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Look at this picture.
It is actually a 400-year-old caricature.
A caricature of the Land of Israel:
What are we actually looking at here?
This map was drawn by Heinrich Bünting in complete seriousness.
The flower shape is in fact the three continents of the Old World: Europe, Asia and Africa - and precisely between them, at the center of the flower - Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.
Fine, you're smirking - this map is very far from reality.
You're right, and I certainly don't suggest setting out on cross-continental navigation based on this map.
And yet, precisely because it is exaggerated, almost a caricature, it manages to capture in one brief image the secret of the Land of Israel:
A land of meeting.
In almost every possible sense, this land has been a bridge connecting many realms.
This is a land where three continents meet - Europe, Asia and Africa.
This is a land where three underground tectonic plates meet.
This is a land where the temperate climate zone meets the largest and driest desert in the world.
This is a land where plant and animal species from every climate zone meet.
This is a land into which a billion migrating birds funnel from all across Asia, Europe and Africa.
This is a land on whose two sides the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea meet.
This is a land where different cultures meet - Babylon, the cultures of Africa, of Europe and of the desert.
This is a land that has also connected heaven and earth, as some of the world's most important religions grew within it and around it.
This is a land that in every sense is a land of connection and meeting.
Fittingly, the people that settled in this land was made up of a great many tribes, very different from one another in their opinions, their character and their customs.
So it was in the past, and so it is today.
The people that fell in love with this land is called the people of Israel, and this broad tribal diversity is called: Israeliness.
The meeting between these tribes, on this small stretch of land, is not always easy, and at times it creates bitter frictions and harsh quarrels. So it was in the past, and so it is today. But precisely out of this meeting and connection that they create, the different streams are in fact trying to find the most successful recipe for the ancient Jewish calling of "tikkun olam" - repairing the world.
This website deals with quite a few subjects; it deals with the attempt to understand the secret of Israeliness, with walking the colorful alleys of "the Casbah of life", with a small family and great loves, with trying to get to know our good land a little better, with insights from the world of education, and with coping with these sweet children who sometimes make us feel we brought them into the world just so we could put them to bed.
When I tried to find a thread connecting all the articles and videos on this site, I found that alongside the attempt to innovate and offer different angles, what most of them share is that they try to create some kind of meeting between different fields of knowledge:
between Judaism and Israeliness, between the nature of the land and the tradition of Israel, between the wonder of existence and the simplicity of everyday life, between scientific research and the field of education, between earth and heaven.
The interesting things happen where there is a meeting. And I have tried to make this place a home for an Israeli meeting - a Mifgash Israeli.
Married to Neta, my soulmate, and dad to five sweet little ones. A scout and explorer of the Land of Israel and Israeli society. Crazy about strawberry ergaliyot wafers, which I see as a symbol of Israeliness: zero budget, questionable ingredients, but an extraordinary result.
In the past I had the privilege of working in several wonderful places: running a field school, directing the Tzameret service year for youth in the periphery, head of the pre-military academy (mechina) in Hatzeva, and today head of the Arava Midrasha. I write and present series and content on 'Kan' 11. I have published five books about knowing the Land, history and Israeli society.
My favorite animal is the Duguni kukri snake, which is also the first snake I ever caught, and it's also the most beautiful in the country and very rare too, and once I even kept one in my room in high school and it escaped, and I never told anyone so as not to cause a fuss.
My favorite chapters in the Tanakh are Hosea chapter 2 and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) chapter 7. The book I have read more times than any other in my life is Ephraim Kishon's 'My Family, Right or Wrong', and my favorite band is the Beatles, especially Ringo Starr, who is without a doubt one of the worst drummers in the world, but his clumsy drumming makes the Beatles' songs what they are.
