The town of Mitzpe Ramon is perched atop the precipitous Makhtesh Ramon, an erosion crater that was formed when Africa collided with Europe. The ensuing compression of continent against continent created a ripple, a folding chain of hills and valleys down what 70,000 years later would become the State of Israel. In a country so focused on the conflicts of the present and the events of the Torah (a 6,000 year timescale), it is easy to lose sight of geological time, but this land is much more ancient than those who have died trying to claim it.
90,000 years ago, Makhtesh Ramon was underwater. The limestone that tops the crater’s edge is hard, but the limestone of its slopes is soft; it is this rock that has been and continues to be slowly eroded away by the wind that roars through the desert and by the streams that return to the Negev in Israel’s rainy winters. In the craterbed, iron oxide deposits stand out rusty red from the dun limestone, and aluminum oxide deposits pepper the ground a bright purple. And even older than the rest are the black hills of basalt that dot the basin, reminders of volcanic activity 120,000 years in the past.
In the synagogues of Mitzpe Ramon, rabbis preach of the coming Redemption, and in the skies over the makhtesh, IDF drones soar through battle drills, and all of them and all of us are specks.
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