Community

Blogs are all about community.  And community on the web is much broader than blogs.
This is an official invitation to “friend” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.  I’d love it if you would let me know that you are reading this blog, and add any comments/suggestions/constructive criticism.
And while we are on the subject [...]

Boycotting Israel

Z-World has an interesting post on the British UCU reviving its academic boycott of Israel.  Strangely, the UCU is claiming it is not boycotting Israel, just supporting the Palestinians.

Normal vs. Unique

David Hazony describes all of Jewish history as a struggle between normalcy and uniqueness.  He argues that this is the paradox of Israel today.  On the one hand, Israel seeks to be a “nation like any other nation,” emphasizing its cultural, intellectual and technological achievements.  On the other hand, Israel is unique as the only [...]

Who Were the Essenes?

The Essenes are often named as the sect which lived at Qumran and composed/compiled the Dead Sea Scrolls.  But who were the Essenes?  How do we know about them?  What did they believe?
Philo, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder described a sect called the Essenes—Essenoi or Essaioi in Greek. No scholarly consensus has been reached as [...]

Byron McCane Compares Himself to Indiana Jones

The new Indiana Jones movie is providing the media with an opportunity to discuss archaeology. Byron McCane of Wofford College has the floor in an article about what archaeology is really about:
“There are some similarities between what he does and what I do,” McCane said. “We both go to the desert. We both go [...]

Indiana Jones – The Most Famous Archaeologist

Neil Asher Silberman complains that Indiana Jones misrepresents archaeology. He says the movies are filled with exaggerations and inaccuracies, and that archaeologists are scientists and not adventurers in fedoras.
Even worse, the picture of the vine-swinging, revolver-toting archaeological treasure hunter is all wrong. Gone are the days when all that mattered was museum-quality treasure, and [...]

Has Zionism Made Kabbalah Obsolete?

According to Prof. Boaz Hess of Ben-Gurion University,
[Gershom] Scholem felt that the creative forces of Kabbalah had been channeled into the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah) and Zionism, and was very skeptical about the possibility of having any serious creative energy left for productive Kabbalistic expression. With the creation of the State of Israel, Kabbalah, essentially [...]

Moskowitz Prize for Zionism

The Moscowitz Prize for Zionism has been awarded to:

Rabbi David Fendel, head of the Hesder yeshiva in Sderot
Mr. Moshe ‘Moshko’ Moshkowitz, visionary and builder of Gush Etzion communities
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Ran Pecker-Ronen, founder of the ‘Tzahala’ project based on the volunteerism of former army officers at the forefront of social involvement with Israel’s youth

Read more at [...]

Yigael Yadin on the Dead Sea Scrolls

“I cannot avoid the feeling that there is something symbolic in the discovery of the scrolls and their acquisition at the moment of the creation of the State of Israel. It is as if these manuscripts had been waiting in caves for two thousand years, ever since the destruction of Israel’s independence, until the people [...]

Obama on Israel and Zionism

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic interviewed Barack Obama about his attitudes towards Israel, Zionism and the American Jewish community.  All the presidential candidates have the same basic platform on Israel, but some of Obama’s statements are interesting nonetheless.  For example:
…my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and [...]