Ancient Texts and Modern Libels
Jewish Lives NZ and Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem co-hosted an event with guest speakers Professor Wayne Horowitz and Lilach Horowitz. Wayne gave a riveting survey of the ancient history of Jews in the land of Israel. Lilach shared about her work as a trauma counsellor. Since 7 October she has worked with families of young children who experienced the attacks on their homes and communities. Dame Lesley explained elements of the Synagogue for the non-Jewish guests and Hon Alfred spoke about the recent Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem events in Israel and the meeting with President Isaac Herzog.
Wayne has worked for 30 years at the Hebrew University, as a teacher of Sumerian and Akkadian texts and traditions, with a particular interest in literature, religion, science, and ancient astronomy. He has written on a wide range of topics relating to the Ancient Near East, and supervised many graduate students. For many years, he was also a key member of the faculty of the Rothberg International School, serving as Academic Advisor in both the Undergraduate and Graduate Programs of the school for overseas students, and participating in the development of the M.A. Program in Bible and Ancient Near East.
He has published works based on Sumerian and Akkadian texts written in cuneiform, which contain writings which consider the structure of the Cosmos. These works are considered authoritative. What Wayne likely won’t tell you is that he is a leading world expert on this topic. Amongst his many projects he has worked with Indigenous communities, such as the Gwich’in First Nations in Canada in the area of ethno- and archaeo-astronomy.
Dr Sheree Trotter interviewed Wayne about his trip to New Zealand.
What brought you here to New Zealand?
I'm an Assyriologist. I work with cuneiform tablets. My connection with New Zealand begins with the fact that, due to various circumstances and accidents of history, there are around 200 clay tablets written in the cuneiform script from ancient Babylonia, Assyria, Sumer, Akkad, ancient Iraq and the ancient Near East held in New Zealand collections. Most importantly, the Otago Museum has a world-class international collection of over 150 documents and artifacts inscribed in the ancient script of Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq.
I also came here as a part of a project working with indigenous peoples using some of the methodology I learned from working with an ancient dead civilization to civilizations who are in crisis and danger, in trying to retain what's left and rebuild. This I learned from my work with the Gwichʼin First Nations people in Arctic Canada and Alaska, the Yukon and Northwest territories.
As I've spent my time moving from cuneiform to cuneiform collection and talking with members of the Māori community, and those of Jewish and Christian backgrounds, my experience here in New Zealand has become a journey of awakening, of self-awareness and of finding personal peace with some of the tragic events that occurred in my country on October 7th, 2023.
When October 7th happened and atrocities were committed against the Jewish people, I was of course, stunned. No words can describe one's feelings about watching one's neighbors, fellow countrymen and friends be slaughtered and butchered in their homes. What was also disturbing, was the world accusing me of being a colonialist, when it was clear to me that I belonged to the land of Israel in the way that the First Nations Gwich’in people belonged to the forests of northern Canada and the Mackenzie and Blackstone river. It was shocking to hear this accusation that I was a white colonialist and at the same time that this justified the murder of my own people on my own homeland.
I didn't really know what to do with that and for months, I was very disheartened and felt really helpless. As I was looking through the Internet, I bumped into a newspaper article about the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem. It gave me a label for all the experiences and feelings I'd been having, so it took me a day to figure this out and I told my family I think I found what I need to do. I sent a preliminary email just saying, hello, my name is… I’d be interested in speaking with you and seeing if I can be of service. That started my work with the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.
You co-convened the IEJ Academic Symposium which took place last year in Jerusalem. What do you see as the significance of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem?
I think the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem gives voice not only to Jewish aspirations for an indigenous future, but I think it gives voice to all indigenous people around the world to what their part of humanity has offered and has to offer. It also opens a dialogue with non-indigenous people in different places in the world to be part of the discussion and ultimately to the preservation of the things that I think most people would agree are the fruits of modern Western Judeo-Christian civilization, of freedom: freedom for women, freedom for minorities, basic human rights. It all goes together. Indigenous identity is not the antithesis of Western values. Indigenous identity and protection of indigenous identity is the way forward, I believe, into the 21st century. And this is the way that all peoples of the world can find a place for themselves. I only hope that we're able to move in that direction out of love and respect, rather than from ignorance and hatred.
After 7 October, media and social media outlets pushed the narrative that this horrendous attack was justified because Israel was supposedly a colonialist state. How do you respond to that?
This great colonialist lie seeks to dismiss Jewish indigeneity and Jewish claims to the land of Israel - and it hurts. It hurts me in the same way that I think it would hurt any minority group. This is not said about any other national or ethnic group in the world. Black Lives Matter would be horrified if someone said that they had no connection to Africa and didn't have a history in the Americas that was tragic, or that the First Nations of North America had no rights or that Māori had no rights to be in New Zealand. I don't understand how anyone could say that Zionism, which is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is racism and colonialism any more than one could say that the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa was racist by its very nature.
People who say these things have no idea how wrong they are, but that's on an intellectual academic level. On a personal level, how hurtful it is to hear someone claim that your identity is not only false, but it's wicked - that you have no right to live. And that, of course, brings up vestiges of the Jewish experience in modernity where the thought that Jews have no right to live, no right to any place on this earth led to the death by murder of five or six of my great-grandparents in Europe. I've seen this on posters on the main road of Dunedin in New Zealand, by Otago University. That was in one sense, unbelievable and almost laughable, but it was on the other hand shocking and deeply disturbing, that in 2025 those kinds of views would not only be permitted to stay for days and weeks in public view without any response, but to be celebrated by people. If this is the proper response to murder and mayhem, I don't get it.
If you look at the Israeli Declaration of Independence 1948, it states quite clearly in terms that match the terminology of the indigenous movements that we're using today, that the Jews emerged in the land of Israel, their culture was formed in the lands of Israel. Jews throughout the world celebrated the holidays of the land of Israel, no matter where they were, and we always dreamed of going back to Israel. One of the key moments of the Jewish year is at the end of the Passover Seder, you say, “next year in Jerusalem”. It was the dream of every Jew celebrating the key liturgical event of the Jewish year, of going back to Jerusalem. One of the key moments in the lifetime of any person is their wedding ceremony. The Jewish wedding ceremony always ended, as mine did, with stepping on the glass and saying, “if I forget thee O Jerusalem”, because our own personal joy could not be full, if our national joy was not full. Our people's joy was not full, if we were not able to live our lives in our homeland.
So I don't have the words to express the feelings, emotions and thoughts that this gaslighting of Jewish identity and Jewish history brings up for me as an indigenous Jewish person, now trying to be part of the great experiment of rebuilding our our national identity, of taking control of our future in our own national homeland. People need to start looking at Israel and Zionism like that, and they need to see me like that, not as someone who has no relationship to the land. I'm part of the land. The land is part of me.
What impact has this trip had on you?
In addition to my academic work on the cuneiform tablets, I've been talking with members of the indigenous Māori community and speaking at events of friends of Israel, In Dunedin, Christchurch, Rotorua and Auckland. What I've gotten in return has been an amazing insight into who I am, both right now and in time and place of going back generations and thinking about different aspects of my own life. And so anything that I've been giving, what I've gotten back is really a new sense of self and where I fit as a Jew, as an Israeli, as an indigenous person.