The spelling has changed through the ages, but Kfar Saba, located in the Sharon area of Israel, has always been an agricultural town.

 
 
Starting as Capharsaba in the biblical era and recorded in the Talmud and Book of Josephus, the city then became the Arab town of Kafr Saba. The name appears in records dating as far back as 1596. In 1898, modern Kfar Saba was first established and the settlers made their living growing almonds, grapes and olives.

 
The city was on the front lines of the fighting between General Allenby's British Army and the Ottoman Empire during World War I and was completely razed. In the 1920s it was rebuilt, and the settlers who returned started growing and marketing citrus fruit, which they continue to do today. Kfar Saba gained city status in 1962 and today has over 82,000 people.

 
The ancient beginnings of the city mean there are some beautiful and historical places to visit.

 
The Mausoleum of Nabi Yamin is supposedly the tomb of Benjamin. However, the Arabs in a town just to the north maintain a smaller tomb which they claim to be that of Benjamin as well. Simeon is also supposedly buried in the area surrounding Kfar Saba.

 
 
After WWI, the first house to be rebuilt was a stone family house, owned by the Nordensteins. It's fascinating to walk through th

Kibbutz Tze'elim is located in the western Negev desert and is a lovely green oasis.

There are beautiful hot springs for relaxing as well as guest accommodations on the kibbutz. Some IsraelExperts groups spend a night or two in the guest houses, enjoying the true feeling of the desert.

The kibbutz is a farming kibbutz, focusing on root plants to overcome the trials of the arid weather. The main crops are peanuts and potatoes.

Founded in 1947 by French Moroccans and Eastern Europeans, the kibbutz was named for a grove of acacia trees nearby. These trees were mistaken for the biblical tze'elim trees.

IsraelExperts and Israel Pilgrim Tours President Joe Perlov lived on Kibbutz Tze'elim from 1971 until 1986. He worked in the barn and agricultural fields, and taught civics and English at the regional high school.

Not far from the kibbutz is Wadi Habsor, one of the largest dry riverbeds in the country. Today there is a hanging bridge that crosses the river bed. If you are lucky, you might see one of the spectacular desert flash floods that occur every few years. The water rushes down from the Judean Mountains surrounding Hebron and Jerusalem. The force of the water is so strong that, during the wet season, everything in the path is washed away. 

It is therefore no surprise that the Romans, the Nabateans and t

Florentin, and its surrounding neighborhoods Neve Tzedek, Rothschild Boulevard and Herzl Street in Tel Aviv are imbued with the Zionist history of the Israeli nation. 

Trekking through the city, Tel Aviv's southern neighborhoods are a mixture of now and then, representing the Israel of today and its future. The town was started in 1909 by a group of sixty-six Jewish families who gathered on a desolate sand dune on what is now Rothschild Boulevard to parcel out the land by lottery. 

While the history of the area is interesting, however, "the one really cool thing that a lot of people don't know about the area," Gia Arnstein, IsraelExperts Education Coordinator said, "is that the coffee place right under my house, on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Salama Street used to be the British guard post which divided the city between the Arab side [everything south of Salama] and the Jewish side [everything north of Salama], before the creation of the state."Florentin is the future of Israel in culture, literally built into the stones of the past.

Salama Street, the dividing line between Arabs and Jews before the creation of the state of Israel, is now considered the street that divides North and South Tel Aviv. Its residents are mostly young and trendy. 

In coffee houses of Tel Aviv, one is able to observe the residents of a city witho

What do you get when you combine Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Chaim Weizmann? You get the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The idea of a Jewish University in the Land of Israel was first proposed in 1884. In 1918 the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus' cornerstone was laid, and the University opened in 1925 when these three men, along with many other distinguished figures in the Jewish community, formed the first Board of Governors of the University.

The first degrees were awarded to 13 students in 1931.

In 1948 the Mount Scopus campus was cut off from Jerusalem during the War of Independence and the Givat Ram Campus was built in 1953. The Hebrew University's Hadassah Medical School at Ein Kerem was completed soon after that.

In 1967 Mount Scopus was regained from Jordan, and restorations and expansion began. During the mid 1970s a few courses were run on the campus, including the Rothberg Overseas Program at the Hebrew University. The Mount Scopus campus was reopened officially in 1981 and once more became the main campus.

Today, the different campuses focus on different fields of study, with the humanities and social sciences located at the Mt. Scopus Campus and the sciences and mathematics departments at the Givat Ram Campus, and the medical school at Ein Kerem. There is an additional campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem located in Rehovot, housing the ag