Israel Active

A lifeguard tower on Tel Aviv’s Frishman Beach is being converted into a luxurious 5-star hotel. The winner of a photo competition will be flown to Tel Aviv for a 4-night break, including one night at the hotel with a personal butler. Afterwards, the hotel reverts to a lifeguard station for the summer season.

Makhtesh Ramon is a geological feature of Israel's Negev desert. Watch award-winning journalist Dayve Sutton rappel down the 25-mile, 1,600-feet deep phenomenon.

Although soccer team Hapoel Beer Sheva was eliminated at the final stages of the Europa League, it is still top of the Israeli National League. The club is owned by Alona Barkat - the only woman to own a professional soccer team in Israel, and known as “The Princess of the Desert”.

Readers may remember when Rihanna, a rare white rhino, escaped briefly from Israel’s Ramat Gan Safari Park. She has been much more content since and recently gave birth to her first calf, Rami - the 29th baby rhino to be born at Ramat Gan.  Click to read about three others.  

40,000 runners are registered to compete in the Tel Aviv Marathon events on Feb 24.  In addition to the 42km run there is a half-marathon, 10km run, 5km run, 42km cycle race and a kids mini-marathon.  Set along the beautiful coast and amongst the city’s famous metropolitan sites.

The Jerusalem Wine Experience (Feb 22-23) at Jerusalem’s First Station allows you to taste some of Israel’s finest boutique wines. Participating wineries include Yaffo, Ramat Negev, Metsuda, Jerusalem, Morelli, Kishor, Tanya, Netofa and Haroe.

Eilat’s dolphins are not encaged but free to come and go when they please. Israeli biologists have discovered that dolphins have their own names for each other, their own language and can even remember dolphins from the past.

On the heels of his franchise’s latest Super Bowl title, New England Patriots owner and five-time National Football League (NFL) champion Robert Kraft has announced that he will donate $6 million to a new regulation-sized American football stadium near Jerusalem.

Israeli stamps issued during February feature the ancient Jewish sites of Bet She’arim Necropolis and Bet-Guvrin Caves – both UNESCO World Heritage sites.  Other stamps feature Etsel, Krav Maga, 120 years of the Zionist Organization of America and Aromatic plants.

In one day, actress and writer Renny Grinshpan and Jerusalem U director Chloé Valdary make shakshuka, learn self-defense, attend a peace pre-school, taste wine in the Gush, visit a petting zoo, ride a very long zip line, go surfing, attend yeshiva, breakdance, watch basketball, hit the bar and enjoy a live band.