I was briskly walking down the main drag of a swanky neighborhood in Seattle when I saw a faded, old-timey lithograph in the window of an art store. It was a landscape with a fortress built into the cascading side of a massive, dry and desolate canyon. The location was as far from green and leafy western Washington on that drippy spring day as one could imagine. In the foreground, a group of men wearing exotic clothes were standing and sitting outside the fortress.

I did a doubletake — I  knew that place; it was Mar Saba, an ancient monastery in the middle of nowhere.

I went into the store and talked with the owners who told me the artist’s name was David Roberts. He was a contemporary of a couple of men named Charles: Dickens and Darwin. David Roberts started his career by painting sets for the London theater. After that, he developed an interest in landscapes and toured western Europe drawing historic churches and later found his way to southern Spain where he drew the famous sites of Moorish architecture.

Then, he did something truly extraordinary, especially for someone living in London at that time. In 1838, he sailed from England all the way to Egypt. Almost no one in Europe had traveled there since Napoleon and his army invaded in 1798. He toured Cairo and sailed up the Nile to the temples, tombs and relics of the pharaohs, detailing them in his sketches.

After returning to Cairo, Roberts embarked upon another excursion even more daring than his Egyptian adventure. A deeply religious Christian, he succumbed to the urge to see the Holy Land. The easiest way to do that would have been to sail down the Nile to the Mediterranean and follow the coast to the east. Or, he could have gone by horse or camel along the Via Maris, the ancient road that follows the coast. Both routes would have taken him only a few days to complete.

Instead, Roberts made a totally radical and potentially dangerous choice. He hired Bedouin tribal guides to take him by camel across the eastern desert of Egypt and through the length and breadth of the Sinai Desert, following the route the Hebrews took during their 40-year journey we now refer to as the Exodus. In the Torah, the book of Exodus is called BaMidbar which means “In the Wilderness,” which is exactly what the forbidding Sinai is like. Life can easily be lost if one is not careful due to lack of water or the threat of bandits.

Once Roberts finally reached Israel, he toured almost all the places mentioned in the Bible and continued on to Lebanon, drawing everything he saw. Upon his return to England, Roberts made lithographs of his drawings and collected them into three jam-packed volumes. Being a shrewd businessman, the artist sold his collection to subscribers. It was an instant hit. His first subscription was purchased by Queen Victoria.

A refuge from the outside world

Years ago, when my wife and I were visiting Israel, we took a bus from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. After visiting the popular sites in that city, we hired a taxi which took us down a one-lane, dusty, rutty, partially paved “road” atop a narrow, steep ridge to its literal end. This road led us deep into the Judean Desert where Jesus spent time and where King David hid from his rebellious son, Absalom, who almost succeeded in having his father assassinated.

Mar Saba sits precariously on the shoulder of the canyon, called a wadi by the locals, in the hills above the nearby Dead Sea. Even though it was mid-October, the air was so hot that a local shepherd and his goats were sheltering in the shade of one of the high walls of the fortress.

We approached the main gate and knocked. A low voice inside answered. It was one of the monks. We were lucky he spoke English. However, we were not so lucky with what he said. He told us my wife could not enter because she was the wrong gender and would have to wait outside. However, he let me in.

Inside the main gate, the compound was crowded with ancient sand-colored stone structures. The monk first showed me the chapel, which was cool and dark in striking contrast to the veritable furnace outside. What it lacked in size, it made up for in ornamentation. The floor had a complex pattern of symmetrical pieces of colored marble. The altar had an elaborate filigree of gold. Most impressive were the walls up to the domed ceiling which were completely covered with icons of various saints, all of which appeared to have been made a very long time ago. Even the inside of the dome was covered with painted images of saints.

I followed my guide to a nearby stone building and was dumbfounded by what I saw. This was the monastery’s sepulcher room. On display on wooden tables under glass were dozens of skulls and bones. The monk explained that when a monk dies, he is buried in the monastery’s cemetery and remains there for several years. After that, the bones and skull are removed and placed on display in this room. He said that many of the remains belonged to martyred monks who were murdered when the Persians invaded in 614 CE.

In what I supposed to be the dining hall, the monk gave me a drink and proceeded to tell me he was from Greece. He seemed to feel free enough to unload his feelings because he went on to elaborate about the corruption and iniquity of the outside world and how his community of believers cherish their refuge from all of that behind the high walls of their little world.

Once I exited the main gate, I found my wife sitting on a rock in the shade waiting for me. Her only company was an old Arab man who was likewise escaping the withering glare of the sun. Her only consolation was that I had taken so many photos of the interior of Mar Saba that I had made a visual record of everything I saw inside the walls.

An island at the end of the world

When I was in the art store in Seattle two years later, the experience of Mar Saba came flooding back and I wound up purchasing the lithograph. I can tell you it is a pretty accurate depiction of what we saw. The place has not changed at all in more than 175 years since the artist was there. I doubt the place has changed much at all since its founding in the fifth century CE.

After learning more about Roberts, where he traveled and what he did, I began collecting more of his lithographs, including a drawing of the Tower of David, which I saw regularly when I was a college student in Jerusalem.

The Tower of David, next to the Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, functioned in ancient times as the citadel of the city. It was originally built during the Hasmonean dynasty who descended from the Jewish Maccabees of Hanukkah fame. I should mention that the Tower had nothing to do with King David as it was constructed by the Romans after their conquest hundreds of years later. When Roberts made his drawing, the road outside the Tower was just a narrow, dusty, dirt path. Now, it is a busy, well-paved, four-lane highway leading from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Hebron.

Roberts also drew a panorama of the Old City viewed from high atop the Mount of Olives. After my wife and I climbed the steep road up the Mount, past the old Jewish cemetery, which is where legend says the Messiah will appear and raise the dead on Judgment Day, we saw the same precise view that Roberts recorded for posterity. I believe Roberts took some artistic license with his work since he sketched a bridge over the Kidron Valley, even though there never was one.

Roberts drew the Isle of Graia where I traveled with a friend, Andy, when we were on spring break and took a trip to Eilat. At that time, Eilat was extremely remote, and it took hours to get there. The only other passengers on our bus from Jerusalem were workers headed to construction jobs building new hotels. As we got close to our destination, the other passengers pulled knives and guns out of their luggage.

Eilat, located where the Negev desert ends and the Sinai begins, was not much of a town back then.  Surrounded by high hills, it is not a pretty landscape of undulating sand dunes; the terrain is rocky and almost completely devoid of any living thing. While Andy and I were there, we heard about an island further down the coast. We hitched a ride with some soldiers in a jeep who were headed down the coast. After about two dozen kilometers, they dropped us off at a place called Hof Almogim, or Coral Beach in English.

It was a beautiful beach without a soul there. It seemed as if we had reached the end of the world. The only thing on the beach was a small shack where the lone proprietor sold Cokes and rented snorkeling gear. Off in the distance was the island. On the opposite coast were the mountains of biblical Edom, in today’s kingdom of Jordan.

When Roberts was there, he was heading north with his local Bedouin guides in a caravan. I believe he included himself, dressed in Ottoman style-clothes, in the lower right corner of his picture drawing the scene; you can see him holding some kind of paper and his writing kit and an umbrella are on the ground in front of him.

When we showed up many, many years later, the weather was scorching, so we did what anyone else would do— we rented masks, pipes and fins and waded into the water. It didn’t matter that I had never gone snorkeling before. It took me a little time to get the hang of it, but I figured it out. The Red Sea’s temperature was like bath water, so we plunged right in and crossed into another world.

Not far from shore, we encountered a multi-colored coral reef that, from the shore, looks distinctly red, which is where the Red Sea gets its name. In stark contrast to the aridity of the land, the sea was alive. The reef was covered by lots of sponges that looked like colorful human brains. It was surrounded by swarms of shimmering, iridescent, palm-sized fish in different hues. As we maneuvered through them, they darted here and there, moving in unison liked flocks of birds.

The coral was razor sharp, so I was careful to keep my distance as we passed over it, at which point the sea floor dropped to 60 feet below us. Suddenly, it was devoid of life and it was hard to see the bottom.

It took almost an hour to reach the island. It has an impressive stone castle which was originally built by the invading Crusaders who wanted to protect the pilgrimage routes in the area and defend their kingdoms centered in Jerusalem. Later, during the Crusades, the Christians lost control of the fortress to Muslim forces. When we were there, Israel controlled the area, having conquered it in the Six-Day war. The Sinai now belongs to Egypt as a result of the 1979 Camp David peace agreement.

When Andy and I reached the beach, the weather was blistering. We could not explore the castle since our only footgear consisted of the fins we had on our feet. So, we did not stay long. On our return, the sun was sinking on the horizon. It was becoming noticeably colder. Sea creatures were emerging from their hiding places; a pink bubble the size of my fist floated directly toward me. It had tentacles that hung down from the body. Instinctively, I turned to avoid it. I later learned it was a Portuguese man o’ war, a type of jellyfish, which carries an evil sting.

Upon reaching the mainland, darkness smothered us, and Andy and I camped on the beach. The next morning, we checked our belongings for scorpions and caught a ride back to Eilat. Today, luxury resort hotels have sprouted on that once-lonely beach. The commercialization of that former paradise is heartbreaking.

Epilogue

Quite a few years have passed since those travels and David Roberts’ lithographs now hang in honored places in our home. Once in a while, I pause in front of one of them and marvel at the precision with which the artist captured the mood of his subject. Some of these locations, such as the ones in Jerusalem, I have been intimately familiar with. Others I merely passed through as a tourist just as Roberts did, albeit under far more primitive and dangerous circumstances. I almost wish I was able to go back in time and travel with him in that caravan.

The post How a deeply religious Christian artist captured the spirit of the Jewish holy land appeared first on The Forward.

The Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies will not be admitting new students in the upcoming academic year, it told current and prospective students this month, as a new university president plots a dramatic overhaul of the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles.

Ziegler’s admissions office informed applicants earlier this month that the decision was part of “a broader review and reimagining of our program.” The decision follows the January announcement that the school’s longtime dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, would retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year.

Current Ziegler students said Jay Sanderson, the president of American Jewish University, Ziegler’s parent institution, told them their studies will continue as planned.

The change comes amid a decadeslong decline in membership in Conservative Judaism, once the largest denomination in the United States. Sanderson previously told the Forward he envisions the seminary moving away from a strictly Conservative affiliation.

“As part of a broader strategic review of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, we are thoughtfully evaluating how best to position the school for long-term strength and sustainability,” Sanderson wrote in an email Wednesday. “This includes reviewing recruitment, program structure, communal needs and challenges.”

He added: “Our commitment to rabbinic education remains strong, and we are working with external advisors and a task force in formation to ensure that the next chapter reflects both institutional responsibility and the evolving needs of the Jewish community.”

Sanderson did not say who the external advisors were, or who was on the task force. He said the school would share more information “when appropriate.”

But one thing already seems clear: Conservative Judaism will no longer be the only path for study.

Speaking with the Forward last month about Artson’s retirement, Sanderson described the idea of “a multidenominational rabbinical school: teaching 21st century skills as well as Torah and Talmud, and bringing people across denominations to learn together.”

The changes have left many on the faculty unsure of what lay ahead — and a few unaware of what rumored decisions had become official.

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, who teaches rabbinics and has served on the Ziegler faculty since the seminary’s inception three decades ago, said that while he was aware a Shabbat program for prospective students had been canceled, the school had not communicated to faculty its decision to pause admissions altogether. Ziegler’s admissions website does not reflect any change in outlook.

“The future is foggy,” Cohen said. “Decisions are being made, I imagine, someplace, but we’re not part of them right now.”

Ziegler, founded in 1996, was the first full-fledged rabbinical school opened west of the Mississippi. It has since ordained more than 200 Conservative rabbis, and its faculty includes some of the leading thinkers of the movement.

In recent years, the seminary sought to adapt to a changing religious landscape. As Conservative synagogues across the country have faced declining membership, Ziegler’s enrollment shrank. In 2022, after enrolling just two new students the previous year, Artson slashed the school’s tuition 80%.

Two years later, AJU sold its 22-acre hilltop campus in Bel Air — one of the largest Jewish community properties in the state — with Ziegler relocating to rented space in West Los Angeles.

Admissions have picked up amid these changes. The last two school years have seen double-digit incoming classes, with roughly 30 to 35 students total in the four-year program. And the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an umbrella organization for the movement, reported last year that half of its affiliated synagogues reported an uptick in attendance since Oct. 7.

Sanderson took over as president from Jeffrey Herbst in 2025. He previously served as chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

The American umbrella organizations for Conservative Judaism, the USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly, have largely remained quiet about the changes underway at the movement’s second-largest seminary and its intellectual anchor on the West Coast.

But Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, head of both the RA and USCJ, responded to the admissions news in a statement to the Forward.

“For over two decades the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies has ordained hundreds of outstanding rabbis to serve the Jewish people and the Conservative/Masorti movement. We appreciate the commitment by AJU that all current students will be able to complete their education in ways that qualify them for membership in the Rabbinical Assembly.

Stressing a need for more rabbis within the Conservative movement and beyond, and nodding to AJU’s planning underway, Blumenthal added: “We look forward to being a part of those conversations, helping to ensure that the school can continue its tradition of training rabbis for the Jewish people and for our movement.”

The post Conservative rabbinical school Ziegler stops admissions, signaling broader overhaul appeared first on The Forward.

Mike Huckabee looks on as Donald Trump reacts during a campaign event at the Drexelbrook Catering and Event Center, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, US, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

On February 22, the BBC News website published a report by Maia Davies titled “US ambassador’s Israel comments condemned by Arab and Muslim nations.”

The report is made up of three elements, the first of which is a presentation of what that headline calls the “US ambassador’s Israel comments.”

Davies begins by telling BBC audiences that: [emphasis added]

Arab and Muslim governments have condemned remarks made by the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who suggested Israel would be justified in taking over a vast stretch of the Middle East on Biblical grounds.

In an interview with conservative US commentator Tucker Carlson, Huckabee was asked whether Israel had a right to an area which the host said was, according to the Bible, “essentially the entire Middle East”.

The ambassador said “it would be fine if it took it all”. But he added Israel was not seeking to do so, rather it is “asking to at least take the land that they now occupy” and protect its people.

Davies later adds:

In the interview, released on Friday, Carlson pressed the ambassador on his interpretation of a Bible verse which the host claimed suggested Israel had a right to the land between the River Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq.

Huckabee said “it would be a big piece of land” but stressed that “I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today”.

He later added: “They’re not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.”

He also said his earlier remark that Israel could take it “all” had been somewhat “hyperbolic”.

The relevant section of that “interview” can be found here.

BBC audiences were not informed that — as was noted by Lahav Harkov — Carlson put out an edited clip on social media.

The Tucker Carlson Network posted a clip of the video in which Carlson expostulated at length about Genesis 15:18, in which God tells Avram, “to your descendants I will give this land, from the River of Egypt to the great river Euphrates.” The Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judea never included all of the land promised in Genesis, even at its historically largest size.

Carlson asks if Huckabee believes that Israel was promised to the Jewish people and they therefore have the right to take all of the land promised, which covers modern-day Jordan and parts of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In the clip, which cuts Huckabee off mid-sentence, he says in a facetious tone of voice, “It would be fine if they took it all.”

The second half of the ambassador’s sentence, as heard in the interview, is: “but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

The second element to Davies’ report is the statement put out by various Arab countries and organizations, which she describes as follows:

Following the interview’s release, the UAE’s foreign ministry released the statement on behalf of various governments and other actors expressing “strong condemnation and profound concern” regarding the comments.

The statement said Huckabee had “indicated that it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab states, including the occupied West Bank”.

It said the remarks violated international law and directly contradicted US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, including efforts to create “a political horizon for a comprehensive settlement that ensures the Palestinian people have their own independent state”.

The statement continued: “The ministries reaffirmed that Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the Occupied Palestinian Territory or any other occupied Arab lands.”

“They reiterated their firm rejection of any attempts to annex the West Bank or separate it from the Gaza Strip, their strong opposition to the expansion of settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and their categorical rejection of any threat to the sovereignty of Arab states.”

The statement said it was signed by the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and the State of Palestine, as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Davies makes no effort to clarify to her readers that “the occupied West Bank” has never been included in “territories belonging to Arab states”; that it has never been “Palestinian” in the sense of belonging to a sovereign state; that it was part of the territory allocated to the creation of a Jewish homeland by the League of Nations; or that it was illegally occupied for 19 years by one of the signatories of the statement she promotes: Jordan.

Neither does she bother to point out that Huckabee’s responses to Carlson’s statements and questions concerning the principles underlying Christian Zionism have no bearing on the US “plan to end the war in Gaza.”

The third element of Davies’ report is the provision of supposed context, with readers told that:

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Notably, Davies avoids explaining why what she described two paragraphs earlier as “the State of Palestine” is now “a hoped-for future state” and, in line with usual BBC practice, she again avoids the issue of the Jordanian occupation of the areas the corporation chooses to call “the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” as well as the attacks on Israel by Jordan and other Arab countries in June 1967.

Davies continues with the BBC’s usual partial presentation of “international law” together with an interpretation of a non-binding ICJ advisory opinion: “The settlements are illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2024.”

Davies’ report closes with a new version of the BBC’s usual “frozen in time” portrayal of casualties resulting from the war that began as a result of the Hamas-led invasion of Israel — this time erasing Israeli casualties and hostages altogether:

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent military offensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

In addition to failing to provide readers with appropriate historical background, Davies refrained from properly explaining the context to the nine words that prompted the “condemnation” that is the topic of her report, including the fact that discussion of a Biblical passage has no contemporary relevance.

She also avoided providing information about other issues arising from that long conversation or the populist record of the person she describes as a “conservative US commentator.”

Obviously the prime aim of Davies’ reporting on this “much ado about nothing” story was to amplify the statement delegitimizing Israel that was put out by a collection of countries and organizations.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.