Development Site - Changes here will not affect the live (production) site.

Hebron Remained Jewish in the Second Temple Period

Oct. 10 2017

Since 2014, archaeologists have been excavating the site of an ancient settlement, dating to the 1st century BCE and located adjacent to the modern-day city of Hebron. The discovery of two mikvehs provides proof that this was a Jewish town. Bible History Daily reports:

Mentioned about 100 times in the Hebrew Bible, biblical Hebron held . . . the burial ground of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, was a fortified city when Moses sent spies to Canaan, and served as David’s first capital in the kingdom of Judah.

According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 CE), the Zealot leader Simeon Bar-Giora captured Hebron, but the Roman army under the command of the general (and later emperor) Vespasian then retook the Judean town and burned it to the ground. . . .

The site of Tel Hebron resides 3,000 feet above sea level in the Judean hill country, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem. Excavations [have] revealed four occupational phases at Hebron during the Second Temple period, from the time of the late Hasmoneans (ca. 100–37 BCE) to the Bar-Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). Residential houses, pottery workshops, and wine and oil presses were [also] uncovered.

Read more at Bible History Daily

More about: Archaeology, Hebron, History & Ideas, Second Temple

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