What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?



The Romans Carry off the treasures of the Temple
Relief fromTitus Arch, Rome

The “Three Weeks”, a period of mourning for the loss of the Temple observed by the Jewish people, began this Monday night on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz.  During that period we recall the awful climax of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans in the year 70 CE in which the Temple and the city of Jerusalem were destroyed.  Tradition holds that on 17th of Tammuz the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans.

Amongst Jews there has always been a tension between admiration for the great achievements of the Romans and anger and resentment for the way in which they abused their power.  A story in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 33 b) illustrates this well.



Roman Bathhouse - Hypercaust

Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Jose, and Rabbi Shimon were sitting together and Yehuda, the son of proselytes, sat before them.  Rabbi Yehuda opened the conversation, saying:  "How beautiful are the works of this nation (the Romans).  They have established markets.  They have built bridges.  They have opened bathing-houses." 

Rabbi Jose said nothing, but Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: "All these things they have instituted for their own sake. Their markets are gathering-places for harlots.  They have built baths for the purpose of indulging themselves in their comforts.  They have built bridges to collect tolls from those who cross them." 

This month two discoveries in Jerusalem were announced that illustrate both the technical achievements and the brutality of the Romans.

Roman Road Beit Hanina: Assaf Peretz
Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority 

The Romans are famous for their roads.  A good transport system was vital for the military, financial and administrative maintenance of their empire.  Major roads were built to a high technical standard with inns and forts along the way.  The routes and sometimes the surfaces of major Roman roads have survived for thousands of years.  In the Beit Hanina neighbourhood of Jerusalem an archaeological excavation preceded the laying of a new drainage pipe.  The work revealed a beautifully preserved section of a major road from the Roman period linking the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem.  The surface is made of large flat stones that would have been comfortable to walk on.   It is well worn – a testament to the volume of traffic it carried. 

In Roman times, like today, there were two main routes from Jaffa to Jerusalem.  They followed a common path from the coast as far as Lod.  From there one road led through Sha’ar HaGai following today’s Route 1.  A second headed further north via Modi’in and Beit Horon along the line of our Route 443.  It is a section of this road that was discovered in Beit Hanina.  In some places a modern road had been laid only a few centimetres above the Roman road.  The Roman surface must have been visible until just a few decades ago.

In the year 70 CE the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem.  A terrible famine resulted that was made worse by the rebels who hunted for food in the homes of their fellow Jews.  The historian Josephus wrote: 

As the famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it….For, as corn was nowhere to be seen, men broke into the houses and ransacked them.  If they found any, they maltreated the occupants for saying there was none.  If they did not, they suspected them of having hidden it more carefully and tortured them. ...

Many secretly exchanged their possessions for one measure of corn - wheat if they happened to be rich, barley if they were poor.  Then they shut themselves up in the darkest corners of their houses where some through extreme hunger ate their grain as it was.  Others made bread, necessity and fear being their only guides.  Nowhere was a table laid… (Jewish War, V, 428).

The Finds: Photo Vladimir Naykhin
Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Three whole cooking pots and an oil lamp were discovered in the cistern of a house that had stood near the Western Wall in the area of Robinson’s Arch.   The residents of the house had gone down into the cistern to eat their remaining food in secret.  The archaeologist directing the excavation, Eli Shukron, said that these are the first finds that connects us directly with the famine during the siege of Jerusalem.



And finally here is a clip from the Monty Python film The Life of Brian on the same theme.  John Cleese who plays Reg tries to arouse his fellow members of the “People’s Front of Judea” to rebel against the Romans but encounters some difficulty.



Kaiser Wilhelm II, Vincent van Gogh and Herod the Great: Exhibitions of Genius and Madness

For 2,000 years it has been thought that there is a connection between genius and mental illness.  Seneca, the 1st century Roman philosopher, wrote “There is no great genius without some touch of madness”.   Does the evidence support the idea?  The jury is still out but, even if geniuses are more prone to mental illness than the rest of us, to have psychological problems is no guarantee of genius.

There are three outstanding exhibitions showing in Israel at the moment - two in Jerusalem and one in Tel Aviv.  Each focuses on an individual who was important and influential in his own way despite psychological problems and episodes of mental illness.  Two achieved greatness.  One led his country and the world to disaster.

The Kaiser is Coming!

Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1905

Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor.  Wilhelm was undoubtedly intelligent but he was also insecure, bombastic, autocratic and prone to bouts of depression and hysteria.  He was quite unfit to be a ruler.  In 1898 he visited Jerusalem.  His aim was to cement relationships between the German and Ottoman empires. 
 
The Turks were as determined to honour their imperial guest as he was to strengthen his relationship with them.  He was welcomed with great pomp and ceremony.  Three great decorated arches were set up along his route to the Old City.  The section of the city wall between the Jaffa Gate and the Citadel was torn down and the moat filled in to allow his entourage, complete with horses and carriages, to pass through.  Beggars and stray dogs were banished from the city lest they give a bad impression. 

Wilhelm's Entourage by the Sultan's Arch

Wilhelm saw himself as the patron of the Protestant church and wanted to leave a religious and architectural legacy of his visit to the Holy City.  During his visit he dedicated the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City, acquired the land for the Augusta Victoria Hospice on the Mount of Olives and, in a gesture to German Catholics, laid the cornerstone of the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion. 



Wilhelm's Tent Camp Jerusalem

On November 2nd Wilhelm formally received Theodore Herzl in the elaborate tent camp that had been set up for him in Jerusalem.  Herzl had timed his visit to coincide with that of the Kaiser and hoped to enlist his support for the Zionist cause.  The brief encounter left Herzl deeply disappointed.

Wilhelm’s erratic and reckless foreign policy led to the carnage of the First World War and the downfall of his empire.  He died in exile in the Netherlands in 1941.

There was huge press interest in the Kaiser's visit.  An exhibition in Jerusalem's Tower of David cleverly combines 21st century technology and contemporary reports and photographs to bring this encounter between European and Levantine empires to life and to explore its impact on the city.

“The Kaiser is Coming!” is at the Tower of David in Jerusalem until April 6th 2013.
 

Van Gogh Alive

Van Gogh - The Potato Eaters

In his own lifetime Vincent van Gogh’s work was not fully appreciated.  Today however he is considered one of the greatest artists in history.  He was born in the Netherlands in 1853 into a family in which art and religion were formative influences.  He began to draw as a child but worked as an art dealer, as a missionary in a poor coal mining district in Belgium and, briefly, as a teacher in London before applying himself more seriously to his art from 1885.  That year he produced his first major work The Potato Eaters.  It reflected the poverty of peasant life and was executed in dark, sombre colours.  His work changed radically when he moved to Paris in 1886.  Here he became interested in Japanese wood block prints and was exposed to the work of the Impressionists and the company of Post-Impressionist artists, notably Toulouse Lautrec, Seurat and Paul Gauguin whom he befriended.  He experimented with their brush techniques and adopted a palette of brighter, primary colours.

Van Gogh - Self Portrait With Straw Hat

In 1888 van Gogh moved to Arles in the south of France.  For a time he worked there together with Gauguin but their relationship became increasingly tense.  Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor blade, but fled and used the razor to cut off his own earlobe.  He descended into delusions and hallucinations and was admitted to an asylum in nearby Saint-Remy where he remained for a year.  In May 1890 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris.  On 27th July 1890, at the age of 37 he shot himself with a revolver and died the next day as a result of his wounds.

Van Gogh left a vast artistic legacy.  He worked quickly producing over 2,000 works of art in ten years and averaging a painting a day during his last two months.  He used bold, dramatic brush strokes that gave a sense of movement and emotion and often applied paint directly from the tube.  Uniquely he used colour to express mood rather than realistically.

Van Gogh Alive is not a regular art exhibition.  It is a dramatic multi-sensory experience.  Large scale projections of over 2,000 of van Gogh’s works are synchronised with classical music.  It takes you on a spellbinding journey through his life, his work, his thoughts and his state of mind.

“Van Gogh Alive” is at the Maxidome, Israeli Trade Fairs and Conventions Centre, Tel Aviv until April 30th 2013

Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey

Herod the Great

Herod the Great was King of Judea from 37 – 4 BCE.  He was one of the most ambitious builders of the classical world combining the most modern building techniques with a determination to defy nature.  In Jericho he diverted a river through the middle of his winter palace.  At Masada, in the middle of a desert with scarcely any water, he built a swimming pool.  In Caesarea Maritima he used hydraulic cement that hardened underwater to create a port where no natural harbour existed.  In Jerusalem he rebuilt the Temple of which the rabbis of the Talmud wrote "Whoever has not seen Herod's Temple has not seen a beautiful building in his life". 

Model of Herod's Temple Israel Museum

Herod was far more than a builder.  He was a skilful and effective ruler - the most successful client king of the Roman Empire.  He was also a difficult and dangerous man, famously paranoid.  Descended on his father’s side from Idumean converts to Judaism and on his mother’s side from Nabatean Arabs he married Mariamne, a princess of the royal Hasmonean line, to strengthen the legitimacy of his kingship.  She and two of Herod’s sons were put to death for Herod suspected even his closest family of plotting against him.  Caesar Augustus commented that it was “better to be Herod’s pig than his son”. 

Josephus the Jewish historian of the Great Revolt describes in graphic detail Herod’s death in Jericho and the procession that accompanied him to his last resting place in Herodium. 

 “There was a solid gold bier, adorned with precious stones and draped with the richest purple.  On it lay the body wrapped in crimson, with a diadem resting on the head and above that a golden crown, and the sceptre by the right hand.  The bier was escorted by Herod's sons and the whole body of his kinsmen, followed by his Spearmen, the Thracian Company, and his Germans and Gauls, all in full battle order.  The rest of his army led the way, fully armed and in perfect order, headed by their commanders and all the officers, and followed by five hundred of the house slaves and freed-men carrying spices.  The body was borne twenty-four miles to Herodium, where by the late king’s command it was buried.” Josephus, Wars, I, 33, 9.

Herodium from above

For over 40 years Ehud Netzer, architect and archaeologist, excavated sites that had been built 2,000 years before by Herod.  Herod’s tomb however remained elusive.  It wasn’t until April 2007 that Netzer and his team discovered the remains of a magnificent mausoleum and three sarcophagi on the slope of the hilltop palace fortress of Herodium facing Jerusalem.  Together with staff from the Israel Museum Netzer began to plan an exhibition of these recent discoveries.  Sadly whilst working on this plan at Herodium in October 2010 he fell to his death.

This world class exhibition represents Herod’s final journey from Jericho where he died, through the Judean Desert to Herodium where he was laid to rest.  The richly decorated throne room of Herod’s Winter Palace in Jericho and the royal box of his theatre at Herodium have been reconstructed together with his sarcophagus and elaborate mausoleum.  These and many other original artefacts are on display for the first time. 

“Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey” is at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem until October 5th 2013

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.

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.