So there are these underground caves in northern israel, built 1000 years ago by jews hoping to hide from the conquering romans.  and the caves are basically abondoned water sisterns with little dug-out wormholes connecting them that WE had to slither around in.  they were built small enough so that a larger-framed roman, with torch and sword in hand, would struggle to fit through, which means you have to actually wiggle your way on your belly.  like, too small to even get on your hands and knees.  so after a few minutes of wiggling, you finally arrive at a chamber, and there we learned more about the people who hid in them and how deadly quiet they had to be or the romans walking above would hear them.  so we sit in silence for a few minutes and then break out into song, and sing louder and louder, and the experience of crooning at the top of our lungs in a place where others sat in scared silence was powerful to say the least…

we met up with 8 soldiers (7 guys, 1 girl) who hung out with us for five days, and that was REALLY interesting.  one of the things they talked about that i could just NOT wrap my mind around was this issue of body retrieval, and how soldiers risk their lives to return to battle fields and collect that parts of the fallen comrades.  and when i asked if they had mixed feelings about this policy of ‘no man left behind - alive OR dead’ they tried to get me to see it ‘from the perspective of the dead soldier’s mom,’ and i was like, no, i understand that it’s IDEAL to bring the bodies back but at what cost, and they just kept saying that they would go back for their friends and would want their friends to do the same.  and it made me realize that i have such a practical approach with my cost-benefit analysis, and wars and battles are so emotional.  another interesting thing was that orthodox jews are exempt from the army - i guess ’scholarly’ sorts often are, but it creates a real division in israeli society.

More to come…

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