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How a deeply religious Christian artist captured the spirit of the Jewish holy land
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.
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Mamdani concedes he can’t arrest Netanyahu but urges U.S. to enforce International Criminal Court warrant
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday night that a legal review he ordered found he does not have the authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the city, putting to rest a question that has repeatedly surfaced since he first vowed to take custody in light of an International Criminal Court order for Netanyahu’s arrest.
In the two-minute address posted on his official social media accounts, Mamdani opened by declaring “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” but acknowledged the legal limits that prevent him from following through on his pledge, which had become a rallying cry for his pro-Palestinian supporters. (The use of the term “genocide” to describe the Gazan death toll in the Israel-Hamas war remains contested.)
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani said. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this one.”
Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. pic.twitter.com/YRezmW6YVx
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2026
The United States does not recognize the court’s authority over American citizens or foreign nationals on U.S. soil, and local authorities have no power to execute such a warrant. U.S. law gives the federal government control over foreign policy, and heads of state traveling to the United Nations are protected by diplomatic immunity.
The announcement ended days of speculation and fierce backlash over one of his most controversial campaign promises after comments he made when asked about his arrest vow in an interview with The New York Times reignited the issue. “If someone is charged with a warrant from the International Criminal Court for these types of crimes, that’s something I believe should be honored,” Mamdani told reporters on Monday.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has been unapologetic about his anti-Zionist views. He came under fire during the mayoral race last year for defending the slogan “globalize the intifada,” used by some at the pro-Palestinian protests and perceived by many as a call for violence against Jews, and repeatedly said he’d arrest the Israeli leader over the conduct of the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s representatives in the U.S. responded angrily to Mamdani’s move, calling him “an antisemite” and accusing him of attacking Israel to cover up for political failure.
On Tuesday night, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, responded on social media: “Zohran Mamdani, ENOUGH. Enough with the blood libels. Enough with the attacks on Jewish organizations. Enough with the outreach to the Iranian regime. You were elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda. Do your job!”
Tuesday’s video mirrored the Nakba Day video produced by his City Hall media team commemorating the displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s founding in 1948, which drew sharp criticism from Jewish and Zionist organizations. But it also highlighted the tension that has defined Mamdani’s first six months in office: balancing the activist politics that propelled him to City Hall with the legal limits and governing responsibilities of leading the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel.
In his address, Mamdani said that while the city had exhausted its legal options, the federal government had not. He urged the Trump administration to join the International Criminal Court and enforce its arrest warrant for Netanyahu. President Donald Trump, writing on Truth Social on Monday, reassured Netanyahu that he “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
Mamdani concluded that Netanyahu “is not welcome in New York City” and said New York leaders can choose not to remain silent to defend Palestinian human rights. “That is my commitment to you,” he said.
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Democratic socialist rails against AIPAC in uphill primary bid against pro-Israel incumbent in Arizona
(JTA) — Kai Newkirk, an activist and democratic socialist, has made Israel and AIPAC a focal point in his effort to unseat pro-Israel Rep. Greg Stanton in Tuesday’s Arizona Democratic primary.
“I’ve been arrested over 25 times in civil disobedience — and I’ll go to jail for justice again before I ever take a dime from AIPAC,” Newkirk wrote on X last week, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Newkirk, 45, whose organizing has largely focused on campaign finance reform, has repeatedly blasted Stanton’s support from the pro-Israel lobbying group. He has also accused the Israeli government itself of “trying to interfere in our elections,” including in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District where he is running and which covers parts of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
He pointed to a $45 million text message campaign to improve Israel’s image in the U.S. as a sign of such interference, and posited that “they may be targeting areas where AIPAC is more invested or where these issues are more at stake.”
The primary comes as a number of left-wing congressional candidates with sharply critical Israel stances have won the Democratic nomination around the country, and as Israel and AIPAC grow increasingly unpopular among Democratic voters.
The most recent poll on the Arizona race, commissioned by a group that favors Newkirk, had Stanton up by 8 percentage points, while another poll, conducted two weeks earlier by a group favoring Stanton, showed the incumbent ahead by 33 points.
Newkirk’s platform includes ending all military aid to Israel and imposing an arms embargo on the country, which he accuses of genocide.
Stanton, 56, a four-term incumbent, voted against Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s amendment to cut military aid to Israel last week. Newkirk criticized Stanton, saying that he would have voted for the amendment, and suggested that Stanton’s vote was the result of his support from AIPAC.
“Greg Stanton has taken over $300K from AIPAC,” Newkirk wrote. “And today — as so many Americans in our district and across the country struggle to get by — he just voted to send billions more of our tax dollars to Israel to fund their war crimes and genocide. Disgraceful.”
Among AIPAC’s endorsees in Congress, more than a dozen voted to cut aid to Israel last week; AIPAC has since removed the option on its website to donate to those candidates.
Stanton explained his vote on X, saying that the amendment “would undermine America’s ability to counter real threats from Iran” and weaken the ability to promote long-term stability across the region. He also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wrote that “clear change is necessary” as the U.S.-Israel security agreement, which includes $3.8 billion in annual military subsidies for Israel, nears its expiration in 2028.
Newkirk is endorsed by progressive groups such as Our Revolution, Track AIPAC and the Progressive Democrats of America.
Also among Newkirk’s endorsers is Cenk Uygur, the host of the Young Turks who has spread conspiracy theories about Israel. “Kai is Israel Free and has fought to get money out of politics his whole life,” wrote Uygur last month.
Newkirk has faced turbulence in establishing broader support.
The Young Democrats of Arizona pulled its endorsement of Newkirk earlier in July, writing that it had been “made aware of some concerning patterns of behavior” displayed by Newkirk, without specifying what it meant.
Newkirk did not respond to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment. After the Young Democrats of Arizona retracted its endorsement, Newkirk wrote that the withdrawal of the endorsement was based on a false report amid “a wave of wins by democratic socialists” and called it a “weaponization of … disavowed misinformation.”
Newkirk did speak out against last year’s killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. “I stand always with my beloved Jewish siblings against the scourge of antisemitism just as I will never stop in the nonviolent struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, release all hostages, and open the way to just, lasting peace,” he said.
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Ed Miliband, Britain’s new Jewish foreign secretary has a long history of support for — and disagreement with — British Jews
(JTA) — Tapped to become Britain’s new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband said he would strive to honor the memories of his Holocaust refugee parents.
“My parents came to Britain as Jewish refugees from the Nazis,” Miliband tweeted just hours after Prime Minister Andy Burnham named him to the post. “To them, Britain was both a sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the global fight against fascism. I will carry my parents’ faith in that spirit of Britain to my role representing our country.”
The appointment by the new prime minister positions Miliband as the highest-ranking Jewish official in the British government, assuming a role once held by his older brother David and at a time when questions of the country’s relationship to Israel are a pressing priority. Miliband has long decried antisemitism, including within his own party, and is also known as a critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Among the priorities facing the office is whether Britain should move forward with an effort to ban imports from West Bank settlements, which has support across the political spectrum, and how to handle surging anti-Israel and anti-Jewish violence that authorities say has been orchestrated by actors abroad.
Ed Miliband led the Labour Party when it was in opposition from 2010-2015; his brother was among the candidates he bested in the party’s 2010 leadership race.
He has said he has no Jewish practice or formal education and that his parents favored politics over religion. His mother, Marion Kozak, who died last month, was an early supporter of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, a British group, but ceased speaking out publicly as her sons ascended in British politics.
David Miliband, now the president of the International Rescue Committee, has also said his career choices stem from the suffering their parents endured as Jewish refugees.
Ed Milliband’s stances on Israel have caused consternation among British Jewish groups in the past. In 2014, he led his party in a symbolic vote to recognize a Palestinian state and also criticized the toll of Israel’s operations during that year’s Gaza war.
“I defend Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks,” he said then. “But I cannot explain, justify or defend the horrifying deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, including children and innocent civilians.”
He also told the Jewish News at the time that he did not eschew the “Zionist” label.
“I am proud to be Jewish,” he said. “I’ve no issue with people calling me a Zionist.” He described Israel as “the homeland for the Jewish people.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council said they recognized Miliband’s overall support of Israel, but also chided him for his comments about the Palestinian civilian death toll. “These comments regrettably ignore the ideology of Hamas, the psychology of Hamas, the actions of Hamas and thus the reality faced by Israel,” they said then in a joint statement at the time.
Miliband was succeeded as Labour Party leader by Jeremy Corbyn, whose strident pro-Palestinianism and perceived insensitivity to Jewish sensibilities marked the worst relations between the party and the Jewish community in decades.
Miliband was cautious about criticizing his successor but made clear his unhappiness with how Corbyn was handling the antisemitism charges in 2018 when he took the organized Jewish community’s side in lambasting the party leadership for rejecting a definition of antisemitism that includes some forms of anti-Israel rhetoric and activity.
“Labour should adopt the full IHRA definition,” he said then, referring to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. “The argument that it is somehow incompatible with criticizing the actions of the Israeli government is wrong. The views of the vast majority of the Jewish community are very clear.
Miliband condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, but also persisted as one of Labour’s most forceful critics of Israel’s government.
During the 2024 general election campaign, he called Oct. 7 “an appalling terrorist atrocity,” saying, “We in the Labour leadership are completely committed to the security for the people and security for the state of Israel.”
However, he added that “the continuing Israeli action in Gaza is not either beneficial now for Israel, or for the people of Gaza.”
One of the first questions Miliband will face is how he will handle relations with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is famously averse to people who have criticized him in the past. “These are dark days for America and the world,” Miliband wrote in 2017, as Trump assumed his first term of office. The same year, Miliband also said Trump had “lowered the bar for idiocy.”
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