Israeli archaeologists have announced that dozens of Dead Sea Scroll fragments bearing Biblical verses were discovered during a National Archaeological operation in the Judean Desert. The scroll fragments are written in Greek and feature portions of the Books of the twelve minor prophets, including those of Zechariah and Nahum. It’s the first time in almost 60 years that an archaeological excavation has uncovered fragments of a Biblical scroll.

In addition to the scroll fragments, archaeologists also uncovered a cache of rare coins from the days of Simon Bar-Kokhba that bear Jewish symbols, and a large basket dating back 10,500 years, making it likely the oldest in the world.

The Dead Sea Scrolls include the earliest known copies of the Biblical texts, and are considered the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century. 

The Israeli genealogy website “MyHeritage” has added millions of Lithuanian Jewish historical records to its database as part of its partnership with a U.S. nonprofit organization, Litvaksig, the primary online genealogy resource site for Lithuanian Jews, who are known as Litvaks.

The records in the collection now published by “MyHeritage” were originally translated and indexed by Litvaksig and represent almost all of its body of work over more than 20 years.

The Lithuanian Jewish records are currently searchable for free on the “MyHeritage” platform, one of the world’s leading sites for family history, with billions of historical records and family-tree profiles. 

An 11-year old Israeli boy uncovered a rare, 2,500-year-old amulet during a family excursion, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said. Zev Ben-David of Beersheva came across the pottery figurine in Nahal Besor. He showed it to his mother, and she called the IAA.

The figurine is rare; only one such example exists in the National Treasury, said Saul Ben-Ami, curator of the Iron Age and Persian periods for the IAA. He dated the figurine to the time of the First Temple. The figurine, measuring 2.8 inches high by 2.4 inches wide, is of a bare breasted woman. It was used in homes and in everyday life, like the hamsa, and served to ensure protection and good luck.

Zev was awarded a certificate of appreciation by the IAA.

A lot has happened since the last season of “Shtisel” aired on Netflix. Season three’s nine episodes will be available on March 25, and will pick up four years after the last season ended. But it’s hard to remember where we left off. Here’s a quick recap:

Set in a Haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem, the show centers on the Shtisel family, particularly the relationship between patriarch Shulem and his son, artist Akiva. Last season saw Akiva engaged to Libbi, his first cousin, but his continued desire to make art caused conflict with both Libbi and his father.

In the other main storyline, Shulem’s daughter, Giti, had struggled to navigate her marriage to Lippe, who had left the Haredi community and was now trying to return. Their daughter, Ruchami, played by Shira Haas, the star of another TV series, “Unorthodox,” married a poor yeshiva student named Hanina. When Hanina moved to Tzfat to study, abandoning Ruchami, the family tried to get Hanina to give Ruchami a gett, but the end of the season saw the two planning a proper wedding.

The trailer for the upcoming season shows Ruchami talking with Shulem about her hopes to get pregnant, patriarch Shulem being asked to retire, and Akiva pushing a stroller.

NEWS FLASH: CBS Studios has just announced it is developing an American adaptation of the popular Israeli drama with a Romeo and Juliet theme: a secular young woman and an observant Orthodox young man to whom she is powerfully drawn. No release date yet.

“Va Etchanan (And I Pleaded)”

This year in Israel, Yom ha Shoah falls between April 7 and 8. As the siren wails, all Israel comes to a standstill. For me, Yom ha Shoah, in one sense, is the most solemn day in the State, even more so than Yom Kippur. All Jews, regardless of country of birth or philosophical and religious differences, are united for a few minutes in collective memory of those who died. 

The siren has dual significance: to remember those who perished during the Shoah and, simultaneously, to remind us to be vigilant about the cruelty that mankind is capable of.  

Each Shabbat, when Rabbi Gadi recites the “Shema,” the central prayer of Judaism, I am reminded of another “Shema,” Primo Levi’s poem, a plea for teaching and remembering the Shoah, and a curse if we fail to heed his words. It is the invocation of a prophet.

          “Shema”

You who live secure 

In your warm houses, 

You who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man,

Who labors in the mud

Who does not know peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been: 

I command these words to you.

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,

When you go to bed, when you rise,

Repeat them to your children,

Or may your house crumble,

Disease render you powerless,

Your offspring turn their faces from you.

Primo Levi was a young Italian Jew, captured by the Fascists in late 1943, and deported to Auschwitz in February 1944. After liberation in January 1945, he returned to his hometown of Turin, Italy, where he attained worldwide fame for his writings. He wrote the poem, “Shema,” in January 1946 as a warning to the world, to his readers, to convey what happened in Europe and the potential for human evil.

Primo Levi divides  the poem into three parts. In the first four lines, he approaches the general public: “You,” all the readers who are secure and safe must know what happened. The middle section is a summary of the horror in the camp that Levi had recently suffered and witnessed. The last part of the poem invokes the “Shema.” We are commanded to teach our children and cursed should we fail to heed the plea. For Levi, who took his own life on April 11, 1987, the world as he knew it had ignored the plea.  

For many of us in Israel, Italy, and in the US, our custom is to commemorate the birth of Primo Levi on 4 Av with comforting passages from his work. His bar mitzvah parasha, Va Etchanan, is read in the diaspora on Shabbat Nachamu. And on the anniversary of his death, April 11, which sometimes corresponds to Yom ha Shoah, we read his poem, “Shema.”

—Submitted by Elizabeth Levi Senigaglia

Generations of American Jews received their first visual impressions of the Exodus from the iconic Maxwell House Haggadah, introduced as a marketing device in 1932 to convince consumers that the coffee was kosher for Passover. The Haggadah has been updated and reprinted more than 55 million times.

The first set of illustrations was taken from the classic Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695, the work of a convert to Judaism, who took the name Abraham bar Jacob. His illustrations captured so much emotion that they were reprinted in dozens of editions of the Haggadah over the next four centuries.

Personal identification tags bearing the names of four Jewish children deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland were retrieved in an archaeological excavation at the site. The metal tags worn around the neck, carry the names of young Dutch Jews Lea Judith de la Penha, Deddie Zak, Annie Kapper, and David Juda van der Velde — all from Amsterdam — who ranged in age from 5 to 12 years.     

          According to Jewish News Service (JNS), Annie Kapper was 12. She was sent on a train with a total of 1,255 Jews. The moment the train arrived, all of the passengers were immediately sent to gas chambers; Kapper’s tag was found in a mass grave.

Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Yoram Haimi, who ran the dig in conjunction with colleagues from Poland and the Netherlands, said that ID tags bearing the names of children had been found only at Sobibor. “The hardest thing is to hear that one of the kids whose tag you’re holding in your hand arrived…on a train full of children…sent to die alone,” Haimi said. “I’ve been digging at Sobibor for 10 years. This was the most difficult day.”