Wednesday, May 9: Archaeology in the Galilee

Start with a prayer service on the bus. Temple Israel has a morning minyan on Wednesdays, and for these weeks, it was moved to Israel. That meant us. I fell way behind from the start, which is normal for me. :-)

Shopping, a great joy to many of the trip participants. This time at the Naot shoe factory. I had planned to pick up a pair of sandals for myself here, in anticipation of desert travel later in the journey, but discovered to my dismay that Israel was not magic: the sandals they make here are just as uncomfortable as the ones back home. Oh well: fortunately, I had packed several pairs of shoes. Including desert boots!

Thence to Beit Shean: an extensive excavation of one of the cities of the Roman Decapolis. Archaeologists have uncovered almost all of the downtown core of the city, which is sizeable, and which hints at the huge walled city most of which remains underground. As at Caesarea, there is a theatre (what I would have called an amphitheatre), an amphitheatre (what I would have called a hippodrome), and lots more very impressive engineering including a sophisticated sewer system. The highlight for me, though, was a real, honest-to-goodness tell, that some of us went right to the top of.

Beit Shean

A tell is a sort of flat-topped artificial hill, created by layers of cities. Basically, someone would come along, find a nice spot for a city (close to trade routes, easy access to water, whatever), and build one. In time, something would happen—earthquake, fire, enemy action, whatever—and the city would be ruined. But the location would still be perfectly good, so before long someone else would come along, find all this great building material, and decide to build another city in the same place. They'd scavenge what they could, fill in the empty spaces with dirt, and then build on top. Repeat this process a few times, and you end up with a pretty decent hill.

After Beit Shean, we moved on to Beit Alpha, another archaeological dig, where we watched a slightly less cheesy video. Archaeology, by the way, is considered a spectator sport in Israel: there's certainly plenty of material. The law is that if you're doing any digging, say to build something, and you happen to come across an antiquity, then you have to stop immediately and wait for the archaeologists to come, and then you have to pay for their excavation. For this and other reasons, Israel has a very high cost of living. Cars, for instance, cost double their sticker price because of taxes.

The third archaeological excavation of the day was at Zipori, which has beautiful mosaic floors and where the first part of the Talmud was put together. That pretty much made up the day, so we drove into Haifa for the evening.

In Haifa they work: the busy harbour

There's a saying: In Jerusalem they pray; in Tel Aviv they dance; in Haifa they work. Haifa's definitely a working-class city, and probably the best example around of Jewish-Arab cooperation. Our hotel had a marvelous view of the harbour, including the Israeli navy, as well as lots of residential, commercial, and industrial land, and a view up the coast as far as Lebanon. For some reason the hotel didn't want us to eat like normal people so we had to be in their Chinese restaurant for dinner. Sigh. At least it was kosher.

This hotel also had free Internet access, which was a real treat. I spent the evening checking e-mail and also walking outside on a lovely terrace that overlooked the city. Thence to bed.

Next: Thursday, May 10, Haifa and Area