Touring the Parsha – Tetzaveh

Last week I started a new series of blog posts that I call ‘Touring the Parsha’.

An ancient olive tree on Hebron Road in Jerusalem

This week’s Parsha, Tetzaveh, starts with a description of the pure olive oil that must be used in the Temple Menorah. Olives and olive oil have always been an extremely important staple all over the Mediterranean. When driving around Israel you can see olive groves in many parts of the country including the Galilee and the Judea and Samaria mountain range.

There are many sites in Israel where you can find installations for producing oil from olives, some are original archaeological finds and some are recreations.

How was olive oil made in ancient times?

In modern factories, olive oil is produced in two stages. First the olives are ground  in a machine to extract the juice. Next the juice is placed in a centrifuge to separate the oil from the other liquid.

The mill for crushing the olives

In ancient times it really wasn’t that different. The olives were first crushed in a kind of mill. The mill consisted of round basin carved from a single huge stone. This basin is called a Yam (Sea) in the Talmud. There was an axle in the center of the basin and a big rolling stone was rolled around in circles by means of a pole driven by animals. In this way all of the olives would be crushed.

The ‘bad’ or pole and weights used to squeeze the olives. (Tel Hazor)

The crushed olives would then be placed in soft, woven baskets. The baskets would be stacked and place in the next installation called the ‘Bad’ (Hebrew for pole). In this installation more and more weight would be placed on the baskets of crushed olives until all the juice was extracted.

There was a long, heavy pole one side of which was inserted into a niche in the wall. The baskets were stacked under the pole near the wall so that maximum leverage could be applied. Then weights were added on the far side of the pole to squeeze out every bit of the juice from the olives.

How oil was made for the Menorah

Now we can understand how the oil was made for the Menorah. This week’s Parsha says the oil must be squeezed (‘Katit’ in Hebrew). When preparing oil for the menorah, they would not do the first process of grinding the olives in the mill. Choice, whole olives would be placed directly in the baskets and then pressed. Only enough weight would be added to get out the first bit of juice from the olives. This is the oil that would be set aside for the Menorah in the Temple.

Now for a few places where we can see this in action:

Neot Kedumim

Cooking old-school at Neot Kedumim

My favorite place to see an olive press is Neot Kedumim. It is a ‘Biblical Landscape Reserve’. Its 620 acres near Modiin (between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv) recreate the scenery of the area as it would have been in Biblical times. In order to do this, ancient terraces have been rebuilt, thousands of truckloads of soil have been brought in to the eroded hills and native plants which had disappeared from the area have been reintroduced.

At Neot Kedumim they have reproduced many of the agricultural installations which were common in Biblical times such as threshing floors, wine presses and yes, an olive press! During the harvest season (around Tishrei) you can see demonstrations of olive oil production.

Other places:

There are so many other places where we can see examples of these installations in Israel. Here’s a partial list:

Tel Hazor

Susia (BTW you can also see a Menorah with diagonal branches like the opinion of the Rambam, carved on the lintel of one of the homes there.)

Maresha

Gamla

The rest of Parshat Tetzavah

Model of the Cohen Gadol wearing the special garments at the Temple Institute.

The rest of the Parsha speaks mostly about the special garments worn by the priests in the Temple. The best place to go in Israel to gain an understanding of these garments is the Temple Institute which I wrote about in last week’s Parsha  Tour. 

This week the Temple Institute is holding a special certification course for religious Jewish tour guides. They are going to be certifying a handful of tour guides to guide groups in their exhibition. I am very excited that I was accepted to this course. I will report on it here later this week (G-d willing).

Since the Parsha speaks about the Hoshen-Breastplate worn by the High Priest, I wanted to write about sites where the Hoshen was used to make decisions, such as Beit El. But I am afraid I am out of time for this weeks post. Come with me on a tour of the Parsha, and you will see all of these sites and many more!