Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

December 23, 2020

An Ancient Mikveh Shows How Jews in Jerusalem Kept the Laws of Ritual Purity

At a site significant to Christians.

At the foot of the Mount of Olives, near the church of Gethsemane—the garden where, according to the New Testament, the Romans arrested Jesus—archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old mikveh, or ritual bath. The garden’s name derives from the Hebrew words meaning “oil press,” and this is exactly what experts believe existed there once. In an interview by Hannah Brown, Amit Re’em, the director of archaeology in Jerusalem for the Israel Antiquities Authority, explains:

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