Aish

There’s a spot in the hills north of Jerusalem where you can stand between two ancient towns and know, with reasonable confidence, that Abraham stood there too. In the Torah portion of Lech Lecha (“Go Forth”), Abraham enters the land of Canaan. He passes through Shechem, then heads to the hill country and pitches his tent with Bet El (“House of God”) to the west and Ai to the east. He builds an altar there and calls out to God. Later, he returns to the exact same spot. His grandson Jacob comes back to it too, and dreams of a ladder stretching up to heaven. Centuries after that, Joshua fights his most famous battle after Jericho: the battle of Ai. That makes this one of the rare places where you can check the Torah’s account against the ground itself. And for about a hundred years, archaeologists said the Torah failed the test. Ai wasn’t there. Nobody lived there in Abraham’s time, Jacob’s time or Joshua’s time. The man who excavated it called it an embarrassment to anyone who takes the Bible and archaeology seriously. In recent decades, much of that has changed, though plenty remains hotly debated. So for the second episode of our series Fact Checking the Bible, I decided to go see for myself. Today’s two leading candidates for Ai are Khirbet el-Maqatir and et-Tell. As I often do, I wrote to an archaeologist who worked the sites: Dr. Scott Stripling, one of the leading figures in the region, who directed the digs at Khirbet el-Maqatir for years. I expected some advice on what to look for. Instead, he wrote back that he’d be there himself in October and offered to take me. How did anyone figure out where these places were to begin with? In 1838, an American professor named Edward Robinson rode through the hill country on horseback with an Arabic-speaking missionary, asking villagers the names of their villages. His idea was simple and brilliant: the Arabic names had preserved the Hebrew ones. Beit Lahm was Bet Lechem (Bethlehem, “House of Bread”). Anata was Anatot. And Beitin, a village twelve miles north of Jerusalem, sounded a lot like Bet El. Ai was trickier. The name means “the ruin,” and the hill country is full of ruins. But about a mile east of Beitin sits a large mound the locals call et-Tell, Arabic for “the mound.” The Torah places Ai east of Bet El. In 1924, William Albright, the greatest biblical archaeologist of his day, declared it a match. He dug Beitin himself and found a Middle Bronze Age town, walls and all. Bet El checked out. Then someone went to dig Ai. Judith Marquet-Krause was a young Jewish archaeologist, born in Palestine and trained in Paris, and Baron Rothschild funded her excavation. She was 27 when she began at et-Tell in 1933. In three seasons she uncovered a large city with a temple, a palace and a wall, all from the Early Bronze Age, roughly 3000 to 2400 BCE. Then came a burn layer. Then nothing. She died in 1936 at just 30, before she could publish. Her husband released her notes after her death. Thirty years later, an American named Joseph Callaway returned to et-Tell and dug there from 1964 to 1972 to see if she’d missed anything. She hadn’t. The city was destroyed around 2400 BCE and then sat empty for 1,200 years. Around 1200 BCE, a small village of a few hundred people appeared, lasted about a century and vanished. Now line that up against the Torah. Abraham arrives in the early second millennium BCE. Joshua doesn’t fit either, wherever you date him. No walled city to burn, no king of Ai, no gate. Just a mound with a name that means “ruin.” Stripling told me how the problem looked from the inside. Callaway, a Christian, concluded there was simply nobody there when the Bible says the conquest happened. “He said this is an embarrassment, nothing’s here.” The timing made it worse. In the 1950s, Kathleen Kenyon had published her excavations at Jericho, which also seemed to contradict the biblical date. Then in the sixties came the same story at Ai. “If you lose Ai,” I said, “you’ve lost the conquest.” “You’ve lost the conquest,” he agreed. “You don’t have a historical narrative.” Amihai Mazar, one of Israel’s most careful archaeologists, wrote that there was no second-millennium Canaanite city at et-Tell “or at any other site in the region.” Critics seized on this. The German scholar Martin Noth argued the story was invented backward: the Israelites came across a huge ruin named “the ruin” and made up a battle to explain how it got that way. Albright, the man who had put Ai at et-Tell in the first place, suggested the battle was real but probably happened at Bet El, and the story drifted to Ai through later editors. The modern version, found in books like The Bible Unearthed, is the simplest of all: whoever wrote the account had never seen a Bronze Age Ai, because there wasn’t one. We’ll come back to that. In 1970, a man named David Livingston published a paper that turned the question on its head. Livingston wasn’t an archaeologist. He ran a small Christian research group, the Associates for Biblical Research, which he’d founded in the 1960s largely because the problem of Ai bothered him so much. His paper argued that everyone had been wrong about where Bet El was, and therefore wrong about Ai. The professionals laughed. He was an amateur, after all. But his argument was interesting. Around the year 300, the bishop Eusebius compiled a guide to biblical places with distances. He put Bet El at the twelfth milestone from Jerusalem on the road to Shechem. Measure it today and Beitin sits at the fourteenth. The town at the twelfth is el-Bireh, a large modern town on the ridge. Robinson, Livingston said, got the name right and the distance wrong. Bet El was el-Bireh, which would put Ai at a ruin east of it called Khirbet Nisya. Standing on the ridge, Stripling pointed it out for me. Beitin, which has been excavated, was in one direction. El-Bireh was in the other, and within it sits Ras et-Tahuna, the town’s high point, which has never been excavated. “If you wanted to settle that, you’d excavate there,” he said. “Not an easy dig, though.” Anson Rainey, who knew the geography of this land better than anyone alive, wrote a reply that was, let’s say, less than gentle. Beitin preserves the name, he argued, and Roman milestones weren’t that precise. Livingston believed the site of Ai, and its name, might have migrated to a nearby hill. He went to Khirbet Nisya, which we passed on the drive in, and as far as Stripling knows, he went to his grave believing it might be Ai. But the idea never caught on with other scholars. There was no fortification, and even a ruined wall leaves stones lying around. Still, Livingston had accomplished something. He got people looking at the ridge again. And on that ridge was a mound nobody had dug. Khirbet el-Maqatir (khirbet is Arabic for “ruin”) lies about a kilometer west of et-Tell, on the road up from Jericho, at the head of a valley. In 1995, Bryant Wood, an American archaeologist who had already built a career arguing against the consensus, began digging there. Stripling later took over and dug until 2016. Wood and his colleague Gary Byers had worked with Livingston at Khirbet Nisya and concluded it couldn’t be Ai without fortifications, so they went looking elsewhere. Early explorers had left a clue. Locals told Ernst Sellin, famous for his work at Jericho, and other excavators in the early 1900s that Khirbet el-Maqatir was Ai. It was the local tradition. “I thought it was et-Tell,” I said. “No, they never pointed to that hill,” Stripling said. Locals sometimes mentioned a nearby site called Khirbet Haiyan, later dismissed because it only dated to the Second Temple period. But others pointed here. Following up on Sellin’s lead, Wood found Bronze Age pottery on the surface. And the site was small, which is exactly what you want for Ai. The biblical text says it was smaller than Gibeon and smaller than Jericho. That was the beginning. A license followed, and in 1995 the excavation began. “So what makes you think this is Ai?” I asked. To keep things objective, a researcher named Peter Briggs drew up a screen of fifteen criteria at the start of the excavation. If the Bible is giving us straight information, the site has to pass archaeologically and topographically. Some criteria were geographic. The site had to be in the hill country of Benjamin, west of Jericho and east of Bet El, and within sight of Bet El. The landscape had to match the battle scene in the Book of Joshua: a hill to the north, and a large valley to the west where an army could hide, invisible from both Ai and Bet El. The city itself had to be fortified, occupied in the Late Bronze Age, with a gate facing north. It had to be smaller than Gibeon. Other criteria were possible indicators: signs that women lived there, since the biblical text clearly suggests they did, even though many fortresses and citadels had none. And broken idols, which would point to the arrival of a people commanded to destroy them. Before the digging started, the team already knew a few things. The site roughly matched the geography, and it was smaller than Gibeon. That was a few boxes ticked. There were many more to go. Stripling had me sit down in a stone chamber on the north side of the site. “This is where the investigation really picked up,” he said, “because the gate was on the north.” That matters, because Joshua 8:11 places the gate of Ai on the north. Had it been on any other side, the expedition wouldn’t have lasted long. They would have tested the hypothesis, watched it fail and moved on. In 1995, Byers and Wood found the first socket stone, still in place, right beside what looked like a gate complex. “Explain what a socket stone is,” I said. A gate’s heavy doors pivot on posts, he explained, and each post sits in an upper and a lower socket stone. This gate had four chambers with a road running between them, and doorways with sockets. An attacker breaks through the first door, then faces another, and another. Altogether the team found eight socket stones in this area. “Why would you have eight socket stones in this spot if it’s not a gate?” The chamber we were sitting in, he said, is the only one of the Late Bronze Age gate that survives. Why did later builders leave it when they scavenged the rest? Because they turned it into a wine press. The bedrock floor is tiled with tesserae, small mosaic tiles. Workers filled it with grapes, trod on them, and the juice drained into a vat. Every village had olive presses and wine presses, so why build one from scratch when a perfectly good chamber was sitting right there? The chamber was used into the Late Bronze Age and repurposed as a wine press in the Second Temple period. I was getting very excited at this point, and here’s why. There’s a long-running debate over this site. Supporters point to this gate as key evidence. Critics say it was a wine press. That was exactly what I’d come to ask him about, and he’d just brought it up himself. I’d seen a video by Joel Kramer, who once dug here with Stripling. Kramer explains that he believed for years this was the Late Bronze Age gate of Ai, until he brought three experts to the site, a geologist and two archaeologists. Each of them, independently, immediately identified it as a Byzantine wine press. Two plastered vats for collecting grape juice were later found in front of it, and the excavation report itself calls the structure a wine press. For Kramer and his colleague Titus Kennedy, that was reason to reject the gate theory. “I saw that too, and I pushed back,” Stripling said. “I understand it’s a wine press. I published it in 2023, in the final volume on Maqatir, as a wine press from the late Second Temple period. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also a Late Bronze Age gate chamber. Why else do we have a socket stone right there? You don’t have socket stones in wine presses.” Kramer and Kennedy’s explanation, he said, is an oversimplification. “It’s not either/or. It’s both.” “So it’s a wine press repurposed from a gate?” “That’s right.” Continue reading: https://aish.com/fact-checking-the-bible-the-lost-city-of-ai/

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Until October 7th, Steve Tsentserensky considered himself an atheist, politically liberal and generally opposed to any organized religion. As a marketer and copywriter, he trekked around the globe until he witnessed the world turn against him and his people. Feeling like he was in the wilderness, suddenly adrift and untethered from his own life, Steve reconnected with the Jewish community and his heritage and eventually moved to Israel. This is his story: https://aish.com/from-atheist-traveler-to-israeli-immigrant-one-mans-awakening/

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Rising anti-Semitism is a hot topic. This month the subject was blazoned across the covers of such disparate magazines as U.S. News and World Report, Tikkun, Commentary, and Foreign Policy. A recent poll in which 59% of Europeans labeled Israel as the primary threat to world peace and a subsequent Italian poll in which 17% thought Israel should cease to exist and 22% declared that Jewish Italian are "not real Italians," has set off an alarm – and a host of attempts to explain the source of “the world’s longest hatred.” After all, anti-Semitism is more paradoxical than an Escher staircase. As the seminar "Why the Jews?" so aptly points out: -Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race – but also for dominating the economy and taking over the world. -Jews are hated for being capitalist exploiters – but also for being socialists and communists. -Jews are hated for their Chosen People mentality – but also for their cringing inferiority complex. To that we must add the newest flavor of anti-Semitism: Jews were hated for 2,000 years because they didn't have their own state; now they're hated because they do. Natan Sharansky, writing an epic-length article in Commentary, traces the transmogrifications of anti-Semitism from ancient Rome to modern anti-Zionism. His theory for the root of anti-Semitism is that it is the result of Jewish rejectionism of the prevailing religion/morality/mores of the surrounding society. He quotes the Roman historian Tacitus: "Among the Jews, all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral... The rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or intermarry with gentiles... They have introduced circumcision to show that they are different from others... It is a crime among them to kill any newly born infant." And what of Jews who whole-heartedly embraced the prevailing ethos? After all, German Jewry in the century preceding the Holocaust was the most assimilated Jewish community in history (until the present American Jewish community). Before the passage of the Nuremburg laws, forbidding Jews to co-habit with Aryans, the intermarriage rate was 42%. Conversion to Christianity was also widespread, with cultural luminaries such as Heinrich Heine, Felix Mendelssohn, and Gustav Mahler the most prominent examples. This did not, however, prevent the Nazis from burning Heine's books and gassing his descendants. Continue reading:

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The name “Israel” comes from the Torah and is connected to Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and one of the forefathers of the Jewish people. According to the Torah, Jacob wrestled through the night with an angel. After the struggle, the angel gave Jacob a new name: Israel. The name is connected to the idea of struggling or striving with God and prevailing. Jacob was the father of 12 sons, whose families became the 12 tribes of Israel. His descendants became known as the “Children of Israel,” or Israelites, which is where the name Israel comes from.

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In recent years, social media has become a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, including the disturbing claim that Israel was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This theory has gained some traction online primarily through selective interpretations of recently declassified documents. Let's break down the theory, show why it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and explain why it spread specifically now. Continue to the full article 📑 https://aish.com/debunking-antisemitism-the-jfk-israel-conspiracy/

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Your life matters, your choices have meaning, and you have guidance along the way. The Torah gives a framework for living with greater meaning and purpose.

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Jamie Geller's recent conversation with Dr. Yardena Bauer about GLP-1 medications raised an important and long-overdue point: weight regulation is far more complex than willpower. For too long, women have been made to feel that their weight reflects their discipline, character, or personal failures. Challenging that misconception is essential. But as someone whose work focuses on eating disorder prevention and helping girls develop healthy self-worth and body image, I was troubled by another message that emerged. If we are finally acknowledging that a woman's weight does not define her willpower, why are we still allowing it to define her worth? The suggestion we heard that becoming thinner will make women happier, more confident, or less jealous of others deserves scrutiny. While weight loss may improve how someone feels about her appearance, does it really eliminate insecurity, comparison, or the desire to be someone else or have what someone else has? Perhaps most telling is that even women who are extraordinarily accomplished and admired can still look to their body size as a measure of their happiness or self-worth. Isn't that sad? When did everything a woman has achieved, contributed, and become take a back seat to the number on a scale? As a community, we are increasingly questioning the pressure to create the perfect wedding, the elaborate Shabbos table, or the most impressive simcha, celebration. We recognize how easily the pursuit of perfection can overshadow what truly matters. Yet are we applying that same awareness to our bodies? If we are encouraging families to move away from unrealistic expectations and constant comparison, why are we simultaneously reinforcing the idea that women should strive for a particular body size? Isn't this another expression of the same pressure to appear perfect in order to feel worthy? If the goal was to reduce shame surrounding weight, why did weight loss seem to emerge as the solution? Shouldn't reducing shame mean helping women recognize their worth regardless of body size, rather than reinforcing the belief that life will be better once they are thinner? The discussion of beauty and Jewish values also deserves reflection. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel beautiful. But when did beauty become synonymous with thinness? Judaism teaches us to care for the body God has entrusted to us because it is the vehicle through which our soul, our neshama, fulfills its purpose. Caring for that body means respecting, nourishing, and protecting it, not measuring its worth against society's appearance ideals. Continue reading:

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Located in the Kashaf River valley between two mountain ranges, Mashhad today is the second largest city in Iran and the capital of the province of Khorastan in northeast Iran, bordering Afghanistan. In its early history, due to its strategic location along the Silk Road, Mashhad suffered numerous invasions and raids. In 1736, the area was conquered by the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah, and Mashhad became the imperial capital. Until then Jews were not allowed in Mashhad, which is considered one of the holy cities of Islam because the burial site of the eighth imam of Shi’a Islam is located there. But Nadir Shah, who was Sunni and intended to convert the local Muslims to Sunni Islam, decided to change the long-standing policy. He invited 40 Jewish families to Mashhad in order to grow the local economy and increase the city’s commercial ties. Under Nadir Shah’s protection, the Jewish community of Mashhad grew and prospered, despite the open hostility from the local Shi’ite Muslims. The Jews’ commercial activities benefited the local Muslims as well, bringing them unknown wealth and prosperity. In 1747, Nadir Shah was assassinated by his enemies. The Jews were expelled to the outskirts of the city and forced to wear identifying marks on their clothes. They had to pay high taxes and obey many restrictions, such as not using public bath houses. On March 27, 1839, the Muslims of Mashhad were observing the holiest day for the Shi’a sect, the day of mourning for Mohammed’s grandson Hussein. The Jews, meanwhile, were preparing for Passover, which was in three days. That day, a Jewish woman went to a Persian doctor to seek help for a skin condition on her hand. The doctor recommended that she wash her hand in a dog’s blood. The woman hired a Persian boy to catch and kill a dog for her. The boy did so but then got into an argument with the woman about payment. Angry at the woman, the boy stormed off, yelling at the top of his lungs that the Jews killed a dog in order to mock the Muslims. He claimed that the Jews even called the dog Hussein. The rumor spread quickly and thousands of Muslims, already filled with religious fervor on their holy day, rushed to the Jewish quarter. They murdered, raped, and looted. They desecrated the Torah scrolls and set the synagogue on fire. After 35 Jews were murdered and many more wounded, the surviving Jews of Mashhad were forcibly converted to Islam. The “new Muslims” were brought to the mosque and forced to declare their allegiance to Islam. In return, all the previous restrictions were removed. The Jews no longer had to pay extra taxes or wear distinctive clothing. They had to take on Muslim names. Their synagogue was converted to a mosque. Outwardly, Mashhadi Jews looked and acted no different from their Muslim neighbors. However, despite the special officers appointed to oversee the “new Muslims” and prevent them from practicing their original faith, Mashhadi Jews continued observing Judaism in secret. For generations, they married only within their community and taught their children about their Jewish roots and Jewish practices. Continue to the article: https://aish.com/the-secret-jews-of-mashhad-iran/

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As a 16-year-old yeshiva student in Jerusalem, Eli Beer dreamed of being an EMT. He volunteered on an ambulance service, and one day received a call about a 7-year-old child choking on a hot dog. By the time the ambulance arrived 20 minutes later, the child was dead. When Eli found out that a doctor had been just a block away, he realized that the emergency medical system was in desperate need of disruption. Summoning Israeli chutzpah, Eli convinced his parents to buy him a police scanner in order to monitor emergency medical calls. Soon after, he heard a call about an auto accident just one block away. Eli raced to the scene by foot. "An elderly man had blood gushing out of his neck," Eli tells Aish.com. "I had no medical equipment, so I removed my kippah and used it to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. I later found out the man was taking blood thinners and would have been dead in two minutes. The ambulance only arrived 15 minutes later. I had saved a life!" At that moment, Eli knew his life mission: to reduce the wait-time for emergency medical care. Eli heard about a group of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, New York, who had formed a local rapid-response team, and he decided to organize something similar in his own Jerusalem neighborhood of Bayit Vegan. Together with 15 friends – all EMTs – Eli bucked bureaucracy, legal tangles and resistance from existing emergency services to get launch his organization. Now, nearly 30 years later, United Hatzalah is a nationwide network of 4,000 trained volunteers, headquartered in a state-of-the-art dispatch center near Jerusalem's central bus station. United Hatzalah has treated over 2.5 million emergencies, an estimated 20% which are life-threatening – heart attacks, strokes, auto accidents, terror attacks. In many locales, Hatzalah has achieved its stated goal of 90-second response time; the nationwide average is three minutes. Hatzalah's secret? The "ambucycle," a motorcycle equipped with oxygen kit, heart defibrillator, burn wraps, maternity kit, glucometer, trauma kit, and communication gear. Today, 700 ambucycles – painted in distinctive Hatzalah orange – dot the Israeli landscape. In conjunction with Israel's 70th birthday, another 70 ambucycles will begin service in May. "Our primary objective is to get to there fast and administer treatment before the ambulance arrives," Eli explains. "Because these ambucycles are small and mobile, they're not held up by traffic jams or narrow streets. If necessary, they even go on the sidewalk." Receiving treatment within the first minutes of a medical emergency often spells the difference between life and death. In the case of cardiac arrest, for example, the lack of defibrillation and life support reduces chances of survival by nearly 10% – every minute. "With stroke and choking as well, the earlier the victim receives oxygen, the less damage," Eli explains. "Just today we got a call about a woman not breathing. Our dispatcher told her son what to do. One minute later, Hatzalah volunteers arrived and performed CPR. The ambulance arrived four minutes after that. Did we save her life? We never know exactly. But for every minute saved, we decrease the damage and risk of death." Israel, the "start-up nation" with trailblazing technology in agriculture, security and medicine, is now seeing that same innovative spirit applied to saving lives. United Hatzalah's LifeCompass system is the world's first application of advanced GPS tracking technology to emergency medical care. When an emergency call comes in (United Hatzalah responds to a thousand each day), LifeCompass automatically alerts the phones of the five best-positioned volunteers – based on geographic proximity to the scene, and accounting for equipment and training best suited to this specific emergency. The system then automatically transfers the volunteer to a mapping app that guides them on the fastest route. Uber, meet emergency medicine. Whether at work, school or home, Hatzalah's 4,000 volunteers carry their rescue bags everywhere they go. "A few years ago I was driving down the coastal road and received an alert that a child was drowning on a kibbutz," Eli says. "I wasn't familiar with this kibbutz, but our system immediately recognized me as one minute away. I arrived and treated the child. The ambulance came 40 minutes later. That day I saved a life." In response to the 2014 kidnapping of three Israeli teens, Hatzalah developed an SOS app which allows anyone to send a one-touch distress signal to the 24/7 dispatch center, which transmits the GPS coordinates to law enforcement officials. Beyond saving innumerable lives, Hatzalah has emerged as a force for positive change in Israeli society, where the divide between religious and secular, Jew and Arab, is often painfully felt. "We've always responded to anyone who needs help, yet we began with mostly religious volunteers," Eli explains. "Then one day I got a call from a non-religious man in Herzilya. He said that in his city, people would frequently wait 15-20 minutes for an ambulance. He noticed our ambucycles operating in religious neighborhoods and wanted to bring Hatzalah to his own city." Eli saw this as a great opportunity, and received full encouragement from the great Torah sage Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky. This saved lives and generated positive interactions between religious and non-religious Jews. In addition, United Hatzalah instituted a course in the laws of Shabbat, so that every volunteer, regardless of background or observance, can appreciate how saving lives overrides other Torah laws. "When it comes to saving lives, we do everything we can, in every way," Eli says. "The same Jew who wouldn't accept a million dollars to drive on Shabbat, will rush out at the holiest time of year – in the middle of Yom Kippur prayers – to save a 98-year-old stranger. This value on human life is the beauty of Judaism, and it's a great Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's name)." United Hatzalah continues to expand, with an annual budget of $20 million and thousands of “angels in orange” – Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and Christians – regular citizens willing to put everything else aside and rush to save a human life, anytime, anywhere. Hatzalah's fleet now includes 4-wheel drive "Ambutractors" that perform rescues in rugged terrain such as forests, deserts, beaches and mountains. Hatzalah also has a rescue boat and jet skis stationed at the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret), Israel’s biggest lake. Eli's own family is, in his words, "addicted to Hatzalah." His wife Gitty has opened a division for religious women to treat other women, and his three daughters have joined. Another significant breakthrough came when Eli was visited by two Muslim Arabs living in east Jerusalem. One of them, Mohammed Asli, explained that a week earlier, his middle-aged father had suffered cardiac arrest and died while waiting 55 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Mohammed told Eli: "Nobody was there to help my father. He died right in front of my eyes. Let us form Hatzalah in east Jerusalem, and we promise to protect anyone who needs help." Seeing this as a unique opportunity to foster good relations in Jerusalem – as well as saving lives – Hatzalah trained 30 Arab volunteers, many with prior medical experience. This partnership proved fruitful and came full circle one year later when Eli's father suffered a heart attack on Shabbat. He describes: "I heard the call on the radio. I was two buildings away and immediately ran over. Yet when I saw my father lying there, unconscious, I started crying like a child. I've saved many lives with my own hands, but at that moment I simply froze up." One minute later, another Hatzalah volunteer arrived and began administering CPR. Then 20 seconds after that, another volunteer arrived with a much-needed defibrillator. Eli's father regained his breathing and woke up. With Divine justice, that medic with the defibrillator was none other than Mohammed Asli, the same Arab who originally asked to join Hatzalah. "I gave Mohammed a big hug," Eli says. With Hatzalah's sterling record of Jewish-Muslim cooperation, in 2013, Eli Beer and Murad Alyan – another key initiator of Hatzalah's east Jerusalem squad – shared a prestigious Middle East Peace Prize. This reputation extends to the Arab world as well. Al Jazeera aired a documentary on United Hatzalah's work. Eli met with the ruler of Dubai, and visited Jordan to receive an award from Queen Rania. "Being of Palestinian origin, she is not typically friendly toward Israel," Eli says. "But when she heard what we do and how we have Jewish and Arab volunteers working together, it touched her very much." Continue to the full article: https://aish.com/saving-lives-through-israeli-innovation/

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Comment below! 🥯🥯🥯 Bagels have a long history in Jewish culture, dating back centuries to Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. They became a popular food among Ashkenazi Jews and were brought to America by Jewish immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In New York City, Jewish bakeries helped turn bagels into an American staple, especially when paired with cream cheese and lox.

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Flowers Play a Meaningful Role in Jewish Life According to Jewish tradition, when the Jewish people were gathered at Mount Sinai, the barren mountain bloomed with flowers at the time they were given the Torah. To remember this miracle, many synagogues are decorated with flowers on Shavuot. Saying blessings over flowers is a Jewish tradition. Special prayers are recited when seeing a blossoming tree or smelling fragrant flowers, thanking God for the beauty of creation. The menorah in the ancient Temple had flower-shaped designs. Made of gold, it featured almond blossom motifs, symbolizing beauty and holiness. Jewish texts compare the Jewish people to a rose among thorns. The Zohar (Judaism’s central kabbalistic, or mystical, text) describes Israel as a rose surrounded by God’s thirteen attributes of mercy. For centuries, Jews have cooked with flowers. Rodomilon was an ancient jelly made by Jews in the Middle East that contains quince and roses. There are many beautiful Jewish names related to flowers, including: Shoshana, Yasmin, Dalia, Sigal, Raizel, Irit and Nurit. To learn more about Flowers and Judaism... https://aish.com/flowers-and-judaism-8-facts/

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One of my fondest memories growing up was taking my little orange UNICEF box and collecting pennies - as well as yummy treats - on Halloween. It was also a great day for acting rowdy and causing a little trouble around the neighborhood. Now that I have my own kids, I'm wondering - what is the Jewish position on Halloween?

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A 2022 study conducted by the AMCHA initiative found that Harvard University leads American campuses in beliefs and acts of antisemitism. In its three quantifiable criteria of redefinition, denigration, and suppression, Harvard ranked first in each category. Furthermore, Jewish students at Harvard responded more affirmingly than any other college campus in response to the prompt questioning students' discomfort in expressing their Jewish identity. The report said, “The threats to Jewish student identity come from their peers, professors, and even school administrators, and reach every corner of campus life — the quad, classrooms, dorm rooms, student newspapers, social media platforms, student government, and more.” While I believe there are severe methodological and statistical issues with this survey, it nonetheless begs an important question: if antisemitism is given a pass by an increasingly larger share of the Harvard body, what does that say about the state of contemporary higher education in the United States? Ironically, it was Ken Roth, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Watch who was recently engaged in a spat with Harvard University concerning a rescinded fellowship over a perceived anti-Israel bias, who opined recently, wondering “if Harvard can rescind my fellowship, imagine what they can do with scholars with less notoriety?” In a similar vein, if significant percentages of the student body are allowed to promulgate their antisemitism at America’s most elite institution, imagine the discrimination festering elsewhere in the country. In February 2022, Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jonah Steinberg sent a letter to Jewish students across campus, noting “the anti-Israel stickers appearing on Sabra hummus in the dining halls, the tearing down of Harvard Hillel posters all over campus, about which the Dean of Students Office had to issue a statement just this past week, and the black-colored posters everywhere against the Harvard College Israel Trek.” Indeed, the daunting reality Jewish students at Harvard are faced with is one in which antisemitism is given a platform under the guise of academic free speech and supposed anticolonialism. Read the full article: https://aish.com/antisemitism-at-harvard/

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The October 31 Pogroms: For most people October 31 is a day of parties and dressing up in costumes. But just over a century ago, October 31, 1905 was a tragic day, ushering in hundreds of pogroms that killed thousands of Jews across Russia. Crowds surged through the streets, yelling threats, destroying property, and murdering Jewish men, women and children with impunity. The immediate cause of this seismic wave of violence was the October Manifesto, a declaration from Czar Nicholas II guaranteeing basic freedoms and political rights. Promulgated on October 30, 1905 (sometimes referred to as October 17 on Russia’s “Old Calendar”), the declaration came amid rising political turmoil and the threat of revolution. Instead of calming tensions, the manifesto led to huge demonstrations and riots in many Russian cities. Tragically, it was Russia’s Jews who suffered the most. Read the full article here: https://aish.com/the-october-31-pogroms/

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Although Halloween is often thought of as a secular holiday, its origins are religious, reflecting both ancient Pagan practices, and also the Christian holiday All Hallows Eve. It presents a challenge. For those of us who wouldn’t think of celebrating non-Jewish holidays, how should we deal with the intense peer pressure our kids face to observe this high-profile non-Jewish holiday? While many Jewish parents might want to ideally steer their kids away from Halloween, it can be difficult to do. Here are 13 ideas to start making October 31 special for our kids, in a Jewish context. Because it’s more fun to have company, try calling up some friends to see if they’re interested in joining you for one or more of these activities. Once you start spending October 31 your own way, you might be surprised at how many people will be glad to escape the trick-or-treat treadmill, too. See 13 ideas of alternatives here: https://aish.com/13-things-your-family-can-do-this-halloween/

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Visitors to the ancient Colosseum in Rome are awed by its sheer size. Measuring 620 by 512 feet, it’s a massive structure; six and a half football fields could fit inside its space, with room to spare. Rising four stories into the sky, the Colosseum has 80 entrances and used to hold more than 50,000 spectators who flocked to this landmark to watch games during the height of the Roman Empire. But few guidebooks mention why the Colosseum was built or how its sponsors could afford to build what was the largest amphitheater in the ancient world. The Colosseum was built to commemorate the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem, and was funded by loot stolen from the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. A Jewish Temple stood in Jerusalem – barring a 73-year interruption – for nearly a millennium. King Solomon erected the First Temple in 827 BCE. It was a magnificently beautiful building, filled with gold and silver ornaments, including the Ark of the Covenant and the Menorah, a seven-branched candelabra formed out of one piece of solid gold. The First Temple stood for 404 years, forming the center of Jewish identity and worship. Babylonia’s fearsome King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 423 BCE. A generation later, in 350 BCE, the Second Temple was dedicated, nearly as beautiful as the First Temple. The Ark of the Covenant had been lost, looted by the Nebuchadnezzar’s troops, but many of the gold and silver vessels, as well as the golden Menorah, were restored. The Temple was enhanced further in 19 BCE, when the Roman-appointed, non-Jewish King Herod, seeking to shore up his popularity, rebuilt the Temple, enlarging it significantly and increasing its grandeur and beauty. In the year 63 BCE, the expanding Roman empire captured Jerusalem. Hopelessly riven by internal divisions, Judea (the ancient Jewish homeland in present-day Israel) fell under an often brutal Roman occupation. For the next 113 years, the Jews were oppressed and harassed. Rather than coming together to fight their Roman overlords, Jews formed endless factions, each advocating a different course of action. Finally, in the year 66 CE, matters came to a head. Rome’s Emperor Nero is remembered in popular imagination as “fiddling while Rome burned” during a massive conflagration that destroyed much of the city in the year 64. Two years later, he appointed a violent sadist, Gessius Florus, as procurator over Judah. Florus publicly humiliated the Jewish population. When Jewish children heckled him during a public appearance in Jerusalem, Florus ordered his troops to kill local Jews, slaughtering over 3,600 in one day. He then ordered the Jewish community leaders of the city to be publicly whipped and then crucified. That sparked a popular uprising that lasted for four years and is known as Rome’s “Jewish War.” For four long years, Jewish forces battled Roman troops, and were slowly crushed, first in the country’s north, then in other major population centers, and finally, in the year 70 CE, in Jerusalem. For much of the Jewish Wars, the general in charge of regaining control of Judea was a man from relatively humble beginnings named Vespasian. After re-conquering most of Judea for Rome, he led four divisions of Rome’s fearsome army against Jerusalem, laying siege to the city and blocking the city’s thousands of Jewish residents from escaping. The Talmud documents some of Vespasian’s deeds and interactions with the beleaguered Jews. One day, the great Jewish sage Rabbi Yochanan had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin, ostensibly to be buried outside the city walls. Rabbi Yochanan was discovered, and brought to Vespasian for questioning. When Rabbi Yochanan saw the fearsome general Vespasian, he greeted him as king. Vespasian protested that he was not king; Rabbi Yochanan replied, “In truth, you are a king; if not now, then in the future” (Gittin 56b). While Vespasian and Rabbi Yochanan conversed, a messenger arrived, informing Vespasian that the emperor had died and he was to be Rome’s next supreme leader. Vespasian explained to Rabbi Yochanan that he would send another general to take over the siege of Jerusalem, but asked if there was anything he could do for this great Jewish sage who had predicted his political rise. Rabbi Yochanan asked that one city in Judea, Yavneh, be spared total destruction, and that Vespasian spare the lives of some of the Jewish sages. Vespasian agreed. The general Vespasian sent to take over besieging Jerusalem was Titus. Titus tried attacking the defensive walls surrounding Jerusalem, and eventually concluded that his easiest route to victory was to starve out the Jews barricaded inside. Jews who tried to escape the starving city were tortured; the Jewish historian Josephus describes Roman troops disemboweling Jews who tried to leave. Just after Passover in the year 70 CE, Titus gave the order to attack Jerusalem’s city walls. Troops catapulted boulders into the city and attacked the walls with battering rams. Titus offered prizes to the first soldiers who could battle their way into the center of the city and scale the walls of the Jewish Temple within. After months of hand to hand combat, in high summer, Titus prevailed. His troops set fire to the Temple and Titus ordered the wholesale destruction of the entire city of Jerusalem. Nothing was to remain. Titus’ troops plundered the many priceless gold and silver vessels and decorations of the Temple, taking them as spoils of war. To celebrate his victory, Titus distributed spoils to his soldiers and ordered a three-day party for his troops. He forced many of the captured Jews to fight wild animals in gruesome gladiatorial battles to entertain his troops. Afterwards, Titus returned home to Rome with about 50,000 Jewish captives as slaves. Among them were two Jewish military leaders, Yochanan ben Levi (also known as John of Giscala) and Simeon ben Giora, who’d fought valiantly, and whose capture was a particular feather in Titus’ cap. The highlight of every Roman military victory was the vast triumphal procession back home in Rome afterwards. Cambridge University classics professor Dr. Mary Beard explains that successful generals led triumphal processions in the heart of Rome, in which they displayed the many slaves, prisoners of war, and booty they’d looted in foreign conflicts. These parades were a centerpiece of Roman imperial identity. “The triumphal processions of victorious generals offered one of the most impressive windows onto the outside (world). When the Roman crowds lined the streets to welcome home their conquering armies, which paraded through the city with their profits and plunder on display, it was not only the astounding wealth that impressed them…it was also the dazzling display of foreign lands and customs that captured the popular imagination” (quoted in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard: 2015). Titus’ triumphal procession was an especially awe-inspiring event. Some processes took several days to display all the looted materials, wealth, and slaves taken from far-away lands. It seems that Titus’ procession celebrating his victory over Jerusalem was one of the more dazzling spectacles the city had ever seen. It was so memorable that Titus commissioned a massive triumphal arch erected in the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome, decorated with friezes (carvings) illustrating his victory parade, complete with Jewish slaves, captives, and looted goods including the Temple’s golden Menorah. The arch reminded Romans of their empire’s triumph in the Jewish War, and has stood for nearly 2,000 years, dazzling visitors to this day. Titus became emperor nine years later, in 79 CE, and launched a vast building project to transform Rome. The centerpiece of his program was building a huge arena near the Forum which could seat 50,000 viewers and host the most lavish games that Rome had ever seen. (It was named the Colosseum after a nearby massive statue of the emperor Nero, called the Colossus.) The Colosseum was funded by booty from the Jewish War, and likely was built at least in large part by Titus’ 50,000 Jewish slaves. Construction took ten years. It was grueling, backbreaking work, under the scorching sun of burning Roman summers. It’s unknown how many slaves died during its construction; their deaths, like their names and their lives, are lost to history. Read the full article: https://aish.com/the-colosseums-jewish-connection/

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