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Channel: Selected articles by Matti Friedman | Matti Friedman
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Religious politics foil fire exit at Holy Sepulcher

JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of Christian believers will fill the medieval chambers of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem on Saturday for a ritual known as the Holy Fire, packed shoulder to...

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A Crusader town emerges under an old Israeli port

ACRE, Israel (AP) — Off the track beaten by most Holy Land tourists lies one of the richest archaeological sites in a country full of them: the walled port of Acre, where the busy alleys of an...

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An Israeli algorithm sheds light on Bible

JERUSALEM (AP) — Software developed by an Israeli team is giving intriguing new hints about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible. The new software analyzes style and...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Matti’s articles from the Times of Israel

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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...

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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. 

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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...

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An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth (Tablet Magazine)

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...

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What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel (The Atlantic)

The Atlantic, Nov. 30, 2014 During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the...

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The Sistine Chapel of the Jews is restored to life in Jerusalem (Tablet...

Tablet Magazine, Jan. 5, 2015 Yaakov Stark died penniless and unknown. His murals at the Ades Synagogue are a masterpiece of early Zionist art.   In 1901, in Ottoman Jerusalem, members of the wealthy...

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Jerusalem, Spring 2015: What Is Normal Here? (Tablet Magazine, May 15, 2015)

Before dawn one day early last year, I tagged along with a garbage truck picking up trash around the southern part of Jerusalem. The crew was Jewish and Arab, and so was the trash. (“Everyone eats the...

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Israel’s Happiness Revolution (Tablet, Aug. 31, 2015)

What my preschooler’s taste in pop says about where the country is at The Israeli culture wars arrived in my kitchen a few months ago when I discovered that the cure for my daughter’s grumpy...

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When One Israeli Went Too Far (Review, Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2015)

One Saturday night in late 1995, I was with a few other 18-year-olds at a kibbutz in northern Israel, watching a Hebrew B-movie called “Lemon Popsicle” on TV. Words began scrolling urgently at the...

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The Age of the Terror Selfie (Tablet, Jan. 5, 2016)

At a lonely army outpost in 1994, Israel was shown the difference between radicals and fanatics—and between soldiers and storytellers. But the West didn’t learn. This fall and winter have seen many of...

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Holy Rubble and Rabble (Wall Street Journal book review)

April 1, 2016 “Whoever did not see Jerusalem in its days of glory has not seen a beautiful city in his life,” the Talmud says of the days when Herod’s temple shone at the center of a city that...

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