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Humorous Signs

Over the years, I’ve collected photographs of interesting signs posted in Israel and other places. One day I’d like to create a collection, as some sets could be helpful for adding color in teaching. I’ve found on signs the names of most of ancient Israel’s judges, many of its kings, as well as various biblical events. In countries where English is used on the signs but is not the native language, you are more likely to find errors. Below are a few that may not be of any use for teaching, but are interesting for other reasons.

I have to wonder how the wording on this sign came to be.

This one gets my attention.

One day I am going to try to sneak in a picture of my wife and I celebrating our fifteenth anniversary.

At least it’s not the Academy of the English Language.

Tagged Tourism

The Samaritans Today

The BBC has a brief profile of the modern Samaritans and some of the challenges they face, including their uneasy position between Jews and Arabs, and their hesitance to bring outsiders into the community.

For hundreds of years, the Samaritans have been caught between warring groups.
Before, they would take sides, but now they are trying a new approach – neutrality.
They are building good relations with their Palestinian and Jewish neighbours and are unique in the region for having both Israeli and Palestinian identity papers.
This means they can travel between Israel and the West Bank with ease.
Some entrepreneurial Samaritans are now using their unique status to offer a delivery service to businessmen in the West Bank town of Nablus, just a few miles away from Mount Gerizim.
[…]
In the 1920s their numbers dropped to just over 100 and it was predicted that they would die out.
The community was struggling with birth defects because of their tradition of marrying other Samaritans, and they were not open to new converts.
But some now say that to survive, they must open up to outsiders.
[…]
More recently, an American woman has made history by becoming the first person to convert to the Samaritan faith without marrying in.
Originally from Michigan, Sharon Sullivan now lives with her four children within the Samaritan community.

The full story is here.

HT: Paleojudaica

Tagged Samaria

Hot and Dry: Israel Breaks Record in 2010

From the Jerusalem Post:

The year 2010 was the hottest by a large margin since records began being kept in Israel, with temperatures two to three degrees hotter than the average, according to the Israel Meteorological Service’s year-end summary. What’s more, temperatures were one to one-and-a-half degrees Celsius higher than the next hottest year, a striking statistic, according to the IMS. Most years, the average temperatures fall within 0.1- .0.3 degrees of other years. For example, the average temperature for Jerusalem between 1981 and 2000 was 17.5 [63.5 F] degrees. In 2010, the average temperature was 20.3 [68.5] and during the next hottest year, 1998, it was 18.7 [65.6 F]. […] The IMS also tracks rainfall, and while this past year was one of the driest, there have been drier years. However, 2010 was unique in that it had the least amount of days of rain at many of the monitoring stations. For example, in Jerusalem and Haifa, the fewest number of rain days were recorded in the past 80 years.

The article gives further interesting details, such as the unusually large number of rainy days in June and the absence of rain in November. If you need help converting temperatures to Farenheit, this site will help.

Tagged Weather

Archaeological Meetings in Israel

Aren Maeir reports on several recent and one upcoming archaeological meetings in Israel.

For the retirement of Amihai Mazar, Maeir provides summaries of eleven presentations, including one by Ronnie Reich in which he:

proposed a new dating for the so-called Hezekiah tunnel. Due to his dating of a feature which he claims is the origin of the tunnel to the late 9th/early 8th centuries (“the round pool”), he believes that the tunnel could only have been made at a time earlier than Hezekiah. If I may note, now that there is a suggestion to date this tunnel to after Hezekiah (as I mentioned here) and now this suggestion to before, I think a defense of poor Hezekiah is required…

Another presentation of note was that of Israel Finkelstein who

reviewed the long debate that Ami and Israel have had on the chronology of the Iron Age, and, bottom line, suggested that they have both now reached the point where they have almost met in the middle. Time will tell…

Another conference honored the memory of Hanan Eshel, and Maeir writes briefly on a few of the presentations. Ami Mazar presented a paper on seven 10th- and 9th-century inscriptions from his excavations at Tel Rehov. A paper by Shmuel Ahituv on the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions proposed that

the Asherah refers to an object and NOT to a female deity, partner of YHWH – as opposed to most scholars who have dealt with this topic.

Finally, Maeir provides information about the Annual Archaeological Conference in Israel, which will be held on April 14th at Bar-Ilan University.

Thank you, Prof. Maeir, for serving us so well with these reports.

Tagged Jerusalem, Lectures

Humorous Signs

The Samaritans Today

Hot and Dry: Israel Breaks Record in 2010

Archaeological Meetings in Israel

More Top Stories of 2010

Top Stories of 2010