Meir Todress Licensed Tour Guide Hebrew English German

12/09/2016

01/08/2016

02/05/2016

Haggada in German - In Atlit detention camp

21/01/2016

Hansen's hospital - past and present
Situated in what today is one of Jerusalem’s most affluent neighborhoods is an architectural treasure: the hansen hospital which appears on the list of buildings intended for preservation under the auspices of the society for preservation of Israel heritage sites (t.b.a [city building plan] 2097).

Established in 1887 by the city’s protestant community as the Jesus Hilfe Asyl (jesus help asylum), it was designed by conrad schick, a german missionary and self-taught architect. The spacious two-story building was set in a large, walled compound containing four water cisterns, a vegetable garden, fruit trees and livestock, and was designed to be self-sufficient. Each floor had access to its own toilet via a bridge.

30/08/2015

The Memorial Museum Of Hungarian Speaking Jewry
Tucked away in a small garden opposite the Yigal Allon Cultural Center, you will find one of the hidden gems of Safed. A museum dedicated to the lost communities of Hungarian Jewry.

Hungarian Jewish Life
Jews lived in Hungary for over 1000 years until the community was devastated and destroyed in 1944 during the Holocaust. However, despite this devastation, the Museum is dedicated to the life and times of Jews in pre-war Hungary, as well as to the community's resistance during the Occupation, and focuses very little on the destruction of the community.

22/07/2015

The Friends of Zion Museum in Israel invites you to a fascinating journey through time, learning and experiencing the stories of men and women not of the Jewish religion, that played a significant role in helping the people of the Promise return to the Holy land.

16/06/2015

Jordan River Village, Israel - the place in the Middle East where children with serious illnesses can just be kids.



Mission:

By creating free, fun-filled, memorable, empowering, medically sound and safe camping experiences, the Jordan River Village enriches the lives of children of all ethnic and religious backgrounds in Israel, who suffer from a chronic or life-threatening illness.

The Camp:

The Village’s 60-acre, wheelchair-accessible campus in the Lower Galilee of Israel is the only camp of its kind in the Middle East. Open year-round, the Village can accommodate up to 64 campers during each session.

JRV has everything expected at a children’s camp: 12 bright and comfortable camper cabins, a communal dining hall, theater, sports center, arts & crafts building, a specially heated and treated pool, library, petting zoo, adventure tower, and more. The Village also has a state-of-the-art, yet unobtrusive 24-hour medical center.



Children who visit the Village have the experience of a lifetime. They leave their illnesses at the door, and participate in the broad range of camp activities enabling them to have fun, succeed, come together, and discover new things. In addition, campers meet other children who face challenges similar to their own, and make life-long friends, and circles of support.
http://www.jrv.org.il

Jordan River Village continues to welcome and accommodate sick children to the Village and expand its activities with other entities.

07/06/2015

The Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery was founded in 1996, on the initiative of local residents and artists who wanted to bring quality contemporary art to the city and its population and to exhibit original Arab and Palestinian art.

With a lack of other art galleries in the Arab sector in Israel, the gallery has become an important social and cultural meeting place. Contemporary art exhibits, symposiums, creative workshops and seminars have drawn large audiences and have established the gallery as an important center in the local and international culture scene.

The gallery operates under the auspices of the El-Sabar Association, with a membership that includes intellectual and cultural figures from the entire Wadi Ara region. The association is a non profit organization and is supported by funds from the Ministry of Education of the State of Israel, the local municipality, various foundations, private donations and contributions from local residents.

22/05/2015

The Ilana Goor Museum Building in Tel Aviv

The Museum building stands on a hill in Old Jaffa and constitutes an architectural pearl and a work of art in itself with its unique view of the Mediterranean Sea. The Museum experience allows the visitors to depart on a fascinating journey which starts in the 18th century. The building was constructed in 1742, as the first Jewish home outside of the Jaffa walls, by Yaakov Zonana, who served as the head of “Committee of Officers in Kushta” in Constantinople and took care of the financial debts of the Jewish community. The original function of the building was as an inn for pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Apart from it being a half-way stop for the pilgrims, it also served as a shelter protecting them from robbers, who roamed the walls of Old Jaffa.

In the second half of the 19th century the building served as a factory for the manufacture of soaps and perfumes based on olive oil which was, at that time, a major export for the Land of Israel.

In 1949 the building was used in part as a synagogue for a community of Libyan Jews. In the fifties new immigrants from the Balkan States were housed in Jaffa and the Museum building also served then as housing, under difficult sanitation conditions, without a regular supply of electricity and water. In the seventies Old Jaffa attracted many artists who decided to live in the area and to open small, unique galleries there. Ilana Goor also came to the area and in 1983 purchased a small part of the ancient building which served her at that time as a private residence. At the start of the nineties she decided to open a Museum in Israel in which she would be able to display her artworks and her huge art collection. In due course she purchased the rest of the building without knowing what was contained in it. She immediately began intensive reconstruction work which took three years during which she found some sensational discoveries including pieces of actual information which verified records found in historical documents.

07/01/2015

Museum Notrimin Kibbutz Hanita
The Notrim lit. Guards were a Jewish Police Force set up by the British in the Mandatory Palestine in 1936 to help defend Jewish lives and property during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine
As notrim thousands of young men had their first experience of military training, which Moshe Shertok and Eliyahu Golomb cited as one of the fruits of the Haganah's policy of havlagah.

The British authorities maintained, financed and armed the Notrim until the end of the Mandate, even though they knew that although the force was nominally answerable to the Palestine Police Force it was in fact controlled by the Haganah.

02/01/2015

The Open Museum – Kibbutz Negba
Negba was founded in July 1939 in the middle of an area surrounded by hostile Arab villages as an appropriate Zionist response to the British Land Law. There were many obstacles: land of low quality and water with a high content of chlorine, but the settlement overcame the difficulties and was established on the night following Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) of 1946. Negba became a departure base for the establishment of further 11 outposts in the Negev. With its steadfastness Negba blocked the Egyptian army and prevented it from occupying Gedera and Rehovot.

What’s at the site: a reconstruction of the “Homa ve Migdal” (“Tower and Stockade”) structure, historic films at the dining room barracks, the Egyptian tank, the monument at the military cemetery, the “Tom and Tomer Hill” in memory of the 73 victims of the Helicopter Disaster.

23/12/2014

Tel Hai court yard
the dramatic events of 1920, when Tel-Hai and some other Jewish settlements in Upper Galilee were cut from the central part of the country and attacked by Arabs. Yosef Trumpeldor was at the head of the battle and was killed with other seven soldiers. Every year people gather here to honor the heroes.

02/12/2014

The Great Courtyard of Merhavia
Merhavia, the first Jewish settlement in the Jezreel Valley, was established over an ancient hill. A crusade fortress named LA FEVE of the French Templars was located at the site, and The Battle of Mount Tabor, Napoleon’s greatest victory in the Land of Israel, took place around it. Only in November 1910 did Jewish settlement at the site begin in the form of an agricultural cooperation.
According to the ideas of the economist and the German-Jewish sociologist Prof. Franz Oppenheimer.Where members receive a salary differential, each according to his contribution.(As todays Kibbutzim)

The Great Courtyard, containing Golda Meir’s room during her first days in the Land

23/11/2014

he Valley Train site – Kfar Yehoshua
Near the entrance to moshav Kfar Yehoshua, on the western part of the Jezreel Valley, is a narrow road running along a line of old and impressive stone houses, lying at the heart of tall eucalyptus grove. It was here that the station of Al-Shamam operated for nearly 50 years – one of the first and impressive stations of the mythological “Valley Train”.

The railway, which was laid down in the beginning of the 20th century by the Turks, under German supervision, connected Haifa and Daraa in Trans-Jordan, and connected from there to the route of the Hejaz railway – from Damascus via Amman to the Arabian Peninsula. The railway’s branch in Land of Israel was called the “Valley Train”.

18/11/2014

Ayalon Institute - Rehovot
Next to the Rehovot Science Park, on Kibbutz Hill, stands the Ayalon Institute, which tells one of the fascinating and mysterious stories in the history of the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel. Here, beneath the ground, and right under the nose of the British, a factory was created for the production of 9mm bullets for the Sten submachine gun, which was the personal weapon of Palmach fighters. The factory lay eight metres below the ground and was the size of a tennis court. The task was assigned to the members of the Scouts A group, who were joined by others, a total of 45 young men and women. The site operated under complete secrecy from 1945 until 1948, a period in which over four million bullets were produced.

12/11/2014

MiSho'a liTkuma Museum - Yad Mordechai
The story of the Jewish people in the diaspora and the Land of Israel, from the end of the 19th century to the establishment of the State, is told at the “From Holocaust to Resurrection” Museum, the Battle of 1948 site and the Anielewicz Memorial. The sites place a special emphasis on the 1948 battle at Yad Mordechai and the southern front and on Mordechai Anielewicz, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising commander after whom the Kibbutz is named, the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising that took place there. All the commemoration are situated within kibbutz Yad Mordechai and fit into the kibbutz’s landscape. Additionally, a museum named “Kibbutz shel Paam” (“A kibbutz of the old days”), describing the early days of the kibbutz, has been set up in one of the kibbutz’s first buildings.

05/11/2014

The Or Torah (Tunisian) Synagogue’s claim to fame is that it is literally covered in mosaics – every floor, wall, ceiling and step!
This unique house of prayer is the dream of Acre resident Zion Badasche, who has made its construction his life’s work since 1955. Badasche also named it the Djerba Synagogue, after the Jewish community on the island by that name off the coast of his native Tunisia. The mosaics were manufactured for Or Torah by the workshop at Kibbutz Eilon in the Upper Galilee. The lower floor depicts dozens of birds and animals, and motifs that adorned ancient synagogue mosaics such as the menorah and the shofar; the harp and other musical instruments used in the Temple are also depicted. The main prayer hall has seven Torah arks and a dome adorned with symbols of the tribes, signs of the zodiac from ancient synagogue floors, and some of the building’s 140 stained-glass windows. The women’s gallery is embellished with scenes of the matriarchs and other Bible heroines. Modern Jewish and Israeli history is also amply represented.

18/10/2014

The Atlit "Illegal" Immigrant Detention Camp tells the story of the struggle of Jews fleeing Europe (Ma’apilim) from N**I persecution and death, trying to reach British controlled Palestine, only to be incarcerated in camps similar in appearance to the N**I camps of Europe. In October 1945, a daring military operation freed the 208 detainees. On the site: a recently purchased ship, similar in size and appearance to those used to transport immigrants to Israel, the notorious disinfection facility, a model of the original camp, restored barracks, a computerized information database

29/09/2014

The open Museum Tefen
The Car Collection
The Tefen vintage car collection features some forty models of cars dating from the early 20th century to the present. This rare private collection is owned by industrialist Eitan Wertheimer and is the largest collection of its kind in Israel and one of the largest in the world. The collection expresses part of a comprehensive world view that illustrates the development of industry, in general, and of the automobile industry, in particular.

22/08/2014

Mazkeret Batya was established on November 7, 1883 by 11 pioneers from Russia and 7 local Jews. It was originally called Ekron, the first agricultural settlement of the Hovevei Zion movement. The land was purchased by Baron Rothschild in an early attempt to introduce Jewish farming in Palestine. Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever was instrumental in mobilizing funding and organizing the settlers. Mohilever's remains were later reinterred in the Mazkeret Batya cemetery. In 1887 the name was changed to Mazkeret Batya, in memory of Betty Solomon de Rothschild, mother of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild.