Discovering History

I took this picture before I went down to the water tunnel, I think it shows the area that we were in best, you can see the trees in the background, the hills, the rocks, and an ancient building.I lived in Israel for 6 years out of my life and have never experienced Israel like I did today. I learned a lot about Gezer and about Israel in general, I learned that Tel Gezer was a city, now an archaeological dig, built on the road connecting the via mares to the king’s highway, two trade routes connecting Egypt and Mesopotamia. The town was not formed naturally, it was established,  it was a gzera. It didn’t have water so the people dug water tunnels that would connect their town to the closest water source. Gezer was made into an Archaeological dig because of the layers of the destroyed civilizations built on it. Archaeologists dug trenches to see the different layers of strata where they would find shards and observe them to see when they were from. I saw the high place, a temple to the Canaanite fertility G-ds which I found really interesting and different,  As our first trip, I thought it was pretty amazing. I loved that everywhere we stood another Jewish kid stood so many years ago. When you said “you are Americans by mistake but Jewish on purpose” I felt a deeper connection to the land of Israel and to my Jewish identity that I have in a while. I think it’s amazing that everything we saw today is still standing and the fact that we got to see it is even more amazing. - Natalie