In a Nutshell

Neot Kedumim — the Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is a unique endeavor to re-create the physical setting of the Bible in all its depth and detail. Far more than a "garden" showing various biblical plants, Neot Kedumim embodies the panorama and power of the landscapes that helped shape the values of the Bible and provided a rich vocabulary for expressing them.

The Bible conveys its ideas not in abstract terms, but through a clear and vivid record of long human interaction with the land of Israel. Neot Kedumim draws on a variety of disciplines — such as Bible scholarship, botany, zoology, geography, history, and archaeology — to bring the Bible and its commentaries to life.

Literally with the Bible in one hand and a spade in the other, Neot Kedumim has constructed a network of natural and agricultural landscapes bearing names that indicate their textual source:

• the Forest of Milk and Honey
• the Dale of the Song of Songs
• Isaiah's Vineyard
• the Fields of the Seven Varieties
• and many more.

Thousands of tons of soil were trucked in and spread on the eroded hillsides, reservoirs were dug to catch runoff rainwater, and ancient terraces were restored. Habitats were created for such varied species as cedars from the snow-covered mountains of Lebanon and date palms from Sinai desert oases.

Hundreds of varieties of biblical and talmudic plants; wild and domesticated animals; ancient and reconstructed olive and wine presses, threshing floors, cisterns, and ritual baths bring to life the literal roots of the biblical tradition in the soil of the land of Israel.

By reuniting text and context, Neot Kedumim opens up before the visitor Israel's nature as the idiom of the Bible. The symbols, prayers, and holidays of the Jewish and Christian heritage, observed and preserved for thousands of years, blossom in a new and colorful dimension at Neot Kedumim, the world's only biblical landscape reserve.

A non-profit organization in Israel, Neot Kedumim has received international recognition as a model of restoration ecology — the reclamation of ravaged landscapes. In 1994, Neot Kedumim won the Israel Prize, the highest honor awarded by the State of Israel, for its special contribution to the society and the state.