Yadin Notes Important Developments Archaeology a t Hebrew U.—`Jewish Science' By PROF. MOSHE KOHN There is no longer any question that Holy Land archaeology is be- coming a "Jewish science," with; the Hebrew University's Institute! of Archaeology as a main center of both teaching and research. The newly elected director of the institute. Prot. Yigael Yadin, men- tions the excavations being car- ried out at the southwestern cor- ner of the wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount as "perhaps the most significant and dramatic development of the past year in Jewish arebn-ologv." Prof. Yadin notes that this is the first time that a Jewish arch- aeological institute is digging so close to the Temple site. Before the liberation of the Old City in June 1967 from Jordanian rule, Prof. Yadin recalls, "this privi- lege was denied to Jewish arch- aeologists because of religious and political factors" that oper- ated under the Jordanians and under the British Mandatory authorities and the Turkish authorities before them. All this while, "We had to con- tent ourselves with looking on at their doctorates from the univer- sity will this year join the faculty as research or teaching fellows. Next year. the institute will start moving back to Mount Scopus, to the former Museum of Jewish Antiquities building which housed the department of archaeology be- fore 1948. In the first stage, the Scopus facilities will be used only for research and processing field work, while teaching remains at the Givat Ram campus. Eventual- ly, the entire department will be moved to Scopus. In the second phase of the reorganization and expansion program, the institute wants to launch a number of planned five- and 10-year research projects— preparing a number of corpuses, "the systematic assembly of. for example, all the known pottery and metal objects and Hebrew seals, etc.. including catalogues, analyses of the finds, diagrams, and photographs, in such a man- ner that scholars will be able to Every member of the institute's staff must not only be a teacher but also be free to conduct exca- vations. Heretofore, teaching mem- bers were free to go out into the field only during their so-called spare time, when there were no classes to teach. Prof. Yadin points to "one great turning point" in Israeli archae- ology: "For the first time we are absorbing a young new generation of archaeologists who are the prod- ucts of the Hebrew University." Half-dozen young persons who have just received or will shortly receive 56—Friday, May 16, 1969 Israeli scholars would like to work on the role of the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean world, espe- cially in view of what is known of the close ties between the Jews and the Phoenicians from the time of David and Solomon onwards. and between ancient Israel and the Aegean world. Archaeological authorities of some of those countries have asked the Hebrew University to send ex- peditions, but, Prof. Yadin says the university has been unable to do so because of lack of staff and means, "So we won't start until we have all the means. But we will send survey teams to select suitable sites, work out a series of well-defined projects, then look for the means to carry them out properly — and thus justify the name 'Institute of Archaeology.' "! SETTLEMENTS IN THE BET 5NEAN VALLEY FOUND THAT ENEMY BOM- BARDMENTS ARE CAUSING MARKED PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE TO CHILDREN WHO MUST SLEEP IN UNDERGROUND SHELTERS EVERY NIGHT. .YOUR CONTRIBUTION OF $36.50 ' TO THE uNrtgo JEwiS14 APPEAL WOULD PROVIDE A HOT SCHOOL LUNCH TO AN ISRAELI CHILD FOR A FULL YEAR •.. ARABLE LAND IN ISRAEL 1.4A5 r.45 D L B-LP . NCE 1946. A Great Book Out of Crucible of a Poetic Soul the activities of British and French By WOLF SNYDER expeditions excavating in areas Poems From the Sea of Death by most holy to our religion and our Abraham Sutzkever, Tel Aviv: Ber- gen-Belsen Memorial Press. 1969. 480 people's history." pages. Speaking of the "different aims One of the very few survivors of and objectives" of non-Jewish the Vilna Ghetto. the great Yiddish archaeologists working here, Prof.! poet, Abraham Sutzkever, hails Yadin declares: "It is typical of , from the once younger group of a Jewish expedition that the main Yiddish poets generally known as sensation so far has not been the; the "Yo"ng Vilna." Several years discovery of masonry as such or before the Holocaust, Sutzkever, even of objects, but rather a most then a rising young poet, already dramatic find which might have attracted the attention of a great meant nothing to. perhaps would number of literary men. not even have been noticed by, The dark days in the ghetto fol- others. This was the fallen ashlars lowed by his experience as a fight- found lying in a layer of ashes at ! ing partisan in the forests of White the very bottom of the wall—the first and so far the only archaeo- logical testimony of the greatest tragedy in our history: the de- struction of the Temple by Titus in the year '70." Another significant find of the past year pertaining to the Second Temple period is Prof. Yadin's purchase on behalf of the Israel authorities of a complete head tefillin (phylactery) which was found at Qumran. "Now," Prof. Yadin says, "we can for the first time understand and visualize the shape and composition of the tefil- lin in this early period." He notes that from the literature ABRAHAM SUTZKEVER we know that in those early days the pious wore the tefillin, espec- Russia and Lithuania (his survival ially that of the head, all day. is itself a miracle!) left an in- "Now we see that the size and delible impression on the young shape of the box were perfectly poet. suited for this purpose." Futher- In 1944, the crucial year of the more, we can now for the first war, the poet-partisan Sutzkever time study such technical prob- reached Russia where he was lems of the leather used in making received with great acclaim by the box: the narchment strips con- the Moscow literati headed by taining the biblical passages insert- t he f ya ed into the box, threads of tendon Ehrenburg. After wandering and hair used to hold it together. from land to land, he finally These are only two of the latest settled in Israel where his pres- examples of the achievements of "Jewish archaeology" in the less than half-century since the beginning of the pioneering work of the late Elazar Lippe Sukenik, Prof. Yadin's father. Now, just a little over 40 years after Suk- enik became director of the Heb- rew University's department of archaeology, his 52-year-old son has assumed the responsibility of leading the Institute of Archae- ology into a new period of re- organization and growth. concentrate on new aspects of Holy Land archaeology instead of continuing to seek in new sites parallels to what we already have." ent literary activity is closely tied with the world's best Yid- dish literary magazine, "The Golden Chain," of which he is the editor. His present hook is a collection of some of his poems written dur- ing the years 1936-1966, and repre- sents as he puts it "an ingathering of his darkest days and torment- ing nights transmuted into poetry." Some of the poems in this collec- tion were written while in Israel and are like the rest creations out of the crucible of his poetic soul. Like many other Yiddish poets, Sutzkever was influenced by the Jewish folklore, by the great Yid- dish poets, his predecessors, and by European poetry in general. There is no doubt that Russian poets like Pushkin, Blok, and Yese- nin must have contributed their share of influence. In a great many of his poems Sutzkever transcends the other poets by his excellent ability to harmonize the structure of the poems with his creative poetic breadth. His poems are written from with- THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS in the deepest inner experience, sense an attempt to find one. The "eez nutra" as the Russians would poet Sutzkever makes use of the say. With his masterly use of legendary hope for the coming of words and verse he succeed.; in the messiah, when at the resound- his various esthetic excursions, be ing call of the Shofar (horn) the they in symbolism, impressionism dead will come to life again. In or expressionism. Such series of vain does the poet look for the poems as "Kol Nidre" or "The shofar of the messiah in the burned Cherry of Recollection" cut into out ghettoes. Not there is it to be the very soul of the reader leav- found. He hears a voice that com- ing him with a mood never to be mands him to search for it deep in forgotten. The poem ''If the fate his inner self. In great anger he of my people . . ." is as forceful tears his heart wide open and out and as moving as one of the classic of its emerges his spirit loud as the poems by the late great Hebrew sharpest of the shofars. With a poet H. Bialik written after the resounding call (Tekiah!) he com- massacre in Kishinev. In the midst mands the dead to come to life of the satanic deeds of de-human- again and rise from their graves: ized beings the world as a whole "It is a new world and one that is stood indifferent. To the sufferings free," the poet exclaims. But a and prayers of the millions coun- multitude of scornful voices answer tries turned a deaf ear. Why? Is in return: "Away! Defiled is your there an answer? And if no living earth! We have already been freed being could come forth with one, of the punishment of having been perhaps the dead might. The poem born once. We have no use for the "Resurrection of the Dead" is in a blindness of your days nor the twinkles of your stars." Only one yearning voice with the softness of the softest grass is heard implor- ing the poet to come to save him. It was God's voice—one that once lived in the poet's verses. Too deep is the sorrow and too painful are the recollections of the Holocaust. Words are too weak to give expression to the trials and sufferings, indignation and condemnation. They fail at the very gates to the sea of death. And it is only the poetic genius of Sutzkever that enables the reader to submerge into the depth of the "Sea of Death" and emerge from it with a De-Pro- fundis prayer on the lips. Great recognition is due to the World Federation of Bergen- Belsen Association for this well- accomplished task of publishing this great book of poems (Lider Fun Yam Hamoves) by the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever. Dr. Marcus' History Invokes Data About World-Famous Traveler Who Quoted Isaiah in Predicting Transcontinental Railroads What did Isaiah, the Hebrew pro- phet of the eighth pre-Christian century, have to do with the build- ing of a transcontinental railroad across the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas? In 1861, Israel Joseph Benjamin, a Jewish adventurer who called himself Benjamin II (Benjamin I had been a 12th Cen- tury Spanish-Jewish Marco Polo), crossed the mountains, plains, and prairies on his way from the Pa- cific to the Atlantic. Wagon trains in those days took some five months alone to travel the 1,100 miles from Salt Lake, Utah, to St. Joseph, Mo. Benjamin marveled that he had made that trip by stagecoach in only 18 days. He prophesied that a day would yet come when the continent would be traversed by railways and the words of Isaiah (40:4) fulfilled al- most literally: Every valley shall be lifted up, And every mountain shall be made low; And the rugged shall be level, And the rough places a plain. It was not long before Benjamin's dream came true. On May 10, 1869, in the Utah village of Promontory Point, two locomotives moved for- ward gingerly until their noses kissed. The junction of the two roads was marked by a symbolic ceremony. A prominent capitalist, Leland Stanford, dressed in formal attire—high hat and frock coat— drove a golden spike into a wooden railroad tie with a• silver sledge hammer to signalize the comple- tion of the first American trans- continental railroad, The American Union, forged in a bloody Civil War, was now reinforced by bands of steel. From then on, men could make the entire trip in three or four days. Today they do it by air- plane in three or four hours. Naturally, the hardest part of the transcontinental enterprise involved laying tracks across the mountains in the west. In one span of 60 miles, 15 tunnels had to be bored. The man most responsible for initiating this amazing feat was a brilliant engineer and promoter by the name of Theodore Dehone Judah. His great-grandfather, Mi- chael Judah, had been an Ortho- dox Jew in pre-Revolutionary Nor- walk, Conn. Though almost alone in the village, Michael had tried to keep kosher. His Christian wife probably cooperated with him. Their son David, who was circum- cised, grew up to serve as a sol- dier in the Revolutionary War. Apparently, however, David lived his life as a Christian; his son be- came an Episcopal minister and had two distinguished children. One of them was Theodore D. Judah, the engineer. The other was Henry. Moses Judah, who achieved the rank of general in the Civil War after a notable and heroic career as an officer in the conflict with Mexico. in some detail in his two-volume "Early American Jewry." On May 10, 1869, with the meet- ing of the eastbound and westbound railroads, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, a new era was ushered in for American Jewry. Since the country was now held to- gether by the railroad, Jews could begin uniting on a nationwide basis. A union of the country's Jewish congregations had been urged by Isaac Leeser, of Phila- delphia, as early as 1841, but noth- ing came of the attempt, and later efforts had no better success. The distances between Jewish commu- nities were simply too great. Now men could travel, meet, learn to know one another, make decisions, return home—all in a few days. Leeser's younger contemporary, Isaac M. Wise, of Albany and then of Cincinnati, had been campaign- ing for a congregational union ever since 1848. Twenty-one years later, with the transcontinental railroad a reality in 1869, his hopes became more than a gleam in his eye. Union was in the air. Not long after, in 1873, Wise succeeded in creating the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. He was overjoyed when representatives from nearly 30 Midwestern and Southern congregations met. Today the union includes some 700 Re- form congregations, with more than a million members from all over the continent. The American Jew- ish community, may justly claim to be the largest, if not the great- est Jewry the world has ever The Judah family is well doc- umented in the files of the Amer- ican Jewish Archives on the Cincinnati campus of the He- brew Union College-Jewish In- stitute of Religion. Dr. Jacob R. Marcus, the director of the Archives, describes the Judabs known..