighbourhood was first built it connected the Jaffa Road and Rehov Hanevi’in.  It was also a convenient route between the established neighbourhoods of Even Israel and Meah Shearim.  Iron gates were installed at both its entrances and they were locked at night.  With the building of the evangelistic church the way through to Rehov Hanevi’im and Meah Shearim was blocked.

Hacham Bashi
Harav Ya'akov Meir

Ezrat Israel though small was home to some prominent people.  The Sephardi Chief Rabbis Ya’akov Meir and Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel lived there as did Yitzchak Ben Zvi, the second President of the State of Israel and Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi.  The authors Yehuda Burla and Yehuda HaEzrachi (Brisker) grew up in the neighbourhood.  There were three print houses in Ezrat Israel.  In one, the Co-operative or “Unity” printing house, David Ben Gurion and Yosef Haim Brenner worked and at times lived.  Jerusalem’s Freemasons’ Hall can still be found in the neighbourhood.   Today the little neighbourhood contains a mixture of homes, shops and offices and has a traditional or secular character.  Take the time to visit Ezrat Israel next time you are near the Jaffa Road.  It is a quiet and picturesque oasis in the midst of Jerusalem.



A street sign from the British Mandate
Photo: DMY

For those of you who wonder about Nabi Okasha: There is a Mamluk mausoleum and a mosque known as Nabi Okasha or al-Kimeria on Rehov Strauss.  Many traditions cling to this place.  It is the grave of Okasha, a friend of the Prophet Muhammad.  It is the grave of four sons of Kimer who fought with Saladin against the Crusaders.  It is the burial place of the major prophets of the three great Abrahamic religions: Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.  That is the reason that the British Governor Sir Ronald Storrs gave Rehov Hanev’im (the Street of the Prophets) its name. 

In Memory of the Jews of Greece for Yom Hashoah

“I will give them, in My House and within My walls, a monument and a name (Yad Vashem) better than sons or daughters.  I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish.” Isaiah 56, 5.

Hall of Remembrance,Yad Vashem.
Photo: Berthold Werner 

As night falls this Wednesday in Israel Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day will begin.   A state ceremony will take place that evening in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem.  The President and the Prime Minister will speak.  The Chief Rabbis will recite prayers.  Six torches will be lit, each one by a survivor in memory of the six million Jews, almost two thirds of European Jewry, who were murdered in the Holocaust. 

Flags will fly at half-mast that day.  Places of entertainment will close for 24 hours.  The main television channels will broadcast only programmes related to the Holocaust.  The radio stations will carry sombre music.  At 10.00 o’clock on Thursday morning sirens will sound calling the whole country to come to a standstill and to observe two minutes silence in memory of those who died.

Batis Family Plaque
Memorial Cave, Yad Vashem

Millions of Ashkenazi Jews from northern and eastern Europe were murdered during the Holocaust but its terrible impact also reached Italian Jewry and the Sephardi communities of Greece, the Balkans and even North Africa.  One of the survivors who will be lighting a torch at this year’s state ceremony is Artemis Miron.  She was born in Ioannina in Greece.  Her father, Iosif (Pepo) Batis, was arrested, shot and killed in 1943.  Her mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.  Artemis herself survived forced labour in Auschwitz and death marches to Ravensbruck and to Malchow. 

The Jewish community in Greece is the oldest in mainland Europe dating back more than 2,000 years.  The first written record of Jews there is from about 300 BCE.  Synagogues have been discovered from the second century BCE.  In Jerusalem two synagogues have been established by Jews from Greece; one in the Ohel Moshe neighbourhood in Nahlaot and one in the Sephardi Orphanage near to the neighbourhood of Even Israel. 

Beit Knesset Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah:

Plaque on the wall of
Beit avraham VeOhel Sarah

Ioannina is in North West Greece where Albania, Yugoslavia and the Ionian Sea meet.  There was already a Jewish community there in the days of Alexander the Great and it was in its day the largest Jewish community in Greece.  The community spoke Judeo-Greek (Yevanic) and used the Romaniot rite of prayer, an ancient rite that dated back to Byzantine times. 

Entrance to Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah

Avraham and Sarah HaCohen came to Jerusalem from Ioannina in 1925.  They had no children.  Avraham died later that year and his widow decided to consecrate their house as a synagogue for Jews from Ioannina whilst she was still alive.  She died 14 years later in 1939 but until then she lived in a modest room at the side of the synagogue.  Nowadays Sephardi Jews pray in this synagogue.  There is no-one to speak Yevanic and the Romaniot rite is almost never heard here. Many religious items from the original community are preserved in the synagogue.

Beit Haknesset Kahal Tzion:

Salonica, The Fortress

Salonica, Thessaloniki, is Greece’s second largest city.  In 1492 thousands of Sephardi Jews settled in Ottoman Greece, many of them in Salonica, following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.  They quickly became the dominant group and their Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino) became the predominant language of Greek Jewry.  The Sephardim developed Salonica into a major commercial centre.  In the last quarter of the 19^th century 56% of the city’s population was Jewish.  They were so influential that the city virtually shut down each Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.  Salonica became known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans or as “la madre de Israel” – the mother (city) of Israel.  A street near my home in south Jerusalem is called Kedoshei Saloniki – the holy ones of Salonica.  It is dedicated to the memory of the 50,000 Salonica Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. 

The Sephardi Orphanage, Jerusalem

The Sephardi Orphanage in Jerusalem was established by the Jaffa Road near Even Israel in 1908 by two Bukharian families.  There have been synagogues in the orphanage building ever since its foundation.   In the early days of the 20^th century Jews from Salonica came to settle in Even Israel.  They established a community centre and a synagogue.  At first the synagogue was in the home of Ezra Benveniste.  In the 1920s the community of “Olei Salonica” (immigrants from Salonica) moved their synagogue to the ground floor of the orphanage where it flourished for thirty years until it joined with another synagogue founded there by a Sephardi religious Zionist association called Al Hamishmar (Standing Guard).  Services are still held there every day.

Postscript:

The destruction of Greek Jewry began in 1943.  By the end of the Second World War 60,000 Greek Jews, 86% of the pre-war population had been killed.  Today only about 5,000 Jews live in Greece most of them in Athens and Salonica.  There are just 35 Romaniot Jews alive in Ioannina.

And the Egyptians ill-treated us...

One of the ways we describe the festival of Passover is “z’man heruteinu”.  It is the festival of our redemption, of our freedom from slavery in Egypt.  As a child this always puzzled me because my father ע"ה was born in Egypt, actually on the first day of Passover, and grew up there.  How did he sit with his family around the seder table celebrating having been taken out of Egypt when he was still living there?  It is a mystery to me!

The Bible tells us that the Egyptians enslaved the Children of Israel in Egypt.  The archaeologists and historians add that they ruled over the land of Canaan during the Late Bronze Age, from 1550 BCE to 1200 BCE.  In Biblical terms this was the time of Joseph in Egypt through the Exodus to the time when the Israelites approached the Land of Israel.  So where in Israel can we see evidence of those 350 years of Egyptian domination?

Megiddo

Megiddo City Gate Photo: Golf Bravo

Megiddo is a huge and impressive archaeological site.  It’s not surprising.  It was one of the mightiest city states in Canaan.  For thousands of years it dominated the ancient trade route between Egypt to the south and the empires to the north and east.  It has been the site of some critical battles.  The last of these was the British General Allenby’s defeat of the Turkish army in 1917.

Thutmose III attacks his enemies

from the temple at Karnak

In 1482 BCE the King of Mitanni was stirring up revolt in Canaan against Egypt.  Pharaoh Thutmose III marched north with his army to put down the rebellion.  The Canaanite forces gathered for battle near Megiddo.  Thutmose took the Canaanites by surprise by choosing the most dangerous but most direct route from the coastal road through the valleys to Megiddo.  The next day the two armies met on the battlefield.  When the Egyptian infantry charged the Canaanites fled and sought refuge in Megiddo.  Instead of pressing their advantage the Egyptian troops took time out to loot the Canaanite camp.  They lost the element of surprise.  It took a seven month siege before Megiddo fell to Thutmose.  Egypt continued to rule Caanaan for the next 300 years and established garrisons in Megiddo and around the country in Gaza, Beit Shean and Afeq.   In an inscription at the Temple of Karnak in Upper Egypt Thutmose recorded that 119 cities in Canaan had bowed down before him. 

Jerusalem

A letter from Tel el-Amarna

In 1887 a peasant woman was digging in the ruins of el-Amarna in Upper Egypt when she came across a pile of palm-sized clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform script in Accadian, the diplomatic language of the Late Bronze Age.  What she had discovered was Egypt’s Foreign Office archive from the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten.  These were mainly letters between the Egyptian administration and their representatives and client kings in Canaan and Amurru (modern Lebanon).  Six of the letters are from Abdi-Heba, the king of Jerusalem, to Pharaoh.  He pleads with Pharaoh to help defend against attacks from neighbouring cities and from nomadic fighters called the Apiru.  One letter opens:

“Say to the king, my lord: Message of Abdi-Heba, your servant. I fall at the feet of my lord 7 times and 7 times.  Consider the entire affair.  Milkilu and Tagi brought troops into Qiltu against me... ...May the king know (that) all the lands are at peace (with one another), but I am at war.  May the king provide for his land. ...”

In 2009, while the archaeologist Eilat Mazar was excavating a gatehouse tower in the wall of First Temple Jerusalem, a small fragment of a clay tablet with fragments of nine lines of Akkadian cuneiform script.  We don’t know for sure but this seems to be a fragment of one of Abdi-Heba’s letters to Pharaoh – a copy perhaps stored in his archive.  You can see it on display in the Davidson Centre in Jerusalem.

Anthropoid coffin from Deir el-Balah:

Hecht Museum, Photo: Hanay

At the entrance to the Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum there is a group of strange anthropoid coffins from the Late Bronze Age.  They were discovered at Deir el-Balah, a few kilometres south-west of Gaza.  They may have been made for Egyptians but they certainly reflect the influence of Egypt in Canaan at that time.  The Hecht Museum in Haifa also has an anthropoid coffin from this period.

Beit Shean



Inscribed tablet governor's house

Beit Shean. Photo: Yukatan

Mention Beit Shean and most people think of the magnificent remains of Scythopolis, a Roman Byzantine city destroyed by an earthquake in 749.  At the northern edge of the Roman city is Tell el-Husn, the mound of ancient and biblical Beit Shean - an Egyptian regional centre for 300 years.  An Egyptian basalt stele (standing stone) was found here celebrating the defeat by Pharaoh Seti I of a group of Canaanite cities that tried to capture the city in 1318 BCE.  The governor’s house from the time of a later Pharaoh Ramses III was built in Egyptian style from mud bricks.  A bust of the Pharaoh stands in one of the rooms.  Over the doorpost was a stone tablet bearing the name of the governor, Ramse-Weser Khepesh, and his titles.  The stone artefacts on display are copies.  The originals are in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.

Timna Valley

Solomon's Pillars Timna Valley

Photo: Chmee2

Copper has been mined in the Timna Valley,in the south west Aravah about 30 km north of Eilat, for over 6,000 years.   In the Late Bronze Age the Egyptians established a sophisticated copper mining and production centre here.  Their mine shafts can still be seen.  Three huge sandstone pillars, known as Solomon’s Pillars, stand near the copper mines.  At their base is a small temple to Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of mining.  The engraved stelae in the temple contain a lot of information about the groups of Egyptians who came to mine here.  Above the temple on the side of one of the sandstone pillars is a carving of Ramses III with Hathor.

A Final Word?

Merneptah Stele
Photo: Webscribe

Mernheptah, the son of Ramses II, reigned from 1213 – 1203 BCE.  He was the last Egyptian king to personally enter Canaan to put down a rebellion.  In 1896 A basalt stone known as the Merneptah Stele was found at the Pharaoh’s burial temple in Thebes in Egypt.  A part of the inscription refers to Mernheptah’s victories during a military campaign in Canaan.  It includes the earliest known reference to Israel.  It reads:

“Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, its seed is no more.”

The scholars tell us that “Israel” here refers to a people, the Ancient Israelites, rather than to a state and that the “seed” refers to its supply of grain.  Even so this is one of many times when our conquerors have underestimated our resilience.  As the Passover Haggadah tells us:

“For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!”

Chag sameach!

Cook’s Tours: the Kaiser and the Father of Zionism ...and... A Note About Birds in Spring

In 1929 the Bezalel artist Ze’ev Raban designed a poster for the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land.  To entice potential tourists he included this lyrical description of spring from the Song of Songs.

“For, Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
Spring began officially last week and with it our major tourist season opened.  About 3.5 million tourists come to Israel each year.   Thomas Cook & Son, the world’s first travel agency, pioneered the development of tourism to Jerusalem.  It also played a part in a historic meeting between Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Theodore Herzl that took place here.

Thomas Cook

Sign for Thomas Cook's agency
on the wall outside the Jaffa Gate

Thomas Cook, an English cabinet maker and Baptist minister, founded his business in 1841 running railway excursions to temperance meetings.  In 1850 he led his first trip abroad, to Calais.  He was the first to develop many of the familiar features of package holidays including travel brochures, hotel coupons and traveller’s cheques.  By the mid-1860’s Cook’s Travel agency was already transporting tourists to Jerusalem.  The journey was not easy.  The road from Jaffa to Jerusalem wasn’t paved until 1867.  The construction was primitive and parts of the road were often washed away by heavy rains.   By the 1870’s, with improvements to the road and to security along it, Cook’s agency began to organise cheap group visits to Jerusalem – “Cook’s Tours”.  They set up tent encampments for their tourists along the way and, because there were as yet no good hotels in Jerusalem, outside the city walls - near to the Damascus Gate,  near the Jaffa Gate and on the Mount of Olives.  They even had servants available for the guests.  The agency opened a ticket office just inside the Jaffa Gate - now a busy centre of commercial activity. 

The Kaiser's tent camp

In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, visited Palestine.  In Jerusalem streets were cleaned and public buildings repaired in his honour.  The wall between the Jaffa Gate and the Citadel was torn down and the moat filled in so that he could ride into the city with his entourage.  A huge camp with 230 tents was set up for him in Jerusalem on the street we now call Rechov Hanevi’im.   Magnificent tents were provided by the Sultan for receptions.  Prefabricated buildings were brought from Germany for the royal visitors to sleep in.  Furniture and carpets were appropriated locally.   The Turkish army guarded the camp.  All the arrangements for this visit were entrusted to Thomas Cook’s travel agency. 

The Kaiser's procession to the
Church of the Redeemer

The official reason for Wilhelm’s visit was to attend the consecration of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter.   The Kaiser had more political purposes in mind.  He wanted to strengthen German national feeling amongst German Protestants and German Catholics in the Holy Land.  He presented his visit in heroic terms with himself entering the city like a Crusader.   The British satirical magazine Punch portrayed him in a cartoon as a “Cook’s Crusader”.

As demand grew, the services available for tourists improved.  By 1895, for example, the municipality required all tour guides in Jerusalem to take an examination in the history and geography of the city.  Those who passed received a diploma.  At the end of the 19th century several modern hotels opened in the Old City and outside the walls. 

The Kaminitz Hotel building today
Photo: DMY

Sandwiched between the Jaffa Road and Rehov Hanevi’im is the building of the former Kaminitz Hotel.   This was the first modern Jewish hotel in Jerusalem.  It was one of the hotels with which Thomas Cook and Son had an annual contract.  Eliezer Lipa Kaminitz had originally opened his hotel by the Jaffa Gate.  He moved it to these more spacious premises opposite the Alliance School in 1883.  It is dilapidated now but this was a five star hotel of its time with luxurious guest rooms, a large garden and a carriage drive leading up from the Jaffa Road.

Herzl on a boat en route
for Palestine

The Kaiser's entourage passes
through the Jewish triumphal arch

In October 1898 Theodore Herzl made his only visit to Palestine.  He had come to meet the Kaiser and to try to persuade him to support the Zionist cause.  Herzl arrived in Jerusalem late on a Friday afternoon.  He walked to the hotel from the railway station despite feeling unwell only to find that all the rooms had been taken by the Kaiser’s entourage.  Kaminitz took pity on him and found a bed for him for one night.  On Saturday afternoon he watched from the hotel as the Kaiser paraded through the two triumphal gates that had been set up to welcome him along the Jaffa Road.  That night the Stern family took Herzl to stay at their home on Mamilla Street where Steimatsky’s bookshop stands today.  The official meeting between Herzl and the Kaiser took place on November 2nd at the Kaiser’s tent camp.  Wilhelm was polite but made no commitment of any kind.  Herzl came away with nothing.

A Note About Birds in Spring

Cranes over the Hula Valley
Photo: אילת לב ארי שלי

With the start of spring the great migration of birds is also in full swing.  Because Israel sits at the junction of three continents, twice each year 500 million birds fly across our skies.   In the spring they journey north to enjoy temperate summers.  In the autumn they head south to find milder winter weather.   Eilat and the Hula Valley are regular refuelling points for the birds during their long migrations.  No wonder then that many bird enthusiasts visit to see the amazing number and variety of birds that pass through.  It’s a spectacular sight.  Timed to catch the peak of the spring migration, the 6th Eilat Bird Festival is on now and continues until April 1st.  The Hula Valley holds its bird festival in November during the autumn migration.

Heimishe Essen - A Story of Haredim, Zionist Socialists and a Barber

Inscription above the doorway
Beit Ezrahi-Brisker 1924

The Rehavia restaurant Heimishe Essen is in the news this week because it has been dragged into the debate over the exclusion of women.  The building that houses Heimishe Essen has a history of its own.  It was originally the home of Shmuel Ezrahi-Brisker, and thereby hangs a tale. 


Heimishe Essen Restaurant

Heimishe Essen (the name is Yiddish and means home-style food) is a long-established restaurant and take-away on Keren Kayemet Street in Rehavia.  Lately it has attracted more and more Haredi customers.  On Thursdays, the traditional night out for the Haredi community, it has become a favourite haunt of yeshiva students and Haredi activists.  Now the kashrut supervisors of Agudat Israel’s Badatz (Beit Din Tzedek – religious court) have demanded that the restaurant stop employing waitresses on Thursday nights if it wants to retain the prized Badatz kashrut certificate.  The restaurant owner and his staff claim that this demand is prompted by complaints from extremists and explain that Rehavia is not, by and large a Haredi neighbourhood and that the waitresses anyway dress modestly.  Despite this they are about to accede to the Badatz demands.

Shmuel Ezrahi-Brisker came to Jerusalem in 1911 as part of the Second Aliyah.  He prepared for life here by training in two “essential” professions as a barber and as a stage make-up artist.  Arriving in Jerusalem he sought to open a barber’s shop.  He found a site in a building owned by the Russian church and put up a sign advertising “a modern Hebrew barber’s shop”.  The next morning he found that his landlords had moved the sign and hung it over the stable opposite.  The story reached the press and people from all over town came to visit his shop.  Brisker spent the First World War years in Tiberias but on his return to Jerusalem he established a luxurious salon in Zion Square that became an unofficial club and debating chamber for the intelligentsia of Jerusalem.  The poet Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote that Jerusalem had “two distinguished public institutions: a national library and a national barber’s shop”.

Brisker was one of the first to buy a plot in the new neighbourhood of “Janziriyeh” (Arabic for “iron chain”) – today’s Rehavia.  Rehavia was to be a “garden suburb”, planned by the architect Richard Kaufmann with more green space than building.  Brisker didn’t have sufficient funds to build the house he wanted.  He raised half the cost by taking loans but the rest he found in a very unusual way.


Members of Gdud Ha'avodah
take a rest from building Rehavia

Gdud Ha'avodah building Eliezer
ben Yehudah's house, Talpiot 1921

The Gdud Ha’avodah was a group of young Zionist socialists formed in 1920.  They built roads, drained swamps, built settlements and worked on farms.  Gdud Ha'avodah suffered major ideological splits and was disbanded in 1929.  Members of the group established several kibbutzim including Ramat Rachel just south of Jerusalem.   Ironically in 1923 a group from the socialist Gdud Ha’avodah was helping to build the upscale neighbourhood of Rehavia.  They had a tent camp where the Yeshurun Synagogue and Beit Avi Hai stand today.   Brisker approached them and offered them haircuts in exchange for building work.  They agreed the deal and he and his family moved into their new home in 1924.  Brisker was still paying off his debt to them with haircuts for a while after the building was finished.  People said in jest that his house hung by a thread of hair!