A lone Rakefet in December!

I almost never paid attention to the plants and flora around me.  We just started to study this subject and I decided to throw myself into it.  I bought a few booklets to help me identify flowers, trees, and bushes.  This morning I went out for a walk with them in hand and was so excited to start to look carefully and distinguish between the plant life on the Gilboa. I was able to connect so much of what I saw to what I have been studying.  Five samples in particular stood to me.

The first is this beautiful רקפת or Persian Cyclamen.  It was the only one I saw and I really was keeping an eye out from the time I first noticed it.  Wikipedia says that they bloom from January through April but my booklet says from October to May so perhaps its not so strange to see one.

The next are not nearly as striking as the Rakefet but I was nearly as thrilled to notice them.  I found a Carob tree:

Wikipedia noted that the Carob isn’t in the Bible but it appears in a number of Rabbinic stories – The Choni HaMeAgel Story, the Jewish Rip Van Winkle. R. Eliezer and the oven of Achnai and the story Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and his son who lived off of a Carob tree that miraculously grew in the care they were hiding in. Apparantly the Carob isn’t indigenous to Israel but was brought here by the Romans.

Here is some קוצנית סירה or Prickley Burnet. It is one of the most common shrubs in the Mediterranean costal strip.

Another common shrub אלת המסטיק – Lentisk.  Mastik in Hebrew is gum and the sap of the Lentisk was used in the past to chew on like gum.

Lastly, Here is a pic of an Italian Cypress.  Apparently these may have been indigenous at one point here in Israel but nowadays they are not wild here.

Between Archeological Certainty and Amazing Conjecture

The Ancient city of Gezer… I have to admit I don’t think I could have said one thing about it two months ago. It’s not a major metropolis in the Biblical stories – nothing like Jerusalem or Shiloh or Beer Sheva, or Chevron. In fact, it is only mentioned about a dozen times in total in the Bible, and usually in an off hand way.
The book of Joshua recounts that Joshua defeated the Canaanite King of Gezer:

לג אָז עָלָה, הֹרָם מֶלֶךְ גֶּזֶר, לַעְזֹר, אֶת-לָכִישׁ; וַיַּכֵּהוּ יְהוֹשֻׁעַ וְאֶת-עַמּוֹ, עַד-בִּלְתִּי הִשְׁאִיר-לוֹ שָׂרִיד.	33 Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining.

From Joshua chapter 21 we learn that the city fell within the borders of the tribe of Ephraim but was designated as a city for the Levites.

וּלְמִשְׁפְּחוֹת בְּנֵי-קְהָת הַלְוִיִּם, הַנּוֹתָרִים מִבְּנֵי קְהָת; וַיְהִי עָרֵי גוֹרָלָם, מִמַּטֵּה אֶפְרָיִם.	20 And the families of the children of Kohath, the Levites, even the rest of the children of Kohath, they had the cities of their lot out of the tribe of Ephraim.
כא  וַיִּתְּנוּ לָהֶם אֶת-עִיר מִקְלַט הָרֹצֵחַ, אֶת-שְׁכֶם וְאֶת-מִגְרָשֶׁהָ--בְּהַר אֶפְרָיִם; וְאֶת-גֶּזֶר, וְאֶת-מִגְרָשֶׁהָ.	21 And they gave them Shechem with the open land about it in the hill-country of Ephraim, the city of refuge for the manslayer, and Gezer with the open land about it;

Joshua 16 recounts that at least some of the Canaanites of Gezer remained in the city after the conquest (see also Judges 1:29):

וְלֹא הוֹרִישׁוּ, אֶת-הַכְּנַעֲנִי הַיּוֹשֵׁב בְּגָזֶר; וַיֵּשֶׁב הַכְּנַעֲנִי בְּקֶרֶב אֶפְרַיִם, עַד-הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה, וַיְהִי, לְמַס-עֹבֵד.  {פ}

10 And they drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt in the midst of Ephraim, unto this day, and became servants to do taskwork. {P}

Not much action or intrigue here. So why has this almost unremarkable city made my heart beat faster? Its because a few thousand years later, I have learned that we can be quite certain that we know exactly where Gezer was located!



Now I have always wondered how we can claim to have located the ruins of ancient cities. With our exploration of Gezer, I came to understand that in some cases there is nearly proof positive.



13 boundary stones inscribed with the words “the boundary of Gezer” were found surrounding a Tel in the Judean lowlands. These stones have been dated to the first century BCE. Check out these weekend explorers off to find the stones that still remain on cite in the youtube video to the right. Its hard not to accept that this Tel, which is located in the area where we would expect Gezer to be is in fact the Biblical Gezer.



With this as a given, Israeli archaeologist (and former chief of staff and deputy prime minister) Yigal Yadin made a fascinating and compelling conjecture about one of the structures uncovered in the Tel Gezer digs. The First Book of Kings recounts King Solomon's building campaign:

וְזֶה דְבַר-הַמַּס אֲשֶׁר-הֶעֱלָה הַמֶּלֶךְ שְׁלֹמֹה, לִבְנוֹת אֶת-בֵּית ה וְאֶת-בֵּיתוֹ וְאֶת-הַמִּלּוֹא, וְאֵת, חוֹמַת יְרוּשָׁלִָם; וְאֶת-חָצֹר וְאֶת-מְגִדּוֹ, וְאֶת-גָּזֶר.

15 And this is the account of the levy which king Solomon raised; to build the house of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.

my picture of "Solomon's Gate"

Yadin noted that the gates of the cities Hazor and Megiddo were identical. Since the building of the walls of Gezer is mentioned along side the building of the walls of Hazor and Megiddo, Yadin predicted that Gezer should also have a gate matching the structure of Hazor and Megiddo. He suggested that a partially discovered ruin in Tel Gezer was actually the gate of the wall that Solomon had built. Subsequent digging indeed revealed a gate identical to those at Hazor and Megiddo. The dating of the age of these gates synchs with the time of King Solomon. Amazing!

Scrolls of Fire

We visited this monument on our first tour of the hills of Jerusalem. It is called the scrolls of fire. The artist is Natan Rapaport. He fled from Poland when the Nazi's invaded for the Soviet Union.  According to our guide, while the war was still going on, he already decided to create a monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  That monument stands to day in Warsaw where the center of the Ghetto was.

The monument here tells the story of the Holocaust and Rebirth of Israel.  I found it incredibly powerful.  First of all the fact that the monument is a "scroll" says to me that the story that is being told is a sacred one, of Biblical proportions and importance. The first scroll, on the right tells the story of the Shoah and the one on the left tells the story of the Rebirth of the state of Israel.  The most powerful images on the monument for me were 1.) The amazing educator Janusz Korczak with the orphans in Warsaw who he refused to abandon in order to save himself. 2.) The Menorah that appears on the Arch of Titus being returned to Jerusalem by Zionist pioneers and soldiers.

I was awed by how powerfully Rapaport captured the magnitude of the story of Israel's rebirth on the ashes of the Holocaust.  I think that this would be an excellent introduction for tourists as the story of the Zionist narrative.

Because the picture I took above doesn't capture the sculpture very well I am including this one I found on the web as well:

The beginning of a dream come true

For decades I have dreamed of becoming a tour guide.  Just a week and a half ago I began the course to become a certified tour guide at Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem.  I decided to try and keep a running blog of my experiences for (at least) the following reasons:

1.) Recording some of the learning and tours here will help me to remember what I have done. This is really important because the course inundates us with an immense amount of material and I will be expected to remember a tremendous amount for the final exam(s).
2.) I am feeling a need to process the learning and explore what it means for me personally.
3.) Some of my friends or others might find it interesting to follow me through this process.

Because the writing of this is so important and is primarily for me, I don't intend to maintain the standards I would normally expect from myself before putting my writing in the public domain.