Archeologists find ancient quarry and stone vessel factory

Reineh excavations in the Galilee unearth thousands of chalkstone cores and other types of production waste, including fragments of mugs and bowls.

New light has been shed on this question with the discovery of a 2,000-year-old stone vessel quarry and production center at Reineh near the city of Nazareth in the Lower Galilee. The ancient site was uncovered during the course of construction work at a new municipal sports center in Reineh.

“According to ancient Jewish ritual law, vessels made of pottery are easily made impure and must be broken,” explained Prof. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University and director of the excavations conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

“Stone, on the other hand, was thought to be a material which can never become ritually impure, and as a result ancient Jews began to produce some of their everyday tableware from stone.”

Indeed, the jars filled with water which the Gospels say Jesus turned into wine were made of chalkstone. And the wedding at Cana narrative in the Gospel of John (John 2:6) relates, “Now there were six stone water jars set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each.”

The Reineh excavations unearthed a small cave in which archaeologists have found thousands of chalkstone cores and other types of production waste, including fragments of stone handled mugs and bowls in various stages of production.

This is the fourth chalkstone workshop of its kind discovered in ancient Israel; two are in the Galilee and two in the Jerusalem area.

Although chalkstone vessels have been found at many archaeological sites in Israel, including Kfar Kana, Sepphoris (Tzipori) and Nazareth, “it is extremely unusual to uncover a site where such vessels were actually produced,” Adler said. “Our excavations are highlighting the pivotal role of ritual purity observance not only in Jerusalem but in far-off Galilee as well.”

Archeologists find ancient quarry and stone vessel factory

Secret Blueprint Leads Archeologists To Ancient Ritual Baths Of Vilnius Synagogue

A newly discovered blueprint of the destroyed great synagogue in Vilnius led a team of archaeologists to unearth the remains of two ritual baths that were used by congregants of one of Europe’s largest and most prominent Jewish communities before its annihilation. The synagogue, which was at the heart of the large Jewish

A team of Israeli, American and Lithuanian archaeologists have uncovered the heart of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, which was razed by the Nazis 70 years ago. The discovery of the ritual baths, considered a vital part of an active Jewish community, is the most exciting find in this second year of excavations at the site.

The Great Synagogue is actually a large compound that was considered the beating heart of Lithuanian Jewry for some 300 years. It contained the renowned Strashun Library, 12 synagogues, Jewish schools, ritual baths, the local Jewish community council building, and even kosher food places. When Nazi soldiers occupied the city in June 1941, these Jewish buildings were burned to the ground.

Vilnius, a community of some 70,000 when World War II broke out, supported over 100 synagogues and half a dozen Jewish dailies and was known as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” Under Nazi occupation, 95 percent of Lithuanian Jewry was murdered in the Holocaust and Soviet rule drove out many who survived. In the 1950s, the synagogue compound was turned into a basketball court and kindergarten.

After the Nazis destroyed the compound, three pieces from the Great Synagogue of Vilna survived: a bas-relief with the Ten Commandments, a door from an Ark where Torah scrolls were kept, and a table upon which the scroll was read. All other traces of the compound virtually disappeared.

In 2015, a team of archaeologists led by Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dr. Jon Seligman and Prof. Richard Freund, director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, conducted a ground-penetrating radar survey and found promising indications of where the underground ruins of the buildings still stood.

In 2016, the excavations uncovered the underground rooms and this summer, the bathhouse and ritual baths continued to be excavated.

“The mikveh was used for the ritual use of all the Jews who went to this synagogue here in the city,” said Seligman, sitting on a concrete lip above a yellow tiled floor in an IAA video taken at the dig site.

“This is the classic form of a mikveh, of a modern mikveh, with the tiling and the concrete steps. The Great Synagogue was not only a community center, it was also a religious center and a place where everyone had to go, multiple times during the day,” said Freund.

“But the mikveh was a place where people performed a ritual which was unique to the Jews. It was for some people a monthly, for some people a weekly, and for some people a daily ritual, that they would come to the mikveh to purify themselves in order to pray,” said Freund.

The archaeologists have also discovered the “treasury,” where natural water was stored for kosher use in the ritual bath.

The discovery of the ritual baths, said the scholars, gives another dimension to the reconstruction of the daily life of a slaughtered Jewish community.

Secret Blueprint Leads Archeologists To Ancient Ritual Baths Of Vilnius Synagogue

90,000 Hebrew Manuscripts Available Online for First Time in History

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, was a visionary who not only played a crucial part in the creation of the Jewish state but also understood the importance of preserving Hebrew manuscripts. Declaring, “It is our first duty to save Hebrew literature,” he sent experts across the world to find and reproduce with permission Hebrew manuscripts that could not be physically brought to the Holy Land.  

It is estimated that Ben-Gurion’s mission collected 90 percent of the world’s Hebrew manuscripts, either in their original forms or on microfilm. These records have been held at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem since the 1950’s.

On August 6, at the opening of the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion’s vision was launched into the modern era by way of a new website digitizing millions of images from dozens of collections for online use. The website, called Ktiv: The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts, has preserved for posterity some 90,000 Hebrew manuscripts and images from 40 countries dating back to the Middle Ages until today.

“This is an important project for scholars and laypeople alike as so many manuscripts have been destroyed over the ages, often through anti-Semitism or natural disasters,”  commented Roni Segal, academic adviser for The Israel Institute of Biblical Studies, a company which offers language courses online, to Breaking Israel News. “Both Biblical and modern writings are now centrally preserved for all to study.”

Accessible through innovative search and discovery tools, savvy researchers who love Hebrew, history and the Bible may now see online the Babylonian Talmud from the 14th century, and a manuscript written by Rabbi Joseph Caro, the author of the famous Jewish law book, the Shulhan Arukh, in his own hand. Additionally, one may view important previously unpublished Kabbalist documents relating to Jewish mysticism and Hebrew poetry dating back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Other manuscripts of interest are the Leningrad Codex, significant Judeo-Persian handwritten writings such as from Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law) dating back to Persia 1549-50, the Aleppo Codex, documents from the 13th century detailing struggles within the Yemenite Jewish community, commercial and family records chronicling Jewish life in Afghanistan in the 11th century and discourses in philosophy, astronomy, science, medicine and the Jewish calendar.

Also included are the First Gaster Bible, dating back to the 9th-10th century and containing fragments from Psalms, and the Second Gaster Bible which dates back to the 11th-12th century and includes sections from the Pentateuch. Both are decorated with Islamic style motifs. There is also an Italian decorated daily prayer book dating back to the 15th century.

Ktiv is a joint venture of Albert D. and Nancy Friedberg through the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society, The National Library of Israel (NLI) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage’s Landmarks project. The Vatican, the British Library, and the national libraries of Austria, Germany, France, Russia, as well as dozens of other important institutions, are also participating, making the site is one of the largest digital collections of manuscripts in existence.

“Over the course of thousands of years, the Jewish people used the written word to express their religious beliefs and their scientific knowledge,” Chairman of The National Library of Israel David Blumberg said. “They meticulously copied Torah scrolls, books of religious laws and customs, and essays on different topics related to religion and science.

“Hebrew manuscripts, reflecting the knowledge and culture of the Jewish people, traversed countries and continents before finding refuge in large libraries and the vaults of private collections. Today, these manuscripts present a rich resource for learning about the spiritual and material cultures of Jewish communities across the globe and we are now enabling free access to all Hebrew manuscripts from any computer or mobile device.”

Though every manuscript is written in Hebrew letters, there is a wide range of Jewish languages represented, including Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Greek. The collection only consists of hand-written texts.

“Not only will this library preserve ancient and modern Hebrew, but, as many of the manuscripts are richly illustrated, it will serve those interested in Jewish art,” noted Segal. “For example, documented is the Sephardi Golden Haggadah from 1320 AD which includes stunning images from Genesis, the Exodus story and Jewish rituals.”

To learn more about Biblical and modern Hebrew, please visit here.

source

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com

90,000 Hebrew Manuscripts Available Online for First Time in History