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Mansions of the Ancient Jerusalem Aristocracy

July 20 2016

Archaeologists working at Mount Zion have discovered what appears to be an upper-class neighborhood from the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago, located at what was then the center of the city near King Herod’s palace and the home of the high priest Caiaphas. Philippe Bohstrom writes:

One of the houses had its own cistern, a mikveh (ritual bath), a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and a chamber with three bread ovens. Inside a room found with its ceiling intact was a bathtub—an extremely rare luxury that commoners of the time could not afford. Bathtubs, as opposed to ritual dipping pools, have so far been found only at King Herod’s palaces in Masada and Jericho, and in the so-called “Priestly Mansion” in [what is now] the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. . . .

A ritual stone cup with a priestly inscription, used for purification rituals, also found there supports [some archaeologists’] theory that this area was the priestly quarter of ancient Jerusalem.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Archaeology, Herod, History & Ideas, Jerusalem

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic