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While fully employed at the IAA, he earned a master’s degree at Bar-Ilan University and is now a doctoral candidate at Ben-Gurion University.
By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN FEBRUARY 1, 2025 12:13
Benyamin Storchan is seen uncovering an ancient olive press in Pisgat Ze'ev, Jerusalem.
(photo credit: Assaf Peretz)
Benyamin Storchan really digs Israel. Literally and figuratively.
An archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), this Michigan native knew from the age of 16 that Israel would be his home.
The product of a Modern Orthodox family in the Detroit suburbs of Southfield and West Bloomfield, Storchan came to Israel the first time with a pluralistic teen mission sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Detroit.
“That month and a half that I spent traveling in Israel affirmed for me that this is where I need to be. I felt I was an Israeli born in the wrong country,” he recalls.
“A few Israelis accompanied our tour group, and I felt very close to them and I felt very close to the land – everything from the people to the places to the food. I even tried to ask my parents if I could go to high school in Israel. That didn’t work out.”
In the summer of 2002, before starting Michigan State University, he signed up for the international students program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. However, following the tragic terrorist attack at the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus on July 31, MSU forbade travel to Israel.
Undaunted, Storchan simply deferred admission for a year and attended Ben-Gurion University independently. He’d wanted to study world religions but the course offerings were limited, so he chose a class in archaeology.
“That was another ‘aha’ moment in my life. I realized that not only do I need to be in Israel, but I also need to be an archaeologist.”
Becoming an archaeologist
He returned to MSU, but in the summers following his junior and senior years he came to Israel to join excavations. He worked with teams at Tel Rehov in the Jordan River Valley, and at Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley. “You need fieldwork experience to get an archaeology degree,” he explains.
“After graduation, I bought a one-way ticket.”
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During the Megiddo excavation, he’d been based at Kibbutz Ramat Hashofet, so that’s where he went. Six months later, he walked into the Interior Ministry office in Afula and said, “Hey, I want to make aliyah.”
“They were quite surprised, but they helped me through the process,” he recalls.
Even before attaining citizenship, he got a job working with Eilat Mazar, a renowned archaeologist.
“I had excavated with her uncle, Ami Mazar, in Tel Rehov, and he made the connection for me,” says Storchan.
He assisted with the excavation of what Mazar called the Large Stone Structure in the City of David, which she believed to be the remains of King David’s palace.
“I was transitioning from student to professional, and I didn’t understand the magnitude of what we were doing. Every day was blowing my mind,” Storchan recounts.
When that project was finished, he was hired by the IAA as an entry-level antiquities inspector. He moved to Beit Zayit to be closer to Jerusalem. Now, nearly 20 years later, he’s an IAA research excavation archaeologist.
One major project he’s been involved in is the excavation of a Byzantine church in Beit Shemesh, which made world archaeology headlines for its fabulous mosaics and a rare inscription stating that Caesar Flavius Tiberius of the Byzantine Empire had personally donated two church buildings in the Holy Land. Storchan has been a lead author of several publications about this find.
“Another major excavation I’ve done is at Eshtaol, near Beit Shemesh, where we uncovered remains of a Canaanite village from the time of the patriarchs,” Storchan says. “In 100 excavation squares, we uncovered many domestic units. This period marks the beginnings of urbanism in the land of Canaan.”
He and his team also spent years surveying, excavating, and salvaging before new neighborhoods were built in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
While fully employed at the IAA, he earned a master’s degree at Bar-Ilan University and is now a doctoral candidate at Ben-Gurion University.
“Prof. Steve Rosen is my adviser, and he was the teacher who taught the course that inspired me to become an archaeologist in the first place. It’s literally full circle,” says Storchan. “This year, I had the opportunity to teach a course at the university, and the classroom is in the same building I used to learn in.”
IN AUGUST 2011, Storchan married Chaviva Lanton from Montreal. She’d made aliyah in her early 20s.
“We’d been living parallel lives, without our paths crossing, until a friend of ours, Meir Dan, made the connection,” he says. “We dated 40 days and knew this is what we were looking for.”
Her parents made aliyah a couple of weeks before the wedding, which was held in a Bedouin-style tent in Gush Etzion.
The couple moved to Adam (Geva Binyamin), and they now have a son, 12, and a daughter, nine. After a few years, they decided to make a change and try renting in Beit El.
“When we moved to Beit El, we finally found our place,” he says. “Within a year, we decided to buy. We fell in love with the community and the place. There are high religious values that are brought into the community in a very loving way. I feel it’s the right place for my neshama [soul]. And it is reminiscent of my own childhood; our children enjoy free movement from house to house. It’s an environment where they feel safe.”
Chaviva works in the boys’ elementary school not far from their house, and next to the girls’ school. She and her children walk to school together every morning.
“She is also active in the community library,” says Storchan. “Beit El is a community where a lot of people give back; there is a strong sense of community pride. As a dreamer, I find it comforting to be in a community with a lot of doers who are always fixing things and creating things.”
Though the Storchans speak English at home, their lives are immersed in Hebrew. Storchan explains that he came to Israel with a strong background in Hebrew reading and writing but not speaking.
“I learned Hebrew by throwing myself in the water,” he says, “first at the kibbutz and then in Beit Zayit and at work. On the first week of my job, I was already asked to type letters in Hebrew and I felt lost, but I engulfed myself in it. I’ve become so Israeli I’m not American anymore, but at the same time I’m Western. I’m sort of a mixture like kilayim [seeds of different species]. And I feel I have nothing but benefit from both worlds.”
So, too, his professional and personal lives coalesce harmoniously.
“Archaeology helps me put things into perspective and gain an appreciation for how we became who we are. I see academia and faith as supplemental – they fulfill each other in so many ways, like an interlinear text. My occupation is my passion. It’s part of the story of me,” he declares. ■
Benyamin Storchan, 41: From Detroit to Kibbutz Ramat Hoshofet, 2005 to Beit El, 2020
English (US) ·