Touring Israel with a tour guide

The European Stonechat A Winter Visitor to Israel, this little bird is often seen perched on reeds, fence posts or shrubs. In Israel, it’s mainly a winter visitor, favouring open fields, scrubland, wetlands & agricultural areas where it can scout for insects from a low perch. 🍽️ Diet is mostly insects - beetles, flies, caterpillars & spiders - but in cooler months it may also eat small berries. Its classic behaviour is the quick ‘sit-&-dart’ technique: watch, swoop, return to perch. 🧭 Stonechats breed across Europe & western Asia, then migrate south for the winter. Israel is a key stopover & wintering ground along their route. 🪺 While they do not breed here in Israel, in Europe they build cup-shaped nests close to the ground in dense vegetation. Both male & female defend their territory fiercely. 🦊Typical predators include foxes, snakes, birds of prey & occasionally feral cats. Their upright posture & twitchy movements are part of their early-warning...

Magdala, in The Galilee Yesterday I had the pleasure of leading a tour group to Magdala, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, where we viewed one of t he one of the earliest & most important synagogues built in Israel. Unearthed only in 2009, the site offers a rare glimpse into a thriving Jewish town from the early 1st century CE - the period in which Jesus lived & taught, & in which Jewish society was undergoing cultural, economic & religious transformation. It is significant because it reveals to us that synagogues were places of worship during the time of the Second Temple, not only after its destruction. At its heart is the Magdala Stone , an extraordinary carved block found in the synagogue. Its imagery including a menorah set on a tripod, rosettes & geometric motifs, is considered one of the earliest visual representations of the Jerusalem Temple created by someone who may have actually seen it. It is believed that the stone would have formed p...

The Olive Tree  The olive tree is the national tree of Israel, chosen in a public vote in 2021. A  powerful symbol of peace, longevity,  wisdom, & vitality, it represents  & the deep-rooted connection of the Jewish people to The Land. An olive branch was famously carried by the dove to Noah after the Great Flood. The image above is of the Jewish cemetery on The Mount of Olives,  (Har HaZeitim), the  oldest & most significant Jewish cemetery in the world , with an estimated  150,000 graves . Burials have taken place here for  over 3,000 years . The Mount of Olives is referenced in  Tanach, notably in  Samuel, Kings, Zechariah & Ezekiel.  According to Jewish tradition, the   Messianic era  & the resurrection of the dead will start here.  We can identify burial caves from the  First Temple period  & tombs from the  Second Temple  era, including:  Zechariah, Absalom,  ...

Pioneers from 'the first aliyah' which began in the 1800s. Working the fields outside Zichron Yaakov As an experienced Israel Tour Company, we are well aware that the modern State did not emerge overnight. It was built - field by field, idea by idea - by men & women who transformed visions into reality. These early pioneers drained swamps, founded new communities, revived Hebrew, shaped the national economy, built defence frameworks & laid the social foundations of a future state. Their work continues to influence Israeli society today. The "Tower & Stockade" (Homa U'Migdal) was a groundbreaking settlement method during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in British Mandate Palestine Here are just a few of the remarkable individuals whose efforts helped shape the country we know today: *Key Pioneers of Modern Israel 1. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Revived Hebrew as a modern spoken language, creating dictionaries & promoting its use in daily life. 2. David Ben-Gurion L...