One Man’s Fortune
While walking along a more untamed stretch of beach behind Ramat Poleg, I happened upon a huge Mediterranean sea turtle washed up on the beach, albeit a dead one. I have never ever seen one (alive or dead) before in the last five summers here. It was completely intact. I took a photo of it, went to show it to my kids, and then went on with my life, never thinking any more about it. That was until I was contacted by Dr. Haskel Greenfield, a University of Manitoba anthropologist wanting to know what I was doing for the weekend.
Before I knew it, I was hosting Haskel and three of his students from the University of Manitoba for Shabbat, in what was to become one of the more unforgettable weekends of my life. He and “his boys” had been working in July at the archeological site of Tel es-Safi, the ancient Philistine city of Gat, the hometown of the legendary biblical figure Goliath.
Haskel, who has been working at the site for the last three summers, is the Assistant Director of the Early Bronze Age Excavation at one area of the site, as well as, being the area’s zooarcheologist.
He and his team arrived with beer and some groceries (in that order), and I assigned them each a bed. Although none of them really wanted to sleep with their University Professor, the hapless task of sharing a room with Dr. Greenfield fell upon 42 year old, married with children, River Heights resident Dawson Ives.
MEETING “THE BOYS”
Poor Dawson… When I asked him how he ended up on this particular dig, he explained that he was a “naive gentile” who “happened to move into the wrong neighborhood on the corner of Cordova and Fleet”. After an evening of food and drink with his new River Heights neighbors–Haskel and Tina Greenfield (also a zooarcheologist), he was “somehow” convinced to join the digging project at Tel es-Safi.
The colourful Dawson, who in real life works in the field of international transportation, said he used to study archeology twenty years ago and was persuaded that this dig (which gives him a university credit) could somehow be useful to him.
It was Dawson’s first time in Israel, and he said there were a few things he hadn’t quite expected, involving the accommodations at Kibbutz Revadim where they were all staying. For one thing, “I hadn’t expected to be eating the Salade a’Revadim three times a day every day,” he said. He described it as “made of baby tomatoes, cucumber slices and brownish tinted used- to- be red pepper slices.”
Dawson also didn’t expect “to be getting up at 4:30 in the morning and doing physically strenuous work digging in 42 degree temperatures everyday WITHOUT losing a single ounce of weight.” He blamed his failure to lose weight on the “Revadim diet”, which “consists of three fatty white cheeses also served constantly that vary in consistency from solid to runny.”
Dawson’s “funniest story” is when a 24 year old Israeli woman on the dig bent over and said, “How do you like my rack?” She meant “rock” but mispronounced it. Dawson told her never to say, "what do you think of my rack? to a Canadian man.”
His other “best experience” was when an Israeli woman thought he looked like he was 30, not 42.” As he said, “One month in Israel takes 12 years off me.”
He joked that his best advice to single men travelling to Israel who want to meet Israeli women is “remind them that Canada has a bilateral free trade agreement with Israel.” But he also cautioned any single men who might want to join the dig in the future to prepare for the fact that the Israeli women from Bar-Ilan University on the dig were religious. “That means if you want to score, you have to marry them.”
As for the actual archeological part of the trip Dawson’s best find was “a flint arrowhead about 2500 years old used for shooting animals or people.”
The next team member I met was Chris Neufeldt, who is married with three children and lives in Garden City. After working in Aerospace (Chief of Quality Control at Water Custom Cutting), he wanted a career change. He returned to school, did an undergraduate degree in arts, wrote a book on the physics of flight, and obtained an education degree.
“As a child I wanted to be an archeologist after seeing the movie Massada,” Chris said, but he remembered his grandparents saying there was no money in it. Chris’s wife Robyn began studying to be an archeologist, and with her encouragement, “I decided to follow my dream.”
After hooking up with Greenfield, Chris did a pre-masters degree in anthropology, and received a prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award for his master’s program. This was his “first field school, first time in Israel," and he had been working on “creating a digital model of the site,” and overall, “loving the experience.”
Chris knew enough to know he “didn’t want to share a room with Greenfield,” although he definitely wanted to return next year on the dig. He regaled me with stories of how already Greenfield had managed “to blow out the same tire on the rental car twice.” The youngest team member was Jeremy Beller, age 23, studying 4th year archeology at the U of M, who came on the dig because he wanted “field experience.”
The only Hebrew phrase that the three team members had learned all summer was “Telackek et zeh” [which means “Lick it”]. I chose not to make any further inquiries.
THE TURTLE SOUP
At some point in the weekend, I mentioned to Haskel about seeing the dead turtle on the beach, thinking he might be interested in seeing it since I know he analyses animal bones.
I kind of just blurted it out—figuring we could go for a walk on the beach and I’d point it out and he could take a photo or two. The next thing I know Haskel was asking if I had plastic bags, garbage bags, rags, cardboard boxes, etc. He thought briefly about needing some sort of permit, but dismissed the idea.
I asked why he needed those items. He explained that he might want to pack up the turtle or parts of it to analyze the bones. The boys were sending looks to each other—and Chris began saying, “You had to go tell him about the turtle didn’t you?”
Haskel explained that if he found the sea turtle’s carcass was in good shape, he might want to take it back to the lab and analyze it. He liked to have specimens on hand so he could identify the types of animal bones that were unearthed at the site.
Sure enough we trekked out to the beach and found the deceased turtle. Haskel’s eyes lit up. “It’s in perfect shape, she’s a real beauty! This is a one in a million find.” The team jokingly named the turtle "Trudy." The closer we got to Trudy, the more she smelled.
Haskel gently lay down beside Turtle while Dawson took a picture of the two. Trudy did not object, and since Trudy had already moved on to a better place, she lay still for the whole humiliating ordeal. Trudy the turtle wasn’t anywhere near where we could park the rental car. This meant she would have to be carried about a mile to where we had parked.
The four of them carefully strategized how to transport her, turning her over, arranging their plastic bags and caressing her carcass up in layers of baggies.
To pass the time, I began strolling further on the beach and rather unbelievably found the bodies of three other smaller dead turtles. Haskel was overjoyed—his cup runneth over. He wanted them all! But he began to think about how he would transport all these stinky dead turtle carcasses back to Kibbutz Revadim in the rental car.
Unluckily for Jeremy, he was voted “the strongest”. He was elected to single handedly carry the large "Trudy" back to the car—managing to inhale the stench of dead turtle fumes as little as possible. I’ve never seen a guy walk that quickly. Chris bagged the three other turtles and carried them down the long stretch of sand casually as if he was carrying eggs and milk. Dawson, by far the smartest of the three, carried absolutely nothing. He and I told Haskel that we’d be happy to grab a cab home.
Arriving at the rental car, the team packed all the turtles in a crate and left their “treasure” behind a bush near the car so we could all go out for supper at a beach restaurant, of course after they washed up.
Haskel, who naturally didn’t want the turtles to be in the car while they drove two hours back to the kibbutz, began thinking of how he could transport the cargo on the top of the car. Dawson said, “We need a good RACK” [to put on the top of the car and then tie the turtles to it, but they didn’t have one.]
Haskel decided it was best to leave the turtles somewhere in the parking lot of my apartment overnight in the crates they had been packed in. For now, we’d have to put them in the back of the car transporting them to my apartment. In the morning, the team could tie up the turtles to the undercarriage of the car and transport them back that way [another Dawson insight].
I called the front seat. The boys resigned themselves to the back seat. We drove with all windows open as the stench became stronger and stronger. Haskel, by the way, had no trouble with the dead turtle smell as after years of working in his field he has lost his sense of smell.
While driving, Haskel began telling us about a colleague of his in Budapest who had found a Bison carcass and cut it up , packed it, and taken it in his car only to be arrested by police who thought he had murdered someone.
We got back to my apartment and I thought that would be the last I’d have to hear about the turtles. Except when Haskel, the “mad professor” opened the trunk of the car, and announced that “the turtles have leaked”-all over the car and the back car mat.
Next thing I know I was up in my apartment finding every possible strong cleaner –laundry soap, bathroom cleaner, towels, and paper towels. The boys sprayed the car and mat with every strong chemical substance I could find. We went for a walk downtown leaving the mat to air out on top of the car. When we got back an hour or so later, Haskel announced it was time to take the car mat up to my apartment, rinse it out in my bathtub and let it hang on my outside laundry rack overnight. (Dawson didn’t miss the opportunity to compliment me on my laundry RACK).
I suggested not bringing the mat into the apartment and instead washing it out with sea water but Haskel said the salt in the seawater would damage the mat and then he’d have a whacking big bill to pay at the rental car company.
Haskel sauntered into the apartment with the car mat, dumped it into the bathtub, until it was clear that the stench form the bathtub was so foul that we had to get the mat out of the apartment right away. Unfortunately, the stench of leaky turtle juice remained. It was now one thirty in the morning, the stench of leaky turtle juice was filling up the apartment, and I had Haskel and Jeremy on all fours washing my hallway and bathroom with every conceivable cleaner. We opened all the windows and waited for the stench to go away. By the time the apartment was cleaned the sun was supposed to rise… perhaps the smell of Trudy scared it away.
In the morning, the team was joined by another team member, Trent Cheney, a married 39 year old graduate student of archeology at the University of Manitoba who has been to the dig for four years and was currently working as a stylized “Logistics Officer” for the team. Trent hadn’t bunked at my place since he had had the good sense to go to a nice family run Christian hostel nearby.
As the team left, turtles and all packed under the car, Chris and Dawson said they’d like to come back next weekend—and “don’t worry next time we won’t bring Haskel.”
Haskel won’t be in Israel anyway next weekend it turns out. But if he had been, I would have suggested he try out the Christian hostel. And yes—for next Christmas I think I’ll send the boys a nice box of chocolate turtles.
The morale to this tale? "One man’s trash is another man’s fortune" or, "dead turtles tell no tales," and in the future we will leave it that way.
P.S. I’ll be writing to the University of Manitoba President shortly asking if in light of the above story I can receive an honourary doctorate in archeology. If not, at the very least, I’d like to have the University pay for the replenishment of my cleaning supplies.
All the team members I met said they want to return next year. Chris also wants to begin learning Hebrew and Trent has already been learning Hebrew for a year.
Upcoming? "The Tale of Turtle burials." Stay tuned in!
