Who will guide you

I'm a tour guide licensed by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. I grew up in the Czech Republic and have lived in Israel since 2011; I hold both passports, guide in Czech, Slovak and English, and sit on the board of the Israel–Czech Chamber of Commerce.

The licence takes about two years — archaeology, geology, modern history, first aid, and a serious grounding in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, alongside the other communities who live here: Druze, Bahá'í, Circassians and more. State examinations at the end. What the course can't teach is the part I enjoy most: working out what a particular group actually wants from a country this crowded with things, and shaping the days around that. Guiding taught me something else. The longer I did it, the more my guests' questions ran past anything a guiding course covers — about the region, about the neighbours, about why things here are the way they are. After the 7th of October 2023 those questions became urgent, and so did my own. It was not only the communities around Gaza; the northern border changed, the West Bank — Judea and Samaria — changed, and so did the country as a whole. So I went back to university. I'm studying for a B.A. at Reichman University, in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, on the Terrorism and Homeland Security track. It has changed how I understand this land and how it functions alongside its neighbours, and if you want it, I'm glad to bring that into our day — with the questions and the competing accounts of them. I learn a great deal from you, too.

You may be coming for the Gospels, or for the archaeology and the history, or for the wine and the markets and the food. You may be coming because you have followed this country in the news for years and want to see how much of it holds up. My guests have included Czech government ministers, bankers and industrialists, visiting sports teams and official delegations — and families with no agenda at all, who matter to me every bit as much. Everyone who spends a week here goes home carrying an impression of this country. I'd like yours to be your own — built on what you saw and heard while you were standing here.

Tell me when you're coming and what you're curious about, and we'll start from there.