Why couldn't the sages simply refer to the Torah to resolve the dispute by confirming the correct date? Remarkably, the Torah omits the specific date of Shavuot, unlike other holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Passover, which have clearly defined dates in the Jewish calendar. Shavuot, marking the covenant between God and Israel at Sinai, is unique in that its precise date is not recorded in the Torah. What, then, does the Torah provide?

The Torah states that the giving occurred "in the third month after the children of Israel left Egypt," meaning Sivan, but it offers no specific day. The only guidance is to "count fifty days" from the day following the first day of Passover. However, because Hebrew months can be either full (30 days) or short (29 days), the lengths of Iyar and Nisan that year could result in multiple possible dates.

Both months might have been short, both full, or one of each, meaning the Torah could have been given on the 5th, 6th, or 7th of Sivan. Further complicating matters, the Torah does not confirm that the Torah was given on the fiftieth day, only that this day is a "holy convocation" when "no work shall be done." Thus, it's a day for rest and celebration – but of what exactly? The Torah remains silent.

The debate over Shavuot's precise and official date might seem like a technical matter of calendar calculations, but it holds a deeper significance. The lack of clarity may reflect a deliberate intent to prevent the Jewish people from tying the Torah to a single day. The Torah is a timeless guide, eternally relevant, and Jews are meant to embrace it anew daily, as expressed in the blessing "who gives the Torah" in the present tense, not "who gave the Torah" in the past.

Yet one question persists: Why didn't the Torah clarify that Shavuot is the day of the giving of the Torah? Why did it take the sages to later define it as "the time of the giving of our Torah"?

Rabbi Sacks explains that Shavuot carries an additional layer of meaning that might have been overlooked if it were solely associated with the giving of the Torah. Every mention of Shavuot in the Torah is linked to agricultural practices, such as the omer offering, roasted and fresh grain, the wave offering, and the first fruits. Additionally, in Emor portion, right after mentioning Shavuot among Israel's festivals, the Torah addresses the commandment of pe'ah – leaving a portion of the field for the poor – and leket, the gleanings for the needy. This indicates that Shavuot also celebrates the Land of Israel. Rabbi Sacks suggests that Shavuot honors two divine gifts: the Torah and the Land.

Thus, the three pilgrimage festivals reflect three phases of the Jewish people's redemption from Egypt: Passover recalls their enslavement and exodus, Sukkot commemorates the 40 years of desert wandering, and Shavuot marks their entry into the Land of Israel.

The link between the Torah and the Land of Israel is clear: the Torah's commandments are fully realized in the Land. Hence, one holiday celebrates both. Today, with the Jewish people's return to their homeland after 2,000 years of exile, during which they safeguarded the Torah's teachings worldwide, it can again be declared, "From Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem." The surge in Shavuot night study sessions in recent years proves this, as tens of thousands of Israelis – secular, traditional, religious, and ultra-Orthodox – engage in their own way with the Torah's timeless messages, given thousands of years ago.

Rabbi Elie Kling heads the "Atid Chemed" program at the Chemed Academic College in Sdot Negev,.

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Shalom Boguslavsky's new book boasts probably the longest book title you have ever read: "The Unlikely and Oft-Overlooked Story of the Rise and Fall of Jewish Eastern Europe." The first sentence in this highly popular history book, written by the tour guide, lecturer and blogger, who has a strong passion for Eastern Europe, proudly tells us that, "It is a ridiculous feat to recount five hundred years of history in one book."  But Boguslavsky was forced to tell this story in one book as it is precisely this 500-year period from the 15th century to the Holocaust that creates a clear narrative arc: at the start of the 16th century (the period of the Expulsion of the Jews of Spain, the growing strength of the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of America by the Europeans) there were only a few tens of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe; by the mid-18th century (prior to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution) this number had already grown to 750 thousand; and by the end of the 19th century (the birth of Zionism, the eve of the First World War, against the backdrop of a tremendous wave of emigration to America), there were some 6.5 million Jews there.

But Boguslavsky's book does not necessarily deal with these relatively well-known global events, which accompanied the rise of Judaism in Eastern Europe, but actually focuses on the no less interesting but much less remembered (or "oft-overlooked" in his words) developments of that particular area. Who are the people and the cultures who shared the Eastern-European domain with the Jews? What is the connection between the Jewish mythology of that period – the shtetl, the incessant battles between the Hasidim and the Litvaks (the Misnagedim or "opponents" who later took on the term Litvaks as they came from Lithuania) and so on – and the reality of the other surrounding nations and states? Our inability to perceive the conditions leading to the development of such a major force in world Jewry, does to a large extent underscore the importance of one of the maps presented at the beginning of the book: that large land of two kingdoms Poland-Lithuania, which at the time encompassed Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Kaliningrad. This is an immense swathe of land that has changed over the years, it expanded and was later downsized, it was partitioned and then reunited, and for the duration of those hundreds of years it was plagued by revolutions no less than those occurring in Western Europe. This certainly had an impact on the Jewish population.

Boguslavsky's interest in the Jews of Eastern Europe began as a necessary part of his profession. "I began to travel to Eastern Europe, mainly to Ukraine, due to personal circumstances, and also as I was extremely interested by it," recounts Boguslavsky. "The more I traveled the more I became captivated with it, and I thought: I travel in any event and deal with guiding and tourism, so why shouldn't they pay me for those trips? So, I began to take groups of tourists with me. I obviously needed to engage in an orderly effort to learn the relevant material so as not to talk garbage when providing commentary on the sites in question. When I learned the general history of those places, it cast Jewish history in a completely different light, and gave me the broader context that I had been missing until then, and that people usually are not aware of. The second thing that happened is that I was overly critical of certain images that had been traditionally associated with the Jews of Eastern Europe. They still remained firmly implanted in my head, but then, gradually I began to see things that did not really fit in with those images."

The first thing that Boguslavsky noticed, which contradicted those preconceptions that had "been implanted in his head," he claims was the number of Jews spread across the lands of Eastern Europe. "There were simply masses of Jews there," he says. "At some point, more than three-quarters of world Jewry were concentrated in that region. This was information that was already available, but it became much more present and tangible when I was there and saw the little that remained of it with my own eyes. It is still possible to feel the prominent presence of the Jews in that region to this day. The first example that caused me to understand this was one of the remains of the synagogues that I saw. Even the little that remained of it was extremely grand and majestic. I thought to myself that it is from the literature written about that period, rather than the academic research, that we always tend to gain the impression of the small, shabby and pitiful shtetl with the non-Jews on one side of the river and the Jews on the other side, and everything is so small and abjectly impoverished. And then, all of a sudden, you see a synagogue hewn from stone in the center of the town, a magnificent edifice built by the King of Poland's own personal architect. Thus, a number of factors began to accumulate that did not correspond with the image that I had entertained, and so I began to delve into this subject a little more.

"In the beginning, I thought to myself, 'Wow, how smart I am, I have unearthed completely new ground here,' but as soon as I began to read I immediately grasped that I had not uncovered anything at all. Everything that I thought I understood – the world of academic research already knew. Prof. Majer Bałaban, Prof. Israel Heilperin and all the leading lights in this field have already written everything there is to write much more eloquently than I could write. But it transpires that there is a gap between what is known to the world of academic study and the popular perception of things. And I, in my profession, am supposed to give this out to people who do not hail from an academic background or who have been dealing with such issues for their entire lives. And so, this is how I decided to take the leap and try and bridge that gap."

Where did the Cossacks come from?

The book weaves the general history of the region with the local Jewish history and the Jewish memory, or the Jewish mythology of Eastern Europe. Familiarity with the broader view of the story, says Boguslavsky, sheds a different light on our story, that of the Jews. "If you ask historians dealing with Jewish history what was the greatest event that occurred in the last third of the 18th century, the rise of the Hasidic movement will always stand out together with the bitter split between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim, Boguslavsky points out. "Ostensibly, this is an internal Jewish theological-ideological dispute, a fight for the spiritual leadership of the Jews, and similar issues. However, when you study the wider picture, you come to understand that all this took place in parallel to the Civil War, revolutions, invasions, and severe internal political strife in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. The Jews were involved in all these affairs. At that time, the historic Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) discussions were well underway, which were intended to determine the fate of the kingdom, and the Jews sent their emissaries to it, took part in the rebellions, and played an important role in the wars – both as victims but also as fighters, here and there. So, to what extent did the Jews who lived at that time really regard the halakhic disputes, such as the question of whether it is permitted to stand on your head during prayers, as a central issue? I don't know and there is no way of checking this. But we really should not be telling our story without the broader context."

How does that context have a specific impact?

"The issue of the denunciatory letters sent by opponents of Hasidism to the Russian government is a central pillar in the conflict between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim. I have heard this story more times than I care to remember, and I have never come across anybody who mentions that there is a wider context to the use of such a tool: the Russian government in those areas, which were given over to Russia following the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, was completely new, it had just materialized there. So, everybody was trying hard to prove to the new administration that they were loyal to it and that the other side was full of treachery and plans to undermine it. This is also a government, and once again it is important to mention here the wider context, which until that point had not come across any Jews at all. Until that time, there had been no Jews in Russia so that its government had absolutely no idea who these people were and what was happening among the Jews. So now, each side was convinced that it had been presented with a golden opportunity to go to the new administration and present to it the reality of the situation as it saw it, and in a manner that would support its own cause.

"This is not the only context. This dispute is also connected to the processes of modernization that were just beginning to take shape at that time. The leadership crisis in the Jewish world that led to the rise of Hasidism is a direct outcome of the crisis of modernity. The Enlightenment is not the only thing that was born out of that crisis. Hasidism too, as well as the Misnagedim movement, along with the Enlightenment, are modern phenomena. These are three distinct movements that appear at the same time, against the same background, and under the same circumstances. I believe that this puts the whole story in a much more interesting context than the purely internal Jewish theological and sociological aspect that it has been customary to talk about."

Another example is that of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in the mid-17th century, clearly one of the more severe traumas that is indelibly etched in Jewish historical memory – but without any context. "The story usually goes something like this: people called Cossacks, known by and familiar to only a handful of people, suddenly appeared from nowhere, and they slaughtered us because they are antisemites with a deep-rooted hatred of anything Jewish," says Boguslavsky. "The truth is that this is correct, as who did not hate Jews during that period? Having said that, when you zoom out from what was clearly a horrific series of pogroms, you see a historical event in dimensions that are reminiscent of the Thirty Years' War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in Western European history, which was just coming to an end when the Khmelnytsky Uprising began. We are talking about several decades of wars resulting in millions of dead and wounded, with a whole spectrum of factors involved. An epic drama of which we remember an episode that lasted for a year and a half and which was not necessarily the most fatal event for the Jews at that time, but regarding which the most eloquent text was written, which also survived, the book "Yeven Mezulah" or the "Abyss of Despair", written by Rabbi Nathan Nata ben Moses Hannover. What would have happened had this book not been written or had it not survived? We might have completely forgotten about this event or not even known about it."

A highly selective memory

The book is replete with figures we have heard of, but also brings to life from the 'abyss of despair' colorful characters, who might not have left a personal stamp on history but their stories are no less riveting. One of these figures, whose story to a large extent is the story of the entire period, is Fabus Abramovich of Kraków. "A rogue and a con artist who took over the community in Kraków at the end of the 18th century. This is an amazing story. He was the leader of the opposition in the community. In the Jewish communities of that period, an oligarchy comprising just a few families was able to rule all the community institutions for more than a hundred years on occasion, even though elections were actually held annually. In terms of the situation in those days, this was one of the most democratic forms of government that existed on Earth, but such an oligarchy also gives rise to opposition, which is usually composed of those people who were not given the jobs that they believed they ought to have been given. In the 18th century, when the initial buds of mass politics were just beginning to sprout, the opposition began to portray itself as ostensibly being the force that represents the 'simple people' against the 'arrogant elite'. Of course, had they succeeded and risen to power they would have acted precisely as those preceding them did. These struggles were always a sordid affair, but the events in the community of Kraków were especially sordid and violent.

"Our man, Abramovich, took advantage of the fact that Kraków was conquered time and again by various forces during the period of the partition of Poland-Lithuania. Against the background of this tumult, he succeeded in creating a devious bureaucratic manipulation that would appoint him as a dictator to rule over the community. Jewish communities in Europe were run for hundreds of years by a joint leadership of four 'parnasim' (heads of the community), each one running the community for one month at a time on a rotation. Underneath the parnasim were the 'tovei ha'ir', the good (elder) citizens, who themselves were above the rest of the community. This form of government, which has roots in the Hellenistic-Roman world, ensured decentralization of power, creating checks and balances. The community rabbi too had his own form of power. Abramovich left this entire structure in place in Kraków but then placed himself above it all as a sort of dictator. He managed to convince the community that the governor had appointed him to this position; while he persuaded the governor that the community had asked him to assume that position. He relied on the fact that both sides would fail to uncover the deception.

"In the end, it failed, and the deception was indeed exposed. This story, apart from the fact that it is extremely entertaining, reflects the fact that the leadership structure of the Jewish communities, which worked so well for hundreds of years, had ceased to function by the end of the 18th century. Due to its inherent weakness, all sorts of issues began to crop up, such as the Hasidic takeover and manipulations such as that of Abramovich.'"

One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them.

One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them. They are not historians, they do not have an overall perception of the periods from the 15th century onwards, in some of which life was better and in some it was much worse. They are familiar with what they remember, and the tendency is to assume that the reality with which we are familiar is the fixed, permanent situation. This picture is not completely baseless, although it is somewhat exaggerated, and this is the death knell. But we are interested in the entire period, not only the demise but also the ascendancy and the golden period of prosperity.

"To all of this, we need to add the existing image that we have regarding Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and the rest of the places that make up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We regard these as being extremely antisemitic areas, where the local inhabitants are breastfed on antisemitism. This has always been a matter of concern for me. Could the Jews be such complete idiots who specifically went to those places where they were so hated? That is simply not logical. If so many Jews chose to live there of all places, this must mean one of two things. Either the fact that there were so many Jews there led to the hatred of our people, and this is not very flattering for us as Jews, or that the situation there was not as bad as in other places.

"And lo and behold, just as it was clear to anybody living throughout those eras, it was indeed not as bad there. In other places, where we do not regard the local inhabitants to be antisemites from birth, they simply did not allow the Jews to settle among them. The best method of not being attributed the current image of an antisemite was prevalent already back in the Middle Ages, by expelling all the Jews, and in this manner, nobody would accuse you of antisemitism. This is the reason why nobody accuses the English of being antisemitic. They threw out all the Jews back in the 12th century and since then, everything there has been just 'peachy keen'. The Jews lived in Eastern European countries and thus they were subject there to the best things and the worst things too. And it is from here too that we have the most historical sources and memories."

The fact that masses of Jews lived in this region distorts the perception as to the actual scope of persecution of the Jews. "If a war is being waged – and wars at the time were without intervention from the High Court of Justice or human rights groups such as B'Tselem, with armies massacring civilian populations without any remorse, just for the fun of it – then in a place that was home to tens of thousands of Jews, then it is a predictable consequence that hundreds and thousands of Jews would be killed. If the same type of war occurs elsewhere, where only a few thousand Jews were living, then a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred Jews would be killed. Clearly, thousands of Jews being killed leaves a much more lasting impression, but this does not necessarily mean that the warlords and the soldiers in those places with a much denser Jewish population were more antisemitic. We remember one event, and the other, smaller event, we have never heard of – and this is what shapes the story."

Their rise and fall

The book paints the rise of Jewish Eastern Europe in bold colors along with the years of its glory and grandeur, but it also focuses equally on the long and hard years of its demise. Boguslavsky succeeds in persuading the reader of the existence of a strong bond between the overall geopolitical processes and the severe crisis experienced by the Jewish population. "In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jews developed into a status of their own within the feudal order, just like the classic classes of the nobility, the peasants and the bourgeois," he explains. "In Poland-Lithuania there were two parallel urban classes: A Christian urban class and a Jewish urban class, more or less equal in size. One of the issues that set the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth apart from Western Europe was that it was engaged in the conquest and settlement of non-developed lands, mainly in Ukraine and Belarus. In the process of the settlement and regulatory organization of these territories, the government and the nobility encouraged different types of people to settle there: urban dwellers, peasants, and Cossacks. The Jews had good reason to take an interest in settling down there, as they had been pushed aside and removed from other locations, and this led to a situation whereby they developed into an extremely important factor in these areas.

"Therefore, the entire system in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became dependent on the Jews in relation to a number of matters – for example, in the mediation efforts between the nobility and the peasants, or in the field of public administration. Somebody had to manage the estates, postal services, fishponds, and forests. The concept of a 'leaseholder', which is very familiar to us from Jewish literature, comes from here. Leaseholding is the accepted method of management in the feudal regime – a type of privatization: the government or the noblemen who own the estate do not manage the day-to-day running of the lands on their own. They issue a 'tender' and then check to see who is ready to run everything and pass on the profits to them. This is privatization in its pre-modern form. The Jews were also responsible for the transportation of goods. The peasants would grow agricultural produce and the Jews would then export this. The local Jewish merchant purchased the goods from the peasants and then sold them wholesale at a regional fair, and from here the produce was then transferred to the next fair, and it would proceed from one fair to another until it was eventually shipped abroad. The imported goods would also be passed on via the Jews. The result is that large parts of the largest country in Europe were simply unable to function without the Jews.

"In other places, the Jews were not involved in leaseholding. In Medieval times, the Jews were traditionally involved in commerce, but here the commerce actually moved aside somewhat in favor of the leaseholding. This is based on the fact that the Polish nobility took control of the Jews in the 16th century: the Parliament of Nobles was much more powerful than the king, and the nobles simply succeeded in taking control of the asset that was called the Jews. They took it from the king for themselves, just as they took other assets, and in essence, they used the Jews for whatever they deemed to be important to them."

All this was turned on its head once modernity appeared at the doorway and the social order was undermined. "The nobility began to decline and the state became more centralized. During this modern era, the king was not made any weaker and actually gained power: suddenly there was no such thing as every nobleman doing whatever took his fancy. And so, the status of the Jews was undermined. Their unique role was eroded. And as soon as the Jews become like everybody else, then those selfsame 'everybody elses' no longer wished for the Jews to be part of them. And this is what leads to their demise. Prior to the rise of nationalism, society was divided up into groups – there were nobles and peasants, there were Catholics and Protestants, and there were also Jews. But, then when all of a sudden there is a collective identity, the question inevitably arises: Are the Jews really part of it? These questions arise and this is also the trigger for the revival of Jewish nationalism, which did not occur in a vacuum, disconnected from what was happening in the greater environment surrounding the Jews at that time."

Jewish Eastern Europe has become a genuine magnet for young Israelis these days. Do you understand why this is happening at this specific juncture?

"The truth is that I have no clear answer to this. I can however hazard a guess: This is a reaction to the dismissal of the Diaspora, which was an extremely acceptable approach in Israel until not so long ago. People who made aliyah from Eastern Europe preferred to leave behind what was there, but after a few generations there is no longer any sense of urgency to escape from this, and now, all of a sudden, they are beginning to show interest and they really wish to learn. This is part of a natural process of searching for your roots, even among today's youngsters. The discourse surrounding identities picked apart the liberal 'Israeli' identity, and so young people whose families came from Eastern Europe are now asking themselves why everybody has an identity apart from me. Suddenly everybody is looking for their own personal identity."

Boguslavsky (47), a resident of Jerusalem ever since he made aliyah at the age of five, is married with two children. Until a number of years ago, he was known to the followers of the blog entitled "Drop the Scissors and Let's Talk about it". Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he became a social media influencer and even almost a media star. The strongly opinionated and well-reasoned analyses he published on social media regarding the war attracted considerable attention, turning him into one of the leading commentators in that field for some time, even though he is neither a journalist nor an academic researcher of the conflict.

"It became a part of my routine," he says. "I used to travel to Ukraine several times a year, I have friends there, colleagues, acquaintances, and relatives, and so when the war broke out, it naturally preoccupied me and is still doing so. Writing on that topic provided me with a form of escapism. This is a war that I felt was 'close to home' so that by writing about it on a more intellectual level, I was able to stand back and distance myself from it to some extent. Apart from that, I also saw that many people were writing nonsense about what was going on there and that really annoyed me.

"Truth be told, this is often the trigger that gives me the impetus to start writing: I see that someone else is writing absolute baloney and I feel a need to correct them. That's the reason that people write on the internet, no? And indeed, the knowledge that people in the West and in Israel have about Ukraine is sorely lacking, to put it delicately. I don't claim to be an expert on that country, but in view of the overall paucity in that field I am a genuine 'lily in a field of thorns'. The professional experts, almost all of them, are experts on Russia – and based on their expertise on Russia they tend to extrapolate and project their knowledge onto other post-Soviet states, usually looking at issues via a Russian prism. This is why what they said was hot air, and somebody had to portray a different picture of things and write less nonsense. I'm sure that there are those who will beg to differ but this is how I saw things."

You have recently ceased to write about this topic.

"I don't like repeating myself. If I have written something a number of times, then I get fed up. In addition, during the initial months of the war I spent long hours, often close to 12 hours a day, just going over all sorts of Telegram channels and other sources of information in a variety of languages in order to get my hands on the rawest of information available. It is not possible to go on living in that fashion for a long time. So today, I still try and keep up to date but not with the same intensity.

"And also – I wore myself out. There is a limit to the number of atrocities to which you can become exposed. When October 7 came round, I had already developed the ability, even before you actually see what is in the photo, to scroll down the feed as you know that this will be a trigger. Your finger knows to skip over it before your eye identifies what is in the image, because you really need to maintain your sanity."

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Tefillin, or phylacteries, during the Second Temple period around 2,000 years ago were not intentionally dyed black, contrary to the long-held Jewish tradition codified in the Talmud, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from Ariel University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the University of Exeter (Britain), and the Weizmann Institute of Science conducted extensive scientific analysis of ancient leather tefillin cases discovered in caves near Qumran in the Judean Desert. Their findings, published Thursday in the prestigious PLOS ONE journal, contradict the long-held halachic tradition that tefillin must be dyed black – a ruling from a Talmud sage, who declared that having black tefillin was a religious law originating from Moses at Mount Sinai.

Since the Talmudic era, it has been standard practice to dye tefillin cases black. However, the multidisciplinary study, spanning several years, revealed no evidence that the early tefillin were artificially colored.

"This is an extremely important discovery," Professor Yonatan Adler of Ariel University, who led the research, said. "For the first time, tefillin were scientifically examined for their original color. Where the leather appeared very dark, we now know this resulted from natural aging and degradation over two millennia, not intentional dyeing."

The rare ancient tefillin artifacts were analyzed using advanced spectroscopic techniques and chemical compositional tests. The findings suggest that the black color stipulation emerged later in rabbinic tradition rather than as an original requirement.

"It seems likely that initially, there was no halachic significance to the tefillin's color," Adler explained. "Only in a later period did the sages rule they must be dyed black, though there remained disagreements over whether it was an obligation or merely for aesthetic reasons."

Ilit Cohen-Ofri and Yonah Maor of the Antiquities Authority's Dead Sea Scrolls unit highlighted how the research illuminates the dynamic evolution of Jewish law over generations. Adler noted, "Our studies of these ancient tefillin teach us that halakhah was always a vibrant, living tradition – the opposite of the static perception."

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A scavenger hunt at a Talmud-era village in northern Israel took a surprising turn on Tuesday when an Israeli girl found a 1,500-year-old bronze coin.

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The girl and her family were visiting the Korazim archeological park, near the Sea of Galilee, The Times of Israel reported.

During the game, the girl found the coin on the ground.

According to Korazim Park director Dekel Segev, the coin dates to the Talmudic period, between the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The park's website quotes Segev explaining that Korazim is a Jewish village some 2,000 years old, which reached its heights during the time of the Mishnah and Talmud.

According to Dekel, what makes Korazim special is not only its wealth of archaeological artifacts, but how intact it is. Korazim is one of the only sites in Israel that shows visitors an ancient Jewish farming community that boasts a synagogue, homes, a mikveh, olive oil presses, and a wine press.

In addition to refurbishing walking paths and creating the scavenger hunt activity, the park also offers curious visitors a chance to get their hands dirty by digging with a professional archaeologist in a program it calls "Digging Through Time."

Segev praised the girl for immediately handing the coin over to the park authorities.

"The young girl and her family showed good citizenship and brought us the coin because it is a national treasure," he said. "The piece will be forwarded to the Israel Antiquities Authority for further research and preservation."

This article was first published by i24NEWS

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The 600 students of the Max and Ruth Schwartz Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot devote their time to religious studies and, like many of their peers, cherish the rabbinical tradition of "Hevruta", or learning in pairs.

But at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, that practice is virtually impossible to combine with social distancing, as are the daily group prayers and rabbinical lectures.

"We knew that we had to find some way of restoring the beautiful, strong cacophony of Torah (Bible), learning, prayer, to somehow bring that back to the Max and Ruth Schwartz Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot," said the seminary's head, Rabbi Duv Fendel.

The inspiration came from countries where pupils' desks have been fitted with plastic dividers to stave off infection.

"It's something phenomenal because it allows the younger [boys] to learn with the older boys and it allows the rabbis, even though they're not in the same capsule, to be able to talk and discuss Torah topics in-depth," said Fendel.

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Israel, which has a population of nine million, has confirmed more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases in total and 867 deaths.

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Is history something we create by our acts, or an immense wave that sweeps us all up? The history of our people begins with a key story about the father of the nation who hears a call to leave everything he knew and go to another land: "Go forth from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1). Where to? Get going, don't stay here. Going has its own dynamic. It is the opposite of remaining frozen in place. It is motion. It gives us the power to form a family, a tribe, and a nation. Doing so in response to a call also creates a new faith. Where to? By the very act of going, you are already in the Promised Land.

When you really want to get to know a person, you can't depend solely on external data. It's important to learn about their history, their family, their dreams, their loves and hates; their passions and beliefs. The part that is hidden, which lies behind social and personal coverings and in the depths of the unconscious is many times more important than what we think we see. Psychoanalyst Karl Jung compared the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious to the relationship between an island and the ocean.

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The same holds true in the case of peoples. History, culture, faith, and origin stories are a more reliable calling card of a nation than its current actions and modern-day political conduct. A story of origin is one that is retold over and over. In our case, we retold our five basic books week after week, year after year, for thousands of years. That is not an exaggeration: for thousands of years, in all Jewish communities, throughout the various changing conditions of history - in both moment of calm and distress – Shabbat would arrive, and with it the weekly Torah portion.

It's no coincidence we are known as the "People of the Book." Sometimes that term was used with contempt, but for us it was an epithet of life. Since we were exiled from our country, we lived in the book; it was our portable homeland. If you want to get to know the Jewish people, talk about them, and discuss their future, get to know their formative book.  Our base. Not just the basis of our existence, but also the base of our conduct throughout history, in the valley of the shadow of death among different peoples and nationalities, in war and peace, destruction and redemption.

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Our people's entire book of origin – Genesis – teaches us to view history cautiously. In the very first section, we learn that God created the world in six days. Why not in a single moment? If God is omnipotent and created the world, why not just say, "Let there be a world!" Still, creation was divided into six days and progresses gradually until it is complete and contains everything: "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array" (Genesis 2:1). Development, rather than upheaval. Evolution, not revolution. The end of the process, its apex, is a day entirely devoted to rest, which is also part of the process.

Man is placed in the garden of Eden only briefly. History – a series of events and occurrences – begins the moment knowledge is gained, the forbidden consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, after which man is expelled from Eden and humanity begins. Just before the expulsion, God punishes Adam and Eve. The man is sent to work the land, "In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. … By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Genesis 17:19).

The process is based on the principle of instructive punishment: he will need to invest effort and cultivate patience until seeds become crops and yield fruit, and even then he will have to reap and thrash and bake before he has bread to eat. Earlier, the woman was told something similar: "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children" (Genesis 3:16). And what is pregnancy, if not a process that involves effort and pain until the longed-for fruit is borne? Development. Evolution, not revolution.

The same idea persists throughout the book. From a single person, as great as he was, we became a family and a tribe, until we were absorbed into Egypt's womb, where we waited hundreds of years to be birthed by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, as a free people on their way to their ancestral Land. The Promised Land was never a done deal – for most of our years of existence, we have lived outside it – and still, we clung to it, dreaming of returning and living here once again. Our people's history is full of countless events, each one of which requires description and explanation and from which meaning must be distilled. But years later, we can see that what we dreamed of at far-off moments in history took place at another time, a short time or a long time later. From the failure of the Bar-Kochba Revolt, we waited 1,813 years to restore our national independence. A long time. On the other hand, we waited "only" 19 more years to return to Jerusalem. "Three things come unexpectedly: the Messiah, a 'find,' and a scorpion," Talmudic sages said when discussing thoughts about calculations of the end of history and the redemption.

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A man of Jerusalem at the end of the eighth century BCE, the prophet Isaiah the son of Amotz, saw ahead and predicted our national and spiritual dawning ("Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you"); the ingathering of the exiles ("Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip"); foreign nations accepting our return to history ("Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you"); that we would stand up as a nation and smash our diplomatic isolation ("Powerful kings and mighty nations will satisfy your every need"); defend ourselves ("Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders") and the demographic graph that Israel alone would see rise and flower ("The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation") (Isaiah 60:1-22).

But the prophet then qualified, adding: "I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it" (Isaiah 60:22). Our sages point this out as two kinds of historical processes: those that arrive in their time, and those that arrive suddenly and take place in haste (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a). They also said that history takes relatively few leaps forward, since history is for the most part comprised of slow processes that form like a fetus in its mother's womb. The Jerusalem Talmud tells the story of a nighttime walk that two Mishnaic scholars – Rabbi Hiyya the Elder and Rabbi Shimon Ben Halafta – took in the Arbel Valley in the Galilee in the second century CE toward the end of the night, "They saw the dawn break." The rays of dawn breaking through the darkness prompted Rabbi Hiyya to tell his friend, "Such is Israel's redemption. At first, it comes slowly by slowly, and as it progresses its light increases" (Jerusalem Talmud, Brachot 1:1). In other words, they should not lose their heads and should wait patiently until the light is shining. We took that insight with us on our journey among the nations of the world, until we returned to our land.

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It isn't easy to implement that vision in an era when the time ideas or inventions come amazingly quickly, but that is why we go back to this book every week. The state of Israel was not born in an upheaval. Theodor Herzl wasn't operating in a vacuum; many good people before him laid the foundations that lead to implementing the idea of returning Zion with a political and national plan. Israel is the product of many generations who put their entire lives into preserving our national and religious legacy, who kept alive the memory of the Land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular, who insisted in making aliyah in a slow stream, until the drops turned into a rushing stream that became a rising sea. If we have learned any lesson from our many years as a people, it's that haste is a trap, including quick solutions to various problems. We need to have patience. And faith.

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