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Digging At Heaven's Door

JEWELERS and ANTIQUARIANS

Will archaeology be
taken over by Israers
religious right?

ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent

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7/2 4
1998

38 Detroit Jewish News

CITY OF GROSSE POINTE LICENSE # 98.1

awrence Stager, a genial
Harvard archaeology profes-
sor, has been digging in Israel
most summers since 1965.
For the past 14 years he has headed an
American-Israeli expedition at the bib-
lical city of Ashkelon on the
Mediterranean coast between Tel Aviv
and Gala.
He had heard often enough about
clashes between archaeologists and
Orthodox Jews, who object to their dis-
turbing the bones of their long-dead
ancestors. But it had never happened to
him. Until recently.
Two bearded men in black suits and
hats to match appeared
unannounced from
Jerusalem, 40 miles to
the east, climbed over the
perimeter fence and start-
ed poking around the
site.
"We told them to get
out," the portly professor
said. "We don't want
accidents and we don't
want people damaging -
the antiquities. Half an
hour later, one of them
tried to scale the fence
again. We pulled him off. He injured
himself when he fell."
Undeterred, the intruders bounced
back, running towards the under-
ground caves where the archaeologists
are digging Philistine and Canaanite
tombs dating from 2000 to 1200 BCE
— and an ancient dog cemetery. After
the 80-year-old site foreman pounced
on one of them, blows were exchanged
and the men withdrew.
The next day the zealots reappeared
with an official from the Religious
Affairs Ministry, who took away pho-
tographs of the pagan tombs. Professor
Stager said the man from the ministry
didn't sound too convinced by the evi-
dence that there were no Jewish bones
in them. He promised to return later.
The raid has sounded an alarm for
the Harvard professor and for Israel's
entire archaeological community. The
prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,
is reported to have yielded last month
to the demands of Orthodox politi-
cians, who were threatening to bring

down his precarious coalition unless
they were given control of tomb exca-
vations.
Netanyahu promised to replace the
head of the overseeing Antiquities
Authority, Amir Drori, with a political
nominee and to appoint more reli-
gious Jews to its supervisory council.
Drori, a combative ex-general, has vig-
orously resisted Orthodox interven-
tion.
Under a longstanding, if uneasy,
compromise, any bones found during
digs have to be reported to the
Religious Affairs Ministry. The archae-
ologists are allowed to complete their
investigations, then the bones are
reburied by a rabbi. The religioui
activists are demanding that ancient
tombs be treated in future as holy sites, -
off-limits to research.
"I feel," Professor Stager warned,
"that a medieval darkness is descending
on the country. If they are serious
about replacing Amir Drori or stuffing
the council with their
own people, it would
be the end of archaeol-
ogy as we have known
it in Israel."
Bone study, the
archaeologists insist, is
essential to their work
"In any excavation,"
Trude Dothan, direc-
tor of the Hebrew
University's Berman
Center for Biblical
Archaeology,
explained, "we usually
find skeletons. There's an enormous
fund of information in bones. By
examining them with DNA testing and
other advanced scientific techniques we
can learn a lot about the people who
lived in this land in ancient times —
their diet, their diseases, their life
expectancy, where they came from."
According to the Antiquities
Authority, only 5 percent of the graves -
unearthed during excavations are of
Jews. In any case, some of the most
respected talmudic sages have ruled
that moving Jewish bones is permitted,
so long as it's done with dignity.
During the Second Temple period
more than 2,000 years ago, secondary
burial was standard practice among
Jews. The bones were reinterred in day
boxes or ossuaries.
Archaeology has long been a nation-
al sport in Israel. Generals, like the late
Yigael Yadin (a scholarly professional)
and Moshe Dayan (an acquisitive ama-
teur whose private collection was sold
to the Israel Museum for $1 million),

"Archaeology
now,
other
sciences
later."

.

