Zahi Shaked A tour guide in Israel and his camera zahigo25@walla.com +972-54-6905522 tel סיור עם מורה הדרך ומדריך הטיולים צחי שקד 0546905522
My name is Zahi Shaked
In 2000 I became a registered liscenced tourist guide.
My dedication in life is to pass on the ancient history of the Holy Land.

Following upon many years of travel around the world, which was highlighted by a very exciting emotional and soul-searching meeting with the Dalai Lama, I realized that I had a mission. To pass on the the history of the Holy Land, its religions, and in particular, the birth and development of Christianity.

In order to fulfill this "calling" in the best way possible, I studied in depth, visited, and personally experienced each and every important site of the ancient Christians. I studied for and received my first bachelors degree in the ancient history of the Holy Land, and am presently completing my studies for my second degree.(Masters)



Parralel to my studies, and in order to earn a living, I was employed for many years in advertising. What I learned there was how to attract the publics attention, generate and, increase interest, and assimilate information. All this I use as tools to describe, explain and deepen the interest in the sites that we visit. From my experience, I have learned that in this way, the Holy Land becomes more than just history, and that the large stones that we see scattered about in dissaray, join together one by one until they become - a Byzantine Church. This also happens when I lead a group of Pilgrims in the Steps of Jesus. We climb to the peak of Mount Precipice, "glide" over the land to the Sea of Galilee, land on the water and "see" the miracle which enfolds before us. This is a many faceted experience. Not only history which you will remember and cherish, but an experience which I hope will be inplanted in your hearts and minds, and will accompany you all the days of your life.
Jerusalem Mount of Olives BW 2010-09-20 07-57-31.JPG
JERUSALEM Mount of Olives Cemetery.JPG

Aerial view of the mountain
The Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives, including the Silwan necropolis, is the most ancient and most important cemetery in Jerusalem. Burial on the Mount of Olives started some 3,000 years ago in the First Temple Period, and continues to this day.[1] The cemetery contains anywhere between 70,000 and 2 or 300,000 tombs from various periods, including the tombs of famous figures in Jewish history.
In the 19th century special significance was attached to Jewish cemeteries in Jerusalem, since they were the last meeting place not only of Jerusalemites but also of Jews from all over the world. Over the years, many Jews in their old age came to Jerusalem in order to live out the rest of their lives there and to be buried in its holy soil.[2]

During the First and Second Temple Periods the Jews of Jerusalem were buried in burial caves scattered on the slopes of the Mount, and from the 16th century the cemetery began to take its present shape.[1]

The old Jewish cemetery sprawled over the slopes of the Mount of Olives overlooking the Kidron Valley (Valley of Jehoshaphat), radiating out from the lower, ancient part, which preserved Jewish graves from the Second Temple period; here there had been a tradition of burial uninterrupted for thousands of years. The cemetery was quite close to the Old City, its chief merit being that it lay just across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount: according to Jewish tradition, it is here that the Resurrection of the Dead would begin[2] once Messiah will appear on the Mount of Olives and head toward the Temple Mount.

Many famous names are buried in the cemetery such as Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, known as the Ohr ha-Chaim, and Rabbi Yehuda Alcalay who were among the heralds of Zionism; Hasidic rebbes of various dynasties and Rabbis of "Yishuv haYashan" (the old – pre-Zionist - Jewish settlement) together with Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, and his circle; Henrietta Szold, the founder of the Hadassah organization; the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of Modern Hebrew, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Nobel Laureate for Literature, and Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel School of Art; Israel's sixth Prime Minister Menachem Begin; the victims of the 1929 Arab riots and 1936–39 Arab revolt, the fallen from the 1948 War of Independence, together with Jews of many generations in their diversity.

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