Hello Friends,
When it comes to censorship of information - sometimes books are burned, talks are banned, voice silences - and sometimes books get written, propaganda propagated, and ideologies enforced - despite dissent, discord and different opinions.
Our history is full of such examples - like the creation of the Hebrew Bible — and sadly - this is part of our current reality. How can we learn to discern this trend, talk back to tyranny, lift up more narratives and perspectives that celebrate the full spectrum of life?
At our next LIVE LEARN session on June 14 (details below) we’ll learn about the first book burning in the Bible - and how this 2,700 year old story scorched the path towards the suppression of critical dissent and alternative perspectives that still impact and hurt our lives today.
Even in London.
Did you about the drama in the British Museum?
It’s a relative small storm in a teacup but still an upsetting incident that speaks to the high volume of tensions these days as attacks on anything to do with Israel and Jewish life continue worldwide - and in this case - directly related to the topic of our year-long journey.
What does the ancient history of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah have to do with contemporary political realities?
And why would a lunch&learn session at the British Museum cause fury and make it to every major media channel?
The short version is that an afternoon talk at the British Museum, planned for May 28, as part of Jewish Culture Month in the United Kingdom - was initially cancelled, then postponed, due to the museum’s concerns over disruption by protestors. A new date has yet to be announced - and hopefully it will include an online access option - so that we can all join.
Why the protest?
The event, titled ‘The Ancient History of Israel and Judah’ delivered by Paul Collins, Keeper of the Museum’s Department of the Middle East is intended to explain how “the histories of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah can be illuminated by the archaeology and art of the wider ancient Middle East.”
But with credible fears of Anti-Israel protesters, the Museum published a note announcing the postponement of the event - with heightened security.
You can read more about it in the New York Times:
British Museum Postpones Jewish Cultural Event, Citing Threat of Disruption
And you can also read the Museum's Statement - here.
AND - what does this actually have to do with the histories of Judah and Israel and why this ancient discord informs the ways we are so deeply divided now?
British-Jewish historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of several books, among them the magnificent book Jerusalem: The Biography wrote a super long response on X to this scandal, worth quotation almost in full:
S Sebag Montefiore@simonmontefiore
This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why
S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore
Dark times when a talk about Ancient Judah and Israel @britishmuseum is cancelled ‘for security concerns’?
11:30 AM · May 28, 2026 · 208K Views
82 Replies · 837 Reposts · 2.86K Likes
“This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?
The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.
..There is the history itself.
This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70AD etc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase.
This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum.
But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat.
Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc).
The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these.
Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself.
And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard.
Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.”
I’ve been wanting to go visit the British Museum in London for some time now - with a special focus on viewing precious relics and artifacts from the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel.
I hope it happens soon. Or at least I can attend the Zoom version of this rescheduled event. I’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile - our next event is coming up:
🪬Next LIVE Session: Sunday 6/14/26 @ 2 PM (ET)
“Book Burning: What Scriptures Start a Civil War”
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Wishing us all Shabbat Shalom.
Peace שלום سلام
Amichai
