The Israel Photographically Tour is taking shape. An itinerary has been established, hotel contracts have been negotiated, and pricing has been set. I am starting to get excited.
The main tour will last 10 days. An optional trip to Petra will extend the tour by two days. Pricing will be $2299 per person, double-occupancy. The Petra extension will be an additional $795 per person, double-occupancy. These prices include lodging in very nice hotels, breakfast and dinner each full day, transportation, and entrance into national parks, museums, and other historic venues. Airfare, souvenirs, and optional tour guide tips are not included. Fond memories, cultural understandings, religious epiphanies, and life-long friendships are free.
Mediterranean Coast
We will begin in Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast and ancient port of Jaffa, now encompassed by Tel Aviv. We will travel North to Cesarea, built by Herod the Great as a Roman naval port. We will continue to the Crusader fortress of Akko, the immaculate gardens and golden Shrine of the Bah’I headquarters in Haifa.
Galilee
We then turn East to Galilee, surprisingly green and lush in the springtime. We will visit a wildlife sanctuary at the headwaters of the Jordan River, a center of Kabala (Jewish mystical tradition), tombs with round stone covers, and 16th century synagogues. We will lodge on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen, in a Kubbutz guest house.
We will visit Capernaum where Jesus lived during most of his ministry and hometown of Peter, who fished the Sea of Galilee. We will visit the remarkably well-preserved “Jesus Boat,” dating back 2,000 years, and of the type that Jesus and his fisherman friends may have used. We will sail the Sea of Galilee in a wooden boat. We will visit the mount of Beatitudes and a baptismal site on the Jordan River.
South to Jerusalem
From there we travel South visiting Beit She’an, one of the middle east’s largest and best-preserved Roman Cities before arriving at the hilltop city of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is so rich with history and cultural sites, it will take us 4 days to experience them all. We will see the Temple Mount, the Western Wall excavations, City of David, Dome of the Rock, Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb, a model of ancient Jerusalem, and the Yad Vashem memorials honoring Holocaust victims.
Dead Sea
Our travels will take us to the arid desert surrounding the Dead Sea where we will have a chance to bath in its healing waters. We will visit the nearby fortress of Masada, such an enduring Zionist symbol, then move on to Mt. Nebo, where Moses view the promised land that he would never enter.
Petra
This remarkable world-heritage site includes entire building carved out of solid rock. We will enter the main canyon on horseback and see tombs, obelisks, and carved monuments unlike anything else on earth.
These and many other site are just waiting for you. Please join us.
Dana Sohm, May 12, 2012
801-450-1947
Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel
On April 19, 2012, in the United States and Israel, Jews and non-Jews paused to remember the murder by Germany’s Nazi party of millions of people it considered politically, racially, or socially unfit, including an estimated 6 million Jews. The vow never to forget is a founding principal of the Israeli people.
In the United States, Holocaust Remembrance day warranted a short audio story on NPR that included appropriate and touching remarks made by President Obama at a photo opportunity organized for that purpose. After hearing Obama’s excepted speech, most American went about their daily lives without much addition thought on the subject.
In Israel, Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance day, is remembered in a more profound way. At 10 am, loud sirens suddenly blare throughout the country. These are not police car sirens, but the kind of sirens that announced in-coming bombers during World War II.
Throughout the 1 minute-long siren blast, the nation stops and remembers the horror that so deeply scarred its people. Shopping in busy markets ceases. Workers set aside their tools. Cars on freeways stop to allow drivers and passengers to stand and remember. The effect is dramatic and profound. Although carefully timed, the unsettling siren seems much longer than 1 minute. To all Israel, it is a very long minute of remembrance.
Several remarkable YouTube videos have recorded the event. Here is one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGPbA9wowRk&feature=related
Take a minute to watch it and image what Yom Hashoah means to a nation that lost 6 million sons, daughters, parents, and friends.
Dana Sohm, Easter, April 8, 2012
801-450-1947
Happy Passover
In the Christian world, today is Easter.
In the Jewish world, yesterday was the first day of Passover.
The two are intimately connected.
Passover remembers when Israel was held in slavery in Egypt. With Moses as his spokesman, God brought plagues upon Egypt to convince Pharaoh to set his people free. The final, most devastating, plague brought death to all first-born throughout Egypt. However, because Moses marked Hebrew doorways with lamb’s blood, the Angel of Death passed them over sparing their children. Hence, “Passover.”
Pharoh finally relented and agreed to free Israel. The people left in such a rush, they baked and ate unleavened bread for there was not time for bread dough to rise. In commemoration, Jews today eat matzah (unleavened bread) during the Seder (ceremony including the Passover meal).
Every Friday afternoon throughout Israel, shoppers throng open-air markets buying food in preparation for the Shabbat (Sabbath) that begins Friday at sundown. Last Friday afternoon was special. In additional to their usual supplies, shoppers bought matzah and bitter herbs for the Passover meal that followed. Shabbat extended from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown. It represented the first day of a 7-day Passover celebration throughout Israel.
The Jews have celebrated Passover for centuries, including throughout Jesus’s life. At the end of his life, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his disciples. Jesus’s “last supper” was likely a Passover meal. It was at this meal that Jesus perceived Judas’s betrayal. Jesus dismissed Judas with the words “that thou doest, do quickly.” Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ following his betrayal and cruxifiction.
For this reason, Easter is generally celebrated during Passover although the Jewish and Christian holidays are calculated differently and do not always coincide.
In Jerusalem and throughout modern-day Israel, Passover is perhaps the busiest time of year with Jews celebrating Passover and Christians flocking to Jerusalem to commemorate Jesus’s last days.
Last year, as I made my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, my flight arrived on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, the day following the end of Passover. Banners hanging in airport concourses still proclaimed “Happy Passover.” Christian visitors that followed Jesus’s last steps, his cruxifictions, and ressurection on Easter Sunday April, 24, had finally dissipated. The airport was once again relatively quiet.
While in Jerusalem, we visited an upper room on Mt. Zion, claimed, with dubious historicity, to be the venue for the last supper. The claim was made simply because the room existed on a second floor and was spacious enough to accommodate 13 people.
We also visited the magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulcher, designated by someone, with equally dubious historicity, to be the site where Jesus was crucified and buried. As with most holy places in Israel, the spot was revered by erecting a church by the religion making the claim.
We also visited the much more modest “Garden Tomb” which to my mind seems a more probably site of Jesus’s burial. Here, instead of an ostentatious church, lay a simple tomb carved out of a vertical stone face. The Christian ground-keepers maintained a beautiful garden surrounding the tomb. Although heavily visited, the place exuded calmness rare among religious sites in Israel.
Easter and Passover take on new and deeper meanings to those fortunate to visit Jerusalem.
Dana Sohm, Easter, April 8, 2012
801-450-1947
The Sea of Galilee is Beautiful in the Springtime
God looks down upon the Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee.
The very words evoke reverence.
Peter was fishing on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus invited him to become a fisher of men. Jesus boarded a boat and pushed off into the Sea to seek refuge from pressing multitudes. Jesus walked upon its water and rebuked its winds and waves. With the words “peace be still” he brought calm to a raging tempest. It was with two fishes from the Sea and five loaves of bread that Jesus fed thousands of followers.
Dawn, Sea of Galilee
On the Israel Photographically tour, we will ride a boat onto the Sea of Galilee whose waters are as pure and fish-filled today as they were 2,000 years ago.
We will visit the “Jesus Boat,” a remarkably well-preserved shell of a fishing boat dating back to Jesus’s time.
"Jesus Boat," was found in mud upon the banks of the Sea of Galilee. It dates back to Jesus day.
We will lodge and dine at Nof Ginosar on the banks of the Sea of Galilee in a Hotel located within and managed by a working Kibbutz.
Wild mustard is abundant in Galilee's springtime.
We will arrive at Galilee at the peak of springtime when hills are blanketed in green and exploding with the vivid yellow of wild mustard blossoms. Migrating birds drift overhead and nest on the Sea’s banks. Frogs serenade the wetlands along the shore.
It is not hard to see why Jesus loved Galilee and chose to live and preach there for most of his ministry.
But there is more to see than just the lake. We will visit the ruins of Capernaum, locally called Jesus’s town. We will visit nearby hillsides where Jesus may have delivered his “Sermon on the Mount.” We will visit a site on the Jordan River where modern-day Christians still conduct immersive baptisms.
The Jordan River in April
Galilee is my favorite part of Israel and Spring is its most beautiful time.
You will be captivated.
Dana Sohm, March 3, 2012
801-450-1947
The Old World is Calling You
The Old World
These are evocative, romantic words.
The Old World is our mother, our birthplace, the cradle of Western civilization, the source of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Old World formed our thoughts, our values, our wants, our needs, our commonalities, our conflicts.
The Old World is calling you home.
In Jaffa, a Jewish man contemplate a mysterious side-door to a ancient Christian church
Our adventure will take us from Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean; to Caesarea, an elaborate Roman port constructed by Herod the Great with a full-size hippodrome for chariot races; to Acco with its crusader-built ramparts, churches, and perfectly-preserved cavernous tunnels; to the Sea of Galilee where Jesus preached to throngs of thousands and sought refuge by casting off in a fishing boat into its crystal clean water; to a place of baptism on the Jordan river, still in use today; to Old Jerusalem, spiritual heart of three religions; to Masada, beside the dead sea, a place sacred to all modern Jews, to holocaust remembrances that will melt your heart. The especially adventurous will take an additional 2 days visiting Petra, the legendary city carved from sandstone that one enters only on horseback.
But this will be more than a tour of places. It will be a time finding spiritual roots, a time of cultural discovery, a time of understanding conflicting world views, a time of personal growth.
Israel changes people. You will return a different person than you were when you arrived. That I guaranty.
Dana Sohm
2012 Israel Calendar now Available
Every year I produce a calendar for clients, family, and friends. It is truly an “Artist’s Calendar” photographed, designed, printed, and assembled by the artist, me. This year’s calendar features pictures from my trip to Israel last Spring, the trip that inspired our tour next year. The calendar is designed to sit on a desktop with a built-in stand. The face of the calendar is 5 in x 8.5 in (12.7 cm x 21.6 cm). Its takes about 3.5 in x 8.5 in (9 cm x 21.6 cm) of desktop space.
The calendar, simply named “Israel” features a cover photo of the Sea of Galilee resplendent in the hours just after dawn taken from the shoreline at Nof Ginnosar. Beams of heavenly light pour through light clouds as though God himself were smiling on this amazing land. The Hebrew word “Israel” in bold lettters competes the cover. The Hebrew letters are comprised of the gold hues and texture of another sacred spot to all Israelis, the desert fortress of Masada taken during my visit there last Spring. I wanted the Hebrew word “Israel” to appear as though it was carved from the Masada mountainside. I would love your feedback as to whether I achieved the desired effect.
Here is a preview of the Calendar:
Dana sohm
Our Guide, Roeh Shmerling
I am pleased to announce that we have secured the services of Roeh Shmerling as our master guide on the Israel Photographically tour.
Fortunate we are to have a guide of Roeh’s caliber. Roeh is licensed as a tour guide by the Israeli Government. Such licenses are only granted after extensive training in Middle East culture, archeology, and history to insure intimate familiarity of Israel’s historic and religious sites. Before being granted his license, Roeh was required pass a rigorous test to insure competency. To maintain his license, Roeh takes periodic refresher courses covering the latest archeological findings.
Roeh is not only knowledgeable but also brings a life experience that gives him rare insight. As all Israeli-born citizens, Roeh served in the military as a youth and saw battle while stationed in the Golan Heights during Israel’s war with Syria. He has lived through nearly all of Israel’s wars, its fragile treaties, the organization of Palestinian terrorist organizations into political parties, and the rise of both hawkish and dovish Israel leaders.
He lived in Israel when Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel and was murdered as a result. He lived through both gulf wars. He now lives through Iran’s current march toward nuclear capability, the “Arab Spring,” and Israel’s current expansion of “settlements” into contested Palestinian space. Roeh knows what is means live in a nation with enemies on every side.
Roeh speaks fluent English, Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic and adeptly defuses potential misunderstanding in all four languages.
Intense is a word to describe Roeh. He is free to share strong opinions on history, religion, government, and life. Yet moments of intensity are punctuated with a disarming smile and priceless sense of humor.
The intensity
The smile
This crusty ex-soldier has a soft spot for animals whether it be a calico cat asleep in a centuries-old nook or a bird looking for handouts atop Masada. He knows the very ledge on a cliff in Armeggedon where a mother peregrine falcon raises her young and sings to her to gently announce his arrival.
In short, I can think of no better guide.
Dana Sohm, Sohm Photografx, 801-450-1947
