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Dear Friends, shalom,
The ingenuous way by which Israeli society in ancient times collected and stored water is one of its most distinctive characteristics and can be observed in hundreds of sites throughout Israel.
The best example is Jerusalem with 15 or so cisterns that I know about and possibly hundreds which I don’t know about.
One can see cisterns also at Megido, Hazor, Gezer, Gibeon and hundreds of other sites especially in the Negev desert.
The Romans, Egyptians, Babylonians and others had their clay pipes, channels and aqueducts etc to conduct their plentiful river water to their farm lands, but the Jews having no rivers to speak of and very sparse rainfall became famous for their cisterns in the cities and terraces in their lands to collect every drop of rainwater.
Rainwater was considered holy and every Jew in the time of the temple was compelled to keep holy by bathing in natural water like the sea, a river, natural lake, any gathering of rainwater was considered suitable for purification.
Carved into the rock next to every home and public place, cisterns collected water from every roof and every hillside.
One of the most spectacular examples of the use of cisterns can be seen at the desert fortress of Massada.
One water cistern carved into the side of mountain is easily accessible to all who come up by cable car, but there are 13 others much bigger, less accessible ones.
Your voice echo’s as you enter the cistern and you can imagine how enormous the others are.
Imagine the amount of work and the number of workers it must have taken to carve these cisterns out of the hard limestone more than 2000 years ago with simple chisels and hammers.
According to Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived in Rome these cisterns held enough water to irrigate gardens by streams of water as if there were natural springs at the top of Massada.
This was corroborated by the discovery in 1966 of thousands of pits of peaches, plums, apricots, grapes, pomegranates, date and olives1 which could have came from trees growing at the top of the mountain.
The Roman army, aware that the water stored at the top of Massada would last for about 10 years
had no intention of trying to conquer Massada by a siege.
They spent 3 years building a ramp with platforms to hold the battering ram and the archer’s tower.
Joseph claims that the Jews took their own lives but imagine how foolish the most elite soldiers of the Roman army would have felt had the Jews managed to escape after all the effort they’d spent preparing to fight the Jews and to prevent them from escaping.
In spite of all these efforts, however the Land of Israel still had its droughts even until recent times.
Today however we can say that the water shortage has been overcome; 8 million people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River survive very well on the same amount of rainwater which was not enough for 3 million people 300 years ago or in Biblical Times.
In contrast to population size in the 18th century Israel now has a population 7 times greater, yet we have enough water.
Nobody needs to collect rainwater in cisterns as they did in ancient times at Massada and elsewhere, yet every person receives a steady, plentiful supply of as much water as he likes and droughts are almost unheard of.
Today the problem isn’t collecting water but the efficient use of our plentiful supply of water for agriculture and gardening.
Our government’s efforts to encourage saving water are very laudable; they have an ad showing a pretty girl shriveling up like a dried potato and a tap with the last few drops of water falling out of the spout.
I’m convinced that we should save water but I’m more convinced that we should learn to use the available water more efficiently. This will lead to water saving eventually.
For example many of our cities have become more beautiful because some municipalities divert refuse water to drip pipes that irrigate public parks.
Some people, like my friend Shaul, have installed their own private system for conducting refuse water to the garden.
I’m happy to say that I am doing likewise and benefiting 3 ways plus the pleasure I get from it all.
- Firstly I can get more time (which I’m always short of) by not having to physically stand with a hose pipe and water my plants.
- Secondly, having an automatic system to water them I can indulge my love of plants and of course I’ll have many more than I have now.
- Thirdly I’ll actually save a bit of water by diverting refuse water to my toilet.
I’m so excited about this I think of it all the time and even day dream about it.
When I started writing this letter it was just a dream now it’s a reality;
My stainless steel basin is installed next to the washing machine, the outlet pipe from the washing machine gushes water into it.
Now all I need is to increase the pressure with larger diameter pipes to push the water into narrow 16 mm pipes hanging over my pot plants.
That’s it. Free garden water, beautiful plants. Now I’ll proceed to select the plants for my garden.
Hopefully, I estimate within a year, Leon’s No News Letter will present pictures of the plants in my garden.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork
Notes:
1. Haaretz 30/11/06 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=794492
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