Monday

On Monday, we went on an archeologic dig in the caves near Maresha. Maresha was a city at the time of the Macabees, about 2000 years ago. We explored the caves before, during, and after excavation. When we were digging, we would dig with picks and with trowels. If we found anything, we would put them into find buckets. All the dirt woud go into other buckets. We found many pieces of pottery and even bones. Eitan dug with our guide Zvi, and found 84two pieces, that fit together, of a wine jug, with wine residue!! Rachael unearthed an ancient bathtub, and Maya found the bottom of a fish plate. After that, we sifted through the dirt to see if we missed anything. Then, we crawled through cave system 84, which was unexcavated. As soon as we finished that, we went to a fully excavated cave, which had olive oil equipment in it. We learned that to make olive oil, you need three steps: Mush, the initial crushing of the olives into a pulp, Smush, the secondary crushing, and gush, taking the finished olive oil.

We stopped at asome beautiful red wildflowers and then went to crawl through the Bar Cochba caves...or was he called Bar Coceba - son of stars OR a false messaih...you choose. The caves were very cool and we understand why in the Haggada the disciples had to find the Rabbis to tell them that it is time for prayer in the morning. You had to crawl through very very dark caves with flashlights. Some of them were almost too small for my mom and my dad to crawl through. My mom had claustraphobia...

We ended the day with the story of David and Golaith and we each took a stone from where David took one to slay the giant Goliath.