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The honor to be the first Jew in 700 years to visit and explore the cave of Machpelah went to a 12-year-old girl named Michal. The slender child grips a rope as she slithers down the narrow aperture into the cave. Once inside, Michal “landed on a heap of papers and money-bills in a square room,” according to an account she wrote down shortly after her adventure. The late Moshe Dayan, who directed the exploration, wrote of the courageous and inquisitive nature of his archaeological novitiate, “[She] was unafraid not only of ghosts and spirits—their existence was not proven, she said— but also of snakes and scorpions, which were a very real danger.”