A new exhibition featuring a collection of rare archaeological finds opened on Monday at the Knesset during the Tu Bishvat open house event celebrating the parliament building’s 60-year anniversary.
The event hosted more than 2,000 visitors, including soldiers, police officers, Holocaust survivors, and students from schools and kindergartens across the country.
The exhibit, organized by Israel’s Antiquities Authority (IAA) in cooperation with the Knesset and the Heritage Ministry, “presents archaeological finds from Jerusalem and Galilee sites that trace a historical continuum of Jewish leadership institutions over thousands of years,” the IAA shared in a statement.
“The new exhibition in the Knesset building bridges, in a deeply moving manner, our ancient past and our present of regained sovereignty,” Heritage Minister Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu said, urging the public to visit and “experience firsthand the deep connection between our glorious past and the living heritage that we continue to build in the State of Israel.”
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana echoed the sentiment, calling the anniversary and the Knesset “another link in a long chain of sovereign Jewish leadership.”
According to the IAA, two rare Hebrew fragments alluding to the Sanhedrin’s sages’ legal roles will be joined for the first time since their respective discoveries and read together at the event.
The first fragment was unearthed from the southern area of the Temple Mount by French archaeologist Louis Félicien de Saulcy in 1863, and the second was discovered by Israeli historian Prof. Benjamin Mazar about a century later.
Coins found at the ancient Jewish city of Sepphoris will also be displayed, alongside an about 1,800-year-old basalt door decorated with a seven-branched menorah which was discovered during Hebrew University of Jerusalem excavations in Tiberias.
Stone storage vessel found in Galilee to be on display
In addition, the exhibit will display a 1,800-year-old stone storage vessel that was recently discovered during a joint IAA and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) excavation at the Pundaka de Lavi site in the lower Galilee.
The storage vessel’s significance lies in its size and material, according to IAA Excavation Director Noam Zilberberg, because vessels made of “chalk limestone” do not become impure under Jewish law, unlike those made of pottery.
The vessel also shows a “high level of strict halachic adherence” and a “well-defined Jewish lifestyle” in the Galilee, added IAA Northern Region Community-Educational Center Director Dr. Einat Ambar-Arnon, showing the region as an “active and vibrant living space during the Mishnah and Talmud periods.”
“Where Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – the Jewish National Fund plants the trees of the future, the soil reveals to us the roots of the past,” KKL-JNF Chairman Eyal Ostrinsky said. “The stone vessel discovered in the Lavi Forest is a living greeting from the Jewish leadership in the Galilee, straight to the heart of the Israeli leadership in Jerusalem.”
Keshet Neev contributed to this report.