Special Gala Event Showcasing New Discoveries from the Temple Mount Sifting Project Research

Dear All,

Since the beginning of the war, we’ve received many messages from our friends abroad expressing their concern for our welfare. Thank you all for the warm messages, it encourages us and fills our hearts. As the war erupted, four of our staff were immediately recruited to the reserve army, and we pray for their safe return and the safety of the rest of the IDF soldiers. We promise you that we in Israel and in the TMSP will prevail!

Those of you who have been following our newsletters were probably pleased to hear that in the past months, the process of becoming eligible to receive government funding was finally completed, and significant budgets for supporting the research and publication of our findings were approved.

Just before Sukkot, as our funds were almost depleted, we received our first government grant. This will allow us to operate for the next several months and helps us move forward with key research and publications. However, this was just the first sum within a much larger grant, and it seems that the current war has now reshuffled all the cards. All liquid funds are now being diverted to war-related needs. In addition, many foundations and individual donors who support Israeli non-profit organizations are also redirecting their donations to the needs of the war. Consequently, non-profit organizations like ours, which do not deal directly with issues related to the war, will, in the near future, find that all their funding has dried up and will have to close down their activities.

Furthermore, as expected, 100% of the sifting reservations for the coming period have been canceled. We are currently providing some wet sifting services to other excavations, but once this ends, we will face a financial challenge in continuing to fund the sifting operation and retaining our professionally trained staff.

For these reasons, we’ve decided to conduct a special online gala event that will take place next month, on the eve of the 4th night of Chanukah. In this event, we will present new discoveries in our research that have not yet been published, with hope of generating interest in helping to fund our operation in 2024.

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New Discoveries in the Temple Mount Sifting Project Research

On-line gala event, eve of the 4^th night of Chanukah, Sunday, December 10^th 2023.

Program (all times are in Israel time):

18:50 Lighting of Chanukah Candles

18:55 Mr. Edward Baumstein, Member of the Board of Directors

• Greetings from the Board

19:00 Dr. Aaron Greener, Chairman of the TMSP’s Board of Directors

• An Overview and Update of the Project’s Work before and after the Beginning of the War

19:15 Zachi Dvira, Co-Director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project

• A Survey of New Discoveries from the Research of the TMSP Finds and New Insights on Temple Mount History and Archaeology

19:40 Dr. Gabriel Barkay, Co-Director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project

• The Archaeology of the Temple Mount during the Byzantine Period

20:00 Haim Shaham, Numismatic Researcher at the TMSP

• Do Two Extremely Rare Weights from the TMSP Attest the Existence of a Major Church on the Temple Mount during the Byzantine Period?
• What Can We Learn from the Hasmonean Coins that were Recovered in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount?

20:15 Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich, Epigrapher and Research Director at the TMSP

• Items with Fragmentary Ancient Hebrew Writing and other Potters’ Marks from the Temple Mount Sifting Project

20:30 Distinguished Guest: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University

• The Struggle over Jerusalem between Judaism and Islam and between the Sunna and the Shi’a

21:15 Concluding Remarks

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