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    Israel - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Israel - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Israel - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Ebook213 pages1 hour

    Israel - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

    By Jeffrey Geri, Marian Lebor and Culture Smart

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    About this ebook

    Culture Smart! Israel marks the nation's 70th year of independence in a concise cultural guide that enables readers to get to the heart of this diverse, dynamic and paradoxical country and enable you to make the most of your visit. Independent since 1948, this edition provides important insights into the complexities of Israeli society so that you will know what to expect and how to behave in different circumstances, avoid misunderstandings and form good relations both socially and in business.

    While Israel is a modern and largely secular country, it is one steeped in biblical history and in which religion still plays an active role in public life. In seventy years it has grown from a sparsely populated strip of land into a vigorous democracy and regional superpower. Often called the Startup Nation, Israel is a world leader in a number of Hi-tech industries. Its democratic institutions, despite a political and social polarization in recent years, are among the most enlightened in the world.

    This pocket guide will help readers understand the country and its people beyond the headlines, ensuring for greater understanding and a far more valuable travelling experience, whatever the reason for visiting.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKuperard
    Release dateJun 21, 2018
    ISBN9781787029248

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      Israel - Culture Smart! - Jeffrey Geri

      chapter one

      LAND & PEOPLE

      GEOGRAPHY

      Situated at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is a narrow strip of land bordered to the north by Lebanon; to the east by Syria, the West Bank, and Jordan; to the south by the Red Sea; and to the southwest by Egypt. A more recent border, added by Israel’s disengagement in 2005, is that of the Gaza Strip, a slim finger of land pointing along the coast from the Sinai Peninsula, ending just south of the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

      Israel is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey or the country of Wales, but with a climate and topography that varies greatly from north to south and from east to west. Along the Mediterranean on the verdant coastal plain are two of its three main cities: Tel Aviv–Jaffa, the city that never sleeps, and, about 53 miles (85 km) north, Haifa, serene and beautiful on the slopes and crest of Mount Carmel. Haifa is the port city gateway to the Galilee, with its landscape of hills, forests, and olive groves and, at its lowest point, below sea level, the Sea of Galilee. There are no mountains in Israel, only hills.

      Jerusalem, Israel’s spiritual capital and the seat of government, nestles in the biblical Judean hills 37 miles (59 km) east of Tel Aviv. East of Jerusalem is the Judean desert, which slopes down to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and the start of the Great Rift Valley that runs south through Africa. About 71 miles (115 km) south of Tel Aviv lies Beersheba, the capital of the Negev desert, and a 150-mile (241 km) journey further south through the desert, to its southernmost point, takes you to the Red Sea port and resort of Eilat.

      CLIMATE

      Israel enjoys a Mediterranean climate with hot, rain-free summers and mild winters, which have intermittent periods of heavy rain, particularly in the north and center of the country. From April to October daily temperatures range from 73.4°F (23°C) low to 86°F (30°C) high, with July and August the hottest months. From November to March temperatures range from 59°F (15°C) low to 68°F (20°C) high. In the winter, from the northern Galilee to the northern Negev, the country is transformed into a deep green. You are unlikely to encounter snow, but if you do it will be in winter in Jerusalem or on the Golan Heights. Temperatures and tempers rise during the occasional hamsin (sharav in Hebrew), a hot, dry, desert wind occurring mostly in early summer and fall.

      Jerusalem is cooler than the coastal plain, especially in the evenings, and enjoys lower humidity. Eilat is always warmer, and is a winter sunshine favorite for Israelis and foreign visitors alike, as are the Dead Sea resorts.

      A BRIEF HISTORY

      The State of Israel was established in 1948, in a land holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Unsurprisingly, interpretations of its history are hotly contested, but to understand the Israelis one must start with the Jewish perspective.

      Ancient History

      Jewish history began about 4,000 years ago, in around 1600 BCE, with the wanderings of the biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Book of Genesis relates how Abraham, a native of the Sumerian city of Ur, in today’s southern Iraq, was commanded to go to Canaan to found a community that worshiped the One God. When a famine spread through Canaan, Abraham’s grandson Jacob (Israel), his twelve sons, and their families moved to Egypt, where their descendants were forced into slavery.

      Modern scholarship is continually refining our understanding of the historical context of the biblical account, but the powerful narrative of the Hebrew Bible is the foundation stone of Jewish identity. Thus, after generations of bondage in Egypt, Moses led the Israelites to freedom, to receive the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, and to be forged into a nation by forty years of wandering in the desert. Joshua spearheaded the conquest of Canaan, the promised land of milk and honey, where the Children of Israel were bound to establish a moral and ethical society that would be a light unto the Gentiles. The exodus from Egypt, indelibly implanted in Jewish consciousness, is still celebrated by Jews every year, wherever they may be, at Pesah (Passover), the festival of freedom.

      The Biblical Kingdoms of Israel (c. 1000–587 BCE)

      The Israelites settled in the central hill country of Canaan more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ. These were the years of the biblical Judges, Prophets, and Kings. The hero-king David vanquished the Philistine champion Goliath, and his kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital, became a power in the area; his son Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE. Solomon made political alliances through marriage, expanded foreign trade, and promoted domestic prosperity. After his death the kingdom was split into two: Israel in the north with its capital at Shechem (Samaria), and Judah in the south with its capital at Jerusalem.

      Exile and Return

      The small Jewish kingdoms were caught up in the power struggles of the day, between the rival empires of Egypt and Assyria. In about 720 BCE, the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and dispatched its inhabitants into oblivion; in 587 BCE the Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple and transported all but the poorest Jews to Babylon. Throughout the period of exile the Jewish people retained their faith: If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning (Psalm 137.5). After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great allowed the exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. Many Jews remained in Babylon, and communities grew up in every major city around the Mediterranean. Thus began the pattern of coexistence of a Jewish presence in the land of Israel with Jewish communities in the outside world, known collectively as the Diaspora (dispersal).

      In 332 BCE Alexander the Great conquered the region. After his death in 323 BCE his empire was divided up, with Judah eventually falling to the Syrian portion ruled by the Seleucid dynasty. Their Hellenizing policies were resisted, and they were expelled in an insurgency led by the priest Mattathias and his son Judah Maccabee, who rededicated the defiled Temple in 164 BCE, a victory celebrated to this day in the festival of Hanukkah. The Jewish royal house they founded, the Hasmoneans, ruled until Pompey’s siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, after which the Jewish state was absorbed into the Roman Empire.

      Roman Rule and the Jewish Revolts

      In 37 BCE Herod, son of an Idumaean chieftain, was appointed King of Judea by the Roman Senate. Granted almost unlimited autonomy in the country’s internal affairs, he became one of the most powerful client kings in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Herod kept his subjects ruthlessly in check, and launched a massive construction program, which included the cities of Caesarea and Sebaste, and the fortresses at Herodium and Masada. He also rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, making it one of the most magnificent buildings of its time. Despite his many achievements he failed to win the trust and support of his Jewish subjects.

      Herod’s death in 4 CE was followed by years of political turmoil, civil unrest, and messianic fervor. Cruel and corrupt Roman procurators united the disparate Jewish factions against them, and in 67 CE the Jews rose up in a general revolt. The Emperor Nero sent his general Vespasian to Judea with three legions. After Nero’s suicide in 68 CE, Vespasian ascended the imperial throne, and sent his son Titus to continue the campaign in Judea. In 70 CE the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem, and on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av the Temple was burned to the ground. All other buildings, except for three towers, were razed, and the city’s population was taken captive.

      A band of Zealots had taken refuge at Masada, the fortress palace built by Herod on a barely accessible mountain plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. In 73 CE, after years of trying to dislodge them, the Romans besieged the fortress with an army of ten thousand men. When they eventually succeeded in breaching its defenses, they found that all but five of the defenders, men, women and children, had committed suicide rather than face crucifixion or enslavement.

      A second, better-coordinated Jewish revolt broke out in 131, under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Akiba and the generalship of Simon Bar Kochba. The Romans were forced to evacuate Jerusalem, and a Jewish administration was set up. After four years, and very heavy Roman losses, the revolt was put down by the Emperor Hadrian in 135 ce. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman city dedicated to Jupiter, Aelia Capitolina, and Jews were forbidden to enter it. Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina.

      The Diaspora

      The story of the dispersal of the Jews outside the land of Israel is long and complex, and the subject of a great body of literature. Ironically, the destruction of the Temple cult gave rise to a vigorous new form of religious and social cohesion—rabbinical Judaism, the system of law and custom that was heir to the scholastic tradition of the Pharisees.

      From 135 CE onward, for almost two millennia, the Jews lived as a distinctive minority among other nations. As Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, put it, We have preserved the Book, and the Book has preserved us. In the Christian world Jews were subjected to nearly constant persecution. They fared better under Islam—the

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