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Tuesday, June 17, 2014
After a whirlwind tour of the Israel Museum, we ended DAY FOUR of our trip at the Knesset, Israel’s House of Parliament. The sky was overcast, but the weather proved doubly unusual (for Jerusalem in May) when we found ourselves standing in an unrelenting downpour while we waited in line to clear security. Before... More
Monday, June 16, 2014
Did God have a Consort? Yes.- Danny looking at a single matzevah in the Israel Museum where the second one was missing. This is the question that keeps me up at night. Not simply did God have a wife?, but if God had a concort was it Asherah? What was Asherah's place in... More
Friday, June 13, 2014
While staying at the Ramada in Jerusalem between the 23rd and the 26th of May, Pope Francis visited Jerusalem. He visited the Western Wall and Mount Herzl while in the city. His visit came with a lot of excitement, security, and controversy that I thought was not particularly complicated (silly me) until I came... More
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
The alarms went off at 3 am and we threw our last pieces into our luggage, carried them down a hill to the waiting bus and our patient bus driver, and sought out our packed breakfasts hiding somewhere in the hostel premises. Finally, all loaded on to the bus, a sizable chunk of our... More
Qumran is one of those places that should be in everyone's consciousness. I don't mean this as a zealous, overenthusiastic religious studies student, but rather, I make this comment taking into account the popular fame of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even more so because the Dead Sea Scrolls owe some of their fame to... More
I came out of Yad Vashem having a much deeper understanding of Zionism and of Israel as a Jewish State. The experience of the Yad Vashem museum began the moment we passed through the wrought iron gates which evoked barbed wire. But then the space and landscape around the building of the meusum was... More
At the very end of our first week in Israel, we went to the City of David and walked through Hezekiah's tunnel. This was an important site to visit because this is where archaeologists have theorized they have found the remains of David's City. It would have been established when King David conquered the... More
One day in our last week in Israel we visited, among other places, two ancient synagogues. It was a very interesting opportunity to consider art and iconography in Judaism, and made me reflect as well on the Mosaic Synagogue which we visited in Akko just a few days earlier. The first synagogue we visited... More
The country of Israel contains so many Holy Places for so many peoples and faiths. I am no exception. As a Bahá'í the holiest sites I can visit are located in Akko and Haifa , which is the administrative centre of my Faith. I was thrilled when I looked at the syllabus months before... More
I am more familiar with the stories of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and the beginning of the Temple Mount Sifting Project than I am the archaeological discoveries associated with those sites. Both stories are very romanticized and have political implications. I want to outline some of the most significant archaeological discoveries... More
We had the opportunity on the third day of our trip to crawl through one of the caves used during the Bar Kokhba revolt. The caves were used as the base for Bar Kokhba's guerrilla army, and eventually were their last hide-out from the Romans. From 132 to 135 C.E. the Jews in Syria-Palestina... More
Once I entered the international section of Toronto's Pearson Airport and walked over to the gate leaving for Tel Aviv, I was given a taste of Israel. There were Orthodox and haredi (strictly observant and socially conservative) jewish families talking and entertaining their children, while a group of young teenagers, who were conservatively... More
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