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“And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed” (2 Sam 7:10).
Even busy Highway 1 cannot mask the biblical landscape of the Ayalon Valley. In fact, the modern road just emphasizes it: The main highway linking Jerusalem to the heavily populated coastal plain has been a prime thoroughfare since the days of Joshua. It was here that one fateful, long-ago dawn, the moon stood still at Joshua’s command (Josh 10:12). In the distance, to the east, are the Judean Mountains and Gibeon, where the sun stopped its rising at that same moment, and the strategic Beth Horon Pass (Joshua 10:10) toward which the Israelites trudged all night to face off against the Canaanites.
And the biblical history goes on: To the south is Gezer, rebuilt by Solomon (1 Kings 9:17), and to the east, where the plain turns into rolling foothills, is Emmaus, the destination of the disciples when they encountered Jesus after the resurrection (Luke 24:13). The most beautiful landmark of the Ayalon Valley today is the Latrun Monastery, built in the early 20th century; its charming walkways frame the lush vineyards beyond. Medieval travelers believed the name “Latrun” was connected to the Latin word latro (thief) and saw this site as the home of the “good thief” crucified next to Jesus (Luke 23:40-43).
The Ayalon Valley continued to play a strategic role in modern times as well, as a visit to the nearby Armored Corps Memorial will show you. But the Ayalon is about more than the clashing of armies: A giant green radar balloon rising from the valley enables Israel’s top ornithologists to track the millions of birds that cross the country in their “appointed seasons” (Jeremiah 8:7), thus helping to protect both avians and aircraft. And those busy commuters on the highway cannot help but notice the valley’s changing colors and textures as it is lovingly worked by farmers and shepherds bring their flocks to graze, as Psalm 65:13 celebrates: “The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.”
The Bible is with you from the very first steps you take in Israel. You land at Ben-Gurion Airport near Lydda where Peter healed Aeneas (Acts 9:32-35). You visit Jaffa, where he raised Tabitha from the dead and had his vision on the rooftop of Simon the Tanner (Acts 10:9-17), the ancient port where Solomon imported the cedar logs to build the Temple (2 Chron. 2:16), and from which Jonah set sail (Jonah 1:3).
The Bible is with you even in Israel’s most modern city – Tel Aviv.
There you will find the scene of what is arguably one of the most dramatic events of the 20th century: the declaration of the State of Israel by David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948. It happened in a room in the former Tel Aviv Art Museum, which began as the home of the first mayor of this first modern “Hebrew city,” as they used to call it, founded on the sand dunes of the Mediterranean in 1909. Today you can stand in that very room, restored as it looked on the momentous day. As you hear a recording of Ben-Gurion reading Israel’s Declaration of Independence, you realize that that moment in history was envisioned long ago by Jeremiah: “I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess, says the Lord" (30:3).
You will also be moved to hear how Israel’s first leaders ended the occasion before singing the national anthem: They recited the traditional blessing: “Blessed are You O Lord our God, who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this moment.”
Like many of the leaders who were in that room in 1948, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion was not “religious” in the ordinary sense of the word. And yet, when you visit his modest home in Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, you’ll see beneath the glass top on the desk in his book-lined study, typed on index cards, the words of Isaiah 35:1-2: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.”
It was Ben-Gurion’s fondest dream that the Negev would flourish, and when you visit the arid region, you’ll see that dream, and the prophet’s vision, come true. The land is blossoming, with students and scientists at work at the nearby Solar Energy Center and Sde Boker College, located adjacent to the grave of Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula, which overlooks the vastness of the biblical wilderness of Zin. The capital of the Negev, Be’er Sheba, where Abraham planted a tamarisk tree and you can see the well from which he may have drawn water, is also thriving. The city is home to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where researchers are seeking more ways to make the desert bloom.
An unforgettable landmark that reflects biblical promises for visitors celebrating Israel’s 60th birthday is Kibbutz Revivim, also
in the Negev.
When you learn how Revivim got started in 1943, you’ll realize that the expression “rocky beginnings” is more than a metaphor here: this community’s first home was a Byzantine water reservoir in a cave, which five years later served as a field hospital and command post during Israel’s War of Independence.
Today, the people of Kibbutz Revivim have planted the once barren desert with olive trees, watering them from saline springs. They have a thriving dairy, poultry runs and a plastics factory, and are building up their community as if in answer to the ancient prayer in Psalm 126:4: “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.”
Ein Gedi, on the shore of the Dead Sea, is another site with a venerable and dramatic biblical tradition that has been restored in modern times. It was here that Saul came to seek out David and his men (1 Sam. 24:1-22).
Sixty years ago, Ein Gedi was no more than a lonely outpost in a barely accessible corner of Israel. It is now a blossoming community, having renewed the date groves that flourished there in ancient times and also operating a successful hospitality industry, a spa to enjoy the healthful blessings of the Dead Sea, and a botanical garden with rare tropical species. An added attraction is the nature reserve where you can walk in David’s footsteps to a beautiful spring and waterfall.
The Galilee, the backdrop for much of Jesus’ ministry, is another place that has seen the return of the people to the land as prophesied. On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, called in Hebrew Lake Kinneret, is the grave of Israel’s most beloved poetess, Rachel, a pioneer who came from Russia to work the land in 1909. You will doubtless feel kinship with her beautiful words about the lake, along whose shore she describes walking “in the footsteps of Abraham the Patriarch”: “The Kinneret is not a landscape, not only a piece of nature. The fate of a nation is tied up in it. With a thousand eyes our past looks out at us from within it. With a thousand lips it speaks to our hearts.”
“See, they will come from afar – some from the north, some from the west ...” Isaiah tells us, in verse 49:12. Visitors describe their encounters with Israelis – whether in the streets or the national parks, the holy places or the mall – as some of the most interesting and touching experiences of their trip, especially when you realize that these are people whose parents and grandparents, or they themselves, have returned to their ancient homeland from the four corners of the earth, as prophesied..
To delve more deeply into what this return journey means for the people, there’s nothing like a visit to the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (www. babylonianjewry.org.il) in the central Israeli city of Or Yehuda. There, you will be taken on a virtual journey through 2,700 years of the history of one of the greatest of Israel’s Diaspora communities – from the exile of the Ten Tribes to Assyria (2 Kings 17:6) to the destruction of the First Temple and the exile to Babylon in 586 BCE. You will learn how the Jews mourned the loss of Zion, “by the rivers of Babylon” (Ps. 137:1) but also reestablished their community as Jeremiah had instructed them (29:4-7). You will hear about those who returned to Zion with the declaration of Cyrus in 538 BCE (Ezra 1:1-6). But not everyone came back, and over the centuries, those who remained in Babylon continued to live and prosper in that region, whose biblical roots go back to the time of Abraham. And then, when the state of Israel came into being, some 140,000 Jews of Babylonian descent made their way back to the homeland from what had by then become Iraq, bringing with them their magnificent heritage – biblical, culinary, musical and more – that the museum works to preserve.
The Ayalon Valley, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, the Negev, Ein Gedi, the Sea of Galilee and Israel’s human mosaic – it all comes together in a very special way in one grand picture of past, present and future in this 60th birthday year.
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