Ancient World’s Largest Complex of Winepresses Uncovered in Yavne

 

It appears that the town of Yavne, home to the Sanhedrin in exile after the destruction of the Second Temple, became a worldwide powerhouse of wine production some 1,500 years ago. A vast, well-designed industrial estate from the Byzantine period with an impressive wine production complex—the largest of its kind in the world in that period—has been excavated in the city of Yavne over the past two years.

This large-scale excavation has been conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of the Israel Land Authority’s initiative to expand the city. The plant includes five magnificent wine presses, warehouses for aging and marketing the wine, kilns for firing the clay jars in which the wine was stored, tens of thousands of fragments and intact earthen jars, and well-planned access from each facility to the others.

Drinking wine was very common in ancient times, for children and adults alike. The water was not always clean or tasty, so wine was used as a kind of concentrate to improve the taste. Each of the exposed winepresses covered an area of about 225 square meters. Compartments were built across the treading floor for fermenting the grape juice after it had been crushed by barefoot workers, and next to them there stood two enormous octagonal-shaped vats for collecting the extracted liquid.

Chabad Green Brothers "anti-vaxxers" Lose their Father to Covid

 

The anti-vax Green brothers (both rabbis, both delisted as shluchim by Chabad HQ) have lost their father to COVID after several days in the ICU.

Multiple sources tell me his sons did not allow him to get vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/Ln6fBCOB9a

— Blimi Marcus (@MarcusBlimi) October 11, 2021

Sources state that they did not let their mother hospitalize him as his oxygen trended down to the 70’s and lower until he was critical and was admitted to the ICU.

As soon as shiva ends I expect them to accuse the hospital of malpractice and murder. 

Man who got married to his "Rice cooker" gets divorced just 4 days later ...smack in the middle of Sheva Berachos

 

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BBC describes Alfred Dreyfus as 'notorious Jewish spy' despite being exonerated.

 

Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the French army who was baselessly accused of treason by a deeply antisemitic establishment.

After initially being convicted and humiliated, he was later exonerated of all charges.

Yet the @BBC refers to him as a "notorious Jewish spy". pic.twitter.com/woFbgdnztM

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 10, 2021

 

The BBC described Alfred Dreyfus — a French-Jewish officer accused of treason in the Dreyfus Affair — as a "notorious Jewish spy" in its summary for the first episode of a period police drama released on October 9.

"Paris, 1899. The French Republic is in turmoil as rumors spread about the release from Devil's Island of Dreyfus, the notorious Jewish spy," read the summary for episode 1 of  BBC's Paris Police 1900.

According to the BBC, the summary was later changed to avoid misunderstanding. The line from the program page was rewritten to describe Dreyfus instead as having been "previously arrested for spying." 

"The sentence was not intended as an [sic] historical statement, but to reflect the rumors towards the Dreyfus case that we see in the drama — which also depicts the rise of antisemitism," the BBC Spokesperson said in response to a Jerusalem Post inquiry. 

"For the BBC to produce a series featuring Alfred Dreyfus, who was baselessly accused of treason, and then describe him as a 'notorious Jewish spy' is an insult to his memory and to the Jewish community in general," Emanuel Miller, a media analyst at the media watchdog organization HonestReporting, told The Jerusalem Post. "The Dreyfus case represented a key moment in Zionism's history and in the eyes of many is a byword for the miscarriages of justice suffered by Jews throughout the ages. How many times must a Jew's name be smeared?"

"While the website text was quietly changed, the BBC evidently feels it doesn't owe Jews an apology, much less take serious steps to familiarize its staff with the basics of antisemitism in order to prevent such easily avoidable mishaps," Miller said to the Post. "Unfortunately, judging by past experience, the BBC is unlikely to apologize for the insulting mischaracterization."

Alfred Dreyfus was a French Jewish Military officer who was falsely accused of treason in 1894 in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. Dreyfus's officer sword was publicly broken, he was stripped of his rank, and imprisoned on Devil's Island. Eventually, reports of an army cover-up of Dreyfus' innocence and scapegoating were leaked to the press, later leading to his exoneration in 1906.

The antisemitism surrounding the scandal convinced Theodor Herzl, then a journalist and later one of the founding fathers of Zionism, of the necessity of establishing a Jewish state. 

Noach Said L'Chayim When he came out of the Ark ..in Yiddish

 

Two Blocks from DIN ... Kosher Mikva & Olive Press from the Times of the Chashmonim Uncovered

 

Developers were about to build a building on this site on Rechov Luz in Beit Shemesh Alef, just blocks from where I live, and discovered a Kosher Mikvah and an olive press on site. So instead of another building the Zionists will build a park around this new find so that  all of us will enjoy sitting where our grandparents lived during the times of the Chashmonim...

Who knew that 2,000 years later a descendant would move  around the corner from where my ancestors lived

תושבי בית שמש בתקופת החשמונאים בוודאי לא העלו בדעתם, שמקווה הטהרה ובית הבד שבו הם מייצרים שמן, יהפכו בתוך 2,000 שנה, לחלק מהגן הציבורי של תושבי בית שמש המודרניים

חורבת אל כיך ברמת בית שמש נחפרה במשך שש עונות חפירה, בניהולה של ד"ר אלנה קוגן זהבי מרשות העתיקות. ממש בימים אלו, נשלמות עבודות הפיתוח של השטח הציבורי בשכונה, בתום עבודות השימור רחבות של מינהל השימור של רשות העתיקות במימון משרד השיכון. במסגרת העבודות, ייצבו המשמרים את הממצאים, והם שילבו אותם בצורה הרמונית בפארק הארכיאולוגי. צוות השימור שלנו הכשיר את העתיקות, כך שכיום ניתן לבקר בהן באופן חופשי, ובהמשך ישולבו בגן שלטי הסבר והמחשות.

סיפורה של חורבת כיך הולך הרבה אחורה. אחרי הגירוש הגדול של נבוכדנאצר מלך בבל, כל שפלת יהודה ננטשה לחלוטין. מבנה מהתקופה הפרסית שנתגלה באתר, גילה לנו שהחזרה לשם אחרי הגירוש החלה בתקופה הפרסית – במאה ה-4 לפנה"ס. מבנים נוספים, מאוחרים יותר שנחשפו, מהתקופה החשמונאית, ובהם מקווה טהרה ציבורי, גת לייצור יין ובית בד, סיפרו את סיפורו של הכיבוש החשמונאי והתעצמות השלטון היהודי באזור.

היישוב אמנם ננטש אחרי חורבן בית שני, אבל סוף הסיפור, כמו שאנחנו מכירים אותו, טוב, והיום שוכנת לה כאן עיר יהודית מודרנית, שתהנה מפארק ארכיאולוגי חדש ומונגש.

מוזמנים לשתף

צילום: איל מרקו, רשות העתיקות

US pressures Israel to slow settlement building

 What exactly did Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Joe Biden discuss about settlements? And what’s behind leaks that want to suggest cracks in their relationship?

Judge reinstates ban on Jews praying on Har Habayit, Hamas celebrates Israeli ‘surrender’

 

This is how the Israeli government and Chareidie leadership respond to Hamas threats.  Hamas is correct in their celebration - this is a surrendering indeed. I wonder what would be the next Hamas demand that Israeli government will yield to. And I'm sure that Hamas, encouraged by such surrender will come up with next demand.

A ruling allowing a Jew to silently pray on the Temple Mount for the first time was reversed by a Jerusalem District Court judge on Friday.

District Court Judge Aryeh Romanov agreed with an appeal by Public Security Minister Omer Barlev and the police, ruling that only Muslims are allowed to overtly pray on the Temple Mount.

“What is important… is the fact that there was someone who noticed the praying, which evidently shows that the prayer was overt. If it was not overt, no one would have noticed it,” Romanov wrote.

Hamas was ecstatic after the Jewish prayer ban was reinstated, calling it a “surrender to the threats made by Palestinians.”

In September, police banned Rabbi Aryeh Lippo from the Temple Mount for two weeks after he was seen praying on the holy site. But Jerusalem Magistrate Court Judge Bilha Yahalom ruled that Lippo had a right to return to the holy site. “His daily arrival at the Temple Mount indicates that this is a matter of principle and substance for him,” Yahalom wrote.

Romanov reinstated Lippo’s 15-day ban.

Orthodox Women Reveal Their Abortion Stories

 

Abortion is never simple — no matter the state, the stage of pregnancy, or the reason.

While the nation is besotted with headlines, as Roe v. Wade is once again brought to the forefront of debate, we often overlook the actual stories of women who go through this experience.

But there is one group of women for whom abortion is an especially fraught decision — women in religiously conservative communities, and particularly, women of the Orthodox Jewish community.

For women here, it is a much more complicated decision to terminate a pregnancy, both because the Halacha, the religious law behind it, is complex — and because the shame associated with it is severe.

There is a story of two layers here: There is an official story, of rigid policy, a community that is publicly anti-abortion-rights.

And there is a secret one.

Judge Tells the Witness Testifying Against Netanyahu "I cannot believe one word you say"