Clemans Travelogue

Many pilgrims and visitors find themselves full of awe and amazement within the spaces and places tradition marks as worthy of veneration. 

Maybe it’s centuries of tradition or the millions of pilgrims who have been here. Maybe it’s an ethereal resonance with our inner piety. Maybe it’s a shaft of sunlight piercing the dim interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Maybe it is all these things.

For now though, it’s enough to say that this is a holy space.

Having arrived in Jerusalem we are once more reminded of the pairing of ancient history and modernity.

Near the Jaffa Gate (not far from the Mt. Zion Dig) you can see the old and the new together.

Ancient walls built on top of the foundations of the city walls of Jerusalem in the first century stand as a testimony to the endurance of the past.

Just a few hundred feet away, down a flight of steps, is the Mamila Mall, a modern pedestrian shopping experience that would stand up to any high end mall in the developed world. It is a testimony to the inevitable desire of the present to insert itself alongside the past. 

We see ancient shops updated with modern conveniences and modern shops designed to look ancient.

Being clear about which is which — sorting through the layers of time — is sometimes difficult. But in archeology you peel away one layer at a time, carefully distinguishing between modern overlays and ancient foundations.  

That’s what we look forward to in the days to come.

After much preparation we are finally entroute to our dig in Jerusalem. We fly to Newark then non-stop to Tel Aviv, arriving mid-morning Thursday, seven hours ahead of EST.

The direct flight to Tel Aviv is over ten hours long.  These time zone jumps always tax the body’s rhythms and I for one have difficulty sleeping on oversees flights. I will try Melatonin as a sleep aid which has worked in the past.  We’ll see…

The only glitch so far is that we got word initially that there was a Taxi strike at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. But then we heard that wouldn’t affect our “Nesher” — a group taxi — similar to SuperShuttle here.

Some random bits from our preparations…

• Changed pin codes on ATM card to four digits as some longer codes have caused problems previously
• Put travel notifications on ATM and credit cards to avoid problems overseas
• Set up Google Voice to receive calls/texts forwarded from my and Marion’s phone; Google Voice works on WiFi and will allow us to retrieve voicemail and texts
• (Tech NERD warning!) Unlocked our iPhones so that we can purchase local SIM cards upon arrival; this will give us a local number to keep in touch with team members and provide internet access while out and about.  By the way, data is so much cheaper in Israel!
• Purchased health insurance in Israel which is available to travelers. For the two of us it was $11/per day which covers most all medical treatments, doctors, tests, etc. Our insurance will actual cover international expenses, but you have to pay up front and submit your expenses for coverage later. 

We will have almost two days to settle in, with our orientation meeting on Saturday evening. Work on the dig starts Sunday morning.

Thanks for following our blog. We look forward to sharing our experience with you.

Von & Marion

In mid-June Marion and I will depart for our five-week adventure as part of a team of 80+ volunteers working on the Mt. Zion Project.

“The project is under the academic oversight of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the only American university currently licensed to carry out such excavations in Jerusalem.  Dr. Shimon Gibson, Visiting Professor of Archaeology in the Department of History and a Senior Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and Dr. James Tabor, Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies, serve as Directors of the excavation, along with Prof. Rafi Lewis of Haifa University.”

We will use this blog to post our discoveries and learnings and invite you to comment and post your questions along the way.  We hope you will join us on this adventure!