Antiquitopia

As others have also posted, there is an article in the Jerusalem Post about ancient Israelite wine here .  It is a nice companion to last year's discussion of ancient Israelite beer here .

I have to say, I have never even thought of that question before Rebecca Lesses brought attention to this political ad by the Israeli Green Leaf Party whose primary platform is the legalization of marijuana. They are trying to garner support for this platform through Holocaust survivors: Weird!

Today in the Chronicle : July 29, 2008 Israeli Universities Step Up Criticism of Military Policy on Palestinian Students In a scathing letter to Israel’s defen se minister, the leaders of six Israeli universities have denounced a military policy that prevents Palestinians from studying in Israel as a gross violation of academic freedom, the human-rights group Gisha reported. The policy, which Gisha has challenged in petitions to Israel’s Supreme Court over the past two years, bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from entering Israel without permission from the army. The letter was signed by rectors and deans of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Meanwhile, five Israeli professors have requested that the Supreme Court allow them to join Gisha’s latest petition, the organization said. One of the pr...

The New York Times is running an article on the "Revelation of Gabriel," a Dead Sea find that is a rare example of ink on stone. The controversy is that it supposedly speaks of a Messiah who will die and rise after three days (and not Jesus). Jim Davila at Paleojudaica also has a series of posts on this document--see here . By ETHAN BRONNER Published: July 6, 2008 JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time. The tablet, probably found near t...

Although I typically do not consider myself particularly political, I have noticed that a good number of my postings tend to be about politics, particularly politics and religion. I have posted a few times on Evangelical voters, Catholic voters, and the different candidates, partly because they seem to be getting the most press. But NYT has an article today on Muslim voters and Barack Obama, particularly Obama's apparent distancing himself from Islam and Muslim voters. According to the article, many Muslim voters were originally enthusiastic about Obama as a candidate. And when Keith Ellison, the country's first Muslim congressman, volunteered to help out in Iowa last year, particularly to speak at a Mosque in Cedar Rapids, which has a sizable and older Muslim population, Obama's aides asked him not to do so because it might stir up controversy, quoting, "We have a tightly wrapped message," suggesting that a Muslim politician speaking at a mosque on Obama's...

Today, I sat out on Columbia's quad and watched as the speeches by Lee Bollinger and then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were piped outside onto a megatron screen. The invitation to have the president of Iran speak as part of Columbia's World Leaders Forum, was and remains a highly controversial topic upon which everyone seems to disagree. I think that most (but as I found out today, not all) strongly oppose much of what Ahmadinejad has said and done, but the debate of whether or not Bollinger should have invited A. as a part of this larger forum revolves around the issue of free speech or to what degree we can maintaing free speech. And, in case you have not watched the news at all today, Bollinger made some very strong remarks about the Iranian President. But, instead of telling you about it, I will just show you. And, so here, for your ability to read and dissect, is the full transcript of Bollinger's opening remarks (pulled off of Columbia's website): President Lee C. Bol...

In case any of you did not know, part of my research includes Sabbath traditions, and starting Wednesday evening at sundown is the sabbatical year. That's right--beginning with Rosh Hashanah, for an entire year, according the the biblical and rabbinic mitzvah (commandment), one should leave one's field fallow for an entire year. According to a newspaper article from the Alton Telegraph (that's Alton, Illinois, for you bi-coastal people) sent to me by my mother, this is causing some concern among Israelis about bankruptcy. Since, for most farmers, a profit margin is rather minimal, an entire year without any crops could put many, especially farmers and kibbutzes with small amounts of land, too far in the red to recover. Interestingly enough, more moderate Israeli Rabbis have created a loophole: Jewish Israelis can sell their fields and orchards to non-Jews for the duration of the year. According to the article, "Under this arrangement, farmers can keep working the ...

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education , current students and alumni from Barnard College as well as Columbia are drafting an online petition to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard. They claim that her research, particularly her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society , distorts the evidence and is skewed against Israel. According to the Chronicle, "The petition, which has drawn just over 1,000 signatures, accuses Ms. Abu El-Haj of ignoring or mischaracterizing large parts of the archaeological record, of not being able to speak Hebrew, and of treating Israeli archaeologists unfairly in her work." If true, I think not being able to speak Hebrew would be particularly damning if that is the primary language of the work she is examining. I have not read her book, but I have heard quite a bit about it, always in a very charged context. In any case, I refrain fro...