Israel Active

The Real Jerusalem Streets celebrated the 102nd birthday of the world’s oldest journalist and radio personality Walter Bingham. At his Jerusalem home, Walter hosted US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Janet, his wife.

The ski resort at Mount Hermon opened to visitors for the first time this year, after snow piled on Israel’s highest mountain. Entry to the site requires booking in advance via the Ski Hermon website and nearby lodging facilities are nearly fully booked. The IDF has trained to protect visitors.

The most popular marathon in the world – the Dead Sea Marathon – on 6 Feb 2026 is already sold out. This marathon in the lowest place in the world, allows runners to cross the sea on salt embankments in a desert landscape.

Israeli wine lovers gathered in Tel Aviv for Sommelier, the country’s largest annual winery exhibition. Its popularity signaled a recovery to the whole wine industry. Israel’s 300 wineries produce 40-45 million bottles of wine annually.

A new exhibition, marking the 10th anniversary of the Friends of Zion Museum (FOZ) in Jerusalem, has interactive holograms of most of the 14 prime ministers who have led Israel from 1948, beginning with David Ben-Gurion and ending with Benjamin Netanyahu.

More exhibits for Jerusalem’s Israel Museum’s 60th anniversary (see for previous). “Ages of the World,” a monumental, installation by Germany’s Anselm Kiefer. Also Israel’s Lea Nikel’s color-drenched canvases “Path to Eden”. Plus “The Medium and the Message: Six Centuries of Printmaking.”

While carving a new road through Samaria, builders unexpectedly broke into a hidden, million-year-old underground world of breathtaking caves, rare formations, and unique life. It includes Israel’s deepest cave and a blind spider species.

On his 25th birthday, Israeli basketball player Deni Avdija of the Portland Trail Blazers, notched a triple-double with 29 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists as his 9th-placed Portland Blazers beat 2nd-place San Antonio Spurs. Avdija won Western Conference’s Player of the Week.

Heavy rains from the latest weather system filled the limans and runoff basins across several areas of the northern and western Negev, creating major changes in the landscape.  

. The National Library of Israel is displaying a rare 14th-century manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah for the first time as part of its permanent exhibition. Copied in Provence between 1300 and 1350 C.E., it was later vividly illustrated by Italian artist Matteo di Ser Cambio.