Wednesday, September 10, 2003

ST. ANDREWS AND ANCIENT TIBERIAS are not the only places with a problem with corpse impurity. But in Israel today, a solution is demanded, no matter how expensive:

The impure corpses cost NIS 4 million (Ha'aretz, again via Bible and Interpretation News)
By Dalia Shehori

The expansion of Kibbutz Galuyot Street, along the stretch between Schocken Street and Herzl Street in south Tel Aviv, was recently completed at a cost of NIS 12 million. A "floating bridge" - raising the surface of the road above ground - was built there for the new traffic lanes. Without this bridge, the project would have cost just NIS
8 million.

This section of the road was considered especially jammed, and widening it was necessary to allow a smooth flow of traffic; but building the bridge, so it turns out, was not a result of transportation necessities, but of religious dictates.

A Jewish cemetery dating from the period of the Second Temple and found at the site was what obliged the Netivei Ayalon company to find a creative halakhic solution - the floating bridge - to create a space between the ground and the road that would allow the impurity to escape.

[...]


The rest of the article also describes Haredi interference with the excavation of the burial site of a fifth-century nunnery (denied by the IAA) and the incorporation of a late Roman era burial cave into a new Knesset wing, facing the fitness room.

No comments:

Post a Comment