Day 8
Today, I'm skipping all the breakfast  chat and getting down to the details of the day...Cumran ,  Masada, En Gedi  Wildlife  Preserve, and the Dead sea.
Cumran and Masada, two of the places that have reminded  me  most  of one of my Seminary  professors, Dr. Ralph Doerman, from whom I took Old Testament, Biblical Archaeology, and Between  the  Testaments.

Cumran, that place where the Bedouin  shepherd  tossed a rock to find his goat (which he eventually  did find) and found a treasure of scrolls  that is priceless.  Kaliel  had the privilege  of hearing  this story right from  the  person's mouth!  This story  involves a cobbler from Bethlehem,  Sidonian  Orthodox  Priest, the NY Times, and  the  State  of Israel!
Some  of the  scrolls  have yet to be opened and translated.

Cumran was the home of the Essenes, a sect of Judaism  that believed that the temple was built  of flesh, not of stone.  And  this fleshy  temple  must be pure, so they bathed in a mikvah's many times  each day - before prayers, before  meals, before studying or copying the  Torah.  This community  was only  men, and there  is  a  theory that John  the Baptist was a part of this community - though  there is no proof of this.
I loved the pottery shop and kitchen!  It's  still  a  mystery  as to what happened  to  them - why they left and why all the scrolls stored away.  However the  theory of the storage bears repeating.  As the scrolls  were being copied, if a mistake, sloppy letter,  or drop of ink is on the scroll, it is deemed  unworthy  of use.  So, what to do?  Anything  with  God's  name on it cannot be destroyed!  So, they put these imperfect scrolls in jars and stored them in caves called (  ) .  What  a  gift to us all these thousands  of  years  later!

At En Gedi Wildlife  Preserve, we were greeted  before  entering  by Ibex, the symbol of the National  Park  Service  here.  We saw a lot of Ibex, females with straight  horns and males with bent horns that can reach up to six feet long.  The Hyrex were there, too.  En Gedi  has three waterfalls, each higher and faster the further back you hike.  We made it to the second falls and could see the third was occupied by Israeli school girls on a field trip!  We  chose to  admire it from afar!

Masada was next.  Built by Herod  the  Great on top of  a horst (the 2nd of 2 we saw in Israel.  What's  a horst?  A geological  pimple that hardened) and on top of other more primitive ruins.  It is an amazing place!  We took a cable car ride up to  the  top of Masada (though two of our group walked  up) and spent a  long time simply looking around this feat of engineering!  Storage rooms, cisterns and a double walled fortification system that was incredible  to see.  Herod constructed this palace so that 6,000 people  could  live  there for 4 to 5 years!  You can see for miles in every direction and the round stones used for defense lay ready even today.  The northern  palace  is 3 tiered and build right into the mountain.  From the top of  Masada  you can see the square outlines of the Roman  encampments, especially  the huge one needed to build the rampart to finally break into this fortress.

From  there  we  went  to  the  Dead  Sea.  Most of us took a swim, I chose to wade in.  I love the effects  of  the  Sea  water on the skin, it makes it soft almost oily.  Off to the hotel in Beersheba.  Very nice!  We had a  great  view of part of the city.