Gil Zohar

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto, Canada in 1955 and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. A licensed tour guide, he's a frequent contributor to The Jerusalem Post, The Jerusalem Report, Segula magazine, and ReligionUnplugged.com. Gil wrote 100 pages of Fodor’s Guide to Israel (7th edition, 2009), and six books in the Voices From Israel series (Mitchell Lane, Delaware, 2016).

He can be reached at GilZohar@rogers.com or +972 (0)524 817 482.

For more information see www.GilZohar.ca.


 THE WORDS ‘arbeit macht frei’ hang above the gate at Auschwitz.

Lost music from Auschwitz performed after 80 years

  A view of the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, in April 2025.

Opening of Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum gets postponed yet again

 A SyrianAir Airbus A320-200 waits to take off to Aleppo, on the tarmac of Damascus International Airport, 2020

Do Jewish and Muslim leaders engage in metaphysical battles on the astral plane?


From Jerusalem to Rome: Veronica’s veil exhibited at St. Peter’s

Skeptics consider the relic, allegedly used to dab Jesus' sweat and blood, a fraud invented during the Crusader period.

 Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem.

Jewish war photographer Robert Capa's life and work honored in Budapest

Capa's tumultuous and all-too-brief life symbolizes the cosmopolitan and tragic Central European milieu of Budapest Jewry in the 20th century.

Robert Capa

Educational Bookshop and the cultural institutions of east Jerusalem

Notwithstanding the current toxic political climate, some arguably naïve and ever-hopeful Jerusalemites haven’t lost faith in the dream of coexistence.

 Ahmad Muna of the Educational Bookshop.

Before Trump and Gaza: A look at the first US attempt at annexing parts of the Holy Land

Long before US President Donald Trump proposed placing Gaza under American control, US Christians had already established colonies in Jaffa and Jerusalem.

 An image of the American Colony in Jerusalem, founded by Christians from the United States.

Crashed ‘carma’: Haifa exhibit shows history of Israel's failed auto industry

From a peak during the 1960s of manufacturing more than 3,000 cars annually, 1980 – the last full year of production – saw just 540 cars roll off the assembly line. In 1981, the plant shut its gates.

 Yitzhak Shubinsky in the first sports car that left the factory, 1960s.

Jimmy Carter eulogized for a lifetime of good deeds and spirituality

Breslover Hassidim recall he saved the mausoleum of their Rebbe in Uman, Ukraine.

 President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Menachem Begin reciting Friday night kiddish at the Camp David Presidential retreat, Maryland, September 1978

NLI commemorates centenary of Franz Kafka’s death

While Kafka (1883-1924) passed away June 3, the exhibition opened six months later – delayed by the war in Gaza and Lebanon.

 A poster from the Kafka exhibition at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

Helping hands: An inside view of life after Hamas captivity

Emily remains a textbook case of PTSD. “She’s living day to day, enjoying every day,” her father says with a dash of optimism.

 Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre, meets her father Thomas Hand after being released as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, at an unknown location in Israel.

Death, resilience in Elazar: A Gush Etzion settlement that lost 6 people since Oct. 7

Picturesque and inviting, Elazar has long been a home for the National Religious, close to Jerusalem with a great quality of life. But since October 7, grief and resilience have taken over the town.

 The entrance to the Israeli settlement of Elazar in Gush Etzion in the West Bank.

Gaza war art exhibition at in Petah Tikva confronts the trauma of October 7

“Album Darom: Israeli Photographers in Tribute to the People of the Western Negev” is the first group artistic endeavor in Israel to confront the boundless tragedy of Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

 Destruction in the South after October 7.