Headed North

Today we started at the Tel Aviv University, where we went to the Diaspora museum. The museum is ostensibly a record of the Jewish people in exile, their customs and buildings and writings. The exhibits were put together quite well, in both English and Hebrew. The exhibit is very linear in how one views the exhibits, ending up rather predictable and rather disappointing. I’m not a big fan of museums as political exhibits. Museums should be museums.

From there we went to Caesarea, the great roman city Herod the great built, which in many ways became the capitol of Judea under Roman rule. I though about were I was stepping. Many of the great rabbis lived here, and some died here. Although I couldn’t find any source material for it in the story in Ber 61a, according to the exhibits in Caesarea, rabbi Akiba was supposedly jailed and executed there. But in some research I did this morning, two figures stood out more than the others for me. The first was Eleazar b. Hyrcanos, who was put under the ban for in the oven of aknai incident. Eleazar incidentally was a teacher of Akiba, and Akiba was at his teacher’s death bed in Caesarea.

The other figure was Resh Lakish, who came to Caesarea along with R. Abbahu. But this may not have been Resh Lakish’s first time there. One set of stories claims he was a gladiator in his younger life, and He may have fought in the amphitheater of Caesarea. What an odd thing it must be to be in the same town as a sage as he once was such ugly profession. Walking on that same ground made me wonder about him.

From there we went to Nazareth to the church of the annunciation, which is really a complex of churches signifying the spot where Mary was told she was to have a son by the angel Gabriel. While there I heard the sounds of Gregorian chant, and while enjoying the sound outside the church the call to Muslim worship was sounded. In stead of clashing they harmonized with the bass tones of the Christian chant backing the high tones of the Arabic. I understood none of it but it sounded like heaven, and maybe it was -- the sounds of God in Harmony.