Gabriel Barkai on Israeli television

GABRIEL BARKAI will be filmed on Israeli television today:

TNL Finale to Feature Renowned Jerusalem Archaeologist

by Derek Cling (Arutz Sheva)

Ari Abramovitz and Jeremy Gimpel's Tuesday Night Live in Jerusalem, the popular live Israeli English language television show, will be filming its season finale on May 25, 2010 /13 Sivan, 5770.

World-renowned archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkai will be the featured speaker. Dr. Barkai established the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation, dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from the Temple Mount. Among his discoveries are several ancient silver plaques containing the priestly benediction (birkat kohanim).

[...]

For the Temple Mount sifting project go here and for the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets go here and for both follow the links.

A manuscript exhibition at the Jewish Museum London

A MANUSCRIPT EXHIBITION at the Jewish Museum London:

Rare manuscripts at Jewish Museum chart centuries of interfaith dialogue

Posted: Monday, May 24, 2010 10:12 pm (Independent Catholic News)

The Jewish Museum London is launching its first major temporary exhibition since its reopening in March with an exhibition of Hebrew treasures from the Vatican and major British collections.

The exhibition will bring together a collection of 27 rare manuscripts, many exquisitely illuminated, including three from the Vatican Library, eight from the British Library, three from Lambeth Palace Library and eleven from the Bodleian Library which reveal a story of cultural exchange, practical cooperation and religious tolerance between Jews and non-Jews in the Muslim and Christian worlds during the Middle Ages and beyond.

[...]

The manuscripts and printed books in this exhibition date from the 9th to the 17th century and many are beautifully illuminated and decorated. The Jews who commissioned manuscripts frequently turned to highly skilled Christian artists for the illustration of the text, and the decorative styles of the works exhibited reflect local cultures and design, whether in the Moorish style of medieval Spain, the Italianate style, or the Gothic style of Northern Europe. The works attest to a shared culture and display coexistence and social interaction between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours, as well as enhancing our understanding of the intellectual exchange and transmission of knowledge between Jews, Muslims and Christians.

[...]

From the early end of that spectrum:

- A 9th century midrash (commentary) on the book of Leviticus, thought to be the earliest Hebrew document in codex (book) form (also from the Vatican Library)

Iraqi Jewish archive being returned to Iraq

THE IRAQI JEWISH ARCHIVE is being returned to Iraq. Dorothy Lobel King is not happy. No word on a timetable.

For my part, as always, I regard these artifacts first and foremost as part of the heritage of humanity and my main concern is that they be preserved under the best possible conditions. I have no objections to their being returned to Iraq, although given that nearly all Jews have left Iraq, often under the most horrible duress, the case for return there does not strike me as compelling. I would be just as happy with Dorothy's suggestion that they go to Israel. But the chief point is that these documents should go or remain where they can best be cared for so that future generations have them too. Does Iraq have the very specialized facilities necessary to deal with texts that have been severely water (and mold) damaged and then frozen and freeze-dried? If they do, how high a priority would the conservation be? Iraq's recent record on caring for Jewish antiquities has been encouraging, if somewhat ambiguous, and the message does seem to be getting across that the world is watching and holding them to the highest standards. We can only hope for the best.

For background on the Iraqi Jewish archive go here (where I see I've already made the same point more briefly) and follow the links all the way back to 2003.

Hermann Gunkel's birthday

HERMANN GUNKEL'S BIRTHDAY was yesterday (d.o.b. 23 May 1862) and Tyler Williams is celebrating with A Form-Critical Classification of the Psalms according to Hermann Gunkel.

Philologos on Pentecost

PHILOLOGOS discusses Pentecost (the Christian festival introduced in Acts chapter 2) in The Forward and discovers an ancient midrash that illuminates the story:

Shavuot is associated in Jewish tradition with the giving of the Torah, and, as I once observed long ago in this column, the New Testament’s story of the “holy spirit” — the ru’aḥ ha-kodesh, as it is called in Hebrew — coming to rest on Jesus’ followers on Pentecost, is an account of a second revelation, paralleling the first at Mount Sinai. Yet even while pointing this out, I failed to notice that the parallel is far closer than just that.

The midrash, parts of which were already in oral circulation in the time of Jesus, has many interpretive stories about what happened at Mount Sinai and about the “thunderings and lightnings,” the kolot u’vrakim, that the Bible tells us were heard and seen by the Israelites assembled at the foot of the mountain. One of these stories has to do with the fact that the biblical word for “thunderings,” kolot, also means “voices” in Hebrew. The midrash states:

And all the people perceived the thunderings.” Since there was only one voice, why ‘thunderings’ in the plural? Because God’s voice mutated into seven voices, and the seven voices into seventy languages, so that all the nations might hear it.

Similarly, we read elsewhere:

Just as a hammer that strikes a rock causes sparks to fly off in all directions, so each and every word that issued from the mouth of the Holy One Blessed Be He divided itself into seventy languages.

This is a profound commentary, one that, taken metaphorically, has sometimes been read as a statement that the Torah speaks to every individual differently and that each of us has the right to interpret it by his or her own standards. Generally, however, it has been taken more literally by rabbinic tradition to mean that although the Torah was revealed in Hebrew, it was translated aloud at Mount Sinai into all the languages of the world, believed to be 70 in number, and thus made available to the entire human race.

The parallels with the story in Acts 2 are obvious. Philologos suggests that the story in Acts is based on an incident of glossolalia ("speaking in tongues"), which is possible. But it's also possible that the story is entirely made up on the basis of that midrash (combined with the well-documented early Christian penchant for glossolalia - see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 14). I suppose that would make it would be a midrash on a midrash (a meta-midrash?).

Pentecost Sunday is today. More on Pentecost and the recently concluded Jewish festival of Shavuot here. It would have been helpful if Philologos had given the exact references for the rabbinic midrashim. Does anyone know what they are?

(For some reason the current issue of The Forward is not yet showing up on Google, so thanks to Joseph I. Lauer for noting it.)

UPDATE (24 May): Reader Jim Darlack e-mails to say that the first reference is Exodus Rabbah V.9 (commenting on Exodus 4:27) and the second is t. Shabb 88b.

Review of new book on the Aleppo Codex

A NEW BOOK ON THE ALEPPO CODEX is reviewed in The Forward:

Wonder of Wonders
An Ancient Book’s Tale
By Tamar Yellin
Published May 19, 2010, issue of May 28, 2010.

There is something profoundly alluring about the manuscripts of great literary works. Whether the handwritten fair copy of “Ode to a Nightingale” or a stray page of Shakespeare, Kafka’s diary or the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, we are drawn to manuscripts as talismanic objects, revealers of secrets, at once precious and terribly fragile. They bear both a human and a miraculous imprint. In a secular age, such items can bring one closer to an understanding of the term “holy.”

How much more so when the work in question is a holy book. The idea of discovering the original manuscript of the Bible — even supposing such a thing ever existed — is an impossible fantasy, but the aura surrounding the Aleppo Codex has something of the same power. Completed around 930 C.E., the codex was, until the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest-known handwritten copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in existence. In their succinct exposition of the book’s history, “Crown of Aleppo,” Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider also make the case for its being the most authoritative.

[...]

There's also a nice photo of one of the leaves of the codex.

More on the Aleppo Codex here.

Review of Jewish magic exhibition

THE JEWISH MAGIC EXHIBITION at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem is reviewed in The Forward:

Jews Have Been Magic for Thousands of Years

A Brief Survey From The Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem Whets the Appetite for More

By Dan Friedman
Published May 19, 2010, issue of May 28, 2010.

We all believe in magic. Despite 300 years of industrial and social revolution, as well as unparalleled explanation of the natural world through the scientific method, we still throw salt over our shoulders, put up hamsas in our homes, wear lucky shirts to job interviews and run through tested game-day rituals, whether we are playing or watching. The new exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, “Angels & Demons: Jewish Magic Through the Ages,” (open for a year from May 5) shows us how deep-rooted and complex those beliefs are.

The majority of the exhibition, which displays artifacts from North Africa, Byzantium and other locales more geographically appropriate for a museum based on the Bible lands, is of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” order of magic. Items and procedures that the rabbis might not condone, but would probably not go out of their way to condemn; spells to cure disease, charms to protect new mothers or newborn children and amulets to ward off evil or infestation were not religiously countenanced, but did little harm. In fact, the most recent amulet on display (placed next to the most ancient item, from the 8th century BCE at the exhibition’s entrance) is a text with specific instructions for use. This text, written in 1992, cured the owner who every day for a week drank water in which the parchment had been steeped and then wore it in a silver holder until the problem was resolved.

[...]

There's only one significant criticism:

In the end, the main drawback of “Angels & Demons” is its logistical limitations of space and scope. It’s a shame that such a suggestive exhibition couldn’t be spread out more. The surface of the prevalence, pattern and practice of Jewish magic and its context in the larger world of Mediterranean mythology is barely scratched by this worthy introduction. Samangalof and friends come from an entirely alternative mythical system that would surely enrich our understanding of midrashic traditions. The museum is running a series of events that allows collectors, users and current practitioners of the magical arts to shed light on this marginal but very Jewish narrative. Perhaps, with intervention from either side of the black curtain, such a show might become possible in the future!

The article also has lots of good photographs of exhibit items.

Previous reviews here. It is striking how many of the texts come from the last century or two. Magic practices have never died out and continue today in very many religious traditions.

McGill and the DSS again

MCGILL UNIVERSITY'S involvement in the purchase of the Dead Sea Scrolls is told in a Bible and Interpretation essay:

Owning the Scrolls

How a Canadian University Purchased the Biggest Cache of Qumran Cave 4 Fragments Outside Jerusalem

Essay adapted from Canada's Big Biblical Bargain: How Mcgill University Bought the Dead Sea Scrolls (McGill-Queen's University Press May 2010).

By Jaqueline S. Du Toit
Professor in the Department of Afroasiatic Studies,
Sign Language, and Language Practice,
University of the Free State,
Fellow of the McGill Centre for Research on Religion.

and

By Jason Kalman
Assistant Professor of Classical Hebrew Text and Interpretation,
Hebrew Union College and University of the Free State,
Fellow of the McGill Centre for Research on Religion.
May 2010

Former McGill and Princeton Professor Robert Balgarnie Young Scott, died on the first of November 1987. His New York Times obituary mentioned that he had “helped recover fragments of the scrolls in 1951. They had found their way into the hands of private dealers in Bethlehem and Dr. Scott bought them on behalf of McGill.”2 This summary of a complicated history was almost entirely devoid of truth. It nevertheless hinted at the heroic actions of one Canadian scholar in the quest to preserve the unity of the invaluable Cave 4 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments for posterity.

[...]

HT Carla Sulzbach. I've mentioned this story before here.

Secret Mark handwriting analysis

SECRET MARK has been subjected to handwriting analysis by a Greek expert hired by Biblical Archaeology Review. She concludes that "it is highly probable that Morton Smith could not have simulated the
document of 'Secret Mark.'"

Background here.

A pagan altar at the Ashkelon gravesite

A PAGAN ALTAR at the Ashkelon gravesite:

A Magnificent Pagan Altar was Exposed while the Israel Antiquities Authority was Overseeing Development Work at the Barzilai Hospital Compound in Ashkelon

Israel Antiquities Authority: The find further corroborates the assertion that this place is a pagan cemetery

The development work for the construction of a fortified emergency room at Barzilai Hospital, which is being conducted by a contractor carefully supervised by the Israel Antiquities Authority, has unearthed a new and impressive find: a magnificent pagan altar dating to the Roman period (first-second centuries CE) made of granite and adorned with bulls’ heads and a laurel wreaths. The altar stood in the middle of the ancient burial field.

According to Dr. Yigal Israel, Ashkelon District Archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The discovery further corroborates the assertion that we are dealing with a pagan cemetery. It is an impressive find that has survived 2,000 years. The altar is c. 60 centimeters tall and it is decorated with bulls’ heads, from which dangle laurels wreaths. There is a strap in the middle of each floral wreath and bull’s head. The laurel wreaths are decorated with grape clusters and leaves. This kind of altar is known as an “incense altar”. Such altars usually stood in Roman temples and visitors to the temple used to burn incense in them, particularly myrrh and frankincense, while praying to their idols. We can still see the burnt marks on the altar that remain from the fire. The altar was probably donated by one of the families who brought it to the cemetery from the city of Ashkelon”.

Dr. Israel adds that during the archaeological supervision of the development work burial structures were discovered, which served as family tombs, and cist tombs that were used for interring individuals. In addition a large limestone sarcophagus (stone coffin) with a decorated lid was also found. The sarcophagus stands 80 centimeters high is 60 centimeters wide and is 2 meters long. Part of the stone in the sarcophagus was left rather high in the spot where the head of the deceased was placed and resembles a kind of pillow.

Click here to download a high resolution picture of the altar.
Photographic credit: courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.


The altar can be photographed today in the field, until 19:00, where the work is being done at Barzilai Hospital. Entrance to the compound must be coordinated with Leah Malul, Barzilai Hospital Spokesperson.

For further information and to receive high resolution photographs, kindly contact: Yoli Shwartz, Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson, 972-52-5991888, dovrut@israntique.org.il

That would seem to clinch the identification of the Roman-era graves as pagan, but I would still like to know more about the Byzantine graves.

(Via Joseph I. Lauer.)

LA Times obituary for Moshe Greenberg

ANOTHER OBITUARY for Moshe Greenberg, this one in the Los Angeles Times.

A funeral procession for the Ashkelon bones

A FUNERAL PROCESSION for the bones from the Ashkelon graves:

Barzilai bones get Eda Haredit funeral

By JONAH MANDEL (Jerusalem Post)
21/05/2010 03:56

Children hold anti-Zionist signs.

Hundreds of members of the anti-Zionist Eda Haredit communal organization congregated in the capital on Thursday afternoon, to “beg the forgiveness of the holy bones” recently excavated to make way for an emergency room in Ashkelon, protest the “continued desecration of graves around Israel” and conduct a funeral procession, but not a burial ceremony, for the remains.

A simple white van with black drapes hiding its content, sent by the Ministry of Religious Services, was one of the centerpieces of the event that was held at Kikar Zupnick in the Geula neighborhood, as it contained the ancient bones that the Antiquities Authority deemed to be those of pagans and transferred to the ministry.

[...]

Unfortunately, the procession turned violent at the end.

Lattke, The Odes of Solomon

IN THE MAIL:

Michael Lattke, The Odes of Solomon: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009)

Review copy for the JSNT Booklist.

Museum of Tolerance - the latest

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE - THE LATEST:

Following Haaretz report: Arabs to resume Museum of Tolerance battle
Arab groups vow to step up opposition to construction on site of 1,000-year-old Muslim cemetery.

By Jack Khoury Tags: Israel news Museum of Tolerance

A battle against the construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the site of a Muslim cemetery will be reignited soon, according to sources in the Arab community.
Muslim graves at the site of the planned Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem

The decision to resume opposition to the project follows a Haaretz investigation into excavation at the site, located in the Mamilla area of Jerusalem, and the damage it has caused to hundreds of graves there. The museum is being built by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

[...]

Background here.

Bruce Chilton on the Gnostics

BRUCE CHILTON ON THE GNOSTICS (Bible and Interpretation):

Gnostic Breakthrough

By Bruce Chilton
Author of Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000). His most recent book, The Way of Jesus: To Repair and Renew the World (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010), has just been published.
May 2010

Gnosticism emerged as an important and influential stream of thought in the West, but its depth and diversity have been obscured by clichés. Present discussion, even while claiming to be fresh and original, often perpetuates the reduction of Gnostic insights to banal truisms of fashion. Fortunately, the wealth of text available today offers the prospect that Gnosticism might break through the prejudgments that have consigned it to marginal status.

[...]

Perhaps inevitably, scholarly interest sometimes tipped into uncritical enthusiasm. It is frequently said, for example, that scholars never had direct access to such sources before the discovery [of the Nag Hammadi Library], but only to what the Gnostics’ opponents (Irenaeus, and Clement and Tertullian above all) had to say. In fact, the Pistis Sophis [should read Pisis Sophia) (which means “Faith-Wisdom”) has been known since the eighteenth century and the Gospel of Mary since the nineteenth century.

This enthusiasm has fed the rise of neo-Gnosticism, a modern revival greatly encouraged by the discovery at Nag Hammadi. In co-opting these ancient sources, the neo-Gnostics are unlike their ancient counterparts. They want to embrace the earth, while Gnostics often shunned the earth; they don’t wish to be elitist, although many Gnostics claimed to be a class apart from humanity at large. Above all, neo-Gnostics want to insist on the gender-equality of women with men. Those are aims I happen to agree with, but you need to cherry-pick Gnostic sources and ignore a great deal of what they say to make that picture work as an account of the Nag Hammadi library.

Gnosticism has yet to be evaluated in the light of its own sources because two prejudgments have stood in the way of fair reading. One prejudgment dismisses Gnostics as heretics, in the tradition of Cyril of Alexandria. The other imagines that, because Gnostics were repressed by the Orthodox, it must be that the Gnostics themselves embraced diversity. Neither of these pictures is plausible.

[...]

Indeed. This is a good essay on a slippery subject: some scholars do not want to use the term "Gnostic" as an etic category at all. I'm surprised that in his typology of Gnosticism Chilton doesn't have an explicit discussion of the centrality of the demiurgic myth for some branches. This seems quite important to me.

NYT obituary for Moshe Greenberg

AN OBITUARY for Moshe Greenberg in the New York Times:

Moshe Greenberg, Biblical Scholar, Is Dead at 81
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: May 19, 2010

Moshe Greenberg, one of the most influential Jewish biblical scholars of the 20th century, died Saturday at his home in Jerusalem. He was 81.

[...]

Professor Greenberg brought to the field a willingness to take what is known as the historical-critical approach to Bible study, which assumes that more than one author had a hand in writing the first five and many other books of the Bible.

“Jews were studying it in a traditional pious way,” said Jeffrey H. Tigay, the Ellis professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. The new approach, he said, “undermined the Jewish dogma of the whole Torah being given to Moses at one time.”

Professor Greenberg’s idea, which he called a holistic method, Professor Tigay said, was: “Let’s build on the idea of multiple authorship, but let’s not stop with unraveling the original components. Let’s figure out why the compilers put them together the way they did.” That method was central to Professor Greenberg’s extensive commentaries on the books of Exodus and Ezekiel, which analyzed how the multiple writers had woven their ideas into unified themes.

[...]

We worked a good bit with his Anchor Bible Ezekiel commentary this semester in our Master's seminar on Temple and Presence, which covered material from the Priestly traditions all the way up to the Merkavah mystics. The book of Ezekiel was a key element in the seminar.

Tel Fahkariaya Aramaic-Akkadian biligual inscription

ARAMAIC WATCH: The Syrian site of Tel Fakhariya is profiled briefly by the Global Arab Network, with mention of the Aramaic-Akkadian bilingual inscription discovered there a little over thirty years ago:

North-eastern Syria: An ancient landmark with valuable archaeological discoveries

By H. Said/Ghossoun
Friday, 14 May 2010 15:04

Archaeological landmarks of the Middle and Neo Assyrian, Aramaic, Roman, Byzantine and the Islamic periods in Tell al-Fakhariya (North-eastern Syria) make it a alive witness to ancient civilizations which succeeded each other in the site.

[...]

Rich archaeological discoveries have been found in the site.

Director of al-Hasakah Antiquities Department Abdul Masih Baghdo said a 2-meter basalt statue of the Assyrian king Adad-it'i/ Hadd-yi'thi, king of Guzana and Sikan who ruled between the 9th century and the 8th BC was unearthed in 1979 during land leveling activities.

The bilingual inscription in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian and Aramaic carved on the statue refers to the city of Sikan and relates that the statue was erected in front of the Temple of Weather God in Guzana (now Tell Halaf), not very far from Tell al-Fakhariya.

[...]

Other interesting discoveries from the Byzantine period are mentioned as well. There are articles on the Aramaic part of the inscription by Jonas Greenfield in JSTOR (here) and by Victor Sasson in de Gruyter Reference Global (here). I can access them from my University computer, but I think they are both behind subscription walls.

The Samaritans profiled in Tablet Magazine

THE SAMARITANS are profiled in Tablet Magazine, with a dash of counterfactual history thrown in:

Good Samaritans
Israel's smallest religious minority offers Jews a glimpse of what might have been

By Benjamin Balint | 7:00 am May 18, 2010 | Print | Email / Share

What would the Jews look like had they not been exiled to the four corners of the earth, had they gone untainted—but also unenriched—by the cultures in which they tarried? Imagine Jews who retained their fierce attachment to the Torah and the faith of their fathers, but without the rabbinic response to displacement. No Talmud, no golden flourishing diasporas in Spain or Germany or America, no great movement out of the ghetto and into the Haskala, none of the upheavals of modernity, no Reform movement, no Holocaust, no Zionism, no state of their own, no Nobel laureates to kvell over, only the steady drip of obscurity, anachronism, and numerical decline. What would those Jews be like today?

The answer revealed itself to me the other day atop Mt. Gerizim overlooking the city of Shechem, otherwise known as Nablus, where the High Priest Aharon Ben-Av Hisda, 83, 132nd holder of the post since Aharon, the brother of Moses, was presiding over the Passover sacrifice. He wore a white beard, a loose green silk robe tied at the waist with a wide cloth, and a blue-striped tallit draped over his head. Rising above the jostling assembly of his entire people, which numbered fewer than 750 souls, he clutched a chest-high wooden staff, worn smooth with age, in his left hand. He stood on a small platform facing priests bedecked in white turbans and elders outfitted in red tarbooshes wrapped with a gold and white sash. As the sun set to unveil a full moon, Hisda’s chants (ancient Hebrew and Aramaic comingling in his throat) crescendoed, and with an ecstatic cry the sacrifice rites commenced.

[...]

More on the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE WATCH: Parts 2 and 3 of the Haaretz special reports have been published:

Museum of Tolerance Special Report / Part II: Secrets from the grave
Round-the-clock work, long shifts and unprecedented security characterized the five-month excavation of the cemetery on the museum site, where sources say more than 1,000 skeletons were unearthed.

By Nir Hasson Tags: Israel news Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance

The earthworks

The first one to excavate the site and come upon human remains was archaeologist Gideon Sulimani. Sulimani, a senior archaeologist with the Antiquities Authority, would come to play a key role in the affair. In December 2005 he began a “rescue excavation” financed, as mandated by Israeli law, by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, intended to remove antiquities, or in this case, human bones, before the area was cleared for construction.

The act of excavation thrills Sulimani, from a scientific point of view. A serious excavation, says Sulimani, could open a window into the lives of Jerusalem’s Muslim residents over the past millennium. In this case, however, he says that there was pressure on him to hurry up and remove the graves without adhering carefully to professional standards.
“They constantly wanted to lengthen the work days and I was always fighting to shorten them. They told me: Switch teams, work in shifts. But I can’t bring someone into someone else’s excavation. That’s something that is not done,” he says.

The pressures Sulimani faced during the excavation were also typical, apparently, of the next part of the works. After the High Court ultimately rejected the Islamic Movement’s petition, in October 2008, and thus permitted work at the site to continue, the digging was resumed with greater urgency. Testimony obtained by Haaretz indicates that the guiding principle of the work was not a careful and scientific archaeological excavation, one that was respectful of the remains found at the site, but rather an excavation that proceeded as quickly as possible so as to leave the whole skeleton affair behind, so that full attention could be turned to building the Museum of Tolerance.

[...]

Museum of Tolerance Special Report / Part III:Unearthing a legal morass
The High Court approved continued digging at the site based on a disputed report submitted by the Antiquities Authority, which ignored warnings of a senior archaeologist that a ‘rescue’ excavation carried out there had been unsatisfactory.

By Nir Hasson

Excerpt:

Dueling reports

The most important − and contentious − document submitted to the High Court was the opinion drawn up by the Israel Antiquities Authority concerning the condition of the site.
This document raises many questions about the the IAA’s conduct in the affair. After archaeologist Gideon Sulimani left the first stage of excavations, in 2005, he wrote a report in which he noted that the work at the site was far from complete. “The excavation was not completed in most of the excavation area, other than in parts of areas A1 and A2, and the area cannot be reconstructed without the completion of the excavations,” Sulimani wrote in the conclusion to his report, adding: “All told, about 250 remains of bodies were dug up from approximately 200 graves .... Another 200 graves were uncovered which were not excavated. Based on our understanding of the layers of burial, our assessment is that there are all told almost 1,000 graves in the area of the project.”

Instead of Sulimani’s report, the IAA submitted a “supplementary notice” that diverges greatly from the report, to put it mildly. The IAA notice played down the number of human remains at the site and of its overall archaeological importance, paving the way for the release of most of the area to the project’s developers, even though it had not been fully excavated.

The IAA − which by law can require a professional archaeological “rescue” excavation, at the developers’ expense, of a site where there are signs of antiquities − divided the area into a number of sections. The first section, according to the notice submitted to the High Court, was completely cleared; in the second section “only a few dozen graves remained,” the IAA report stated; and in the third section, known as the “purple area,” graves remained, “but the required scientific data were extracted and the area is released for construction on condition that there be no subterranean penetration.”

Sulimani maintains that the IAA submitted a false report to the court. The IAA says that the excavation was ultimately carried out in accordance with Sulimani’s original approach. According to Sulimani, many graves remained even in the areas that the IAA marked as having been completely excavated.

No one informed Sulimani about the change in the IAA’s position; he discovered it while reading the judgment on the Internet. “I was shocked to read it,” Sulimani said in a newspaper interview. “I feel that the IAA betrayed me, betrayed the profession. My feeling is that they threw out all the professional work that I and the excavators did in Mamilla.”
The Museum of Tolerance episode was only the first in a series of disputes between Sulimani and his superiors in the IAA, which ultimately led to his resignation. He is not currently working as an archaeologist.

These reports are hard to excerpt or summarize, but they are very detailed and the accusations are damning. This story is now being picked up by the rest of the media (e.g., the AP here, the Telegraph here, the Ottawa Citizen here). If the IAA wants to avoid serious damage to its reputation it needs to provide a much fuller response than the brief one published in Haaretz yesterday. This does not strike me as an issue that is likely to go away if it is ignored.

Part one, response, and additional background here and follow the links.

Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Watch

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE WATCH: Haaretz is publishing a series of reports on the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance controversy:

Museum of Tolerance Special Report / Tolerance takes it toll
Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
By Nir Hasson

Holes, Holiness and Hollywood

On the connection between the esteemed California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, run by one of America’s most famous rabbis, an enterprising Jerusalem contractor and the feverish excavation at what was then probably Israel’s most secret civilian building site.

Part I: ‘Removal of nuisances’

Sometimes a lack of sensitivity or even an innocent mistake exposes a major truth. On the Web site of Moriah, a public company for infrastructure work that belongs to the Jerusalem municipality, one can find descriptions of various projects in which the company is involved. Among them is the Museum of Tolerance: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the entrepreneur for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance in central Jerusalem, asked Moriah to carry out preparatory and infrastructure work for the project,” says the site. Immediately afterward, under the heading “Objective,” it says: “Carrying out infrastructure work, removal of nuisances in the area of the project ...” What the site calls “nuisances” are in fact skeletons, bones and skulls. Hundreds of skeletons that were buried in Jerusalem’s central Muslim cemetery over a period of some 1,000 years.

A Haaretz investigation indicates that the “nuisances” were cleared away from the site swiftly and clandestinely during five grueling months of nonstop work. Testimonies of participants who worked at the site, which were recently obtained by Haaretz, indicate that the skeletons were removed as quickly as possible to enable the start of construction on the museum. “That wasn’t archaeology, it was contract work,” claimed one of the workers.

[...]

The five months of excavation are documented in a series of exclusive pictures that are published here for the first time. In one picture a worn cardboard box takes up most of the photograph. Someone drew a schematic bone on the box as in a child’s drawing and wrote “scattered items,” and afterward erased the words. Other words are also erased. The number 4316L marks the “locus” − a sequential serial number in archaeological jargon. The box is far too small to contain the bones that stick out from both sides; the cover doesn’t close and is torn. At least one bone looks as though it broke in the course of the work, according to the archaeologists, since the fracture line looks fresh and light in color.

Another photograph depicts an ancient skull that was apparently exposed to the light hundreds of years after its owner was buried in the Jerusalem soil. In the area of the crown one can see new fractures, perhaps from an imprecise blow from a hoe. Above it there is still a large rock, and to its right a cardboard box. In the top half of the picture one can sees it is broad daylight and young Israelis, the excavators, are engaged in their work. Anyone who so wishes can perhaps find in the hollow eyes of the skull a look of amazement at what it is seeing.

[...]

It's a long article and the position it takes is obvious. I'm not in Jerusalem and I can't comment on most of it. But I will say, in reference to the last two paragraphs quoted, that "fresh breaks" in excavations are unfortunate, and those digging try to be careful to avoid them (people will tease you and possibly scold you if your pot comes out with one), but they do happen. I'm sure with human remains even more care is taken, but two fresh breaks in an operation of this size does not strike me as evidence of unseemly haste or lack of care.

Haaretz also publishes a response to this article in defense of the project:

Museum of Tolerance Special Report / In response to the revelations

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, archaeologist Alon Shavit, the Antiquities Authority and the Moriah company respond to Haaretz investigation on the Museum of Tolerance.

By Nir Hasson

Excerpt from the section by the excavator, Archaeologist Alon Shavit:

As to the weather conditions, Shavit says there is no way to put such work on hold for three or four months. Most of the digging was done under tents, and on very rainy days that “we did have to deal with a lot of mud.”

He adds that on those sections which were not declared to be part of the “purple area,” where no excavation permit was needed, he and his staff sought to unearth the skeletons in the most controlled way and with the best documentation. He believes the security measures at the site did not undermine the transparency of the project.

“The findings were presented to the scientific community throughout the excavation process,” Shavit says, adding that during that process, each skeleton was placed in a separate numbered box, as is standard in archaeological excavations, and each skeleton was clearly labeled in order to identify the precise spot where it was found. However, the bones were in bad shape since the site had been neglected for many years, and because it had been reused for repeated burials, in keeping with Muslim tradition. Many of the skeletons were found in heaps. Those remains were documented as well. All the remains were reburied near where they were excavated, within the Muslim cemetery.

Background here and just keep following the links back.