Israeli Museum

 

Model of Jerusalem 66 AD

The Israeli Museum has a model of Jerusalem from about 66 AD. The second temple stands out on Temple Mount. In the center is the Holy of Holies, which could only be entered by the high priest on Yom Kapoor. But we know that other parts of the temple were accessible to gentiles because of the stone stating only Jews could go beyond this point in the Israeli Museum. Next to the Temple is the Citadel where Jesus was tried by Pilot. He was crucified just outside the inner walls.

Isaiah Scroll

Then we went to the Shrine of the Book. Here are stored the Dead Sea Scrolls found by two Bedouin shepherds in 1947 near Khirbet Qumran.  The Rockefeller Archeological Museum ended up with most of the scrolls at the time in Jordanian territory. The scrolls are mostly chapters of the Jewish Bible written between 200 BC and 50 AD on kosher animal hides. Why were these found hidden in a cave? We don’t know for sure, but one theory is that they were from the Temple being hidden from the Romans who destroyed the temple several years later. Besides the scrolls is the Aleppo Codex, written in the 10^th century AD. The codex had been the oldest written copy of the Jewish Bible, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Yet these two sources are virtually the same, verifying the validity of both.

Galilee Man

We then had time to visit the rest of the museum. Most of us explored the gallery devoted to Israeli  history. It began with the Galilee man, a Skull from 250,000 years ago, Chalcolithic period, the land of Canaan, the land of Israel through its many invasions: Babylonia, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman. The highlight was about the period of Herod the Great. 

Coffin of Herod the Great

After lunch at the Modern Restaurant in the museum We had a tour of the Supreme Court. Israel’s judicial system is very different from the US. There is no constitution, so if Hebrew law doesn’t cover a dispute they will research British Protectorate law, or the judicial findings in other countries. For example they settled a copyright dispute on the internet based on  New York state ruling. There are three types of courts. The magistrate court covers minor crimes and small disputes. The district Court covers major crimes (sentence > 7 years) and major disputes. These courts hear evidence and reach decisions. The Supreme Court is an appeals court for the lower courts as well as the original court for a case against the government. There are 15 judges, but most cases are decided with 3 judges. People apply to become a judge and are reviewed by various 9 person panels of judges and ministers. It takes 5 votes to become a lower level judge, 7 for the Supreme court. The Supreme Court handles 10,000 cases a year. The Supreme Court does have the power to change a law if there is a major public concern brought before them, but this power has only been used twenty times. The current government is proposing that this right of law review be removed. There have been protests of 50-100,000 people for the last three Saturdays against such a change.