Politics—Not Religious Law—Rules Ultra-Orthodox Demonstrators - The BAS Library
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Battle Over Bones

Politics—Not Religious Law—Rules Ultra-Orthodox Demonstrators

By Gabriel Barkay

Political power, not religious law, motivates the ultra-Orthodox in Israel who violently protest archaeological excavations, claiming that ancient Jewish graves are being desecrated. Jewish religious law (halakhah) does not prohibit moving tombs, if it is done with dignity and respect. The sages were well aware of the necessity to relocate graves and their contents, as tombs are found everywhere in this continuously and heavily populated country. The Talmud even tells us about a skull that was found on the Temple Mount itself and then moved.1 Talmudic literature describes the great second-century rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai clearing the city of […]

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Footnotes

1.

A cubit is approximately 18 inches (the length of the standard cubit ranges from 45 to 52/3 centimeters) and is based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the fingers.

2.

See Gabriel Barkay, “The Divine Name Found in Jerusalem,” BAR 09:02.

3.

The Mishnah is the first great rabbinic commentary and law book, redacted (edited) in about 200 C.E. It forms the core of the Talmud.

Endnotes

1.

Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi), Sota 20.1; Nedarim 39.2; Pessahim 36.2.

2.

S. Klein, ed., Sepher Hayyishuv (Jerusalem, 1939), pp. 58–59 (Hebrew). See also Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.2.3.

3.

Tosephta, Bava Batra 1.11.

4.

Magen Broshi, Gabriel Barkay, and Shimon Gibson, “Two Iron Age Tombs Below the Western City Wall, Jerusalem and the Talmudic Law of Purity,” Cathedra 28 (1983), pp. 17–32 (Hebrew).

5.

Yaakov Moshe Toledano, “The Holy Tombs at Tiberias,” in All the Land of Naphtali, ed. H.Z. Hirschberg and Joseph Aviram (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1967), p. 262 (Hebrew).