Years ago, at the Hebrew University, a professor of ancient history was lecturing about the great civilizations of the ancient world.

Egypt and its Pharaohs. Assyria and Babylon. Persia, Greece and Rome. Empires that conquered nations, redrew borders and, in their time, appeared too powerful ever to disappear.

Yet they did. Empires collapsed, kingdoms vanished and peoples were conquered, scattered or absorbed into others. Civilizations that once ruled much of the known world were left to ruins, archaeology and the pages of history.

Then the professor told his students that, for all he had encountered in his studies, one sight had affected him more than almost anything else. It was not something uncovered on an archaeological dig, nor an ancient inscription or long-lost artefact.

It was a Jew eating falafel on a street in Jaffa.

“How can it be,” he asked,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)