Off the Daf and Into Israel

In honor of Jerusalem Day, and the fact that our daf repeatedly mentions the walled cities of the Land of Israel, let's take a quick look at our capital city's earliest Israelite walls. Historically, civilized man (or woman, perhaps) built walls. In order to delineate the home, fields, area of work, people created borders to show ownership. And in this part of the world, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, the development of walled settlements played a big role in geopolitics and ancient history. Small Jerusalem saw many a ruler over 4000 years. Most often their victory was through might of sword and a great breaching of the mighty walls, yet it was David in the tenth century BCE who conquered the Jebusite fortifications and made this the Jewish capital for eternity, by finding the way in through a small 'tzinnor', a pipe perhaps, or passageway at a point of weakness. Later, the Assyrian rise to power in 705 BCE led to Judean King Hezekiah's need to expand and stren

Cavemen Eruvin 61 “If a man spent Shabbat in  . . . a cave, even though it was like the cave of Zedekiah king of Judah , he may walk through the whole of it and two thousand cubits beyond.” The daf is obviously talking about a very large cave. What is the cave of King Zedekiah ? Rashi explains that it was a cave through which Zedekiah, the last king of Judah , escaped from the Babylonians. The escape is mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 52. Zedekiah and his soldiers escape from Jerusalem after the Babylonians breach the wall of the city. He is captured near the plains of Jericho . But there is no cave mentioned in the text.  Rashi again comes to our rescue (here, and with more detail in Ezekiel 12: 13) by telling us about a huge cave that stretched from Zedekiah’s house until the plains of Jericho . Where is this cave? Clearly it was known in the time of the Tannaim. And indeed we come across mentions of Zedekiah’s Cave from the time of the Gemara, through th

Body and Soul   Eruvin 35   Amud Bet of this page discusses what structures are considered part of the city, for the purposes of extending city limits and knowing where to begin counting your two thousand amot limit outside the city. One of the buidings discussed is a nefesh . The Gemara explains that a nefesh that measures four by four amot can be considered part of the city, while one that has only two walls standing cannot. What is a nefesh ? Monumental Second Temple period graves consisted of two parts, a kever and a nefesh . The kever is just what it sounds like: the grave where the person is buried. Sometimes it is above ground, other times it is below. The nefesh is a second section, something that serves some of the functions of a gravestone today.  It is on top and often has a shape rising into the sky, to symbolize the soul ( nefesh ) returning to God. It is an imposing grave marker. One of the more famous graves with a nefesh that we see today is Yad Avsh