Ace reporter Linda Gradstein, Allison Kaplan Sommer and Noah Efron discuss two topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week.
Food Fight!
Can the government’s war on Coca Cola be resolved by diplomatic means?
Can You Dig It?
Is the best thing Israeli archeologists can do, doing nothing?
Our Love for Yulia the Monk Seal
For our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra-special, special extra discussion: Why do we love Yulia the monk seal so damn much?
All that and the return of Yulia the monk seal, a reflection upon the death of the great centenarian Rabbi Gershon Edelstein and the music of The Golem of Prague!
Songs
- Blues Mivreshet Shinayim
- Benneton
- Ko Amar ha-Nahar
Of all of the arguments presented on whether archeologists should continue digging, the one I found the most persuasive was the contention that if we don’t, Palestinians will continue to dig to find evidence for their narrative of the past. This argument convinced me that at the very least, anyone who agrees with that notion should stop digging. The purpose of archeology is to advance knowledge and human understanding, not to create propaganda to advance a political or religious narrative. Any archeologist who believes that the purpose of their work is to counter the Palestinians should stop digging and instead excavate their head from the dark place where it currently resides.
You’re right, absolutely (and how you put it is charming and amusing). Still, it is a little more complicated than you suggest, I think. Archeology in Israel has absolutely been linked to reconstructing the ancient ties of Jews to this land. Masada is lovingly reconstructed, but the site of the Roman encampment below is not. I have not seen many (any, really) Jewish archeologists working on the history of Palestinian settlement of the land. Maybe it shouldn’t be, maybe it doesn’t have to be, but archeology in Israel has been an endeavor that is hard to separate from Zionist ideology. So for someone to say, we need to keep digging because we need to keep advancing this ideological agenda, that doesn’t sound so out-of-line with how archeologists have been trained here for generations.
(And still I agree with you!)
Noah, you are legendary for being able to see all sides in a controversy, which is precisely what people love about you. At the same time, there is a tendency of Zionists in any debate concerning Israel to say “It’s complicated” (and it IS complicated), and the danger of that is obscuring basic truths and principles that need to shine through the complexity. One basic principle, IMO, is that archeology should be an evidence-based discipline and not another forum for propaganda. The fact that someone would consider it appropriate to say that archeology needs to advance the Zionist narrative so directly and openly in a national newspaper demonstrates just how deeply entrenched that unfortunate approach is, as you say. (There is also a long tradition of Christian archeologists who come to the Holy Land with a bible in one hand and a shovel in the other, which is also problematic.) And the fact that that approach is so deeply entrenched in Israeli archeology is exactly why people who believe in evidence-based scholarship should say so just as directly and openly…