Desbois’ team digs for evidence of Nazi atrocities.

Toward an Archeology of Hell

 

Remembrance is a contradictory imperative. Respectful preservation of the past, especially the remains of those who have gone before us, stands at odds with the need to understand the same past, especially through means like archeology.

Treblinka: Revealing the Hidden Graves of the Holocaust  BBC.  Forensic archeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls describes her work at the site of Treblinka.  SAVE

Excavating Nazi Extermination Centers  Isaac Gilead, Yoram Haimi, Wojciech MazurekPresent Pasts.  What do archeological excavations actually tell us about the operation of death camps?  SAVE

SAVE "Toward an Archeology of Hell"

2011: A Year in Books

 

The holidays are over, the coffee-table books have all been unwrapped and set aside, and winter isn't going anywhere for a while. In short, it's time to settle in for some good reading. The literary critic D. G. Myers here presents the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, all of which merit your attention.

2010: A Year in Books  D.G. MyersJewish Ideas Daily.  From the popular to the scholarly, a reader's and buyer's guide to 34 of the best books of 2010.  SAVE

Retrieving American Jewish Fiction  D.G. MyersJewish Ideas Daily.  A historical symposium of some neglected classics, and an introduction to the avot and imahot of American Jewish writing.  SAVE

SAVE "2011: A Year in Books"

Highlights of 2011:
Part II

 

Part II of our round-up of the past year's most popular features on Jewish Ideas Daily. (Part I is here.)

SAVE "Highlights of 2011:
Part II"

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Alive in Times Square

 

In the basement of a converted theater on West 44th Street, tucked between the legendary Sardi's restaurant and a bowling alley, a block from Times Square and across the street from the musical Memphis, is Discovery Times Square.

A Dead Issue?  Elli FischerJewish Ideas Daily.  Since the electrifying discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in the late 1940's, the scholarly consensus has been that they were produced by the Essenes. But is this true?  SAVE

Virtual Qumran Tour  Orion Center, Hebrew University.  Take a virtual tour of the Qumran community and the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  SAVE

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls  Israel Museum.  This digital gallery allows viewers to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls in unprecedented detail.  SAVE

Old and New Tools  Jean DuhaimeH-Net.  In a collection of essays, scholars consider and reconsider their methods of understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the world in which they were composed.  SAVE

SAVE "The Dead Sea Scrolls, Alive in Times Square"

View More in Current Research

Insight & Analysis

Disjecta Membra  Benjamin BalintLos Angeles Review of Books.  Not for nothing was the Cairo Genizah called "the Living Sea Scrolls": its discoverers revolutionized the study of Mediterranean Jewish life at the very moment that it was drawing to a close.  SAVE

Analyzing Ashkelon  Sam RobertsNew York Times.  Science is revolutionizing the study of ancient Ashkelon—revealing mysterious cylinders as parts of ancient looms, proving that what we thought were palaces may really have been stables.  SAVE

The Afghanistan Genizah  Gil SheflerJerusalem Post.  The scholarly world is abuzz over a cave filled with ancient scrolls that may be the most significant historical discovery in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Genizah.  (Hebrew report with video here.).  SAVE

Yehuda Halevi’s Death and the Cairo Genizah  Eliezer BrodtSeforim.  Legend says the great 12th-century Spanish hymnist reached Eretz Yisrael but was killed at Jerusalem's city gate. Genizah documents suggest that the legend was based on fact.  SAVE

Elephants and Homo erectus  Arieh O’SullivanMedia Line.  A cave near Tel Aviv may offer up evidence that modern man first emerged not in Africa but in the Middle East—because of a scarcity of elephant meat.  SAVE

From Haran to Hebron  Moshe GiladHaaretz.  One anthropologist is on a campaign to mark the 1,200 kilometer path traveled by the patriarch Abraham through Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Israel.  SAVE

Holy Land Stonehenge  Associated Press.  In Arabic, the site's name means "stone heap of the wild cats." In Hebrew it is known as the "wheel of ghosts." Just what is the mysterious prehistoric structure?.  SAVE

Powered by eResources