Children are now archaeologists in a town the Messiah cursed:
Thus on a beautiful spring morning in late March 2025, a couple of dozen sixth-graders from Ramat Chorazin School were happily shouting as they industriously excavated a spot near the car park, a few meters from a previously revealed ancient mikveh.
The rains in the winter of 2024-2025 were terrible and drought prevails, but the mikveh still contains water, though not enough to enable the unclean to immerse and be purified. (The Mishnah describes the parameters of a kosher mikveh – it must have 40 se’ah, or approximately 120 gallons, of water, but not just any water.) source: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2025-05-05/ty-article-magazine/tourists-and-child-archaeologists-break-new-ground-at-ancient-chorazin/00000196-9b20-d460-abf6-ffe87d5d0000
The location they are excavating is near a synagogue that the Messiah taught at that rejected his message in Chorazin–which translates either as “Here is a mystery” in Hebrew or “Smoking furnace”.
Interestingly, the focus is not so much the archaeology:
“These children are the first to touch this soil,” Kohn-Tavor says, explicitly unworried about potential damage their unprofessional little hands might cause to ancient artifacts. We asked.
Children excavating? Even toddlers are welcome, Kohn-Tavor stresses. All children of all ages gain from the experience, he feels. The extraordinary day participating in an outdoor activity and working on a shared goal with bigger kids and everyone, rather than watching another cartoon or playing as usual shapes them, even if they’re too young to remember it in the future.
Yes, bring kindergartens, he says, yes, bring the whole class of toddlers. “That’s the whole point – each age and each person comes with their own mindsets and learns some things – I don’t know what those things are, but it’s a very effective tool for education at any age because they are actively involved.
“Kindergarten children barely leave the gan in most cases,” he says. “In the kibbutz they do go out to the cowshed or something, but they’re not an active partner in anything. Here they are an integral part of the project.”
For next year he’s planning a specific project where older schoolchildren teach the younger ones at the dig.
“The more intensive the activity and the dirtier they get, the more people get out of it,” he says sensibly. “We had a family of tourists here from London with four generations. The granny with the walker washed pottery. I don’t need more people to move stones. I need you to connect.”
To paraphrase: The archaeologists at Chorazin and Kursi don’t need more volunteers. They have plenty of labor. They want people to come and connect, for the people’s sake. source: ibid
It’s possible that the children might help solve a genuine mystery, however:
When we visited, the children were digging up homes in the northern quarter of the ancient town, near a mikveh that had been found decades ago. “There is a question [of] whether the mikveh was a public one for the village people, or if it belonged to a specific house,” Kohn-Tavor says. That should to become clearer as the excavation proceeds.
One mystery they may solve one day is that Chorazin arose in the second or first century B.C.E. and survived more than a thousand years. But the early pilgrim Eusebius visited it in 305 C.E. and described Chorazin as being in ruins.
No evidence has been found of destruction at any point. Theoretically maybe the village was deserted for a time, even a century, so when Eusebius arrived, nobody was there. Or, Kohn-Tavor speculates, perhaps he was referring to spiritual ruin following the villagers’ rejection of Jesus. source: ibid
Some of the reason that this synagogue had trouble listening to the Messiah is likely evidenced in the art:
Many Galilean synagogues were riotously decorated with mosaics featuring the sun god at the center, surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. “We don’t have a Helios,” he says regretfully. “But we do have Medusa and Hercules.” source: ibid
It is curious that a site that was cursed so heavily by Messiah is now an attraction for children to excavate. Why is connection being sought here, but not elsewhere? Perhaps a future article will lend clarity to that question.