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In this new Blog you will find short posts about new findings or events of interest in Israel like archaeology, history, tech, environment, israeli society and more. I am trying to keep you updated each month.
January 2026: The christian orthodox epiphany takes place in January 18-19 every year. The orithodox christians include all oriental and slave denominations, to them epiphany memprises Jesus baptism in the Jordan river by John the Baptist. In Israel all orthodox comunities gather on the border of the Jorden river at Qas'r Yahud (the Jewish fortress in arabic) in the Judean desert north of the Dead Sea. Here is the Syriac community, the only one who still practice Aramean language which was the main one 2,000 years ago in Israel. They gather for the ceremony after the ethiopian one while pigrin made a baptism in the Jordan.
December 2025: On the Eve of Hannuka celebration during archeological excavations, an oil lamp dating from the Hasmonean times in the 2nd century B.C. was found in |Nabi Samuel where the Prophet Samuel is believed to be buried. The Hasmonean Dynasty is the continuation of the heroic Maccabee family who started the revolt against the Helenistic Greek empire which led to a Judean independant kingdom in Israel for one hundred years. Together with writing tools of the time, this oil lamp is a key marker of Jewish identity unnearthing insight about Jewish daily life during the fascinating Hasmonean period.
During archeological excavations in the south-western corner of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, excavators found a 1,300 years old Menorah engraved pendant made of lead. According to Israel Antiquities Authority it is a very rare artifact because is dated from the Byzantine times, a period during which access to Jerusalem for Jews was forbiden by order of the Emperor. It shows though that despite this order agains the Jewish community, still, Jews didn't give up on Jerusalem as testified by this anonymous Jew who entered Jerusalm and made it up to the Temple Mount, the most sacred place to the Jewish people.
November 2025: A World First Project! Israel started to pump desalinated water from the Mediteranean into the Sea of Galilee. Pumping desalinated sea water into a fresh water lake is an unprecedent worldwide achievement. The aim of the project is double: restore the depleting level of the water surface of the lake and insure the lake can provide water in case of water shortage in the future. That is in addition to the fact that today most of drinking water comes from several desalination plants along the coast. On the way the water flows through the Tzalmon river restoring it after years of droughts.
October 2025: Habayita in hebrew means "Home" in the sense of back home, that is what millions of israelis prayed for every single day since October 7. Finally on October 13, two years after they were kidnapped on the very same holyday of Simchat Tora the 22 hostages still alive came back home. I spent 24 hours from one spot to another in order to cover the historical moment. Rare are moments if ever in life when the people of a nation as a whole vibrates as one heart, such day did happen on that day of Simchat Torah, literally "The Joy of the Tora". Anyone who was there, at the Place of the Hostages, along the roads, outside hospitals, in front of the TV, in the car listening to the radio and also worldwide, felt that communion of souls in a moment of true kinhood.
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