Digging Israel
I dig Israel. Not only in the outdated-hippie sense, but in true historic terms. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a pile of rocks just begging to tell their age-old story. Yes, my kids roll their eyes when they see me getting excited about some wall we’ve come across, or another endless piece of pottery just poking up out of the path we’re hiking. But it’s not just ancient history we’re after, it’s something more. It’s an almost indefinite need to connect with our past, in order to explain our future in this land.
Zionists go back to biblical times, when our Jewish forefathers came to the land of Canaan. Each was commanded to put roots down in what looked like a god-forsaken part of the world. Parched, dry desert with tents and camels — admit that’s what comes to mind when you hear ancient, or even modern, Israel. But beyond our up-to-date plumbing and state of the art everything, this biblical heritage is a very real part of our everyday.
Why mention this all now? Because this morning started early, when I drove my kids down south, to begin their respective weeks — our son to catch his ride to the army, where he’ll spend a week continuing to learn to defend this precious land from its enemies, and our daughter (completed the army, thank goodness, check that worry off the list) to her exams in the leading Israeli university down south. A typical modern Israeli family.
And then, to make even better use of my time, I hopped over to the nearby archaeological site, the ancient tel of Beer Sheba. Even those with no finesse for history might remember the biblical tales of Abraham in this area. He, the first human to recognize the existence of one God, the father of monotheism, lived here. He walked these halls, and here he dug his wells. He greeted his angelic guests in a tent just down the road from our daughter’s university campus. Abraham set out from Beer Sheba on his ultimate test, with Isaac in hand for slaughter. He taught us so many values relevant these days that I will stop here, for fear of turning a short blog into a philosophy lesson.
But know that our lives intertwine. Yours with mine, perhaps through shared texts, probably through common values learned from Abraham — like faith in ourselves, strength, family. As ancient Beer Sheba spread out before me, its background was the renewed city with its tall white buildings, not quite skyscrapers but certainly a thriving capital of Israel’s south. We do have a flair for making the desert bloom, and we are here to stay, as descendants of a proud people with a rich history in the land of Judea.
And yes, you might have to walk through an ancient water system with me to really feel that connection. Looking forward!
