A Sword Sight

We've been informed that a sword in a scabbard that belonged to a Roman soldier and an engraving of the Temple’s menorah on a stone object were discovered during work the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted in the 2,000 year old drainage channel between the City of David and the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden

The channel served as a hiding refuge for the residents of Jerusalem from the Romans during the destruction of the Second Temple.

According to the excavation directors Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, “It seems that the sword belonged to an infantryman of the Roman garrison stationed in Israel at the outbreak of the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66 CE. The sword’s fine state of preservation is surprising: not only its length (c. 60 cm), but also the preservation of the leather scabbard (a material that generally disintegrates quickly over time) and some of its decoration”.

A stone object adorned with a rare engraving of a menorah was found in the soil beneath the street, on the side of the drainage channel. According to Shukron and Professor Reich, “Interestingly, even though we are dealing with a depiction of the seven-branched candelabrum, only five branches appear here. The portrayal of the menorah’s base is extremely important because it clarifies what the base of the original menorah looked like, which was apparently tripod shaped”.

The fact that the stone object was found at the closest proximity to the Temple Mount to date is also important. The researchers suppose a passerby who saw the menorah with his own eyes and was amazed by its beauty incised his impressions on a stone and afterwards tossed his scrawling to the side of the road, without imagining that his creation would be found 2,000 years later.

All on the eve of the fast of Tisha B'Av,  the national day of mourning for the destroyed First and Second Temples and the Fortress of Betar.

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Cute Word Play

The 15th of Av is a minor festival day, called Tu B'Av in Hebrew.

Contemporary Israel has made it into the Festival of Love or a Valentine's Day.

Spotted this sign reading "Two B'Av", a neat exploitation of English and Hebrew:

and here's a poster advertising fish, to your door, which is another symbol of the Hebrew calendar for during the first 9 days of Av, until after the Tisha B'Av fast, the custom is not to eat meat or drink wine as a sign of mourning for the destroyed Temples:

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Tisha B'Av in the Machkama

As I did last year and three years ago, I participated in the "Rav Goren Minyan" for the Mincha service on the Tisha B'Av fast located in a building which abuts above the Temple Mount compound.

The pictures:

a) at the window overlooking the Temple Mount compound below:

(Photo Credit: R. Sadan)

b) inside the small synagogue:

(Photo Credit: R. Sadan)

c) reading from the Torah:

(Photo credit: Y. Medad)

d) the raising up of the Torah scroll:

(Photo Credit: Y. Medad)

e) the view from another section of the building looking down to the Western Wall Plaza:

(Photo credit: Y. Medad)

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And on the Temple Mount:

Under armed police escort, Danny Danon, a deputy parliament speaker, toured the site of an ancient Jewish temple, a plaza home to the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, and said he thought Jews should be permitted freer access there.



A group of Muslim protesters shouted "Allahu Akhbar", or God is Greatest, as Danon, trailed by armed police and dozens of Israeli and Western tourists, strolled around the area known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

But despite the tense atmosphere there was no violence or confrontations during the lawmaker's hour-long visit.

Danon told reporters at the nearby Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, before climbing up to the Temple Mount, that his visit was to mark Tisha B'Av, a day of fasting marking the day the Roman-era Jewish temple was destroyed.

..."There is full religious freedom for Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount," Danon said. "But it is more difficult for the Jew than the Muslim to go and pray on the Temple Mount. This is a distortion that must be corrected."

"If Jews want to go and pray on the Temple Mount then they should be allowed to do it," he added.

See, too, this

and this:-

Poll: 74% follow Tisha B'Av tradition

Ynet-Gesher poll reveals some 22% of Israelis will fast on commemoration of destruction of First and Second Temples; another 52% will honor day by not going out with friends

Tisha B'Av 5769 - 2009

Here is something you cannot hear anywhere else.

As the Talmud instructs (or here, the talk on October 4, 2008 source notes):

Ta’anit 16b

Amen’ is not made use of in the Temple.6 And whence can it be adduced that the response, Amen, was not made use of in the Temple? — For it is said, Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting; and let them say: Blessed be Thy glorious Name, that is exalted above all blessing and praise...What them was said in the Temple? Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed art Thou who redeems Israel; and the congregation respond, Blessed be the name of his glorious kingdom for ever and ever

Today, I participated in the Mincha (Afternoon) service at the Rav Goren Synagogue as I did two years ago.

In accordance with the above instruction as to the text to be uttered, this video will provide you with the audio for that text as the synagogue is located inside the space of the Temple Mount:

And here are some snapshots of the day's activities:


On Rechov Haguy Street, opposite the memorial plaque commemorating the murder by stabbing of Elchanan Atali, there's an alleyway:

and that alleyway has a sign, in Hebrew, pointing to the "Little Wall"


and there, just before you would enter the Temple Mount, you turn left and walk into a courtyard (here's how it looks coming back out):
and you will come upon a section of the Western Wall north of the Western Wall Plaza:




Afterwards, I continued to the Rav Goren Synagogue.

Here, the Sefer Torah is being held aloft at the end of the reading:

another view of the congregation:


a view through the reinforced windows of the Dome of the Rock:


The sign warning that you are about to cross over the Western Wall towards the east and will be entering the Temple Mount sanctity (the synagogue: is actually on the second floor of a building that abuts into the compound over columns along the Western Wall):

My New LA Times Op-ed - And Please Vote There

In the Los Angeles Times:

Opinion
The 9th of Av's new tears

President Obama's policies toward Israel add fresh pain to a day of lament.

By Yisrael Medad

July 30, 2009

An apocryphal story is told of Napoleon Bonaparte entering a darkened synagogue and observing weeping Jews, sitting on low stools. Asking what misfortune had occurred to cause such behavior, he was informed that it was the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av.

On that day, as Napoleon learned, Jews commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the fall of the Fortress of Betar. The day, marked with a 25-hour fast and a public reading of the book of Lamentations, signifies not only the loss of Judaism's singular holy site but the end of independent political sovereignty and the eventual expulsion, a second time, into exile.

On hearing that story, Napoleon exclaimed: "A people that cries these past 2,000 years for their land and temple will surely be rewarded."

Today, the 9th of Av, there are many new threats to Jerusalem, including the recent diplomatic dissing of Israel by the U.S. Fortunately, the words of President Obama and other U.S. officials have served to reinforce a consensus among Israelis that Jerusalem must remain exclusively under Israeli control and that even communities of Jews living outside the former Green Line, the armistice line drawn after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, must remain a part of Israel.

A liberal Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress, recently conducted a panel discussion based on the premise that the Old City of Jerusalem is the main impediment to solving the Israeli-Arab conflict. The group's plan recommends that Israel and a future state of Palestine appoint a third-party administrator that would run and police the city. An audience member who asked why the status quo could not be retained was informed by a panelist that that "would be too intangible."

We have to hope Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton knows better than to upset the status quo. As longtime diplomat Dennis Ross informed us in his book, "The Missing Peace," the only new idea Yasser Arafat raised at Camp David in 2000 was that the temple didn't exist in Jerusalem, claiming it had been located in Nablus. Her husband, then-President Clinton, was astonished at this. Instead of "Holocaust denial" we were given "temple denial."

U.S. policy toward Jerusalem has long tended toward the "denial" side of the equation. If an American living in Jerusalem gives birth to a child in either West Jerusalem or post-1967 East Jerusalem, for example, her progeny is not recognized by the U.S. as being born in Israel. The birth certificate and passport will list only a city name -- Jerusalem -- as the place of birth.

This rule follows the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual, which notes: "For a person born in Jerusalem, write JERUSALEM as the place of birth in the passport. Do not write Israel, Jordan or West Bank ..." The "logic" for this is that Israel is considered by the United States to be "occupying" territories -- including Jerusalem -- whose final status must be negotiated.

As State Department spokesman Ian Kelly admitted on June 22, before being reined in, the recent Obama administration fixation on a "settlement freeze" also targets neighborhoods in East Jerusalem whose Jewish population's "natural growth" is to be halted.

And there is more State Department trickery. Births of children of American citizens in any of the Arab towns or Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem and beyond the Green Line will have their birthplace noted, as per the above-mentioned regulations, as the "West Bank." Is the "West Bank" a state? Is the State Department engaged in creating new states?

This is an illogical and quite unreasonable bureaucratic situation. On the one hand, the State Department has fashioned a new "state" while, on the other, it is ignoring Israel's status in its own capital.

The "West Bank" never existed as a geopolitical entity until April 1950, when Jordan annexed the area. That annexation, incidentally, was considered by all the world -- except for Britain -- as an illegal occupation. Yet the U.S. has established the "West Bank," with the stroke of a pen, as if it were a state entity.

If the U.S. insists on using boundaries dating to 1948, shouldn't it also use the place names in use at that time? "Judea" and "Samaria" were both names written into the U.N. partition resolution. A baby born to U.S. citizens in Shiloh, for example, should therefore be registered as having been born in "Shiloh, Samaria."

Today is a day of lament for a long-ago event seared into the collective memory of Jews the world over. But the contemporary pressures the Obama administration has brought on Israel have created another lamentable situation between the two nations. This year, the ancient fast days will also provide an outlet for contemporary frustration over issues of sovereignty, political independence and security.

The newspaper has also set up a vote on the question:

Should "Country of Birth" for American babies born in Jerusalem be "Israel"?

Can I request that you vote?



UPDATE

In a Wahsington Post editorial, "Tough On Israel", that criticizes Obama on his approach to Israel, confirming the thrust of my op-ed, I found this:

Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu.

I would dispute that. In the past 42 years, the Israeli public has consistently voted in an overwhelming fashion for parties supporting the basic policies of retaining Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Even various polls hover around the 50% mark and, depending on the phrasing of the questions, actually supports Yesha positions. Check my blog for examples.

Reciting "Lamentations" on Tisha B'Av

This evening at Ramat Shmuel Synagogue, Shiloh

For Tisha B'Av

If we were really serious about our desire for the rebuilt Temple and the imminent coming of Mashiach, why do we keep our Kinnot books from year to year and not throw them away?

Mordechai of Lechovitz

More sayings.