Wednesday July 21

today was another beautiful day in Israel. what does that mean? you wake up; it's sunny; the sky is blue. there's a beautiful breeze and it's cool in the morning, that's before you know it's going to be smoking hotwith a blazing sun in the afternoon. as usual, we woke up early this morning, had a quick breakfast and hopped on the tour bus. today we're going to start at the site of an archealogical dig in the national forest. on the way there we have our usual chat/enlightenment from Jared , our "sababa" (awesome!) tour guide telling us about what we can expect to happen this day along with the insight into the historical,social and philisophical impact of what we are seeing and what this all might mean to us as jews. we also get our daily dosage of political discourse, and spiritual insight into the complicated web of every day israeli life from 2000 years ago up until the modern times of today.Jared and the rabbi fill us with food for thought and discussion and contemplation as we head to our days adventure. as we head out of jerusalem towards our dig,we look out the tour bus window and see the incredible topography of jerusalem. as we leave the city down into the valley,the landscape changes from crowded, built-up city to arid, dry land, with lush verdant patches of farm land where grapes, melons & other assorteed fruits & vegetables are growing surrounded by more arid dry land. when we arrive at our destination, we turn up a dry, dusty dirt road, lined with Jerusalem pines trees and olive trees. we are greeted by Amy, our archeological guide for the day.she hops on the bus as we head up to the top of the hill where our adventure will begin. We get off our air-conditioned bus and the hot, dry , dusty air smacks us in the face.as we all march out of the bus, Looking out at our site, there are pitched tents all over, with "danger do not enter!" signs in front of them. Amy escorts us to a long steep wooden stairway, that at first site, seems to head down to a black shapeless hole. as we get to the bottom of the staircase, there is a low entrance, which we limboed under, and found ourselves in this incredible underground cavern. now mind you, there are 27 of us following single file into this cave along a narrow chiseled partial staircase. we are following amy down more stairs into an enlarged chamber where we will be helping (slave laboring) through 2200 year old rubble, helping to both empty out dirt and possibly uncover hidden treasures, such as bones,pottery shards, coins, coal, gold ,and other signs clues of ancient life. What's incredible here is that there's an entire system of lniking underground caves and tunnels that are more than 2000 years old. when [if] you find a piece of treasure, you are the first person to have touched this in over 2000 years.we are separated into two groups in two different caverns. amy gives us our marching orders.....pick your digging tools...you have two separate buckets....one to fill with plain old dirt and the other bucket for treasure.as we skeptically begin to groan and dig.....comes the first cry of i found something!!!!!!!!!pieces of ancient history start coming up around our room as everyone starts to work in earnest.....shards of pottery...marrow bones....pieces of a former civilization.....as we finish amy has us form a chain up the windy narrow stairs ready to pass all the buckets to the top of our site...the dirt as well as the treasures.as the last of what seem like hundreds of buckets passes we head back up from the cool ground back outside to the scorching bright world. Losing computer battery power - to be continued - Shalom - Adam