June 8^th

We leave early in the morning and start driving north. We stop in Cesarea to see themagnificent ruins by the sea of what was once the capital of Roman Judea. Despite a few Disneyfied  cafes and trinket shops, the ruins are very  beautiful, their location unsurpassable, and among some  historical trivia, we learn that the city was used as a settlement camp for Bosnian Muslims during Ottoman rule.

One of our goals for this trip to the Galil is to visit the excavations at Beith Saida, a city on the northern shores of Lake Kinneret which dates to 3000 BC.  We arrive by mid afternoon to kibbutz Ginossar, where the excavation team is lodged, just in time to hear the “pottery shard reading” session, where the archaeologists analyze ,classify, and catalogue the findings from the excavation. 

The director of the dig is Prof. Rami Arav , and enormously erudite and affable

man, who welcomes us very warmly. Going through tray after tray of pottery, broken fragments of glass, and animal bones, he gives a most entertaining and informative reading of the significance of each piece.  The excavation is done mostly by volunteer students from the US, in this case from the University of Omaha, Nebraska, who put in three weeks of really hard labor under the intense heat and sun for the greater good of unearthing the past and connecting to the birthplace of 3 of the Apostles of Jesus.

 

While visiting the site, we are staying in Tiberias, another ancient city, but a very ugly and creepy one. Our hotel sits smack on the lake, but between two semi-abandoned resort hotels that if we didn’t know better, we’d think they were bombed during a recent war.

Our hotel is filled with a motley crew of Orthodox Jews and Christian pilgrims following in the footsteps of Jesus, among them a loud group of Finnish teenagers.

One afternoon we find a peacock which escaped from an adjacent menagerie wandering lost and squawking among the decrepit abandoned buildings. Very strange and unexpected.