The cities of my life

As those who know me will have heard me say before, I'm a small city person. London is way too big for me, and the only reason I'm living here is because there's nowhere in the provinces with a sizeable young Jewish community any more apart from Manchester. In Newcastle where I grew up, and Edinburgh where I lived before I could come here, I could hop and my bike and be in the city centre in ten minutes, or head in the opposite direction and be in the countryside in ten minutes, and go for a long cycle ride in the countryside, with only the first and last ten minutes spent cycling in the city. Here in London that's three quarters of an hour either way.

I was talking with aviva_m a little while ago about the relative sizes of London and Berlin, and decided to have a look on Google Maps to see just how the two compared, and I was surprised at how big Berlin is. Then I decided to have a look at the other cities I've lived in, and was surprised at how much smaller they all are by contrast.

So, here are the cities I have lived in (discounting Jerusalem, which at three and a half weeks' residence fell under my threshold), plus the one I hope to spend two months in later this year, in the order I lived in them, with the parts of them my life involved in sharp focus:

( view maps )

Antiquities of the Jews, fit the twentieth

Yehudah ha-Maccabee followed of course the restrictions upon how to wage war delineated in Deuteronomy ch. 20 (XII.7.301): ( Read more... )

This despite the odds being ridiculously against them (3000 ill-armed men against forty thousand foot soldiers, seven thousand horsemen, Syrian auxiliaries and Hellenised Jews). I'm not surprised their military success was then later adjudged a miracle.

( Why Chanukah was so-named; what does Josephus know that he's not letting on about? )

Interesting to see that though the other nations were against the Jews in their struggle against the Seleucids, the Nabataeans were on their side (XII.8.335-6):( Read more... )

A piece of good news in the wars (XII.8.349):( Read more... )

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Josephus notes