Healing Well of Miriam

B”H

Vendyl Jones passed away December 27, 2010.  As I gathered pictures for his memorial, I thought of his life–how he blessed the world and me.

I met Vendyl in 1990 when I attended the first Bnai Noah conference in Ft Worth.  My (then) husband was Rabbi Meir Kahane’s body guard when he would speak at functions in the Texas area.  We got to know Vendyl better when he came to Israel in 1992 for the dig in which he found the incense of the Temple in one of the Qumran caves.  Over the years Vendyl spent a lot of time with us, and we got to feeling like family.  When I returned to the States he asked me to work with him; that’s when I began teaching Bnai Noah. 

There are a number of Bnai Noah organizations now.  But twenty years ago it was pretty much just an idea.  Vendyl went to then Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu to ask permission to officially recognize the Bnai Noah status, and he agreed.  At Vendyl’s memorial we displayed a picture of the two of them shaking hands.  The Lubavitch Rebbe Schneerson said of Vendyl that he was doing “the most important work in the world”; there was a picture of the two of them together, as well.  Vendyl believed that this “work” was the dig and that this blessing meant he would find the items of the Temple, however, I believed that the “work” was Bnai Noah, for what else can bring the world to the higher consciousness necessary for true peace?  There was a picture of Vendyl with Rabbi Shlomo Goren at the cave; Rabbi Goren was the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli army during the Six Day War…WHAT A HERO!  He walked through the Old City of Jerusalem during the battle blowing a shofar; they Arabs ran.  There were pictures of Vendyl during the Six Day War, too, looking through field glasses for the Jordanian camouflage, which he could see because of a strange color blindness.  Vendyl was a giant soul who went to the giants of the Torah world to change the world for the people of the nations.  

When I was in Israel the last time I went to Migdal for Shabbat and met the people who arranged for Vendyl to be buried there.  When I was told of this decision, I thought how appropriate it was, for the Sages of the Talmud walked that area.  The Hebrew date of Vendyl’s passing was 20 Tevet, which was also the anniversary (December 12, 1204) of the passing of Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon, commonly called Rambam or Maimonides, who was buried in Tiberias.  The interesting connection is that Rambam codified the Noahide Laws in his Mishneh Torah.  Without that, there could not be a basis for Jewish teaching of non-Jews.  However, these laws sound very similar to the verdict of Acts 15 when the early church was trying to decide what to do with their non-Jewish converts.  Vendyl was one more chapter in this continuing saga, and now he rests near other greats who debated the question.

There was a lot of debate as to the validity of Vendyl’s dig, based on his research on the Copper Scroll.  Yet he is the only person to ever actually find anything.  The first find was a juglet of the anointing oil, which is now at Hebrew University with a copy displayed at the Israel museum.  This oil was used to anoint the kings and priests of Israel.  It was still liquid in the jar—not from the Second Temple period, but the First! 

The next find was in 1992, the incense of the Temple buried in a stone well sealed underneath eleven domed layers of cement and rock.  The substance was analyzed by Rabbi Dr. Marvin Antelman at Wiezmann Institute and at Bar-Ilan University.  He said from those tests he believed it could be nothing else.  The conclusion was that the cave where it was found had been the factory where the family, whose job it was to make it, had operated. 

Then in 1994 Vendyl found evidence of the site of Gilgal, where the Tribes camped when entering the Land, at the north of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan flows into it.  At the time there was talk of handing the area over to Arafat, but when the general in charge of the upcoming talks heard Vendyl’s evidence, he cancelled the talks saying, “This is ours.”  

Vendyl was “larger than life.”  Sam Peak said when he told Rabbi Richman that he was going to officiate over the memorial, the rabbi said to him, “How can you sum up such a life in the time that you’ll have?”  When I was in yeshiva one of the teachers said to us that the Torah was still being written, as our history continues.  This is especially true in the Land of Israel.  It’s very clear that Vendyl was not simply an observer of this history, but an active participant.  This chapter of the Nations’ involvement with Israel is the most epic yet, literally bringing us to the days the Prophets foresaw and longed to see even more clearly—Redemption.