Tablet Magazine, August 26, 2014 The Israel Story Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria …
The Continuing Mysteries of the Aleppo Codex (Tablet Magazine)
From Tablet, an update on developments in the story of the Aleppo Codex in the two years since the book was published: I am not sure I expected the story of the long-forgotten Aleppo Codex, the perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible, to occupy me for very long after the publication of my book on the subject in 2012. I thought I …
New York Times review: ‘The Riddle of the Labyrinth’
My review in the New York Times of Margalit Fox’s excellent new book on the decipherment of an ancient language uncovered on Crete — right here.
Our man in Beirut: The Remarkable Story of Isaac Shushan
From The Times of Israel, April 15 On the day Israel became a country 65 years ago, the young Syrian Jew was in Lebanon as a spy, part of an odyssey that took him from Aleppo to a kibbutz, to war in Palestine and an encounter with Hitler’s yacht. Read the article here.
Matti’s articles from the Times of Israel
For an up-to-date list of articles, click here.
When the Exodus was now
The Passover festival of 1946 found the men of the 650th Company, a British army transport unit, in the southern Italian town of Capua. The soldiers, Jews from Palestine who had signed up to fight in British uniform, were poised between two wars. The world war had ended a year before. Israel’s independence war, in which most of them would …
The serious history of a comical town
How, you may ask, was Chelm created? The truest answer to that question, they say, is that Chelm, the most famous town in Jewish folklore, came into being when the Lord sent an angel with a sack of foolish souls to distribute across the entire world, and the angel tripped and spilled them all in the same place. That, we …
In Dubai killing, some see an espionage era dying in a blaze of publicity
JERUSALEM (AP) _ The killing of a Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel may signal the end of an era: the moment when modern technology finally caught up with the cloak-and-dagger world of disguised assassins and fake passports. “The last assassination of its kind,” said a headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Some believe the fallout _ the killers whose …
Grisly theory for Holy Land mystery
RUJM AL-HIRI, Golan Heights (AP) — A newly proposed solution to an ancient enigma is reviving debate about the nature of a mysterious prehistoric site that some call the Holy Land’s answer to Stonehenge. Some scholars believe the structure of concentric stone circles known as Rujm al-Hiri was an astrological temple or observatory, others a burial complex. The new theory …
In Israel, Rich and Famous Flock to Wonder Rabbi
ASHDOD, Israel (AP) A few evenings every month, some of Israel’s wealthiest and most powerful people can be found in a living room in this seaside city, waiting to have a few minutes with a rabbi they see as an adviser, guru or miracle worker. Yoshiyahu Pinto is slightly stooped, his long beard and hair unkempt. He looks older than …