Negev desert

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The Negev desert, shaped like a 4700 square mile inverted triangle in the south of Israel, makes up more than half of the country’s land area. I can arrange to make a visit to the Negev part of your itinerary, you have to experience the desert to understand its importance.

Geographically the Negev can be divided into 5 areas: the northern, western and central Negev, the high plateau and the Arava Valley. This article focuses on the high plateau area, Ramat HaNegev (Negev Heights). The plateau stands between 370 metres and 520 metres above sea level and has extreme temperatures in summer and winter and significant differences in temperature between day and night. Even though the area gets only 100 mm of rainfall per year and the soil is poor and quite salty, Israel is successfully growing olives, pomegranates, pistachios and grapes for wine.

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Here are some places to add to your itinerary as you explore Ramat HaNegev.

  • Kibbutz Revivim is growing 5 varieties of olives using brackish water and selling the olives and olive oil in an upmarket boutique dedicated to their products in Tel Aviv.

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  • Park Golda includes a lake and picnic tables to eat your lunch or for an unforgettable desert experience, try Beduin hospitality in a black goat’s hair tent followed by a camel ride.

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  • The Large Makhtesh is one of 3 craters in the region, a unique formation to the Negev, where the inside of a mountain is eroded by water, leaving the outer shell.
  • Visit the tzrif on Kibbutz Sde Boker to get a glimpse of how Ben-Gurion and Paula lived. The Ben-Gurion Institute, a research facility for the study and the dissemination of his writings, offers visitors a multi-media program about the man and his vision.
  • You can visit a string of family farms along route <40> for wine and cheese tasting and even sleep over in one of their cabins under the desert stars. On farms that are growing grapes and making wine, the vines have been planted on the same 1500 year old terraces that were prepared by the Nabateans and take advantage of runoff from the winter rains. These farms are also a symbol of Israel’s pioneering spirit in the 21st century, composting their waste, recycling their grey water and generating electricity using solar photovoltaic panels.

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  • Hike into the canyon at the Ein Avdat National Park with springs, pools and waterfalls, an oasis in the desert or from the Roman bath house (below Avdat) supplied with water drawn from a well tunneled 70 meters through bedrock hike north along the Israel Trail to the Ein Eikev spring that flows year round.
  • Visit the remains of the Nabatean city of Avdat which was probably the regional capital. Located at the crossroads that join Petra in Trans-Jordan to Eilat and to Gaza, Avdat controlled the passage of the caravans from India and Arabia. Conquered in 106 CE by the Roman Emperor Trajan, it lost its importance when a road was built between Eilat and Damascus. Avdat adjusted by adopting agriculture, particularly the production of wine, as its means of subsistence. Numerous terraced farms and water channels were built throughout the region in order to collect enough run-off from winter rains to support agriculture in the hyper arid zone of the Negev. At least five wine presses dated to the Byzantine period have been found at the site showing us how important wine-making was in this region. In the Byzantine period (5th and 6th century) a citadel and a monastery with two churches were built on the acropolis of Avdat on the ruins of earlier pagan temples. The town was totally destroyed by a local earthquake in the early seventh century and was never reinhabited.

Ein Gedi

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Ein Gedi-waterfalls and pools

Ein Gedi (literally Spring of the Goats, refers to Nubian Ibex that come to the spring to drink) is an oasis in the Judean desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea. Here are two hikes (each about 5 km) in the Ein Gedi reserve that are perfect for families, Nahal David and Nahal Arugot.
On entering the reserve follow the marked the path and after about 15 minutes of easy walking we’ll reach the first waterfall, Mapal Shulamit that cascades 30 meters down the rock to a pool below. After a refreshing dip we’ll continue to a fork in the trail, we’ll take the steeper one on the right (the other path would take us back to the entrance) to the Shulamit spring and from there above the wadi to the Dudim cave. Retracing our steps we’ll continue to the Ein Gedi spring and beside it the flour mill. From there we can walk to the ruins of the Chalcolithic temple (3500 BCE), one of the oldest remains of human settlement in the Judean desert. We’ll descend through a cranny along a dry canyon to discover a 50 meter high waterfall and a great view of Nahal David and the Dead Sea beyond.

Ein Gedi-Nahal DavidAccording to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder the area of Ein Gedi was settled during the Second Temple period by a Jewish ascetic sect called the Essenes. The archaeological evidence uncovered by Hirschfeld suggests that they lived   near the spring where he found more than 20 tiny stone cells and two pools, one for irrigation and one a miqve or ritual bath. Pottery shards date it to the first century BCE.

The second hike starts from Tel Goren along the Nahal Arugot river bed past acacia trees and salvadora to a large pool used for irrigation of crops like balsam; the pool was filled by a channel that brought runoff from the wadi. Continuing we will pass reeds, maidenhead ferns, willow and poplar; we may see a rare orchid called Ben Horesh. A little farther the wadi narrows to a steep walled canyon at whose end is a waterfall and pool.
Excavations at Tel Goren by Mazar of the Hebrew University in  the 1960s show that the site was settled in the Israelite period and functioned as a royal estate for growing dates of the now extinct Judean palm Phoenix dactylifera, considered uniquely medicinal. Balsam was grown for the production of perfume (in Hebrew, afarsimon).
The Romans were interested in the production of balsam perfume; Mark Anthony confiscated the groves from Herod and gave them to Cleopatra. After their deaths, Herod was able to lease them back. During the Great Revolt, the Jews uprooted the groves so they would not fall into the hands of the Romans.
Excavations have revealed a small Jewish village and a synagogue from the 4th century with a beautiful mosaic floor. Written in Hebrew and Aramaic,  inscriptions list the signs of the zodaic and months of the year (later displayed graphically in mosaic floors in synagogues in Bet Alpha and Tiberius) and the expression “Peace unto Israel” (also found in the ancient synagogue in Jericho) and a dire warning at the end: “whoever reveals the secret of the town to the Gentiles – He whose eyes range through the whole earth and who sees hiddens things, He will set his face on that man and on his seed and will uproot him from under the heavens.” The secret seems to be the production of perfume from balsam.

En Feshka pondThe other natural source of fresh water in the Judean desert is Ein Feshka 30 km to the north of Ein Gedi. The lowest nature reserve in the world consists of 3 parts of which one is closed to visitors except research scientists who are studying the desert. The public part includes a small archaeological site from the Second Temple period and pools of fresh water, picnic tables and facilities for the enjoyment of visitors. The closed reserve is 1500 dunams (370 acres) that can only be visited with an authorized guide like me. It’s incredible to find a large freshwater pond with fish, shaded by trees in the middle of the desert next to the Dead Sea.

Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II

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Herzl and German Kaiser

Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1898

This photograph was taken on October 28, 1898 outside of the agricultural school at Mikve Israel when Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, astride a white stallion, with helmet of gold stopped for a moment on his way to Jerusalem. By the roadside, stood a solemn figure with a black beard: Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism. Herzl considered the Kaiser’s recognition crucial for international approval of his plan to resettle the Jews in the land of Israel. All the Kaiser could muster was the observation: “The land needs water, very much water.”

What’s wrong with the photo? First, the Kaiser is on a dark horse. The original unusable photo can be viewed by clicking here.

On the right edge of the original photo you can just make out Herzl holding his safari hat. The Kaiser’s horse has its head completely out of the frame. Can you imagine taking such a poor photo? Have you ever had one of those days, when nothing seems to go right?

To salvage the situation a photo of Herzl was taken on the roof of the school and superimposed onto the photo after seating Kaiser Wilhelm II on the dark horse and cropping the photo on the right.

Surprised? Actually there are quite a few examples. See the Time magazine website http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1924226,00.html on “Doctored Photos” with the warning “photographers have been manipulating imagery since the medium was invented”.

Here are another two photographs from the early 1900s of Jaffa Gate, after the Kaiser’s visit (the wall has been breached and the moat filled in so that the Empress Augusta Victoria’s carriage can enter). These photos were taken by one of the photographers of the American Colony, probably Lars Larsson. Which one is the earlier one? Do you think the image in either one of them has been manipulated?

Jaffa Gate, Old City, ~1900

Jaffa Gate, Old City, ~1900 (American Colony Photo Department)

Jaffa Gate, Old City, ~1900 (photographer: Eric Matson)

Jaffa Gate, Old City, ~1900 (American Colony Photo Department)

The clock tower at Jaffa Gate was one of seven built by the Ottoman Turks in 1908 on the occasion of the silver jubilee of the reign of the Sultan abd al-Hamid II (there are still clock towers in Jaffa, Safed, Nablus, Haifa, Nazareth and Akko) but was taken down by the British about 1920.

The entire American Colony/Matson collection of photographs, some 22,000 negatives were donated by Eric Matson’s heirs to the American Library of Congress who have digitized the collection and made it available for viewing at http://memory.loc.gov/pp/matpchtml/matpcac.html

Judean palm

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The scientific name of the Judean palm Phoenix dactylifera refers to its remarkable ability to grow again and even fruit after near death due to drought.

The Judean palm was endemic to Israel. It is the one referred to when the palm tree is mentioned in the Bible and Koran and appears in Roman writing, referring to its medicinal properties, and is pictured on various coins. This would imply as well that the lulav or palm frond used for the Four Species (Arba’at HaMinim) on the festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) would be the branches of the Judean palm. Looking at the barren landscape of the Judean desert it is hard to imagine this area covered by palm forests.

Along Dead Sea

The Judean palm, like the balsam plant that used to grow around Ein Gedi and Jericho, became extinct sometime after the Romans, around 500 CE. Today there are palm groves along the Dead Sea shore but these were all imported from the date groves of California or varieties smuggled to Israel from Iraq, Morocco and Egypt in the 1950s.

In mid 1960s, during the archaeological excavations of King Herod’s palace on Masada, Ehud Netzer who was the architect  working with Yigal Yadin found some dry date pits in a clay jar. He passed them along to botanical archaeologist Mordechai Kislev at Bar Ilan where they sat in a lab drawer for more than 40 years. Then in 2004 the seeds were rediscovered by Dr Sarah Sallon of the Natural Medicine Research Center who passed them to Dr Elaine Solloway at the NMRC cultivation site on Kibbutz Ketura to try to germinate them. A small specimen of pit was checked and independent carbon dating at University of Zurich dated the seeds dated between 155 BCE to 64 CE.

First Solloway soaked the seeds in hot water to make them once again able to absorb liquids. Then she soaked them in a solution of nutrients followed by an enzymatic fertilizer made from seaweed. On the auspicious date of the 15th of the Jewish month of Shvat, the Jewish new year of trees, the date pits were planted.

Amazingly, one of the seeds sprouted. It is now about 40 months old, 1.2 meters high with a half dozen leaves. As of February 2020, the palm, named Methuselah had reached 3.5 metres (11 ft).

Date palms are dioecious, meaning that they are either male or female. Researchers are hoping for a female palm which would bear fruit.

Phoenix dactylifera growing after 2000 years at Kibbutz Ketura; photo from March 2022.

UPDATE: An article in the Jerusalem Post reports that the Judean palm (grown from the 2000 year old seed from Masada) that has been growing in a greenhouse at Kibbutz Ketura is now 2.5 meters tall and in a ceremony on Thursday, Tu Bishvat (the Jewish New Year of trees) was transplanted to Israeli soil.

The palm bloomed in April 2011, just past it’s 5th birthday – it’s male.

UPDATE: As of 2019, thirty-two Judean date palm seeds from sites near the Dead Sea have been planted and six saplings (Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, and Hannah; 4 males and 2 females) have survived. As of February 2020, Adam was 1.5 meters high; both Adam and Jonah have produced flowers. As of June 2021, dates have grown from the pollination of Hannah, one of the female specimens, by Methuselah.

Researchers at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura plan to grow dates resurrected from seeds found at archaeological sites in the Judaean Desert and Masada in large quantities using tissue culture, and then establish them in commercial plantations.

Other Readings
  • Frankincense comes home for Christmas (blogs.timesofisrael.com) – Soloway has successfully grown frankincense from seed at Kibbutz Ketura, another native plant extinct here for over 1500 years.
  • Afarsimon (Commiphora gileadensis) or balsam used to grow along the shore of the Dead Sea and the perfume made from the plant was very expensive and in high demand during the Roman period. By the 6th century after the destruction of the Jewish temple and exile the industry had disappeared. Rumor has it that some wild afarsimon plants were smuggled from Saudi Arabia and had been planted at the Jerusalem Botanical garden even though the weather is too cold. Fortunately, Elaine Soloway got some of the plants and grew them in the desert climate at Ketura and from there they were planted at Guy Ehrlich’s Balm of Gilead Farm at Almog junction along with frankincense and myrrh.

Bar/Bat mitzva in Israel

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We celebrated our daughter Tiferet becoming a bat mitzva with family and friends in the archaeological park along the southern wall of the Temple Mount early in the morning – that was back in August 1996 and I still remember how hot it was by mid morning and how our younger son Amitai who was 6 years old at the time foraged for figs that grew on the trees nearby.

Today the popular place is on the Herodian street that runs along the Western Wall, among the massive stones that were pushed from the wall by the Romans almost 2000 years ago, a silent reminder to the destruction of the Second Temple and the downfall of Jerusalem.

We celebrated our son Uriel becoming a bar mitzva by organizing a trip to Peru with close friends, hiking for 4 days along the Cuzco trail to the sacred Inca site of Machu Pichu. We carried a Sefer Torah with us which we read on Monday and Thursday on the trail, on Rosh Hodesh (the new month) at Machu Pichu and on Shabbat back in Cuzco.

Some families decide to celebrate with family and friends in Israel and have climbed the Snake Path to the top of Masada at sunrise, as a sort of physical rite of passage and celebrated a bat mitzva in the ancient synagogue or one of the rooms in the casement wall used by the Zealots. You might like to celebrate a bar or bat mitzva within the ruins of one of the ancient synagogues, for example at Baram or Korazim in the Galilee or at Herodium.

Besides it being meaningful to experience Israel as part of becoming a bar or bat mitzva, friends and family can explore and enjoy the sites and nature of Israel and feel the connection between the Torah reading and the land. As Reb Shlomo Carlebach used to say, “The Torah is a commentary on the world and the world is a commentary on the Torah“.

Not every guide is able to make all the arrangements necessary for a bar or bat mitzva celebration in Israel – provide a Sefer Torah, take professional photographs, arrange the prayer service, do the guiding that makes Israel part of the experience. I handle the logistics and you get to experience a memorable time. I would be happy to help you arrange your bar or bat mitzva in Israel, just contact me.

Here are some of the photos that I took at Rachel’s bat mitzva in the summer.

 

Wildflowers, before the rain

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One of the things about taking a tour of Israel is that you get to see a lot in a small amount of space. Because Israel is located on the land bridge that connects Europe, Asia and Africa it has some of the best features of each. Although it only extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River in the Great African Rift Valley and from the Red Sea to mountains in the north it has a diversity of climates and habitats. These unique conditions are the main cause for the rich diversity of Israeli flora, more than 2500 species (compared to 1500 in the British Isles for example which is 10 times the size).

The Sea Squill (Urginea maritima, חצב מצוי) is a perennial of the lily family with a large poisonous bulb. The squill is one of ten species of plants called geophytes which bloom before the rains in Israel, in the driest part of the year and are a harbinger of winter. You’ll probably find the tall spikes of squill flowering by mid September. I saw some in Jerusalem while running along the tayelet, at the Museum HaTeva (Nature museum) and while hiking in the cliffs above Qumran.

 

You also won’t see the bright yellow Sternbergia (Sternbergia clusiana, חלמונית, from the same root as yolk of an egg) until just before the first autumn rains – don’t confuse them with the saffron and crocus that come after the first rains. Sternbergia belong to the daffodil family. This image was captured in November in the Yatir forest near Arad. On a hike we found Sternbergia growing in the wadi below Maale Rehavam near Herodium. I was touring in Ramat HaNegev and learned that there are Sternbergia in bloom in the wadi behind the Nahal Boker family farm. Moshe Zohar who lives there told me that this is the southern most point that they grow. I learned from a colleague who did a tour in the Golan that there are Sternbergia blooming below Har Hozek (conceivably the most northern point). If you are interested in touring Israel including hikes to see and/or photograph wildflowers please contact me.

You can check out these two excellent websites, that give you a lot of information about wildflowers in Israel:

http://www.wildflowers.co.il/english/

http://www.flowersinisrael.com/