Ancient seed

You may have heard the most amazing story of the Judean date palm;

During 1963-1965, excavations at Herod the Great’s palace on Masada, Israel, revealed a cache of date palm seeds preserved in an ancient jar. They had experienced a very dry and sheltered environment for centuries. Radiocarbon dating date the seeds from between 155 BC  to AD 64. The seeds were held in storage for 40 years at Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem, until in 2005, the seeds were pretreated in a fertilizer and hormone-rich solution. Three of the seeds were subsequently planted at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arabah desert in southern Israel.  Eight weeks later one of the seeds had sprouted, and by June 2008, the tree had nearly a dozen fronds and was nearly 1.4 m (4 ft) tall. By the summer of 2010, the sapling stood at about 2 meters tall. it flowered in March 2011 and is male. –Wikipedia

 

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Assuming the carbon dating as accurate, the seeds age range from HC 3606 to HC 3825 the final; two hundred years of the second bet hamikdash.[/boxify]

From a kehuna point of view, there are some parallels that can be drawn out; Medrash Tanchuma compares shevet levi to the date palm; just as the date palm has only one hear, so shevet levi has one heart to הקדוש ברוך הוא and didn’t fall prey to עבודה זרה.  Too, the third bet hamikdash as described by the navi Yechezkel features the judean date palm, real ones at the שער המזרחי and images of it on the interior of the קודש הקדשים

These seeds belong to a species of date palm extinct from the earth and have been lying dormant for ~2000 years, and have taken root and sprouted -truly amazing and worthy of praise to the almighty for giving his treasure to proper guardian’s until the time when he desires for it to be revealed -ברוך שנתן עולמו לשומרים.