Gabriel Barkay

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Gabriel Barkay (2017)

Gabriel "Gabi" Barkay (Hebrew: גבריאל ברקאי), originally Gabriel Breslaver , (* 1944 in Budapest ) is an Israeli archaeologist .

Life

Gabriel Barkay's childhood was overshadowed by the Holocaust . His mother Rachel arrived with the newborn in the Budapest ghetto; the handcart in which she transported the child and her few belongings also contained a Torah scroll. She came from the private synagogue of her grandfather Reb David Weiss . In November 1944, the last residents of the Budapest ghetto were to be transported to Poland by train; but this did not happen because of bombing. “So I was saved and the Torah scroll in my cradle too.” The father, Eliezer Breslaver, survived a Nazi labor camp in Ukraine. After the war ended, the family got together in Budapest. Eliezer Breslaver hebraized the surname to Barkay and was active as president of the Jewish National Fund in Hungary. He was imprisoned as a Zionist. The Jewish Agency obtained the family's departure from Hungary.

At the age of six, Gabriel Barkay came to Israel by ship with his parents. He has lived in Jerusalem since his alias in 1950 . The Torah scroll was used at Barkay's Bar Mitzvah , after which it was found to be defective. Eliezer Barkay had the scroll restored so that it can be used again today by his synagogue community in Talpiot .

From 1964 he studied archeology, comparative religion and geography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem . His academic teachers were: Yigael Yadin , Michael Avi-Yonah , Ruth Amiran and Nahman Avigad . After graduating summa cum laude, he continued his archeology studies at Tel Aviv University , graduating there in 1985 with a Ph.D. off, also summa cum laude.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project: Gabriel Barkay (center) explains to Mosche Jaalon (left) floor tiles of the temple, which could be put together to form different patterns (2017)
Aaronic blessing on a silver lamella from Ketef Hinnom (Israel Museum)

Teaching

Gabriel Barkay has taught archeology at Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University, and the American Institute of Holy Land Studies.

Barkay participated in numerous excavations. He became known for his discovery and publication of the silver lamellae by Ketef Hinnom .

Together with Tzahi Dvira he started the 2004 Temple Mount Sifting Project , which is aimed at small finds in the excavated soil from the Temple Mount to ensure that during construction of the Waqf incurred no archaeological support and in the Kidron Valley had been dumped (see: Solomon's Stables ).

Barkay, who describes himself as a religious Jew, sees religion and archeology as two areas that should not be confused: “The job of the Bible is not to prove archeology, and the job of archeology is not to prove the Bible. “That the Bible contains historical information can be seen, for example, in the excavations of Lachish , in which he himself took part. The discovery of the silver scrolls by Ketef Hinnom, published by him, refutes the late dating of the Aaronic blessing , as it has been represented since Julius Wellhausen . Having participated in archaeological studies of ancient rabbis' graves, Barkay faced threats from activists in the Haredi community .

Honors

In 1996 he received the Jerusalem Prize for Archeology and in 2014 the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.

Web links

Commons : Gabriel Barkay  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A Baby, a Cradle, and a Torah that survived the Holocaust. Retrieved May 6, 2018 .
  2. ^ Digging into our lives. Retrieved May 6, 2018 .