Jarom in Jerusalem: Old stuff is great, but Bedouins are Better

The day after turkey was a recovery day and we mostly just sat around (I did my blog). But the next day was sweet. We had a field trip into the Negev Desert. This is a true desert that many people think about when they think of the Middle East. Camels and sand! First, we went to visit help center for Bedouin women. The Bedouin can’t travel around anymore and are very poor, and women are usually the poorest. At this center they teach women to take wool (they use sheep wool but traditionally they used goat or camel) and make it into yarn, dye it, and make them into useful and pretty items. The place is run by a woman and somehow the guy in charge of our center is involved there as well. After that we visited on of the “unrecognized” Bedouin villages in Southern Israel. These are unrecognized by the Israeli government as places where people can settle and so there are villages of several thousand people (Bedouins) who don’t have water or electricity. If they build anything substantial the Israeli government will tear them down. In order to build cities, the Israeli government wants to have certain specifications for the village and requirements I guess the people just won’t conform too. I don’t know any of the specifics more than that. One reason we visited this village was the school that LDS philanthropies is paying for there. We got to go in, and it was a very small classroom with some plastic chairs and tables where women who are wearing the full body covering are learning Hebrew to help them out. That was neat to see.

Also, we went and visited two archeological sites, Tel Sheva and Tel Arad. While the Beersheba of Abraham was in today’s modern Beersheba, this “tel sheva” was the tel Sheba of the Solomon and what-not’s day.

Anyway, about the archeological sites…

There was a lot of cool things at these sites. At Beersheba/ Tel Sheva there was ruins of a city from the time between King Solomon and the Divided Monarchy. There was a well that dates to the Iron Age. There is like a three-gated gate where if one falls they have to go through 2 more. Lots of houses, as well as a large underground water storage unit that we were able to go down in and walk around- very large! Also, there are the remains of a “broad room temple” there. Also there are remains of a large horned alter that have been found there. I’ll talk more about the alter and the temple found there in a minute.

In Tel Arad, there are two sites. One is lower down and is a Canaanite city that dates to 3 or 4 millennia (early bronze age) BCE. There are the remains of a palace, residential neighborhoods, a well, walls, and a temple complex. It’s a double temple complex, with one part to do washings of some type, as well as another room where there is a stone that stands up strait. A stone that stood up strait represented diety. Remember, this is a Canaanite city. The other part is further up on the hill that contains an Israelite fortress from the 9^th to 6^th century BCE. There is also a large Hellenistic tower in the middle of it, The Israelite fortress still had quite a bit of wall, as well as… another temple. This one is more interesting and led to the realization that Tel Sheva also had a temple. At Tel Arad there is a “broad room” Israelite temple. This means that the temple looked a lot like Solomon’s temple, with three rooms, an alter of un-hewn stone, a holy place and holy of holies. In these temples the Holy place is very long side to side, and the Holy of Holies juts out of the back of the building in a little box. Archeologists take these two sites as evidence that there was temples and temple worship outside of the regular temple in Jerusalem, and that there they worshipped Jehovah. Now, I believe in Deuteronomy it says that you’re not allowed to have a temple outside of the one at Jerusalem, but some think that part was added later, because there are several temples outside Jerusalem in use during the time of Solomon. However, it’s clear that by the end at least (they were destroyed or covered up during the time of King Hezekiah) they weren’t worshipping in a correct manner because the alter at Tel Sheva is made from Hewn stone (prohibited in bible) as well as in the temple at Tel Arad, there are two stones standing strait up in the Holy of Holies, meaning there was two deities being worshipped there. Make of it as you want. There are some interesting implications for LDS folks though. One is that Mormons have gotten crap for building lots of temples, the objection being that there was only one temple in ancient times. Tel Arad and Sheva tell us that temples were built in probably many places, and that restriction may have been added later. Also, in the Book of Mormon, when Lehi leaves Jerusalem, he builds an alter and offers sacrifice. This wouldn’t have been allowed, unless of course that prohibition against building additional alters didn’t come to later. (The books of Moses originate at about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 600 BCE.) Some interesting stuff!

The rest of this week has mostly been studying and going to class. (There is a lot of it!) On Friday a small group of us visited a Jewish Synagogue for Shabbat (the start of Sabbath). It was a reformed synagogue so probably the biggest difference to an outsider is the men and women aren’t separated, and things like they use cell phones on the Sabbath. They do a lot of singing, in fact the whole thing was singing! At one point you turn around and look at the doors to welcome in the Sabbath. Also, I want to add that at the end we sung “forever young” by John Denver in Hebrew. I guess it had some significance. There was some guys playing guitar and bongos that don’t usually come either our professor said. Our professor is an orthodox Jew (but will visit reformed with us) and so he walked home afterward with his children (driving is work as well.)

Some Jokes…

I hear we’re going to have a race with the Bedouins. Yeah, we betta-win!

Did you like that joke? Wait I’ve got an even betta-one….