Bar-Ilan U Study Proves Origin of Herod’s Alabaster Bathtubs and 5 of 10 videos from Prague and Should Protesters Be Allowed to Shout in Front of Justices’ Homes? By Alan M. Dershowitz and Erase Jordan’s False Claims in JerusalemBy David Weinberg
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
Should Protesters Be Allowed to Shout in Front of Justices' Homes? By Alan M. Dershowitz
Photo Credit: screenshot
Protesters in front of Justice Alito's home. Is this protected speech?
Pro-abortion protestors have assembled in front of Justice Samuel Alito's family home in an obvious effort to intimidate or punish him. It will not change his draft opinion regarding the overruling of Roe v. Wade, but the question arises: are such protests legal and/or desirable?
As to the legality, there is a specific statute that criminalizes protest in front of the residences of judges, jurors or witnesses, that are intended to interfere with or obstruct justice. While that statute might be constitutional as it related to efforts to influence the verdicts of jurors, the testimony of witnesses or possibly even the decisions of elected judges during a trial, it is probably unconstitutional as applied to justices and appellate judges with lifetime appointments who are deemed to be immune from outside pressures.
The First Amendment protects the right to protest and assemble, which includes the right to object to any governmental action, including that of the judiciary. But it permits narrow and neutral time, place and manner restrictions, such as decibel levels, reasonable distance requirements and nighttime prohibitions. Accordingly, I would defend the constitutional rights of pro-abortion advocates to assemble peacefully, not too loudly, across the street from the home of a judge or a justice who is involved in rendering controversial decisions. Such restrictions must be the same for pro- and anti-abortion protesters — and for any others.
This does not mean that I personally approve of such tactics. I think it is wrong, as a matter of policy and decency, to disrupt the personal and family lives of justices and judges, even if one is strongly opposed to their decisions. Such advocates are free to protest in front of the Supreme Court, in front of Congress, and in front of the home of only one government official – namely the president, who lives in the "people's house." I think interfering with the personal lives of judges, whether in their homes, the restaurants they eat in, or their children's schools, goes beyond what should be acceptable in a democracy. Such actions, even if constitutionally protected, should be condemned by decent people.
We live in an age where many, on both sides of the political spectrum, believe, and act on the belief, that noble ends justify ignoble means. That of course is a matter of degree. There may well be extreme situations where such intrusive protests might, under some circumstances, be morally acceptable. But this should not apply to protesting unjust judicial decisions of a divided court. There are acceptable responses to perceived judicial injustices. These include protests in front of the appropriate institutions, congressional hearings, legislation, even constitutional amendments. They certainly include organizing voters to change the political dynamics that allow such injustices to occur.
Obviously, there is a continuum of protests being waged today, ranging from peaceful picketing in appropriate venues to violence of the sort that occurred in parts of the United States following the killing of George Floyd. Most non-violent protests are constitutionally protected. Violent ones are not. And there are close cases that may turn on the specific facts, such as entering the Capitol to protest the counting of the votes of presidential electors. (I am representing one such defendant).
There should be no confusion, however, between what is constitutionally permissible and what should be encouraged by decent people. I supported the right of Nazis to march through the streets of Skokie, despite the outrageous immorality of what they were doing. Accordingly, it is entirely appropriate for decent people — from the president to an average citizen — to object to the protests now being conducted in front of Alito's home. But this should not lead pundits who oppose such protests to argue, as some have done, that these ill-conceived protests are not constitutionally protected.
The First Amendment protects the right to be wrong, to be immoral, to be ill-mannered and to go right up to the line where constitutionally protected advocacy can be made criminal. That line — unclear as it sometimes is — is important to preserve. It should not be tampered with by those who have strong feelings against intruding on the privacy of justices and judges.
Two related issues: first, judges and justices must be accorded all necessary protections against unlawful behavior, especially physical threats. Second, the same rules and levels of protection must apply to the right as to the left, to pro- as well as anti-abortion protesters. The First Amendment does not pick political, ideological or partisan sides. All advocacy is equally protected as a matter of constitutional law, if not as a matter of morality.
So I will protest the morality of those who are demonstrating in front of Alito's home, while defending their right to do so peacefully and within constitutional limits.
Bar-Ilan U Study Proves Origin of Herod's Alabaster Bathtubs
Photo Credit: Prof. Amos Frumkin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Herod's calcite-alabaster bathtub found in Kypros fortress, May 2022
From the Middle Bronze Age, Egypt played a crucial role in the appearance of calcite-alabaster artifacts in Israel, and the development of the local gypsum-alabaster industry. The absence of ancient calcite-alabaster quarries in the Southern Levant (modern-day Israel and Palestine) led to the assumption that all calcite-alabaster vessels found in the Levant originated from Egypt, while poorer quality vessels made of gypsum were local products.
Until now this long-held assumption has never been scientifically tested. But the recent identification of a calcite-alabaster quarry in the Te'omim cave, located on the western slopes of the Jerusalem hills (near modern-day Beit Shemesh, Israel), calls this hypothesis into question. A new study, recently published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports (Sourcing Herod the Great's calcite-alabaster bathtubs by a multi-analytic approach), scientifically refutes the hypothesis and, for the first time, allows the distinction between calcite-alabaster originating in Israel from that originating in Egypt. Furthermore, it confirms that calcite-alabaster objects, such as Herod the Great's alabaster bathtubs, were quarried in Israel rather than Egypt.
The research was conducted as part of Ayala Amir's MA thesis at the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, supervised by Prof. Boaz Zissu and Prof. Aren M. Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Analytical data were first collected from samples of two well-defined sources: Egypt and modern-day Israel.
Te'omim cave and the quarry, May 2022 / Ayala Amir, Bar-Ilan University
The Egyptian sources included both ancient and modern calcite-alabaster samples. The ancient samples were obtained courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. These ancient vessel remains were collected by the Austrian archaeological expedition to Giza in the nineteenth century CE. The modern Egyptian artifact, made of geological-sourced calcite-alabaster, was bought in a market in Cairo, Egypt in 2013.
The calcite-alabaster from Israel included raw material from the Te'omim cave quarry, chips (mining debitage) found in the cave near the quarry, and chips and a stone block (raw material carved to a cube, but not yet used to make a vessel) from Umm el-'Umdan — an archaeological site near the Te'omim cave. Additional samples were collected from a speleothem in Natuf cave located in Wadi en-Natuf in western Samaria.
Next, through a multidisciplinary approach, the calcite-alabaster samples from Israel and Egypt were analyzed with the assistance of Prof. Gil Goobes and Prof. Amnon Albeck, of the Department of Chemistry at Bar-Ilan University using four analytic methods, most of which have not been previously used, to determine their origin: inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis, routine infra-red (IR) spectroscopy, 1H- and 31P-solid-state NMR (ssNMR) experiments and C and O stable isotope ratio analysis to determine their composition and their crystalline structure.
"All four analytical methods applied in the study provided consistent results, clearly distinguishing the Israeli from the Egyptian calcite-alabaster for the first time," said Prof. Albeck of the findings.
Ayala Amir beside the wall of the quarry, signs of quarrying-scars and cessation of quarrying are visible on the quarry's walls and floor, May 2022 / Prof. Boaz Zissu, Bar-Ilan University
The same methods were then applied to two of Herod the Great's royal bathtubs, which were made of finely worked calcite-alabaster and found in the Kypros fortress and the palace of Herodium, located just south of Jerusalem. The results unequivocally indicated that the bathtubs were quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, the main source of calcite-alabaster in ancient periods.
"The fact that both bathtubs were unequivocally quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, as we would have expected due to the high quality of the stone, was a particular surprise because that means that Herod the Great used local produce and that the calcite-alabaster industry in Judea in the second half of the first century BC was sufficiently developed and of high enough quality to serve the luxurious standards of Herod, one of the finest builders among the kings of that period," said Prof. Aren Maeir.
The source of calcite-alabaster artifacts cannot be determined by traditional archaeological methods. Furthermore, petrographic analysis, the main method used to determine the source of Israeli calcite-alabaster, shows wide variability in texture, depending on its depositional environment. Consequently, this method could not be used to identify the source of the bathtubs.
"The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this study provides information concerning both the composition and crystalline structure of calcite-alabaster and is significant for understanding and interpreting archaeological findings," said researcher Ayala Amir. "Combining analytic methods with archaeological studies may provide new and fascinating information that could not be obtained by traditional archaeological techniques and enable us to determine the origin of other calcite-alabaster artifacts with much greater confidence," she added.
This study was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation and the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology. It is an outgrowth of the research project "Ancient Quarry of Calcite Cave Deposit ('Bahat') in the Jerusalem Hills: Archaeological and Environmental Significances" funded by the Israel Science Foundation and directed by Prof. Boaz Zissu, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
This photo of the Flag of Israel flying in Jerusalem with the Temple Mount in the distance represents the position of The Jewish Press Online
POSTSCRIPT, May 14: Sure enough, Biden did the WRONG thing and yesterday "recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem." As my article below makes clear, Jordan invented such "custodianship" out of thin air!
According to numerous media reports, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan wants Israel to relinquish any last vestiges of control over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Instead, the Jordanians are baselessly claiming exclusive "custodianship" over the holy site.
This week, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi brazenly declared that "Israel has no sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem! It is a Muslim place of worship, and only the Jordanian Waqf has full authority over the management of the compound," he avowed. And with additional chutzpa, he added "This is occupied Palestinian land."
Two weeks ago, the overheated Jordanian Prime Minister, Bisher Khasawneh, saluted Palestinian rioters on the Temple Mount "who proudly stand like minarets, hurling their stones in a volley of clay at the Zionist sympathizers defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli occupation government."
All this, on the eve of today's (Friday) meeting in the White House between Jordanian King Abdullah and US President Joe Biden, with the issue of Jerusalem expected to be one of the main topics of the meeting.
Israel has good reason to fear that Abdullah and Biden are cooking-up an attempt to impose new pro-Arab "arrangements" on the Temple Mount, with Biden coming to Israel in late June to ride herd on this issue.
Jordan claims that Israel is violating the "historic status quo" – which is a bad joke because the so-called "status quo" has been killed by the Wakf and radical Islamists who have tuned the Temple Mount into ground zero for battle against Israel.
Jordan nevertheless seeks to have the Wakf (not the Israel Police) take charge of visits to the Temple Mount by non-Muslims – which essentially will mean blocking almost all Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. Jordan also objects to the term "freedom of worship" when referring to the site, because they view it as implying that Jews may pray there.
It's important to remember that Amman fiercely opposed the Trump Plan for regional peace because it specified "freedom of worship" (undefined) on the Temple Mount, and because the administration insinuated a role for Saudi Arabia in administrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque – alongside or perhaps instead of Jordan. For historic reasons, there is nothing that upsets the Hashemites more than the suggestion they might lose-out to the Saudis in safeguarding Al-Aqsa.
For several years now, Jordan has been advancing "mission creep," a campaign to falsely embellish its privileges at holy sites in Jerusalem, both Moslem and Christian. Amman now claims "custodianship" of all Moslem and Christian holy places in Jerusalem, a claim that it invented out of thin air!
Israel never has recognized Jordanian "custodianship" over any holy sites in Jerusalem. In fact, the opposite is true, Jordan renounced claims to Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1988 (in favor of the Palestinians), and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, whose 9th article specifies that "Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance."
So how did Jordan climb-up on its current high horse with claims of "custodianship" and denial of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount? By exaggerating the rest of Article 9.
Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace says that: "In this regard (i.e., regarding freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance), in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem."
The Article adds that "When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines."
So there you have it. Recognition was afforded to Jordan's "special role in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem" – not "custodianship" over Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and not control of the Temple Mount Plaza, neither directly nor through the Wakf. (The latter organization purposefully was not mentioned in the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.)
Even Jordan's purported "special role in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem" was predicated on Paragraph 3 of Article 9, which says that "The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace."
I daresay that with its statements and actions mentioned above, and given the way the supposedly-Jordanian-controlled Wakf has behaved, Jordan is in deep default (complete violation) of this latter commitment.
In case anybody has forgotten, here is a reminder of Wakf and Islamic movement status quo violations. They have greatly restricted visitation rights to the holy mount for all non-Moslems (– only very few hours a week, and only through one Temple Mount gate). They have hijacked the pulpits in the mosque on the Mount to regularly preach hatred and violence against Israel.
They have allowed ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Movement and Turkish flags to fly on the mount in violation of all understandings, as well as blood-curdling banners with calls to annihilate Israel and the Jewish People.
They have attacked Jewish visitors to the Mount, Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall below the Mount, and Jewish worshippers on their way to the Western Wall. They have attacked Emiratis and Bahrainis praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque (because these countries signed Abraham Accord peace treaties). Palestinian terrorists even have smuggled machine guns onto the Temple Mount and killed police guarding the gates of the Mount. The terrorists launched their attack from within the Temple Mount and then fled into the shrines on the Mount.
Then there are the tens of thousands of boulders and rocks stockpiled by Arabs on the Mount under full view of Wakf officials, for periodic, planned "outbursts" of rock-throwing violence, including repeated attacks over the past month.
Perhaps worst of all, the Wakf has conducted vast, illegal construction projects on the Mount and beneath it, willfully destroying centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures.
Unfortunately, Western capitals have fallen easy prey to the chutzpadik Jordanian campaign to overstate its "rightful custodianship" (sic.) in Jerusalem, which amounts to an assault on Israel's rights in Jerusalem.
For example, when then-Canadian foreign minister Marc Garneau visited Jordan last July, he "restated Canada's recognition of Jordan's custodianship over the Muslim and Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem, and conveyed Canada's appreciation of Jordan's constructive efforts and recognition of the key role it plays towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples."
(Garneau's office later partially corrected his statement by removing reference to Christian holy sites, but maintaining the term "custodianship.")
Even Washington occasionally has slipped into its statements stuff about Jordanian "custodianship" in Jerusalem, even though it knows full well that there is no such thing in any Israel-Jordan or US-Jordan agreements.
Washington should also know that Jordan doesn't deserve "custodianship," certainly if that impinges in any way on Israeli claims of sovereignty in united Jerusalem (which includes the Old City and the Temple Mount), and certainly if that suggests Israeli relinquishment of security control on the Temple Mount.
Beware King Abdullah's scheming in and around Jerusalem. The Hashemite kingdom may be an important partner for Israel in maintaining stability along Israel's longest (eastern) border, and an ally in the fight against Iranian hegemonic ambitions. (And note: Therefore, Israel today provides almost all of Jordan's water and energy needs.)
But Abdullah is proving to be a foe in the struggle over Jerusalem, willing to employ historical falsifications, radical rhetoric, and shameless diplomatic guile to undermine Israeli rights at the holiest place on earth to the Jewish People. And he takes on this task with hands that are not at all clean or trustworthy.
