Mikdash and Memory: A Tale of Jewish Love and Longing — Visualizing the Mikdash: A Tombstone and the Temple Dr. Steven Fine | Dean Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History and Director, YU Center for Israel Studies In 2012, Pastor Carl Morgan of Woodland United Fellowship and the Woodland Museum of Biblical Archaeology in California sent Professor Steven Fine of Yeshiva University a photograph of an ancient tombstone. Professor Fine immediately recognized it as coming from biblical Zoar, on the Dead Sea. Dr. Fine and a group of YU students set out to decipher the Aramaic inscription painted on the stone. What they discovered was not only the story of the woman memorialized, but a lesson in how the Jewish people kept the memory of the Temple alive in their hearts and minds in the centuries following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. Tombstone Sa’adah, Daughter of Pi[nchas], Zoar/Zoora, Jordan, ca. 429/430 CE, sandstone, painted; Collection of Yeshiva University Museum, Gift of Woodland United Fellowship Model of Herod's Temple, after original, Jerusalem, late 1st century BCE, designed by York Model Making and Display Ltd, 1996, Leen Rittmeyer, consultant; Collection of Yeshiva University Museum, Created for Benjamin Adelman, Gift of Saul Adelman Learn more about the Straus Center at https://www.yu.edu/straus Like the Straus Center on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YUStrausCenter Follow the Straus Center on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YUStrausCenter Follow the Straus Center on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yu_straus_center/ Connect with the Straus Center on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-straus-center-for-torah-and-western-thought-of-yeshiva-university/