Excavating Canaan as Israelis

For the last couple weeks Matt has been working on an archaeological dig. What this means for me is that I have been sleeping alone. Thankfully it hasn't been too lonely since work has been keeping me busy and our friends are still living with us. 

Being on an archaeological dig is like being at adult summer camp. You live on site (or close to it), you have bunk mates, communal meals, group activities and a giant sand box to play in all day. While it sounds like fun and games, it is also an intense amount of physical labor. You wake up at 4:30am to get in a full day of digging before it gets too hot after lunchtime. The majority of digging doesn't involve uncovering amazing finds, but moving bucket after bucket of dirt. Swinging pick-axes, hauling rocks and collecting broken pottery take up most of your day.  Below, in a first time guest post, Matt explains what it's like to dig in the dirt as an Israeli...

When we made aliyah, the intention was to come to Haifa in order to begin my doctorate in archaeology. The hope was to dig as much as possible throughout the year to get as much experience as possible. If you know anything about our small country here, there is a lot to dig up. Basically everywhere you go there are ruins exposed or hiding beneath the surface of the ground. Quite often, these ruins are integrated into the modern landscape of the country and even find themselves in urban centers. There is so much at stake here that there is an Israeli law that requires archaeological surveys and excavations to be conducted before any construction project begins.

The second week we were here, I spent four days excavating at a site not so far from Tel Aviv called Tell Assur. It was an interesting salvage excavation located in the middle of a field. The project was a joint exposition sponsored by the University of Haifa and the local moshavim and towns in the area. The goal of the dig was to educate local school-aged children on archaeology and the history of the land of Israel.  That meant instead of archaeologists focusing on digging deep trenches and uncovering new finds, we were busy supervising (babysitting, really) a few hundred young Israelis teens hacking away with pick axes, hoes, and shovels in hand. Needless to say, we did a lot less digging and a lot more preventing the kids from destroying the site altogether.

The past few weeks, I have been excavating a Canaanite site that is over 3,500 years old (dates to the Middle Bronze Age). Called Tell Kabri, it is the third largest site in Israel from that time period, and it has the largest palace ever discovered here dating to that time. Located in the middle of Kibbutz Kabri’s avocado orchards (unfortunately it is not avocado season!), it likely once housed a local ruler that was not only Canaanite but that had many connections with the Mediterranean and Greek worlds. A number of years ago, archaeologists uncovered a beautiful fresco wall painting and painted plastered floor with scenes of landscape and the sea. These frescoes are the ONLY ones ever discovered in Israel and the origins of the style are from the Minoan world (a powerful kingdom that existed on Crete, Greece, around the same time period).

What are we working on this year? Figuring out how a large palatial economy functioned. What did Kabri trade, with whom did it trade, and how was trade and commerce conducted, in general? Fortunately for us, we found a large storage room on the side of the palace, filled from wall to wall with large storage vessels, many of which were over a meter tall. Once we are able to completely remove all of the vessels, we can begin to figure out the contents that they once may have held. We are hoping for olives, oils, wines, grains and more.

The past two weeks have been long intense days. The dig week is Sunday throughThursday. We wake up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, start digging by 5:00 a.m., and usually end at around 1:00 p.m. Some days we work double shifts, meaning we excavate through lunch and into the late afternoon. When we are not digging, we are doing other stuff like cleaning and analyzing pottery and bones and analyzing organic samples from soil we kept. It is exhausting work, but it is exceedingly fun.

The hardest part, of course, is being away from home and being away from Stef for so long. This is part of the trade, unfortunately. Luckily, we are only a short train ride away (about 30 minutes), so we’ve managed to sneak in a few extra visits throughout my time on the dig. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures I have been taking!

Sitting in Traffic as Israelis

As part of my job, I travel weekly with my group to places all around the country. And since it is my job, I travel even when I have a bad cold, like I did this trip (and still do). This week's trip was to the Negev, the large desert in the south that accounts for about 60% of Israel's land mass (but only houses 10% of the population).  As our destination was rather far from Haifa, we got on the road at about 6:45am for our 3 hour journey.  

Not even half an hour later, reports started coming in on the radio about a massive crash on the southbound side of the highway we were on. Two large trucks had crashed into each other, essentially shutting down the highway. After consulting with the bus driver, we decided to get off and find an alternative route. Unfortunately for us, the parallel highway was also backed up from an early morning crash and the our third highway option was so crowded from it's regular morning traffic in addition to all the drivers who would have normally been on the other two highways. So we sat in traffic. Eventually we made it off and got onto surface streets only to sit in more traffic. I told my group they were now having an authentic Israeli experience. Long story short, we made it to our destination 5 hours later.

Sadly for my group (and for me) we ended up spending more time on the bus that day than we did at the actual sites we were visiting. While I received my fair share of complaints, I am glad to have a few "silver lining" participants, who always manage to see the positive, no matter how small. "At least we got to see another part of the country, albeit briefly. When are we going to be back here in the near future anyway?"

(Warning: next story is a little gross) 

As we boarded the bus back to Haifa, just a mere 4 hours after arriving in the Negev, my exhaustion, the tremendous heat, my cold and my general bus sickness all caught up to me at once - I was going to throw up. Luckily in my backpack I had a plastic bag, which I grabbed immediately. I tried to ask the bus driver to pull over, but every time I opened my mouth I couldn't get the words out. I knew my only option was the plastic bag, so I nonchalantly (if you can say that about throwing up), did what I had to do.  

I was rather quiet and at first no one noticed.  Then the bus driver caught a glimpse of me in his rear view mirror. Immediately, he started to panic. His eyes went wide and his movements became jerky. Then he started gagging. He wildly pulled the bus off to the side of the road, threw the doors open, ran off the bus and puked himself. He turned back to me: "I have a thing when other people throw up."  He then insisted I get rid of my plastic bag.  When I looked confused and reminded him we were in the middle of the desert and there was not a garbage can in sight, he yelled at me to leave it in the bush, I was "not allowed back on the bus with that thing." As much as I hate littering, I conceded (I mean, I didn't really want to hold on to it either...). My last thought as we pulled away was: "should a man with such an adverse reaction to vomit really be a bus driver? Doesn't it sort of come with the territory?"

On that note, Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt

Hosting Americans as Israelis

I've written in the past about friends and family coming to visit us in Haifa.  We love having the opportunity to use our guest room and show off our new hometown.  This week we welcomed extra special guests, close friends who will be living with us for a month.

When friends stay for extended periods of time, they turn from guests into roommates. Having roommates means there are extra sets of hands to help out with the cooking and cleaning, which I absolutely can't complain about.  At the same time, they remain visitors which pushes us do things outside our normal routine - go out to dinner, sightsee, and have long discussions about politics and life in Israel.  

These friends happen to be here specifically to learn Hebrew. Both are graduate students and received a grant to come to Israel, immerse themselves in Israeli life and, like I said, learn Hebrew.  They will soon begin a summer ulpan course at the University of Haifa to formally work on their language skills, but in the meantime have been grocery shopping, opened a gym membership and traveled around on the train and buses speaking to everyone they can in Hebrew. I am thoroughly impressed with their determination and persistence to speak in Hebrew at every opportunity, even with each other and with us at home. 

One of the highlights of partaking in their experience is seeing their reaction to Haifa. Both of them have spent some sort of extensive period of time in Israel before (she was once my roommate in Jerusalem), but neither have spent much time in Israel outside the "tourist cities" aka Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As people working on spoken language skills, being in Haifa has been a huge advantage even in these first few days of their trip. One of the challenges of having an American accent in Hebrew is, when detected by the Israeli who you are trying to engage in conversation, the conversation easily switches over to English.  Turns out that many Israelis are just as interested in using their English as we may be using our Hebrew.  In Haifa, however, this happens much less frequently. Our friends appreciate, just as we do, that local Haifans are more willing to speak to you slowly and allow you to stumble through your Hebrew without making you feel bad that you aren't quite fluent.  Maybe this is a result of us living in a particularly non-touristy part of Haifa where English is much less frequently heard. Maybe Haifa is just a slower paced city. Either way, we feel proud of our city when our friends come home from a day out on the town and express how nice everyone they encountered was.  We hope during the rest of their time here, Haifa continues to live up to their first impressions.  

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt

Living in a Small Country as Israelis

Writing about hospital visits three weeks in a row was not my intention, but sometimes that's just where life brings you.  Let's rewind a bit... On my group's schedule this past week was our big weekend trip/Shabbaton to Yerucham, a tiny town not too far from Be'er Sheva.  We left early early on Thursday morning for Jerusalem, where we spent the day, and then headed off to Yerucham to spend our weekend in the middle of the desert. We planned ahead that Matt would join the group for Shabbat - he would take the train to Be'er Sheva on Friday and then a bus over to Yerucham.  

On Thursday we got a call from Matt's aunt that his uncle had suffered a heart attack and was being treated at the hospital in Be'er Sheva. Rewind... Matt's aunt and uncle live on a kibbutz just north of Eilat (all the way in the south of Israel). When he wasn't feeling well, he went to the hospital in Eilat which is the closest, albeit very small, hospital. He then suffered the heart attack while in the hospital (which, if you're going to have a heart attack, is the best place to do it) and got medevaced in a helicopter to the larger, better equipped hospital in next biggest city, Be'er Sheva. 

Even though Be'er Sheva is on the opposite side of the country from Haifa, as fate would have it, Matt and I would both be in Be'er Sheva anyway on Friday, which allowed us to easily pop over to the hospital to visit with Matt's uncle and family.  It was a meaningful visit and we're glad we were able to do it with such little planning on our end (but lots of "planning" from the powers-that-be).

A quick story about getting to the hospital. I had agreed that morning to accompany a group of my students to Beer Sheva (with the intention of sneaking away for a bit). I also agreed to run an errand for a kid from another group who had broken his leg and had also recently broken his crutches. There is an organization with branches all over Israel called Yad Sarah that provides rental crutches, wheelchairs and other medical equipment to anyone who needs it, including tourists, and I was heading off to go switch out the broken crutches for working ones. As I walked down the street carrying the crutches and trying to hail a cab, our bus driver, who was patiently waiting in the parking lot for our group to finish the activity, began honking his horn at me.  "Where are you going?" he shouted at me through the window, "Do you want a ride?" I hadn't even thought about asking the bus driver for a private ride around town. In the end, I got a personal ride to Yad Sarah and also to the hospital, had a nice conversation with the bus driver and saved myself s few cab rides.  

Matt's uncle is now recovering well and has been released from the hospital. He asked us to reiterate to you all that he got to ride in a helicopter (for only the second time in his life). While in the helicopter, the paramedic struck up a conversation: "Where are you from? Oh, you're from a kibbutz?  A real socialist kibbutz? I'm also from a kibbutz, Ramat Rachel. Oh, your daughter works there?  Of course I know her! She's my children's preschool teacher!"  And so it goes in this tiny country where your helicopter paramedic's children are students in your daughter's preschool class.  

Let's hope that this is the end of hospital themed weekly updates.  Stay healthy everyone.

Have a great week,

Stef and Matt