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First Letter from Nazareth 2023

Sunday June 18, 2023 Dear Family and Friends, I’m late with this first letter, so I’ll do my best to catch you up on our progress. I landed on May 30 with a small early crew. Most headed to Nazareth to start preparing our storeroom in the hotel and the site for the dig, while Tom and Mary Lynn McCollough and I drove to Jerusalem for a couple of meetings with folks at Hebrew U. The next day we joined everyone at the site to supervise the delivery of our tool container and toilets, and to get shade over our squares. Tom McCollough, Motti Aviam, and I walked the site, discussing where to re-open old squares and where to sink new ones. The weather has been kind to us. That has been the general pattern this year, with the exception of one day that hit 40 C/104 F, and yesterday, which got close to 38/100 during our tour of Megiddo, Beit She‘arim, and Caesarea. Most days have been somewhere in the 80s Fahrenheit, and today the high is predicted at 81. Two Fridays ago, we left the fiel
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Second Post 2013

Dear Family and Friends, I missed writing last week because the weekend was completely filled with obligations, some welcome and others just plain tiring.   Friday was our first kiddish celebration: a welcoming of the end of the work week and the beginning of Sabbath rest with a little service that entails blessings in Hebrew over candles, “fruit of the vine,” and bread, some readings from the Bible and a book of prayers (the readings are our own idiosyncratic additions), a singing of Psalm 133:1 (“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity.”), and then a round of hugs accompanied with the blessing, “Shabbat Shalom” or “Sabbath peace.”   Dinner follows.   Last Saturday we took our first weekend trip to Sepphoris and Capernaum and ending with a dip in the Sea of Galilee.   It was blazing hot.   This was the first year we’ve gone to a pay beach, which means we had access to a clean area under trees with chairs, a grill, bathrooms, and ma
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First Letter from Nazareth, 2015

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues, It’s 6:30 AM on Sunday the 31 st of May.   It’s Trinity Sunday, my automatic calendar alert tells me.   The late hour pushes a little needle of shame into my conscience, as on most days the work at the site is well underway by this time.   The birds outside my hotel window have been singing since daybreak. Much has happened ever since I and the advance crew landed in Tel Aviv on May 23.   Most of it, however, barely rises above the mundane.   It is difficult to get across what I feel when I land at Ben Gurion, and even when I make way through the airport to passport control, baggage claim, and the arrivals hall.   Maybe if you imagine flying into your home airport you’ll get a sense of it, but only if you regard that as a positive experience.   It feels like coming home.   And it feels exotic.   That’s an odd combination. We have a good crew this year.   There are some health issues: a couple have come down with b
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