Tourism Archives - Page 77 of 97

Seven Wonders of Israel

Seven wonders of Israel were selected last year in an online vote sponsored by an Israeli television station. Stas Misezhnikov, the Israeli Minister of Tourism, declared the following winners according to the number of votes received:

1. Baha’i Gardens, Haifa

2. Dead Sea

3. Western Wall, Jerusalem

4. Masada

5. Coral Reef, Eilat

6. Stalactites Cave, Judean Hills

7. Caesarea

One obvious omission from this list are large erosional craters (machteshim) in southern Israel. I would also vote for the Sea of Galilee, surely a wonder in a land with limited fresh water supplies.

Machtesh Ramon from west (source)

Tagged Dead Sea, Tourism

$100 Million for Biblical Tourism in Jerusalem

On the 45th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification, the Prime Minister’s cabinet approved spending nearly $100 million to develop sites in the city. The Jerusalem Post has limited details:

Tourism in Jerusalem dominated the agenda at the meeting, where the cabinet approved NIS 350 million over the next seven years to develop sites and infrastructure in the capital, with a focus on biblical tourism. Israel hosted 2.8 million foreign visitors in 2011.
Eighty percent of them visited Jerusalem and 30% stayed at least one night in the city.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, every million tourists add NIS 5.5 billion to the economy and create 30,500 jobs.
Approximately NIS 20m. of the tourism funding will be directed toward the Mount of Olives Cemetery.
The plan is to renovate 15,000 graves and install 150 security cameras to stop desecration and stoning attacks.
Part of the money will also go to improve the “green lung” of Jerusalem’s parks and open spaces.
The money will be used to develop the Slopes of Mount Scopus national park, next to the Arab neighborhood of Isawiya, which residents oppose because it will stop their neighborhood from expanding.
Netanyahu tasked the Jerusalem Development Authority with overseeing the development of biblical tourism sites. “[The money] will enable us to build biblical sites in the city that will enhance and explain our link to the land of the Bible, to Zion, and also allow millions of people, no less, millions of people to have a direct appreciation of Israel’s heritage as it finds expression in the Bible,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

The full story is here.

Cemetery on Mount of Olives (source)

Tagged Jerusalem, Tourism

Lack of Shade Lamented at Western Wall

Relief from the afternoon sun is not in sight at the Western Wall prayer plaza because of a rabbinic decree that forbids anything that will overshadow the Wall. From Haaretz:

It was a beautiful, partially cloudy spring day in Jerusalem on Tuesday, with temperatures reaching 25 degrees Celsius in the shade. A perfect day for strolling around nearly any part of the city, with one truly glaring exception: the Western Wall Plaza. The glaring whiteness of the plaza pavement reflected the heat, and the complete absence of trees, buildings and pergolas ensured that there was not a speck of shade. The result is an almost unbearable experience for worshipers and tourists who congregate at Judaism’s holiest site. The situation will only become worse with the arrival of summer.
[…]
“I was at a bar mitzvah on the eve of Passover, which isn’t yet summer, and people said it was impossible to concentrate on the prayers,” recalls Ofer Cohen, chairman of an NGO, called the Lobby for Jewish Values. “Anyone who prays when it is hot has to finish the prayer quickly – it isn’t praying with a focused mind,” says Cohen, who has asked the ministers of tourism and religious affairs to try to solve the problem.
Tour guides are also irked by the harsh conditions at the plaza.
“The problem exists all year around, both in the rain and in the sun,” says Jerusalem guide Ben Lev Kadesh. “In this whole huge space there isn’t a single covered corner. Many of the tourists come from Europe and it isn’t easy for them to stand in the sun.”
[…]
Indeed all ideas for providing some kind of cover or shade in parts of the plaza have been rejected. The problem has been under discussion for decades, say officials in Rabinovitch’s office. “There have been discussions about how to deal with heat in summer and rain in winter. But most people from the areas of planning, history and archaeology have felt strongly that for the sake of the Wall’s splendor, glory, and the memory of the past, the Western Wall should be revealed without means of shading,” say the officials.

The full article is here.

Western Wall prayer plaza in afternoon sun (source)

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount, Tourism

Wednesday Roundup

In an article published in the new issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Emile Puech’s view of the Qeiyafa Ostracon is summarized. He believes that it “announces the installation of a centralized royal administration and it makes this announcement to a distant frontier province. He concedes that it is difficult to establish with certainty whether the new royal administration is that of Saul or David. On balance, however, he concludes that, most likely, the ostracon refers to Saul’s accession.”

Gordon Franz discusses three possible locations for the temple to Augustus near Panias/Caesarea Philippi. He concludes that the site of Omrit is likely the backdrop for Peter’s confession.

Using satellite images taken over a span of 40 years, Shmuel Browns shows how the Dead Sea is shrinking.

The first quarter of 2012 saw a record number of tourists to Israel.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority says that if visitors pay they are less likely to trash a site.
Aren Maeir has announced a major scholarship for those wishing to join the excavations at Gath and/or Tel Burna this summer. The application deadline is May 6.

HT: BibleX

Roman temple at Omrit

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Opportunities, Philistines, Tourism

Wednesday Roundup

Shmuel Browns shares some photos from his recent hike of Nahal Darga, which he calls “Israel’s most extreme and challenging” hike.

BAS: “Named by The Sunday Times as one of the world’s top ten walks, the Lycian Way hiking trail weaves along 300 miles of Turkey’s southern coastline through hundreds of archaeological sites.”

Leen Ritmeyer has word of an expansion to the Davidson Center in the excavations south of the Temple Mount.

The audio files are now online for Bryant Wood’s recent lecture series on “Archaeology and the Conquest: New Evidence on an Old Problem.”

Wayne Stiles: “Passover and Easter bring to mind pictures of the Messiah—both for Jews and for Christians. The Mount of Olives echoes these hopes from its slopes.”

The Washington Post reports on a battle in Israel to save the ancient Canaan dog.

Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a left-wing petition against the City of David Archaeological Park.

The article notes that “the City of David site receives around 450,000 visitors a year, up from 2,000 in 2001.”

Craig Evans writes about the Archaeological Evidence for Jesus. The accompanying photos are disappointing.

The Elvis Presley® Holy Land Tour is now taking sign-ups. In addition to stops at the Sea of Galilee and Western Wall, the tour will stop at the “infamous Elvis Inn Restaurant in Abu Ghosh – an Elvis-
themed diner and souvenir shop popular with tourists from around the world.”

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Tourism, Turkey

Weekend Roundup

Using satellite images, a researcher has identified potentially 9,000 new sites in northeastern Syria.

“With these computer science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an enormous map which is methodologically very interesting, but which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over the last 7,000 or 8,000 years.”

The Jezreel Expedition “just released three-dimensional LiDAR models detailing the site’s architecture and ancient landscape taken from recently collected LiDAR data.”

The spring season at Tel Burna has ended.

A writer for the Detroit Free Press describes one day on a dig at Khirbet Qeiyafa.

A New York Times article describes problems facing archaeologists returning to Iraqi sites.

Travelujah tells the “beautiful and tragic” story of Naharayim and Peace Island.

Joe Yudin visits Chorazin this week.

The Winter 2012 issue of DigSight is now online (pdf). Topics include: The “Jesus Family Tomb”
Revisited, The Oldest Egyptian Reference to Israel?, Recent Sightings, and Upcoming Events.

James Tabor: “Discovery TV has confirmed that the one hour special titled ‘The Resurrection Tomb’
will air on Thursday, April 5th, at 10pm EST.”

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, the previous work by Lois Tverberg and co-author Ann Spangler, is
available for $3.99 for Kindle for a few more days.

HT: ANE-2, Joseph Lauer, Jack Sasson

Chorazin from the west

Tagged Excavations, Galilee, Jezreel Valley, Syria, Tourism, Weekend Roundup