I've been a paleontologist before, searching for trilobite fossils in the gorges near Ithaca. It was not until this week, though, that I have come as close to fulfilling my brother Sam's dream of my becoming Indiana Jones (we all know that I'm much more like Marcus than like any other character in the series). On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I had the opportunity to volunteer at an archaeological dig site in Lod, the city where I ordinarily volunteer. School was out, so why not? The process was simple; we chose one of several small sectors of the stone building complex, dug down with wide hoes, and threw dirt over the adjoining wall. After five hours of playing in the dirt, we had dug up... half of such a small room. This might have been some kind of small shop, less than a century ago, when the stone complex was still in use. Since then, it had become more of a garbage heap, with all sorts of trash mixed in the large pile of dirt. I was exhausted, and surprised at how much effort of ours had seemingly accomplished so little, but the archaeologist with us, Lianne, told us that we had done far more work than she had expected. I was amazed at how much loess had blown onto the site in just a few decades. Every moment or so, we found another pottery shard. At one point, I noticed a small greenish object in the loose dirt, picked it up, and realized that I had found a coin. The archaeologists became quite excited, and told me that the coin was undoubtedly from the pre-1948 period, and might have been either British or Ottoman. (Carmel has since informed me that the coin was found to be definitely Ottoman, which means that it cannot postdate the early 1920s, and could be several centuries old.) The coin needed to go to a numismatics expert first (it was heavily oxidized, and caked in dirt), but it was an incredibly rare discovery in this particular site, I was told. I'm honestly just glad that I had the opportunity to contribute to the local museum. Who knows; small finds like this might attract people's interest, and motivate them to become more interested in their history. The only negative part of the day occurred when the archaeologists provided lunch, as promised, and it turned out not to be kosher, as all food on our program is supposed to be. I explained my kosher-vegetarian diet, and, when I eventually opened up my meal, it was a leg of chicken (I gave it to my roommate, so it did not end up going to waste). To make matters worse, the previous night was my first time exercising in more than a month, thanks to a relentless bout of sickness from which I'm only now fully recovered. When I returned from the dig, bleary with dust and sweat, to my apartment in Ramla, my roommate asked me if I had kept the coin, and I got to reply by throwing down my favorite Indiana Jones line:
Ahem. Now, where was I? Oh, right, I didn't return to the archaeological site on Tuesday, because I needed to run some mundane errands in Ramla, such as buying stamps from the post office, acquiring a new bus pass (the last one was in the wallet that was stolen on the bus, slightly ironically), and, yes, buying more dates from the shuk. Mother, in case, I haven't mentioned it, I can buy big, fat, beautiful medjool dates for just ₪14 per kilo (that's about $1.82 per pound, by the way) which makes me very happy indeed. I'll bring some for you and Dad when you visit, if that interests you :). I talked to Eli over the phone that evening, after I spent a fair amount of time studying Hebrew, and we planned my trip of the next day.
I got up early on Wednesday morning, and missed the 8:29 am train to Tel Aviv by a minute, literally seeing it pull out of the station just one hundred meters away. So I took the bus instead. From Tel Aviv, I took a sherut to Afula; I ended up waiting for more than an hour at the station, while the sherut driver chatted to other drivers in Arabic, waiting for all eight seats to be filled with passengers. While driving through cities with high Arab populations, such as Nazareth, I read an essay on Kemalism that Coco had sent to me a few months away. Finally in Afula, I waited another hour and a half for the minibus to arrive. We were extremely crowded; I think that everyone else on the bus was Jewish, and I see quite a few knitted kippot on the other young men. I assumed that they were yeshiva students in Ma'alei Gilboa. The drive up to Ma'alei Gilboa was very scenic. It's a very treacherous, winding path looking down on the Jordan valley. You can quite easily see Jordan from the mountain. Later that day, I saw several people with cameras and tablets photographing the view.
Eli was working in the dining hall when I arrived. The student whose job it was to work in the dining hall was still on Chanukah break, so Eli had stepped forward to do his job. Eli had also set aside some food for me from lunch, for which I was very grateful. I had a few conversations with a few of the Israeli students while I was first getting acquainted with kibbutz. Everyone was incredibly friendly, and I felt very good that I was able to speak to them as well as I could. Their English was almost undoubtedly better than my Hebrew, but I think that they recognized and respected that I was making an effort to speak in Hebrew, and bore with me. They all wanted to know what I was doing in Israel, and I explained as well as I could. My Hebrew is improving, but still very far from being good. Eli's shift ended at tefillat minchah, and he gave me a big hug, and helped me bring my things to his room, where I met his roommate Gabe. Soon after Eli and I embarked on one of the most daring and unique tasks ever to be chronicled in this blog. A couple of days before, Eli had found the body of a recently-deceased hawk by the side of the road, which he had scooped up, double-bagged, and placed in safe-keeping for preservation. So, around twilight, after procuring surgical masks from the local clinic, we took the corpse outside, beside the road on a concrete staircase, and began cutting it apart with Eli's schecting knife. Eli did all of the cutting, and I held the flashlight steady, and made anatomical guesses of just what organs we had revealed at each stage. I thought back to the class on Vertebrates that I had taken during my freshman year, and wished, in hindsight, that I had followed up with more such classes that introduced me to animal anatomy, evolution, and ecology. Sure, I could point out the sternum, tell the small and large intestines apart, and tentatively tag the gallbladder and liver, but I couldn't even remember, for instance, where the crop was actually located (I can only remember what function the crop serves because of its pivotal role in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Blue Carbuncle"). When we cut made the dorsal cut, I wasn't even certain if we had found the kidneys, which presumably would have been one of the first things we would have encountered. Eli enormously enjoyed the learning experience. Once finished, we washed our hands very thoroughly. Since then, no reports of disease reported. Later that evening at the yeshiva, we finished the evening by studying the Rif on chalav u'basar. The Rif, by the way, is the cute acronym for Rav Yitzchak al-Fasi, an 11th-century Sepharadic scholar, whose work of the same name is an abridged Talmud, with a few observations and conclusions thrown in. It's still in Aramaic, though, which makes it almost as inaccessible to the uninitiated, such as myself. Eli could simultaneously understand the sugya, guide me through the linguistic straits while explaining Aramaic binyanim, take notes and circle key terms, and cross-reference the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, which was pretty incredible. I felt much, much stupider, trying to study something that was so much above my intellectual ability, both in terms of content as well as in terms of language. Our conversation about meat involved us making a tour of the vegetarian and vegan students at Ma'alei Gilboa, in order to ask them 1) their opinions on consuming kosher locusts, and 2) whether one could eat fish, and still call oneself a vegetarian. Eli and I were up quite late, much to our mutual enjoyment.
Thursday was the very last day of Chanukah. I got up fairly late, at around 8:00 am (an hour after communal morning prayer in the yeshiva). I met Eli in the yeshiva, and throughout the day, we studied a few different things together. We continued the Rif, but switched instead to Berachot, which is a topic of which I am particularly ignorant. Also, it turns out that there is a different medieval Hebrew word for "beer" than the modern Hebrew word בִּירָה . I swear, Eli has so many gears clicking at once. As he explained to me, the Talmud is not meant to be read through linearly, understanding each line before moving on. Rather, the meaning of some words do not become apparent until the end of the sugya. We encountered such a word, אניגרון which apparently is some kind of tonic or elixir into which some people mixed olive oil to drink in order to soothe their soar throats, in order to avoid drinking straight olive oil. Apparently, people simultaneously believed both that olive oil was beneficial for soar throats, and that olive oil was dangerous when drunk straight. I'm not a doctor, but I'd be rather surprised if any doctor prescribed drinking olive oil to patients with a soar throat. We found that Rambam and the Rif actually had a disagreement about what beracha to make over straight olive oil (see Hilchot Berachot 8:2). Eli and I ourselves had a disagreement over their reasons; Eli thought that they interpreted Halacha differently, and I assumed that their different rulings stemmed from their (not necessarily explicitly stated) different understandings of human health. Just after lunchtime (did I mention that the yeshiva fed me, without asking any questions?), we cleaned out the students' apartment, and I did my best to help out, without getting in the way. A group of students started dancing in the dining hall, in order to celebrate the engagement of a fellow student. These students are all approximately my age, by the way, some older and some younger. I really can't imagine getting engaged or married at my age, at all. Later in the afternoon, we also read some of the laws of lost properties from the Mishneh Torah. I'm still quite feeble, but it stands as a testimony to Rambam's writing skills that I can understand many passages from the Mishneh Torah. At one point, Rav Bigman, the Rosh Yeshiva, stopped by, introducing himself, and I explained that we had already briefly met in Drisha last June, when he had answered my friends' questions about Agunot, and my own question on different schools of Talmudic methodology. This man is so knowledgeable and intelligent, it amazes me, reminding me of some of my better professors from university. In casual conversation, the topic of the relative shapes of marketplaces in late-antiquity Palestine and Persia came up. Eli and I read through the source-sheet that he had prepared for a class that he ended up not being able to teach, concerning (I think) Rabbinic fines. Also that night, I had a call with Rachel Silverman, and we finished Sefer Zecharyia! I'm so excited! We're going to delve back into the historical Nach starting this week, beginning with Sefer Shofetim, one of the most neglected books of Tanakh (in my opinion), probably because it's also maybe the most violent book of Tanakh (likewise my opinion).
Friday was a very lazy day at the yeshivah. The students had the day off, so only the really energetic scholars (plus, this past week, some guy from Ramla who wandered in by mistake) spend the day in the Beit Midrash. I read several of the Rambam's Shemonah Perakim, from the book that Eli had given to me as a Chanukah gift. I also kept on making progress through the Torah, which I began reading on Simchat Torah, thanks to the text skills that Lani taught me last year. I actually fell back asleep at one point, which felt quite embarrassing. Eli's housemate Olaf also needed to borrow my tefillin. I was reading when the sun set. After dinner, we went back to studying. I was completely stumped by Hilchot Gezeila v'Avodah 14:13, mostly because the key word "וָתִיק" is an adjective meaning "excellent" rather than a noun meaning "and a bag," as I had first interpreted. Frequently, the Hebrew mistakes I make are equally as laughable. Eli and I encountered another disagreement, this one about exactly how to interpret a passage in Hilchot Gezeila v'Avodah 11:3, one with very real practical implications. I went to bed very early.
On Saturday morning, the two of us attended the local Sepharadic minyan, and Eli received an aliyah (shlishi, I think), of which I was very proud. I just stood and enjoyed myself, and tried to follow along. Later in the afternoon, the two of us had more time to spend with our books. I worried throughout Shabbat about transportation, which was completely unconducive to my enjoying myself, but I really couldn't help myself. Before kiddush, we reviewed the laws of Birchat Hakohanim, and, later during the day, we read some of the laws of Pesach. I began to tear up a little bit upon reading Chametz u'Matzah 2:3 (I am probably the only human being in history ever to do so) because of the memories that it stirred up. Much to my dismay, I'm suffering slightly from nostalgia, wary as I am of the deceptiveness of this emotion. I've been thinking recently about all of the parts of the last few years of my life that I've enjoyed. Maybe I'll make a list, and post it as part of a longer blog post?
After Havdallah, Eli helped me find a member of the Kibbutz who was driving down to Afula, and could give me a ride to the train station. I think that at first, he wasn't going to drive me (and the yeshiva student in the back seat next to me) all the way to Afula, slightly out of his way, but I think that I came across as so earnest, and excited to be in Israel, that he decided to drive us both directly to the train station, which was very nice of him. He really liked Eli, too, which may have been part of it. Anyway, I took the express bus from Afula to Tel Aviv, then the train from Tel Aviv to Lod, then walked from Lod to Ramla. The whole journey took about four hours.
The next day, we had our Talpiot training, and I spent an enormous amount of time in the art room, making game cards for a version of Memory with art-relevant adjectives. Afterwards, the Ramla and Ashdod ITF groups toured the Ayalon Institute, a secret munitions factory, where 14,000 bullets a year were produced during the British Mandate period. Who knows, maybe my parents would like to visit this out-of-the-way museum during their visit here next month? Oh, and I got to Skype with Josh that night, which really excited me!
OK, it's getting late, and I need to close, but that sums up my Chanukah Break!
TZ! I miss you! Recover quickly so you can come back to school with me!
~JD
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