No idea what I was getting into!

Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting into.  After hurriedly throwing clothes into my suitcase and navigating through breakfast, I climbed onto the bus, expecting a busy but somewhat boring day:  we’d hike several miles and then sit for an hour listening to the tour guide drone on and on and on. I was very wrong, especially about the tour guide.  His name is Ronen and you will hear about him a lot!

After driving for a whopping three minutes we arrived at our first stop: Yad Ha’shmona (The Memorial of the Eight.) First and most important, it was cold. You might be thinking, ‘Oh Nicole, I know. It’s cold. No big deal.’ No. I was wearing five layers—tank top, shirt, sweater, another shirt, and a jacket—and I still felt really, really cold. Mr. Molina briefly talked us through the twelve eras of the Bible. Then, we walked around, and Ronen told us the story of the Ark of the covenant. The Israelites came into the Promised Land from the East, and the Philistines came from the southern west plains. They fought, and the Israelites lost. ‘Oh no!’ thought the Israelites, ‘we forgot to take our God with us!’ So they went back and brought this magical little box called the Ark of the Covenant. They fought again, and the Israelites lost again, but this time the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant.

The Philistines thought they were awesome, but God gave them all tumors so they moved the Ark to a different city, but then the city got tumors too, so they moved it to another city, but, surprise, that city got tumors too. This went on for a little bit before they sent the Ark back and it returned to Kiriath Jearim, where it stayed for 20 years.

On our second stop we hiked up Bet Shemesh where we learned the story of Samson, which focused on God’s just nature and showed how he will always come through for his people, despite the circumstances. It also displays how a cycle of revenge and vengeance will never end well. After that we went inside a water cistern. An actual water cistern. It was dark. It was cool (temperature-wise). It was huge. It was amazing and beautiful and perfect. We stood in the dark and talked about spiritual blindness, comparing it to Samson’s situation and the frogs in the kettle experiment.

Our next stop was…*drumroll please*…Azekah! It was a hill overlooking the place where Goliath and David fought. We could see the exact valley in which they went head to head. Once we discussed the story of David, we descended to the stream where David selected his rocks that killed Goliath. We walked where he walked, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It was breathtakingly amazing. We were allowed to take a few stones with us, but I didn’t want to take any. It sort of felt like picking flowers: they are beautiful, but once you pluck them, they wither and die. If everyone kept taking stones from the dried stream bed, eventually it would lose what made it special (granted, there are limitations on how many rocks you’re allowed to take, but still.) For me it was enough to be present in the moment and stand in a place with so much spiritual and historical depth.

Our last stop, (and subjectively and objectively the best stop ever,) was at a national park. We learned that back then Israelites built their houses underground because 1) it was cheaper and easier, 2) it allowed for the space above the cave to be used for farming, and 3) tax collectors couldn’t find you because you were underground. While looking at the first cave, we caught a glimpse of the via maris, which is Latin and is literally translated to “road/way of the sea.” The ‘v’ in via, by the way, is pronounced like a ‘w’ because that’s how Latin works. Maris is a third declension noun meaning ‘sea.’ It’s lexical form is “mars, maris,” so ‘maris’ is the singular genitive form of the noun, meaning that it’s possessive; ergo, the way of the sea. Sure, it sounds like anyone could have just guessed, but to someone who doesn’t know Latin it could have also mean “sea road” or “road to the sea” or “road from the sea” or “road near the sea” or “road along the sea.” The cool thing about knowing Latin is being able translate it yourself by knowing the exact grammar. The first cave we went into was called the “columbarium,” which is Latin for ‘pigeon house.’ The insides of the cave were lined with holes for pigeons to land it; apparently, this was a big market back then. The second cave we went to was an underground city, which, by the way, contained around 20,000 people. We walked through it, going from room to room to room, and it was pretty spacious too. It took about twenty minutes to go through it, but the part of the underground city they excavated is only 0.5% of the actual city. Imagine how gloriously huge that would be! It was beyond words. Everyone should, at some point in his or her life, go into an underground city. I would live there if I could. In conclusion this day was way more exciting than I could have ever expected; Ronen is a brilliant tour guide with amazing, interesting insights, and  he is a funny guy. I loved it.

—Nicole Tirzamin