Tribute to a vet, training promenade for dogs

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Camera-Critter folks, look what citizen volunteers of Meitar started building a few months ago!
A nice shiny drinking bowl too. 

Complete with rebar bracing up on top!

When finished (maybe it is already) this will be a dog-training and dog-exercise promenade in memory of a beloved local veterinarian, Dr. Doron Avishai (1953-2013).
Click 2x to enlarge and to better see his photo on the sign. 

I remember from my volunteer years at Heifer Ranch how much work goes into digging post holes, mixing concrete, and setting posts straight.
It has to be a labor of love.

All these are right across the path from Meitar's new fenced-in dog park I showed you last week.

Looks like the dogs are going to have fun.

Nice detail work on the balance beams-cum-benches.

Rest in peace, Dr. Doron Avishai, knowing your memory lives on.
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UPDATE:  The place was soon completed and a Dog Day was held, to the delight of Dr. Avishai's widow.
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Βασίλειος Τζαφέρης z"l

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Israel has lost another of her veteran archaeologists.
Vassilios Tzaferis died at the age of 78.
You can see many nice photos of him at work in this Greek article.

Photo from Biblical Archaeology Society

Tzaferis was a monk before becoming an archaeologist.
Here's how he himself tells it:

Archaeology was not in my mind nor in my parents’ minds when, in 1950, at the age of 14, I departed the island of Samos, Greece. The destination for my migration was Jerusalem to study theology and become a monk in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Six years later, when I was 20, my father’s desire was fulfilled when I undertook the vow of monasticism and was ordained deacon in a solemn ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

As a deacon and an obedient member of the “Holy Sepulchre Brotherhood” of the Patriarchate, I was sent to serve the Greek Orthodox Church in Nazareth. Two years later, in 1958, I applied for higher theological studies at the University of Athens, but the then-Patriarch Benedictos had a much different idea: Instead, he urged me to complete my academic education in Biblical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For my B.A. studies, I chose the history of ancient Israel and archaeology. For my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, classical archaeology was my field of specialization.

 Indeed, Tsaferis Tzaferis wrote extensively about monks and monasteries in the Byzantine period, and he served as director of excavations and surveys at the Israel Antiquities Authority from 1991 to 2001.

But in my opinion his most moving discovery was this heel bone with a spike.
It now has a place of honor in the Israel Museum.
Please see my earlier post to understand how the foot was nailed sideways to the cross. 

In a 1985 BAR article Tzaferis told this:

From ancient literary sources we know that tens of thousands of people were crucified in the Roman Empire. In Palestine alone, the figure ran into the thousands. Yet until 1968 not a single victim of this horrifying method of execution had been uncovered archaeologically.

In that year I excavated the only victim of crucifixion ever discovered. He was a Jew, of a good family, who may have been convicted of a political crime. He lived in Jerusalem shortly after the turn of the era and sometime before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Rest in peace, Vassilios Tzaferis. Thanks for all you have done in the Holy Land.
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Archaeologist Yuval Peleg z"l

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In May 2012 this top archaeologist, Yuval Peleg,  was our guide for a Yad Ben Zvi Institute  tour to the Inn of the Good Samaritan and to the monastery of St. Martyrius.
We learned so much that afternoon.
Here above he is explaining the big rolling (or sealing) stone at the gate.
The Martyrius site was  discovered in 1982 when the city of Ma'ale Adumim was being built.  Now it is right in the middle of town.

To our shock and sadness, Yuval Peleg was buried this morning in his hometown, Ma'ale Adumim.
Yesterday he and several Palestinian workers were  beginning to investigate  a cave near Sebastia in the West Bank when big rocks rolled down the hill and crushed him.

May he rest in peace and may God comfort his young family, now suddenly in mourning.
The profession will miss Yuval and his big smile. 

I could write a small book on my own almost-brushes with death at various expeditions around Israel over the years.
Archaeology, at least for those of us who actually work with pickax and turia,  is a profession fraught with danger.
Maybe that is part of what makes it so exciting.
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(Todd Bolen's blog has more links about the accident and about Peleg.)
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My thanks to you, blogger-friends

What a week this was. Last Wednesday the terror began in Mumbai. Yesterday brought a bit of closure, as Israel buried the six Jews who were killed in the Chabad House. Three of the victims were laid to rest in the old cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
It was a heart-wrenching day, with tens of thousands of mourners at the funerals.
Namlevy made an inspiring 2-minute video on YouTube, dedicated to the Chabad House hostages.
I think one is missing from the video, because her body was found later than the other five. Fifty-year-old Norma Shvarzblat-Rabinovich was a Mexican Jew who had planned to make aliya to Israel to join two of her children who had already moved here. She had spent the past few months touring India, and had planned to fly from Mumbai to Israel on Monday, the 18th birthday of her son, Manuel.
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For those dreadful three days of unknowing, we here worried and prayed a lot. For all the many there in India who were killed and wounded, of course. But in a more personal way for our Jewish brethren. Because of Jewish Peoplehood, Jews everywhere feel like family, everyone of us is responsible for the wellbeing of the other.
I don't know, maybe it is hard for normal people to understand this feeling. Normal people are spared this burden and/or blessing of being a People, a nation scattered in a big diaspora.
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I asked for your help last week and you gave it. Thank you, dear blogger-friends around the world, for all your support and counsel! It was so wonderful how the tragedy brought us all together. And the other good thing to come of all this was my getting to know the Indian bloggers, some of them right in the thick of things in Mumbai. God bless you all.

Thank you Paul Newman

Shalom Paul Newman. Rest in peace. Your character Ari Ben Canaan will live on.
The 1960 "Exodus," along with the epic "Lawrence of Arabia," were movies that fueled the fire in my idealistic teenage heart and pushed me to sail to Israel in 1968, with a one-way ticket, disembarking in Haifa.
For the dramatic story of the actual Haganah Ship Exodus 1947 see either Wikipedia (from which the above photo is borrowed) or a Zionist telling of the story here. A great old photo of the Exodus taken from the British ship that intercepted her is midway on the page of a Glasgow website.

Author Ruth Gruber called the Exodus "the ship that launched a nation."