The Naked Archaeologist

Seriously funny
Behind the fun, irreverent style that makes The Naked Archaeologist so fun to watch is a very serious, award-winning Canadian documentary director and producer and also a well-published writer and lecturer. Simcha Jacobovici and his talented Associated Producers team have won a ton of awards, including two Emmys for investigative journalism, for their range of insightful and at times disturbing documentaries on such contentious issues as black Jews in Ethiopia, the Ebola outbreak in Zaire, Jews in Hollywood and the impact of terrorism in the Middle East.

From Israel to Canada
Jews and Jewishness pervades much of Jacobovici's work and it's hardly surprising to hear that he is in fact an Isreali-born Canadian. Born in Petach Tikvah in 1953 just 5 years after the creation of Israel, he was the son of war survivors from Romania and has stated that growing up as the first generation since the birth of the nation "felt special". When he was 9, the family moved to Montreal in Canada but even so, Jacobovici's "Israeliness" has made him the man he is today, as he recently said: "The three outstanding foundations of my life are my 'Israeliness,' my Judaism and the fact that I am the son of survivors. They are the driving forces behind the subjects of my work--oppressed and suffering groups..."

Return to the Holy Land
Jacobovici's directorial debut was a great example of this. Entitled "Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews", it provided a powerful portrayal of the oppression of black Jews in Ethiopia with locals telling stories of torture alongside touching proclamations of their Jewish faith. And Jacobovici's belief in the power of film was justified as eight months after "Falasha" was shown to the Isreali Parliament, an airlift of Ethiopian Jews back to Isreal was launched. These days, Jacobovici is a devout Jew himself, practising daily prayer, a kosher diet and strict Sabbath observance.

In the line of fire
Often termed a guerilla film-maker, Jacobovici is known as someone who will go to great lengths to get his stories, often at enormous personal risk. While filming "Falasha", he almost lost a leg to an insect bite in Sudan and to get to the Ethiopian Jews, had to do so on horseback under the collective noses of the country's Marxist military noses. In the violent hot bed of the West Bank in Israel filming "Deadly Currents", he had his life threatened by extremists and rubber bullets. Perhaps most crazy was the way Jacobovici said his Jewish prayers at the Khyber Pass on the Afghan-Pakistani border at the very time Osama Bin Laden was ruling the area!

Call it what you want
When it comes to the Bible, however, Jacobovici seems to want to lighten up. "My goal," he said of The Naked Archaeologist, "is to demystify the Bible in general, and archaeology in particular." And he certainly manages to do that, not least when interrupting an archaeologist at a famous Philistine site talking about "ceramic, phallic symbols from the Bronze Age" with the question "You're talking penises, aren't you?", or attempting to experience the physical effects of crucifixion for himself.

In the strictest biblical sense of things
But Jacobovici is not merely out to get stuffy archaeologists to call a spade a spade. He is probing some of the most controversial new theories in Biblical archaeology: that the invention of the alphabet contributed to the Biblical Exodus; that recently discovered Bronze Age ceramic penises may explain why Delilah fell for Samson; and that an African army rescued Jerusalem in the 8th Century B.C. That he can combine such pioneering investigation with more irreverent questioning such as "Where do you stop for a good falafel when you're on your way to find the real Mount Sinai?" shows that there's no reason why you can't learn some amazing history while having a bit of fun at the same time.