In Ancient Times, Yafo Remained Outside of Israelite Control

An interesting excerpt from The Anchor Bible: Jonah by Jack M. Sasson (p. 80) regarding the ancient status of the crucial port of Yafo (aka Jaffo, Jaffa, or Joppa and adjacent to modern Tel Aviv) and its relationship to the book of Jonah (see Jonah 1:3 for first mention of Yafo):

As far as can be ascertained from historical records, Jaffa always remained outside Hebrew control. During the Assyrian period, Jaffa is listed as belonging to Ashkelon, a Philistine power, and it fell into Jewish hands apparently only during the rule of Simeon Maccabeus (1 Maccabees 12:34). The narrator of Jonah, therefore, must have chosen it knowing well its status, very likely intending to have the prophet seek escape from God's control even before boarding the Tarshish-bound ship.

Elephantine: The Egyptian City With a Jewish Temple

In studying divorce this week regarding Deuteronomy 24:1-4 for my "Women in the Bible" seminar, I learned that as far back as the fifth century BCE, women at the Jewish colony of Elephantine were also permitted to initiate a divorce with their husbands. In the remainder of the Jewish world divorce remained a male prerogative until the 12th century CE. Having heard occasional references to Elephantine in my studies, I decided to learn more about this interesting place in Jewish history.

Elephantine island is located in the Nile River, adjacent to the modern city of Aswan, which lies just downstream from the Aswan High Dam, completed in the 1970s to form Lake Nasser. Prior to the construction of a dam, Elephantine sat at the First Cataract of the Nile River and in the past Aswan was known as the City of Sun. Its name stems from a rock formation along the river which looks like a herd of elephants (as of this writing Wikipedia suggests that the name comes from the tusk-like shape of the island.)


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In the above map, Elephantine is the elongated teardrop-shaped island. Elephantine is about three-quarters of a mile long and about a quarter-mile wide at its widest point. The ancient Jewish settlement at Elephantine was at the southern end of the small island.

Elephantine served as the southernmost city of Egypt in ancient times and was therefore an important strategic military location. Although there was a Jewish presence on the island prior, it is understood that the primary Jewish settlement there was due to Persian control of Egypt in the sixth century BCE. The Persians, which also controlled Israel at the time (recall, of course the destruction of the First Temple by the Persians in 587 BCE). Therefore, Persian authorities sent regiments of Jewish soldiers to protect the southern border against Nubian infiltration. In addition to the soldiers, there was also a contingent of Jewish civilians present at Elephantine.

We know about Elephantine from a collection of papyri, called the Elephantine Papyri, first published in 1923. In these writings, we learn that there existed a temple at Elephantine where the local Jews practiced sacrifice and established priests to serve there. The temple at Elephantine (which might be considered the first "Second Temple") was likely built sometime between 650 and 550 BCE. Interestingly enough, no record or reference to the Torah has yet been found at Elephantine.

Some scholars believe that Isaiah 19:19 refers to Elephantine, "In that day, there shall be an altar to the LORD inside the land of Egypt and a pillar to the LORD at its border."

Once the Egyptians had expelled the Persians in the fifth century BCE, the short-lived Jewish community of Elephantine began to deteriorate. Local Egyptian priests were angered by the Jewish Temple's sacrifice of locally sacred sheep on Passover. In 410 BCE the Jewish temple at Elephantine was sacked by the priests of the island's temple of Khnum. The Jews of Elephantine appealed to the Jerusalem high priest Jehohanan, to no avail (they likely were not aware of the political situation in Eretz Israel at the time).

More information about Elephantine can be found in the article "Elephantine" in Encyclopedia Judaica, which is my primary source for this post. To stay up-to-date about this blog, please follow me on Twitter at @rabbimattr.

Lech Lecha

Welcome to my Jewish Geography blog! Last semester at my internship, I taught a course called "Jewish Geography," which looked at the geography of the Hebrew Bible and Judaism. On this blog, I will share my favorite teachings from that course along with other interesting tidbits as I continue to learn along my path to the rabbinate.

First, is there a better place to start our geographical journey than with lech lecha, the words God used to start Abraham, the first Jew, on his journey to establish our tradition?

Genesis 12:1-3

1: The Lord said to Abram, "Go forth (Hebrew: lech lecha) from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.
2: I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.
3: I will bless those who bless you
And curse him that curses you;
And all the families of the earth
Shall bless themselves by you." (JPS translation)

Here are two of my favorite quotes about that journey and our own journeys...

"Abraham wandered circuitously. But all the places he stopped on his journey, all the fits and starts, the misadventures and misdirection, were sacred. They were all part of the process. There is no straight line to spiritual growth, in genuine seeking, in the journey. We don’t have to be angry with people who are still in places that we have stopped along the way, but from which we have since moved on. There is also no reason to feel ashamed of the places from which we come. If we had not made those stops along the way, we would not be where or who we are now." You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield

"Thus, the very first words God utters to the very first Jew are lech lecha - get up and move...But that journey will not be easy - not for Abram, not for us. God tells Abram to leave his homeland and the land of his fathers, the land in which he is comfortable and where he may feel he belongs and go to a land that is not yet his, about which he knows little and that might provoke tremendous fear in him." God Was Not in the Fire, Rabbi Daniel Gordis

My own journey to this point in my life has been quite circuitous yet I feel that that life journey has prepared me well for what is to come next. Thank you for reading; I look forward to learning with you.