Real learning engagement is tactile, immersive, and sensory-rich. You don’t get it from a podium or just waving around a laser pointer at a PowerPoint, and you certainly don’t get it by telling kids to “…now stand back politely, shut up and listen.” You get it by putting tools in their hands, sweet and savory scents in their senses, and letting pure curiosity drive the room.

​That was the blueprint for yesterday’s Neshika Honey Infusion workshop.

​The session kicked off around the table with pure anatomy and optics. Handing the kids faceted compound-eye lenses shifts the entire perspective immediately—suddenly they are looking at the world through a grid of thousands of microscopic facets, trying to decipher movement the way a worker bee does in flight. Over the indoor observation box, Miri guided them through the living architecture of the comb, tracking nurse bees, honey cells, and the silent choreography happening behind the glass.

​Next came the flavor lab. Out came the jars of raw Galilee honey, whole cinnamon sticks, aromatic cloves, cardamon, and dried citrus peel. Crafting custom infusions isn't just a recipe; it’s chemistry and sensory exploration. The room filled with the sharp, warm scent of crushed spices against rich honey as wooden tasting spoons worked overtime, testing balances and stirring take-home blends.

By the time the suits and hooded veils went on, the transition was complete. Stepping outside into the sunlight and walking straight up to the working hive boxes felt like the most natural next step in the world. Standing inches from thousands of flying insects with calm, focused smiles wasn't an act of bravery—it was just the effortless byproduct of having spent an hour understanding exactly how their world works.

Tactile learning wins every single time. And because nobody in the group had to hold up a smartphone or fiddle with camera settings, every reaction—from wide-eyed prism discoveries to pure tasting-spoon focus—was captured cleanly and candidly in real time.

​Planning a northern route for a private family, milestone celebration, or boutique tour group? We build custom, hands-on apiary workshops tailored for travelers who want real edutainment.

​[VIP & Sponsor Media Add-On: We offer dedicated, full-session documentary photo and video packages for private clients and sponsors who want high-resolution, candid captures of the entire experience without having to watch it through a phone screen. Reach out directly to coordinate private booking dates and media coverage for upcoming itineraries: miri@neshikha.com. Clients receive a polished, print-ready online Adobe Lightroom gallery of candid captures and environmental portraits, as well as video highlights of the visit - allowing everyone to stay completely present in the moment and share the buzz.]

​Read Traveler Reviews and guest experiences at Neshika on TripAdvisor.

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Watch them as they link together across an open air gap to ferry the workers back from the demo frame.

Rather than flying blind or waiting for help, they interlock legs and bodies mid-air, engineering an organic suspension bridge across the gap. Pure, unscripted instinct at work.

Is that cool, or what?!?

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Photographer’s Notes

​Shooting directly into late-day backlight through a semi-translucent textile is a brutal test of sensor dynamic range. I pushed the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra into Expert RAW to manage the heavy contrast stack without crushing shadow detail or turning the linen weave into digital mush.

​The fabric functions as a literal rear-projection scrim. The close-proximity beads and ceramic Chai star cast crisp, high-frequency shadow silhouettes, while the distant yard foliage dissolves into soft, diffused bokeh discs.

Here is the kicker, and an exercise for street and creative shooting: I didn’t realize it resembled an Israeli flag until I pulled the DNG into Lightroom Mobile. When you’re on location, ( hyperlocal - in this case, our kitchen) you compose for one thing—the light, the shadows, the texture—and usually think you know what you’re shooting. Then you get to the digital darkroom and, hopefully and often enough, realize you captured something else entirely. In this case, an abstract Israeli flag: The horizontal shade ribs mirror the top and bottom stripes, while the central Magen David silhouette and it's displaced shadow sit right against the cool patch of open blue sky filtering through the weave. Unintentional geometry, revealed after the fact.

​Technically, the Lightroom Mobile pass just needed a localized linear mask to rein in the blown top-left highlights and a tight crop on the left-edge window clutter to lock in the graphic structure.

Then, I tweaked the shadows and light, and texture, dehaze, and color luminance, until it glowed a bit more.

Whaddya’ think?

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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​There is a moment in Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths where Paulo (Zeljko Ivanek) is taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of Hans (Christopher Walken), draws a shotgun, and barks: “Put your hands up!”

​Walken doesn’t flinch. He just looks at him with that signature, unblinking detachment:

​Paulo: Put your hands up!

Hans: No.

Paulo: What?

Hans: I said no.

Paulo: Why not?

Hans: Because I don’t want to.

Paulo: But I’ve got a gun…

Hans: I don’t care.

Paulo: It doesn’t make any sense!

Hans: Too bad.

​The exchange short-circuits the gunman entirely. The whole machinery of intimidation relies on the target accepting the role of the trembling victim. The moment you refuse to play along with the script, their leverage vanishes:

Lately, watching horrific, disturbing, and depressing updates of the raw, venomous sewage and bile being spit at Jews and the Jewish State around the globe, that incongruous desert showdown and Walken's dismissive reply has been playing on a loop in my head.

​To be clear: this isn’t about looking down on our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora who are “suddenly” bearing the brunt of a vicious, violent and ugly cultural, political, and online assault. We worry for them, and the tragic inversion—where we in the Middle East fear for the physical safety of Jews walking through London, Toronto, or Manhattan—is deeply felt.

​This is aimed directly at the howling lynch mob.

​It is aimed at the fierce, deranged online hatred and the bomb, gun knife, and megaphone-wielding zealots who have completely detached from reality. The hysterics have gone so far beyond parody—a nonstop, spittle-flecked and foaming loop of “genocide, starvation, colonialist, apartheid”—that they genuinely believe their noise has broken us. They think we’re sitting here quaking in our boots, sweating over their approval, frantically drafting defensive essays and fervent “Letters to the editor” to prove our right to exist.

​We aren’t.

We are not going to spend the next eighty years litigating the previous eighty over basic historical facts with people whose entire worldview is built on ignorance, malevolence and bad faith. We aren’t going to show up to the kangaroo court date.

We simply do not care what you think.

Meanwhile, look at what’s actually happening up here, across the northern border, in Lebanon, 42 km/26 mi. as the crow flies from where I'm writing this in Tzfat (roughly 14 km/8.7 mi. north of the border):

”Tunnels, Combatants, and Three Hills: The Secret of the Ali al-Taher Ridge in Southern Lebanon Posing a Challenge to Israel. Spoiler (Israeli commentator): ‘Part of it is likely already under our forces’ control.’

Attention is turning toward the hills of the Ali al-Taher ridge in the Nabatieh District of southern Lebanon amid escalating Israeli operations in the area. This comes alongside reports that Israel seeks to enforce a new security and geographic reality, granting it a military advantage and fire-control over zones stretching toward the Beqaa Valley and the Lebanese coast.

​Activity in southern Lebanon is gaining momentum as the bombardment of residential neighborhoods and the demolition of homes and land by bulldozers continue, while the Ali al-Taher hills and their vicinity remain subject to repeated raids and strikes.

​Alongside the escalation, it appears that the map of “pilot zones slated for evacuation by Israel” is not expected to expand in the south for now due to Israeli pushback, while Rome will host the eighth round of US-sponsored Lebanese-Israeli negotiations on September 1.

​Knowledgeable sources told Al-Arabiya that the Lebanese Army Commander, Rudolph Haykal, intends to visit Rome in the next two days, where he is expected to hold talks regarding the verification mechanism for the pilot zones, with Italy proposed as a participant.

​Regarding the Ali al-Taher ridge, diplomatic sources confirmed to Al-Arabiya that there is still no American green light permitting Israeli forces to execute a large-scale military operation toward the area.

​The sources explained that Israel, for its part, will continue conducting limited, near-daily military operations backed by aerial reconnaissance and monitoring coverage. The objective is to lay siege to Hezbollah fighters inside the Ali al-Taher facility and prevent them from leaving.

​The sources noted that Hezbollah announced, via mediators, its refusal to hand over the Ali al-Taher facility to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

​Conversely, sources familiar with Hezbollah’s position stated that Israel seeks to control the facility through one of two avenues: conducting a large-scale military operation after securing US approval, or pushing the Lebanese military to seize control in exchange for granting Israel free rein to inspect and investigate inside it.

​The sources added that the Lebanese Armed Forces rejected the notion of seizing the facility and conveyed to the President of the Republic its questions regarding guarantees preventing Israeli forces from re-entering under the pretext of verifying it is free of military activity.

​The sources emphasized that any large-scale Israeli operation against the facility on the Ali al-Taher ridge would reshuffle the deck and alter the rules of engagement, noting that Hezbollah will defend the complex to the utmost of its ability should Israel proceed with a major assault on the area.

​For his part, former South Litani Sector Commander Brig. Gen. Khalil al-Jamil dismissed the possibility that Hezbollah combatants are completely besieged within the Ali al-Taher facility. He suggested they are still able to move to and from the site—albeit with difficulty—based on recent security incidents.

​Al-Jamil assessed that the facility likely served as a command center for Hezbollah’s southern sector, given its strategic location overlooking Jezzine, Mount Rihan, and the Iqlim al-Tuffah region, its proximity to the city of Nabatieh, and its position on the northern edge of the Litani River.

​A facility of this scale would likely accommodate at least 100 personnel for operations and management.

​Al-Jamil noted that intelligence gleaned from major facilities the IDF announced it had uncovered indicates that Hezbollah’s senior operational command in the south spanned three primary hubs: the Central Sector in Bint Jbeil, the Eastern Sector in Qantara, and the Western Sector in Majdal Zoun—emphasizing that Israeli forces have demolished these hubs.

​He explained that the Ali al-Taher area comprises three interconnected hills—Ali al-Taher, Al-Dabsheh, and Al-Tahra—covering roughly 4.5 square kilometers, with a length of about 3 kilometers and a width of up to 1.5 kilometers.

​He concluded by noting assessments indicating the area may house an interconnected tunnel network similar to those in the Gaza Strip, spanning the heights and branching out toward neighboring villages.”

[Original Arab Media Sources & Investigative Reports:
​Al Arabiya / Regional Syndication: أنفاق ومقاتلون و3 تلال... سرّ علي الطاهر الذي يشغل إسرائيل (Tunnels, Combatants, and 3 Hills: The Secret of Ali al-Taher Preoccupying Israel)
​Independent Arabia (Tony Bouloss): فوقها إسرائيل وتحتها “حزب الله”... ماذا يجري في “علي الطاهر”؟ (Above it is Israel, Beneath it is Hezbollah: What is Happening in Ali al-Taher?)
​Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Analysis: لبنان: تلّة علي الطاهر جنوباً تعود إلى الواجهة من جديد]

And now, for comparison, let's take a look at the last few days in Tzfat, within direct rocket range of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies:

​Tzfat Klezmer Festival – Opening Night Energy:

​Night Two Crowds & Streets:

​This isn’t staged municipal PR slop ‘n’ spin, by the way. The reality on the ground is that the Israel Police had to literally close the main vehicular entrances to Tzfat because the mountain was overwhelmed by visitors. As residents, we could barely find parking because tens of thousands of Israelis packed into the ancient stone alleys anyway. The crowds are such that I myself had to hustle over to my temporary parking slot near the Saraya Fortress and move our car, twice, when the cops threatened to tow it off (to make room for security vehicles).

​Look at those clips. That is an older gentleman hopping off the curb to dance full-tilt with a virtuoso violinist in a white blazer. That is packed courtyards, kids on shoulders, brass sections blasting into the Galilee night, and a community refusing to surrender a single inch of life or joy.

​But please understand: we're not naive; the external threats aimed at us are physical, armed, and lethal. As a volunteer community “Tzachsh” Resilience Team member (see notes below), and retired reporter, I follow the local security updates, leaks, news, and rumors obsessively - mostly so my neighbors don't have to. We handle that external threat matrix through the IDF, our own collective resilience, and our eternal covenant with this Land. We will defend ourselves by any and all means necessary.

​As for the screaming peanut gallery and the global chorus demanding that we panic, apologize, or fade quietly into history?

​Read this in Christopher Walken's voice: ”Too bad.”

“TZACHI / TZACHASH (צח"י / צח"ש) stands for Tzevet Choshen / Cherum Yishuvi or Tzevet Choshen Shchunati (Community / Neighborhood Resilience and Emergency Team).

​”The closest American equivalent is a FEMA CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), but tailored for ongoing wartime conditions, direct rocket attacks, and prolonged regional crises.

​”What It Actually Is:

“It is an organized, trained network of local civilian residents who manage the civil, logistics, and social infrastructure of a neighborhood or village during emergencies—especially during the critical window before or alongside national emergency services.

“​Key Roles & Responsibilities:

“​Vulnerable Resident Mapping: Tracking the elderly, mobility-impaired, and families with special needs to ensure they have shelter, medication, and food during attacks.

“​Crisis Information & Comms: Serving as the verified information hub to push real-time municipal alerts, dispel rumors, and provide clear directions during power or network outages.

​”Psychological First Aid: Providing immediate emotional and social support to residents suffering from shock or trauma after an impact.

“​Logistics & Community Continuity: Coordinating neighborhood supply distribution, shelter maintenance, and basic local operations when roads are blocked or services are delayed.

“​While an armed security squad (Kitat Konenut) handles direct physical threats, the Tzachsh handles the civil survival, welfare, and operational resilience of the population itself.”

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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Just finished a restful Shabbat, and tomorrow morning it’s back into the hives early to check the bees, pull frames, and lug in the heavy lifting for extraction this week. People see the finished product, but they rarely see the sweaty, hard physical labor that comes before it.

Eventually, all that work lands on the kitchen table.

With Rosh Hashanah coming up, Neshika co-founder Chaya Ben-Baruch and her daughter Keren are finishing up the packaging on our Neshika lip balms. Keren has Down Syndrome, and that’s simply part of how we run things here—no big marketing campaign about inclusion, just real life and daily work.

Every autumn brings its own rhythm, but in the weeks leading up to the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the work takes on a particular weight. Honey isn't just a harvest here; it’s an intent to be blessed and savored at family tables.

At this table at Beit Neshika here in Tzfat, in northern Israel, sit Chaya Ben-Baruch and her daughter, Keren. Their task is deceptively simple: sorting, labeling, and packing Neshika lip balms. Tubes of beeswax, honey, and natural oils prepared in the kitchen next door pass between hands that have worked together for decades. Keren has Down Syndrome, and that fact isn't tucked away or treated as a side note—it is central to who we are. Inclusion isn't a campaign for Neshika; it’s baked directly into the fabric of the daily work.

To capture this without slipping into cheap nostalgia requires deliberate technical choices—and an appreciation for managing the harsh, unyielding western light of a late Mediterranean afternoon.

Imaging: The Work in Motion

Eye-level perspective shifts the narrative from mechanical process to human connection. Framing Chaya in the immediate foreground creates a natural depth-of-field anchor, pulling the viewer straight to Keren’s expression across the table.

It was a strong, unforgiving afternoon light cutting through the window, but it set off their faces beautifully. It introduced a natural chiaroscuro—a concept my wife Miri often points to in our arts video series, and one I've increasingly adopted in my own work. The goal wasn't to produce something bright, sunny, and polished, but to give room to the darkness to speak. By letting the shadows hold their ground, the soft tonalities between light and deep shadow do the heavy lifting.

Underexposing with the S26 Ultra’s Expert RAW capture allowed for maximum dynamic range across that harsh contrast—holding the highlight details on Keren's face while preserving the rich, deep tones under the table.

Shadow, Form, and Texture

Dropping down to eye level gives you the human side. Framing Chaya in the foreground anchors the shot and pulls you straight across to Keren.

That strong side-light gave us a heavy, natural chiaroscuro—something my wife Miri always pushes me toward. The temptation is always to make things bright, sunny, and commercial, but I wanted to give room to the darkness. The real tonality lives in the shadows.

Stripping away color entirely forces the eye to focus purely on form, light, and subject. A monochrome conversion relies entirely on mid-tone separation.

After decades behind the camera, you build a workflow that fits like an old glove. I love building custom Leica and Hasselblad presets, but for me, a preset is always—always—just the starting point. The real work happens in the manual tweaking afterward: carving out the light, sculpting the mid-tones, and digging for the soul of the composition.

The digital equivalent of dodging and burning in the darkroom.

There is an immensely satisfying pleasure in taking a flat, two-dimensional sensor read and forcing three-dimensional humanity out of it—showing people’s souls active in a craft they love, creating something we love for Neshika.

Here, Keren holds up a single finished tube of balm—a small object against the intense backlight of the window. The strong side-lighting threatened to blow out the frame, but local shadow recovery and precise curve adjustments brought out the quiet confidence in her face without sacrificing the depth of the shadows around her.

The Overhead Dynamics

I shot these on the S26 Ultra in Expert RAW. I like shooting directly overhead here because it flattens the frame and turns the table into a working canvas. The afternoon light cutting through the window was harsh and unforgiving, but it threw sharp, defined shadows across the geometry of the tubes and boxes.

The Harvest

When you drop the color, everything gets quiet.

I’ve been shooting long enough to know that presets—even custom Leica or Hasselblad curves—are just a starting point. The real work is in the manual tweaks: bringing out shadow detail, managing contrast, and pushing a two-dimensional RAW file until you see the actual soul of the person in the frame. Look at Keren holding that tube of balm against the window light. She’s not an assistant; she owns her craft.

Anybody can write a sweet holiday greeting on a card. Building something tangible out of bees, wax, late-day light, and hard work takes time.

You can explore the full collection of handcrafted honey products and lip balms at Neshika.com.

[PS - re Substack's recent “AI text” feature: Yes, I used AI to help structure and draft this narrative. But every observation, every technical choice, every memory, and every editorial decision is entirely mine—crafted through my own exhaustive prompts, my photographs, and my hands-on creative editing across the visual, technical, and narrative frame - DB.]

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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Rosh Hashanah is coming up fast, but high honey season doesn’t stop at the Jewish holidays. Here’s what’s happening in the apiary, and how to get a jar of pure Galilee harvest onto your table—no matter where you live or what you’re celebrating. [ Supplies are Limited, so Order / Reserve Your Honey Today https://neshikha.com/shop/]

“Chagei Tishrei” (Rosh HaShannah to Succot) is right around the corner, and the clock in the apiary is ticking faster than our honeybees' buzzing wings.

At Neshika, Miri, Chaya, Kirin, and Dave—along with a few hundred thousand four-winged staffers—are working at full hive-power. We are harvesting, extracting, hand-bottling, and wrapping up gift sets. Authentic, raw, artisanal honey doesn’t come off an industrial assembly line. It takes precise timing, honest labor, heavy lifting, and a lot of care.

We’re calibrating our final holiday bottling runs right now to match incoming demand. But once this batch is spoken for, that’s it for the season.

Not Just for the High Holidays

While Rosh Hashanah puts honey center stage for apple-dipping, our harvest doesn’t care about calendar boundaries. Real raw honey is a secret weapon for the entire fall and winter holiday gauntlet:

• Thanksgiving: Perfect for honey-glazed roasted carrots, sweet potato dishes, cornbread, or a bourbon-honey turkey glaze.

• Christmas & Winter Holidays: Essential for holiday baking, glazing hams, sweetening mulled wine, or elevating a cold-weather charcuterie board with sharp cheeses.

• Gifting: An actual jar of homemade small-batch honey from the Galilee makes a thoughtful, distinctive gift that easily beats another generic bottle of wine.

If you’re ordering from overseas, locking in your order now means it arrives well ahead of the autumn and winter holiday rush.

A Note for Our Overseas Friends

We get asked all the time if we ship internationally. The short answer: Yes, absolutely. We love sending a piece of Israel to holiday tables around the world, and your support from afar means everything to our team.

The honest caveat: honey is dense, glass requires serious protective packaging, and international postage rates reflect that. Flying liquid gold across oceans isn’t cheap. But if you’re eager to bring Neshika to your table this year—or send a taste of the Galilee as a gift—we are more than happy to pack up a box for you.

A quick tip for shipping abroad: Combining jars into a larger order or splitting a shipment with a neighbor helps soften the freight cost per jar significantly.

Reserve Your Harvest

Take a quick look at your calendar, count your guests, tick off your gift list, and lock in your jars and holiday baskets today so you don’t miss out on the fresh harvest.

Sweeten your table early. Skip the rush, avoid the last-minute scramble, and get the good stuff. [ Supplies are Limited, so Order / Reserve Your Honey Today https://neshikha.com/shop/]

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Marc traded canvas for tactical gear as a security operative covering every tense, complicated friction point across the country, only to eventually pivot right back to full-time art. When your beat spans every active border zone in Israel, you don’t talk in platitudes. Expect grounded insights, sharp conversation, and an unfiltered look at life on the edge.

Key Takeaways from the ZoomCast:

• From the Studio to Security (and Back): Marc outlined his path from processing trauma with a watercolor kit during his army service in Lebanon (1982) through three decades managing regional counter-terrorism and founding Project Zevik. He explained how his son eventually took over his security firm, allowing Marc to return full-time to oil painting and landscapes.

• Grounded De-escalation: Sharing an anecdote about meeting armed PLO counterparts in a wadi to put down their guns and drink coffee, Marc made the case that real security rests on pragmatic, hyper-local choices to prevent escalation rather than on political grandstanding.

• Systemic Failures & Border Dynamics: The panel examined the contrast between security setups in the Gaza envelope and Judea/Samaria, with Marc calling out leadership across the entire political spectrum for ignoring explicit intelligence and threat assessments leading up to October 7th.

• Confronting Fringe Extremism: Addressing radical “hilltop youth,” Marc noted how roughly 300 to 400 manipulated kids inflict severe damage on the reputation of half a million law-abiding residents—recounting how he was personally bear-sprayed when stepping in to stop an altercation between Arabs and Jews.

• Art Boycotts and Diaspora Passivity: In discussing his experiences in New York galleries, Marc critiqued Western art-world boycotts of Israeli artists. He drew a sharp contrast between Diaspora Jewish institutions “hunkering down” behind physical security and Israeli artists whose resilience lies in continuing to capture beauty regardless.

• Choosing Light Over Darkness: In his final thoughts, Marc praised the psychological endurance of Israel’s youth, who navigate hostile military realities yet consistently return to civilian life choosing creation, hope, and light over despair.

Postscript: Long before Marc Provisor was managing active perimeter security or painting full-scale canvases, he was a madrich—a guide and facilitator—for Livnot U’Lhibanot | To Build & Be Built) here in Tzfat back in the 1980s. I was a participant on that third-ever immersive Jewish studies program, aimed at secular, assimilated, and disconnected college-age Jews. Marc’s leadership, example, and grounded presence were a part of my decision to make Aliyah shortly thereafter. Decades later, sitting down with him alongside Adele for Life on the Border, the conversation carried a deep sense of personal closure and gratitude. It brought a 40-year arc full circle, right back where it all started.

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop—my sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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At our educational hive at Beit Neshika, the annual summer confrontation between honeybees and wasps has officially begun.

In this corner of the world, biological defense and regional survival happen to share very similar grammar. When Vespa Orientalis - oriental wasps - move on the entrance of our demonstration beehive at Beit Neshika with decoy sorties and brutal decapitations, they are testing a threshold. They are checking whether the hive still has the memory and muscle to hold. Maybe there’s a Tu B’Av parallel.

“In modern Israel, Tu B’Av is celebrated as a holiday of love – the Jewish Valentine’s Day. But its origins run far deeper: the end of the spies’ punishment, the lifting of the ban on Benjamin, the opening of the road to Jerusalem, and much more.”(Beit Avi Chai)

The primary aggressor is massive. Reddish, thick-waisted, and marked with a sharp yellow band across its abdomen, the wasps - commonly working in pairs - hover inches off the concrete. They don’t charge blindly. They troll, seemingly idly, lazily, closely assessing the honeybees - usually only scant inches away - as the latter leave and return from foraging for nectar, pollen, and water for their hive.

The wasps’ strategy is surprisingly coordinated:

The Decoy:
One wasp may linger high, drawing the gaze and energy of the perimeter.

The Strike:
Then a second wasp swoops in low, grabbing a worker off the landing board before flying off with the prize to feed its own larvae.

On paper, the weight class favors the invader entirely. And the stakes are absolute. Wasps can easily debilitate a colony through sheer attrition. In a weak, stressed, or small hive, the loss of field bees at the entrance triggers a downward spiral: fewer foragers return, the defensive line collapses, and the wasps move inside to finish the job.

This hive, however, is built for the fight. This colony possesses the cluster density, raw energy, and hard-earned genetic instincts needed to parry the threat. They don’t panic.

Across the bottom metal slot of the hive entrance, guard bees form a tight, outward-facing defensive line. Antennae twitching, legs anchored, they calculate the distance faster and better than Iron Dome-synched radar. When a wasp touches down or hovers within striking range, guard bees don’t retreat into the dark—they lunge outward, singly and in clustered salvos to meet the incoming weight.

When contact happens, it isn’t clean. It is raw, chaotic wrestling. A guard bee locks onto the wasp’s legs or thorax, dragging both of them off the ledge onto the dirt below. On the ground, surrounded by fallen pine needles, they roll in a tight, violent knot, the bee struggling to insert its own stinger beneath the wasp’s fingernail-hard chitin armor.

When the wasp does succeed in pinning a worker, its method of execution carries a grim, unmistakable irony. It doesn’t just sting. Using its heavy front pincers, the wasp clips the bee’s neck, severing the head entirely before flying off with the torso. Literal decapitation. In this corner of the Mediterranean, that specific, barbarous mechanics of murder isn’t a dark literary metaphor or a distant biological curiosity. It is a terrifyingly familiar tactic, written directly into the recent history and trauma of October 7th, and so many similar atrocities over the last century.

As a security-minded retired newsman, watching this daily siege on a wooden ledge makes the regional parallel unavoidable. We live in an unforgiving neighborhood. The wasps don’t want to build alongside the hive; they want to raid it, drain its resources, and slaughter its populace. Like the bees, Israel finds itself perpetually forced into a posture of defense and offence against regional forces operating on attrition, asymmetrical distraction, and sudden, medieval savagery.

The contrast is stark. The honeybee’s entire existence is constructive—building comb, pollinating the land, turning harsh sun and dry blooms into sweetness. Yet survival here demands a permanent garrison at the gate, and guard bees primed to fight to the death. The individual cost is brutal. Every conflict takes a toll on workers who should be out foraging, and the threat never truly vanishes; it merely adapts to the season. Success isn’t measured by the total eradication of every hazard in the air, but by keeping the entrance secure.

Weakness in this geography invites total annihilation. A fragile, stressed colony collapses under sustained pressure. But a strong hive—backed by deep roots, collective resolve, and generations of hard-coded survival memory—parries the blow. The intruders score their strikes, and the losses are felt across the entire cluster.

Yet when the dust clears on the concrete base, the line holds; the hive remains; viable, productive, and thriving - despite the surrounding perilous threat matrix.

And maybe there’s an ancient parallel reason this defensive struggle increases around Tu B’Av.

​In Talmudic tradition, the fifteenth of Av marks the exact calendar pivot where national grief gives way to quiet, miraculous survival. It is the night the wilderness generation of the Children of Israel finally stopped dying in the sand, rising from their graves to realize the decree of death had expired. Centuries later, it was the day the Romans finally permitted the burial of the fallen defenders of Betar south of Jerusalem—whose bodies, tradition tells us—had sat uncorrupted under the heat, untouched by rot, in an unyielding defiance of nature. It was the day blockades were lifted from the roads to Jerusalem from the north, and the day wood-cutting for the Temple altar ceased because the summer sun had finished its seasoning work.

​At its core, Tu B’Av is a holiday built on improbable endurance. It commemorates the sudden turn—the moment when a siege breaks, when dead ends reopen, and when life reclaims the threshold.

​Watching our guard bees turn back an assault on a warm July morning isn’t just biology in motion. It is a metaphor of the old, hard-coded rhythm of this soil. Intruders calculate their chances using raw weight, distraction, and sudden savagery.

Yet they always miss the hidden variable: the quiet, persistent miracle of a community that refuses to be erased.

​The full moon rises over the apiary. The line holds. Inside, the sweetness remains intact.

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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​In this video, Miri and I break down the physical mechanics of bringing a rare 17th-century art book into focus. We dissect the precise lighting rig needed to bring out oil-paint texture without blowing out glossy paper, drop into a quick hands-on lesson on archival Brodart wrapping, and explore how a Baroque master manipulated shadow to survive his epoch.

​Light hasn’t changed. Only the modifiers have. - DB

[Now for the original AI-fused essay that - excuse the expression - “prompted” all this: An Italian Master Behind the Lens of a Smartphone]

Previously, the first entry in the series is here:
“Dave to Gemini AI - woke up one day with this idea: “Tell me a story about these four shots, as if you’re an artist from 17th century Italy and have never seen photography before - but you know how to critique a future photographer irregardless of the technical toys, with your well-honed experience, talent, and skills.“

Background:

To look at Fiasella’s world through a Jewish lens requires looking at the actual stones of Genoa during the 1600s. The relationship between the Republic of Genoa and its Jewish population was one of transactional utility and sharp geographic confinement. For centuries, Jews were alternately expelled and invited back solely based on the maritime republic’s shifting financial fortunes.
​By the time Fiasella was establishing his workshop in the early-to-mid 17th century, the walls were literally closing in. In 1660—just a few years before the Maestro’s death—Genoa formally established its official, walled ghetto in the dense, claustrophobic center of the old city, near the Piazza dei Gidoni. Before the confinement, Jewish merchants and physicians lived under a fragile system of temporary residence permits (condotte), wearing distinctive yellow signs on their garments to ensure they were never mistaken for the Christian majority. They were tolerated for their commerce but kept strictly outside the civic and spiritual heart of the Republic.

​When Fiasella was painting his massive altarpieces to decorate the churches of Genoa, he was working within a society that actively legally segregated the very people whose ancient texts formed the foundation of his theological imagery. The majestic, soaring light he engineered for his patrons was funded by a state that locked its Jewish residents behind gates at sunset.
​
Full disclosure: Decades behind a lens, an observant life in Israel, and the discomforting brilliance of an old master’s shadows.

As a journalist, I spent my career putting my personal feelings on a shelf, systematically dissecting the hard mechanics of breaking news. You learn to isolate your gut from your eye.

​But as I thumbed through the books on the desk about the artist on a recent Shabbat afternoon, I found myself trapped in a strange internal conflict. As an observant Jew who has lived in Israel for decades, to be entirely honest, I felt put off by Fiasella’s Christological iconography. I can certainly admire the craft, but the theology behind it breeds an undeniable discomfort - amplified by recalling accounts like the above - chronicling the demeaned state of the Jews penned into his city’s ghetto of the time.

Especially when compared to life in Tzfat in the same era:

”The 16th century would see Tzfat’s Golden Age. As a result of the Spanish Expulsion, a huge influx of pious and well-educated Jews flooded the city. They brought with them brand new technology in textile development, leading Tzfat to become one of the main Mediterranean producers of felt.

A spiritual renaissance accompanied this economic boom. Tzfat was bursting with sages, Kabbalists and visionaries who bounced ideas off one another with razor-sharp clarity and depth. At sunset each Friday, these mystics would descend into the fields surrounding the city, singing Psalms and poems in order to welcome the Sabbath Queen. One of the members of this group, Rabbi Solomon Alkabetz, penned the well-known poem Lecha Dodi. This custom developed into the Kabbalat Shabbat still practiced by every Jewish community around the world today.”

Yet, as a photographer chasing depth, I keep returning to these volumes. I need their secrets. I need to learn how to force two flat dimensions to look like three.

​I sat in our living room in Tzfat, surrounded by the boxed-up remnants of the life’s work of art historian Mary Newcome-Schleier (Miri’s mother)—museum-level coffee-table books, monographs, and sketches focusing largely on the restless genius of the Ligurian Baroque.

​Suddenly, the room felt crowded. A fictional dialogue began brewing between my pocket lens and Domenico Fiasella the master from Sarzana who was a premier visual weapon for the Roman Counter-Reformation.
​He leaned over my shoulder to examine the pixels.

​”You marvel at the engineering of your little device, Dave,” Fiasella murmured, his voice carrying the calm weight of a man who spent his life painting for popes and powerful patrons. “Your device calculates the physics of light in a millisecond, but it cannot choose the moment. It is merely a highly complicated paintbrush. Let me show you how my canvas maps onto your data.”
​
Case Study: The Guardian at the Threshold:

Dave: This is my neighbor, Nissim. I didn’t plan the shot; I was walking by, and he simply happened to be standing in his doorway with his dogs.

​Fiasella: “You speak of brief snaps as if you were merely dropping crumbs for birds, yet look at the fortress your eye constructed. When I painted my Saint Lazarus Imploring the Virgin for the City of Sarzana, I spent weeks calculating how the stone walls and city gates would lock the figures into the physical foundation of the landscape.

​”Look at what you have done here. You placed this man slightly off-center, aligning his shoulder with the masonry seam. He isn’t standing in the space; he is part of the architecture. And the light? It drops from high above, catching the top of his cap and the silver of his beard, while his eyes are cast down into a heavy shadow. A lesser craftsman would have forced a flash of light to show the iris. You had the restraint to let the darkness speak for his weariness. The dog in the foreground is a sharp blade of shadow, while the second beast fades into the gloom—an echo of threat that multiplies in the dark. You turned a concrete doorstep into an ancient boundary.”

Dave: Now let’s take a look at these two, one at a Jewish study hall in Tzfat (also, no doubt, very similar to scenes from the ghetto in Genoa of your day), and the second, a long exposure of the ancient priestly blessing at my own small neighborhood synagogue.

​Case Study: The Geometry of Sacred Debate:

Dave: I caught this in a local Jewish study hall—a beit midrash. I wanted to capture the tension of the argument, but the room was cluttered, tight, and modern.

​Fiasella: “Yet look at how the anatomy breaks the space. When I was in Rome painting Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain for the Marchese Giustiniani, I had to arrange a crowd of figures into a tight, dark space, using hard light to slice through the gloom and guide the viewer to the point of emotional friction.

​”You used the low angle of the polished table to mirror the light, stretching the volume of a tight room. That extended finger on the left is a spear of pure intent—the contrapposto of debate. On the right sits the elder, a mountain of white beard who lets the youth’s energy break against him like water against stone. The engineering of tension remains identical.”

Fiasella moves his hand across the screen, to the deep blacks and stark whites of the study hall. He leans in, his eyes narrowing as he studies the composition.

Fiasella: “You speak of Genoa’s ghetto, Dave, and my mind instantly populates this frame with the memory of narrow, crowded rooms where men argued over texts until the candles guttered out. The air in those spaces was thick with the smell of tallow and damp wool. Here, you’ve captured that exact same intellectual friction.

“Look at how you have anchored this entire room. You placed your device flat against the wood, using the reflection of the polished table to extend the depth of the frame downwards. It is a classic perspective trick to make a small room feel monumental.”

• The Line of the Finger: The young man on the left—his extended finger is the absolute anchor of the drama. It cuts straight through the empty space of the table like a spear of intent. In my day, we used that exact gesture for saints receiving a call or philosophers delivering a decree.

• The Counter-Weight: On the right sits the older man, a mountain of white beard and dark velvet. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t look up. He lets the young man’s energy break against him like water against stone. The contrast between the striped shirt of the youth and the dark vestment of the elder creates a perfect psychological polarity.

• The Geometry of the Background: Look at the ceiling. Those small, round modern lamps puncture the plaster like hot coins. They drop vertical lines of light straight down, illuminating the books on the shelves while leaving the corners raw. It is messy, real, and completely devoid of sentimentality.”

The Architecture of Motion and Prayer:

The Etheral Blur:
Fiasella: “When you turn the camera from the intellect to the spirit, here, this high, downward perspective changes the rules entirely. You are no longer a participant at the table; you are a witness looking down from the rafters.

• “By lengthening the exposure while the ancient blessing was spoken, the figure at the center before the Ark has lost his skin and bones. He has become a fluid, moving cloud of white linen. The shroud blurs into the stone of the wall, making him appear as though he is emerging directly from the mountain itself.

• “The Foreground Anchor: You were smart to keep the boy in the foreground perfectly sharp. His dark cap and the crisp white of his shawl give the eye a place to rest. Because he is solid, the blur of the priest in the background feels intentional, miraculous even, rather than a technical mistake.

• “The Friction of Stone: Look at the walls. The rough, irregular masonry of your Tzfat synagogue catches the flash of light with high contrast. Every stone has a shadow beneath it. It keeps the image grounded in reality, preventing the spiritual blur from turning into a cheap, soft-focus illusion.
  

  “In my century, when we wanted to represent the divine or the ethereal, we had to paint literal clouds, or golden rays shooting down from the rafters. It was clumsy engineering, a theatrical trick of the brush to force the viewer to believe in the unseen. But you? You’ve used time as your pigment. You kept the boy in the foreground solid and sharp to anchor our reality, then let the priest dissolve into a fluid blur.
  

  “It reminds me of how my students and I would lay down a soft, thin glaze of transparent white over a dark ground to make a fabric seem as though it were shifting in the wind. Your toy does it by keeping the sensor open for a few seconds; we did it through layers of oil and patience. The engineering changes, Dave, but the strategy is the same: you must create a lie—a blur, a shadow, a trick of perspective—to reveal a deeper truth.”

  Case Study: The Posture of Modesty:

  

  Dave: This is a portrait shot for friend Tziona Achishena’s musical portfolio. I stripped the color to focus entirely on her downcast expression, trying to find an inner essence.
  
  ​Fiasella: “Ah, the downcast eyes. Today your world calls it a ‘meme,’ but in the Baroque, it was our most sacred shorthand for the interior life of womanhood. If a subject looks directly into your lens, it is a confrontation. But a downward glance? It is an invitation into a sanctuary.
  ​
  ”When I painted my Annunciation, the angle of the eyelids carried the entire psychological depth of the canvas. In your frame, the light from above catches her brow, while her eyelids fall into a soft, smoky sfumato—a gentle melting of form into shadow that protects her privacy from the viewer’s intrusive gaze. Look at her garment. The dense, dark lines of that denim jacket provide a heavy, structural pedestal for her face, exactly like the heavy wools we painted on our Madonnas to give them an unyielding gravity.”
  ​
  The Journalistic Reconciliation
  ​I closed the tablet and looked back at the boxed stacks of art history books. Fiasella’s world was entirely consumed by a faith that is not mine, built to decorate chapels and reinforce doctrines I don’t subscribe to.
  ​But as an old newsman, I know that truth is found in the friction.
  
  ​By pulling his 17th-century engineering out of the cathedral and dropping it onto the stone streets of Tzfat, the light changes. The tools change. The Annunciation becomes the quiet modesty of a woman on a modern sidewalk; the miracle at Nain becomes the fierce intellectual fire of two scholars over an open text.
  ​The machine provides the data buffer, but the human eye is still the one holding the acid, carving out a soul from the shadows.
  
  ​The Takeaway
  
  ​Fiasella leaned back from the screen, letting the digital display reflect in his eyes.
  ​”The machine provides the canvas,” he said, turning back toward the shadows of the room. “But you are still the one holding the brush.”

  ---

These articles are part of the Veritas Books & Bees series, exploring art, books, and the stories they carry. If you’d like to follow that side of our work, you’ll find us here: Facebook or LinkedIn

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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Notes on fasting, municipal prep for potential Iranian ICBM fire at Israel, and why sometimes - for a gifted writer featured below - a superhero movie is the only way through the day.

I’ve featured American-Israeli author, MSW, and commentator Shira Lankin Sheps—founder of The Layers Project— before, and her personal reflection below is a damn good reason why.

While Jews are in synagogue, and at study sessions, due to fasting exceptionally poorly (and seriously, why the hell do we call it a "fast" when it moves at a absolute crawl?), I’m at home—not unlike Shira—alternating between the annual "griefspiring" films commonly viewed across the Jewish collective during these 25 hours.

​And despite a niggling headache, I’m busy checking local updates and reliable off-the-radar civilian sitreps regarding potential Iranian ICBM fire as kinetic events ratchet up in the theater.

While the Home Front Command explicitly emphasizes that there have been no official changes in public safety directives, my presumption is that local municipalities and security departments are running continuous WhatsApp and Zoom coordination calls, just in case.

The core thread running through every Hebrew news report remains identical: the Home Front Command has not raised the official national alert level. Mayors are acting unilaterally to clear infrastructure and manage public anxiety ahead of the weekend.

​On a related note: pre-fast, the IDF Rabbinate and several major halachic decisors emphatically instructed observant and traditional frontline and support forces NOT to fast, and to eat and drink as necessary to adequately function.

​On the civilian front, while local social media is rife with rumors and unattributed reports, the actual mechanics break down quite simply:

​Regional Entities vs. Individual Towns: When a regional council like the Upper Galilee or Mevo'ot HaHermon announces shelter checks, that single declaration instantly covers 20 to 29 individual kibbutzim and moshavim. Aggregate social media summaries often tally these individual communities alongside standalone cities, easily hitting the mid-20s in headline counts.

​Standalone Municipalities: The major cities explicitly noted in Hebrew press over the last 24–48 hours for opening or verifying public shelters include Ramat Gan, Eilat, Karmiel, Herzliya, Beersheba, Dimona, and Gan Yavne.

​Not to minimize the situation, but much of this comes down to precautionary "readiness" and ensuring miklatim are actually usable. Given past issues with vandalism, several locales are prepping everything—lights, air conditioning, water, plumbing—short of leaving the main access doors unlocked.

Meanwhile:

*Prime Minister’s Office on behalf of the Mossad for Intelligence and Special Tasks:*

**Foiling an Iranian Ministry of Intelligence plot to infiltrate an operational cell into Israel – international cooperation prevents the ministry’s plans to target senior Israeli officials**

Against the backdrop of the Iranian regime’s ongoing attempts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, new details are being revealed for the first time about a joint effort among international intelligence services that uncovered how officers of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence recruited foreign elements to harm senior Israeli officials inside Israel.

In recent years, *the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, alongside the Revolutionary Guards, has been leading a worldwide terror campaign aimed at harming Israeli and Jewish targets, and has recently intensified its efforts to carry out terrorist attacks even within Israeli territory.*

Through preventive measures, advanced capabilities of the Mossad and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), and close cooperation with intelligence and security services worldwide, dozens of attack plots orchestrated by Iran have been thwarted. These operations have saved many lives and made it possible to take investigative and legal action against those involved in terrorism.

*In this context, over the past two years, numerous Iranian attempts to recruit and operate agents inside Israel on behalf of the enemy have been exposed and foiled. Most recently, an attempt by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to infiltrate foreign operatives into Israel in order to attack senior Israeli figures was thwarted.*

*The enemy’s method of operation includes recruiting “proxy” criminal infrastructures which, in turn, activate operatives located in Israel or those capable of entering Israel, to collect intelligence on the intended target and later to carry out the attack.*

*The cooperation between the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and intelligence services worldwide,* as well as investigations carried out in several countries, together with analytical capabilities, *led to the dismantling of the criminal proxy infrastructure and the identification of the Ministry of Intelligence officers behind it.*

Thus, *Tharot Ozkur, codenamed “Philip”,* who resided in France, was responsible for recruiting an operational cell composed of foreign nationals for infiltration into Israel.

*"Philip" was recruited by two criminal proxy elements, Babak Mahu-Zadeh Haji Japan (“Babak”) and Mohammad Nadim Yaeit (“Nadim”), who currently reside in Iran under the protection of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. These individuals are known affiliates of drug lord Naji Sharifi Zindashti, a criminal figure who has long been used to promote terror under the direction of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.*

To receive his mission, “Philip” traveled to Iran several times, where he met with his handlers and was paid for advancing the assignments.

*Through international investigations, the connection between Babak and Nadim and their handlers in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was uncovered—identified as Asadollah Behzad Oshsari, Wahid Ma’tzumi, Mohammad-Hossein Dhokki, and Hamid Qasemi.*

*Behzad Oshsari served as a key figure* in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence’s efforts to promote terrorism against Jewish and Israeli targets and was killed during the “Roar of Hary” war.

As for Philip, he paid a heavy price for his involvement in planning terrorist activity directed by Iran, which led to his deportation from France.

*Babak and Nadim continue their efforts to direct terror cells from Iran* and remain under close scrutiny by intelligence services worldwide.

Once again, this terror plot exposes Iran’s familiar method of operation—using the *“proxy by proxy”* system to distance itself from the terrorist activity it directs, in order to avoid consequences and political costs. > >

​Which brings me to Shira’s essay below. It captures the exact, absurd tightrope of trying to honor the heavy history of this day while shielding our kids from the immediate, overwhelming weight of the present.

​By Shira Lankin Sheps

“I spent 30 minutes trying to find a movie that fit the appropriate Tisha Ba’av mood, aware that my teen, like all kids in Israel, has lived through too much heavy stuff the last few years.

I played him the trailer of a couple, and he said, “This feels too much like Oct 7th to me...”

Made sense. Scenes of violence, Israelis, refugees, escape. Too close to relive that today.

Holocaust movies are a hard no for me. I’ve watched too many in my lifetime. Read too many stories. It’s not fiction to me. It’s my family story. It’s what I write. Baked into my DNA. It’s not a mood setter. Just no for today, thank you.

After searching and searching, I couldn’t come up with something that would be a good fit. I’m a terrible faster, and I’m still going, so I just didn’t have the energy to be clever about it.

So I gave up.

I put on the superhero movie he wanted, and even though there was plenty of violence, and tension, and gore- I just let the movie play.

I woke up anxious and stressed anyway. He woke up anxious and stressed too.

Every twenty minutes in the movie, he’d make me pause and look at his notifications, and tell me something horrible that happened in our corner of the world.

“Whoa Ima, did you know how bad the war is getting in Iran right now? When do you think it’s going to come back here?”

“Omg Ima, there was a terror attack in the Shomron. With a fire. And stabbing...”

“Ima, the Mayor of Ramat Gan opened all the public bomb shelters across the city because Iran might attack us over Shabbat...”

“Should we pause the movie and set up the bomb shelter? Go food shopping? Ima, what do you think? Are we going to be attacked on Shabbat?”

I gave him all the assurances I could.

I let the superhero movie play. And every so often I wiped a tear away so he wouldn’t see.

If you ask me what the movie is about, I honestly have no idea.

He paused it to go to mincha.

And all I want to do is the opposite of the energy of the day.

I want to submerge him in comfort.

Ease. Deep breaths. Certainty. Safety.

He’ll come back, and we’ll finish it.

He’ll complain about how hungry he is, cuz he’s 13.

We will check in about our supplies. Start reorganizing for a pending war.

Maybe he’ll fall asleep.

Given everything, we didn’t need a Tisha Ba’av movie after all.”

---

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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This isn’t a passive lecture. It’s a fully immersive, tactile dive into the chaotic, brilliant world of honeybees. You’ll suit up, peer inside a working hive, learn about the inner world of the beehive and pollinators, and taste single-origin Galilean honeys that taste nothing like the supermarket stuff. It’s educational, highly creative, and entirely safe.

Perfect for families, international tourists, and anyone looking for something genuinely out of the ordinary this summer.

• 🐝 **What’s Packed Into the Adventure:**

• * **Armor Up:** Full bee suits provided for all sizes. Zero sting anxiety.

• * **Hive Drama:** Real-time observation of bee colony behavior up close.

• * **The Honey Flight:** A curated tasting of raw, distinct seasonal varietals.

• * **Get Creative:** A hands-on craft project to take home.

📍 Location: Tzfat, Israel

📅 Book Your Safari: neshikha.com

📩 Contact: miri@neshikha.com

#Tzfat #BeeSafari #IsraelTourism #NeshikaHoney #FamilyActivities #Galilee

​Let's talk about David Jablinowitz. For decades, among a host of other senior newsgathering roles, David worked at the State-run IBA Voice of Israel Radio News, served as Op-Ed editor at The JPost, and is now at Kan Israel News. In the worlds of international journalism and transatlantic diplomacy, his name is currency. This isn't hyperbole; it's a matter of record. For years, senior officials across the entire American political spectrum—from the White House to the sharpest corners of the Senate and Congress—have relied on David for off-the-record briefings. When Washington needs a clear-eyed, unvarnished assessment of realities on the ground, they call him. His word and his professional reputation are the gold standard.

​But apparently, none of that pedigree mattered to a panicked staffer inside the Mamdani political apparatus. What should have been a casual, hometown connection quickly dissolved into a chilling demonstration of administrative blacklisting—a native son flatly told he is no longer welcome in his own city because he dares to exist as a Jewish Israeli. Bureaucratic tribalism at its ugliest. Pure, unadulterated cowardice.

​David recently shared a worrying encounter that lays bare the vulgar bigotry and visceral hostility festering within the political camp of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. A mutual friend in New York City tried to bridge a simple gap, suggesting a casual conversation between David and a staffer in Mamdani’s circle.

​The response was instantaneous. It was also pathetic.

​Here is how the exchange unfolded:

​The Friend: "I'd love to get the two of you to talk."

​David: "Who, me and the mayor?"

​The Friend: "No, you and [the mutual friend]."

​David: "I would welcome the opportunity."

​A few minutes later, the friend called back. The tone had completely shifted.

​The Friend: "That was quick and awkward. I made the offer that the two of you talk. He said that he couldn't talk to someone like you; he would probably get fired. He then begged me never to suggest that he meet or even talk to someone who promotes Israel. He then said he had to end the phone call. Just before we disconnected, I told him that you're from Brooklyn. He said that I should tell you that you're not important enough for Mr. Mamdani to care about you, but that someone like you would not be especially welcome in the city."

​Let that sink in.

​"Someone like you would not be especially welcome in the city."

​This is the new administrative baseline. It is a toxic mix of casual anti-Semitism and rigid institutional cowardice, burning hotter than the July asphalt. We are witnessing a political class so fragile, so utterly captured by rank bigotry, that a staffer genuinely believes merely speaking to a veteran Jewish journalist will end their career. They aren't running a public office. They are running a cult.

​To tell a native New Yorker—a boy from Brooklyn who built a legendary career on integrity and balance—that he is "not important enough" and "not welcome" because he refuses to join their anti-Israel echo chamber is a grotesque display of arrogance. It is the kind of small-minded malice that thrives when raw ideology replaces basic human decency. They want to draw a Jewish/Israeli ideological redline around the five boroughs.

​They want a city of compliance. A city of quiet, terrified conformity.

Well, this time they chose the wrong target. While his professional on-air radio voice has long shed his Brooklyn background, I’m going to caption his response as a shrugged “Fuggedabowdit.”

David's actual response to the dismissive snub was characteristically steady, unblinking, and entirely devoid of the moral cowardice that defines his detractors:

​"I was born in New York, grew up in New York, still love New York, and will visit as many times as I want."

​So the bureaucrats can keep their purity tests, their closed doors, and their frantic, fearful phone calls. New York belongs to the people who built its grit, not the “theater kidz' and fragile careerists trying to clean the streets of dissenting voices. A Brooklyn-born Israeli doesn't break that easily, or get fazed by petty spite.

“I’ll always love New York for what it’s meant to me and nothing will change that,” Jablinowitz concluded.

[Full Disclosure: David and I are not strangers. We have collaborated across the grinding gears of news writing and editing, and I consider him a vital professional mentor, and a trusted colleague and friend in local journalism. When I say his professional reputation is gold, I mean it. I've seen the receipts. - DB]

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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The Mechanics: Shot with a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in manual in Expert RAW.

The Frame: Without doing too much digital cleanup of the faded paint swipes, I left the white wall in as negative space, with a slight vignette to draw the eye towards the painting.

The Edit: The heavy lifting happened in Lightroom Mobile during the monochrome conversion, starting with an Adobe Monochrome Profile. I aggressively pulled up the yellow and orange luminance channels to force the hidden texture and fiber out of the wooden stair treads, then slammed the shadow sliders to absolute zero. This crushed the distracting background ceiling details into total darkness, leaving nothing but clean geometric lines and raw timber friction. For comparison, here's the original:

Look closer at the artifact on the “floor.” This is the source file seen in the framed print—the interior of the historic Yosef Caro Synagogue here in Tzfat:

I intentionally juxtaposed the two images: hard-edged B&W vs softly-lit curves fading into dark shadows. Where the first image uses geometric abstraction to hide the domestic reality, the second frame uses hard silhouettes to frame an ancient sanctuary.

The challenge in the synagogue image was handling the violent dynamic range of intense midday light cutting through deep-set, western-facing windows.

​The Mechanics: Instead of fighting the glare, the exposure was locked strictly to the window panes, letting the foreground bimah and the overhead cluster of historic oil lamps drop into heavy, graphic silhouettes. The sensor holds onto the iconic Safed blue of the interior walls, creating a cool, subterranean pocket of stillness that directly rejects the blinding heat outside.

​Two frames. One domestic illusion, one historic sanctuary. Both shot without leaving the shade.

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Share Lens & Land: Dispatches from Israel

Excerpts of his Tel Aviv University address are here: https://youtube.com/shorts/DAcgHlkpf0E?si=GQ6I9Lmf_3ZI8kUf

But by brutally slamming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a proxy for the entire state, Emanuel committed a classic Washington error. His condescension may, paradoxically, only boost the PM's electoral value back home—offering a defiant rallying point for a populace that is exhausted, mourning, proud, and - above all - has endured the “Refiner's Fire" of almost three years fighting a seven-front existential war.

The great modern delusion of this diaspora-bred Beltway operator is the belief that because his father was born in Jerusalem, his supercilious condescension is actually a form of tough love.

“Tough love?” More like spousal abuse.

As the Washington pantheon turns openly hostile, Diaspora Jewry is undergoing its own reassessment, realizing that security cannot be outsourced, or left to the goodwill of others.

[Full disclosure: I got my start in Israeli journalism as a breaking news editor and, later, a reporter and radio broadcaster at The Jerusalem Post. Seeing Editor-in-Chief, Zvika Klein, hold the line in that combative studio gets me right where I used to live.]

Here are two voices I follow that unpacked and rebuked Emanuel's remarks:

As puts it in his essay, “Cutting off military aid, imposing sanctions, denouncing the Israeli right in the sharpest terms he can find — these aren’t proposals aimed at moving Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, where he’s actually speaking. They are proposals aimed at satisfying Chicago, the rising DSA, or wherever the next Iowa turns out to be. Emanuel is smart enough and fluent enough in Israeli politics to know his framework won’t fly with Israeli voters weeks from a national election. He seems to be betting it doesn’t need to.”

​But as Washington turns out the lights on the old alliance, an ironic counter-trend is taking root on the ground. As notes in a striking essay for Moral Clarity, the hostile environment being engineered by the Western political class is achieving the exact opposite of its intended effect. It isn’t house-breaking Diaspora Jewry; it is nationalizing them.

“Diaspora Jews are not becoming Israelis because they are moving to Tel Aviv. They are becoming Israelis because they increasingly interpret the world through assumptions Israelis have held for generations: that security cannot be outsourced indefinitely; that antisemitism adapts; that military strength matters; that public opinion turns quickly; that institutions are less permanent than they appear; and that Jewish continuity requires conscious effort rather than passive optimism.

“…Most of all, they are rediscovering something Israel never forgot. The Jewish people are not merely a religion, an ethnicity or a collection of individuals sharing historical memories. They are a civilisation bound together by an extraordinary continuity of fate.”

​Emanuel’s recent Tel Aviv performance and subsequent Jerusalem Post media blitz were a masterclass in the new progressive gospel: You have an America problem, not a Democratic Party problem. The delivery was vintage Rahm—hyper-caffeinated, blunt to a fault, flashing a resume like a shield, and dropping poll numbers like a tactical strike. But strip away the signature Chicago bravado, and the core message is chillingly clear. He didn’t come to offer medicine; he came to read the terms of an eviction notice.

In the words of Micha Danzig, writing in The Algemeiner, “Commentary’s John Podhoretz calls it the culmination of a forty-year ideological shift party leaders tolerated and even encouraged, not a break from it. Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur adds that American Jewish progressives and Israeli Jews have drifted into such different realities that the former can no longer parse the latter’s choices – and vote accordingly. What starts as unspeakable becomes debatable, then respectable, then policy. That pattern has now reached a man positioning himself for his party’s nomination. Emanuel isn’t a principled man bucking his party’s drift. He’s a cynic chasing it.”

​Only this time, the realization brings a strange, clarifying relief. It is the political manifestation of the old rabbinic adage, Ein simcha kmo hatarat hasafekot—there is no joy like the removal of doubt. For years, the Israeli polity and its remaining center-left allies in the West have agonized over a prolonged “maybe,” expending massive cognitive drag trying to calculate how many policy concessions it would take to restore the old bipartisan consensus.

Rahm just cleared the board. The ambiguity and the uncertainty is gone.

​By casually threatening to extend U.S. sanctions into Israel’s actual banking system, and declaring that military aid is on the chopping block (something Netanyahu has already taken steps to mitigate and lessen, long-term), Emanuel isn’t just targeting the current right-wing coalition. He is signaling a foundational shift in the Washington pantheon. And my use of the term “pantheon” is no mere rhetorical flourish. The ancient Greeks despised the Maccabean-era Judeans in precisely this fashion. It wasn’t just a disagreement over borders or administrative decrees; it was a deep, visceral revulsion toward a stubborn, particularist people who refused to dissolve into the grand, universalist empire of the day.

​To the new Olympian elite in Washington - both on the Left and on the hard Right led by Vice President, J.D. Vance - Israel’s real sin is its refusal to behave like a well-behaved client state in their post-national sandbox. Rahm boasts about telling New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to his face that “river to the sea” means the destruction of Jews, attempting to frame himself as the lone rational adult holding back the tide. But in the very next breath, he pivots to a primary electorate that views Israel with open contempt, offering them exactly what they want to hear: the dismantling of the “special relationship.”

​This is the portent for the future of Israel-US relations. The old guard, which maintained even a tribal or emotional vestige of connection, is using its final act to build the bridge toward total abandonment.

​​There is no use weeping over the data points or trying to polish our “cultural attraction” tools to please an American cohort under 30 that has already checked out. Rahm did us a backhanded favor by bringing the harsh light of certainty to the room. They loathe what Israel is—sovereign, armed, particular, and un-progressive.

​The advice to those awake and un-Woke North American Jews watching this shift from the outside is simple: keep a go-bag packed, with passports and Duolingo Premium set to Hebrew. While we’re not waiting up—this is generational (yet) and not immediate (…and we've been screaming it into the void for decades)—we’ll keep the porch light on here in Tzfat and elsewhere, the guest room primped, and have our favorite cab driver for a late-night Ben-Gurion airport run on speed dial. Now that the doubt has been entirely removed, we can finally stop managing the decline of an illusion and start planning for a reality where we stand entirely on our own feet. Together.

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[If the video above isn't viewable]:

For the last few years, Adele and I have used our weekly and monthly ZoomCasts to beam the unvarnished reality of Israel’s border communities out to anyone willing to look. No corporate media filters. No sanitized government talking points. Just the friction of daily survival. But this milestone hit differently. The questions we forced ourselves to confront weren’t about strategy or geopolitics. They were intimate, sharp, and uncomfortable.
​
How much can a person absorb before the foundation cracks?
When does resilience mutate into simple exhaustion?

​The truth is, the toll isn’t just measured in broken buildings or evacuated towns. It’s measured in the quiet, cumulative burnout of the people trying to document it. Speaking into the void week after week takes a piece of you.

Here are a few characteristic quotes that capture the core of that 1,000-day conversation:

Adele:

“Survival isn’t just about ducking for cover anymore; it has turned into this long, grinding struggle against absolute burnout. We want to rebuild, but you have to face the fact that resilience isn’t some infinite resource.”

Dave:

“There’s a constant internal friction between trying to document this disaster as a journalist and actually living it as a security volunteer. When the macro-reality gets this heavy, you have to pull back and focus on what’s right in front of you just to keep your foundation from cracking.”

Miri:

”Are people coming back to Safed? Not necessarily. Some are sitting on their suitcases, and some say they’re coming back but haven’t made a move. I see the data directly through the [Tzfat English Library where both Miri and Dave volunteer] registrations—the Anglo community just isn’t rushing back yet.”

​”The kibbutz movement has been soliciting heavily, even busing young families up toward Kiryat Shmona and Tel Hai to try and sell the potential of the north. But after the latest round of escalation, even the young couples who took the tours are electing not to do it. They are doing everything they can to make it appealing, but the reality on the ground makes it a hard sell.”

​Living on the edge forces a hyper-focus on what is immediate and real. When the macro-reality becomes too heavy, the micro-reality is what saves you. For me, that sanity is found in the physical, grounding weight of the everyday: checking the hives at Neshika, spending quiet hours with Miri, navigating the subtle shifts in the landscape through a camera lens, and focusing on family. It isn’t a retreat; it’s a tactical withdrawal to preserve what matters.

​We moved from weekly to monthly broadcasts. Not because the story is over—far from it—but because to keep telling it truthfully, we have to survive it first.

​The war rolls into day 1,001+. We are still here. We are just changing how we fight the fatigue.

[A note from the field: this post may be updated or amended as events develop. My sincere thanks to those who follow, comment, and share these dispatches. Your support keeps the lights on and the cats fed while I’m out navigating the dynamic range of the Galilee. Because the standard Stripe plumbing doesn’t reach us here in Israel, I’ve set up a direct alternative for those who wish to support this work. If you’re inclined to help keep the lens focused, you can contribute via PayPal. Much appreciated. — DB]

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All shot on mobile: Samsung Galaxy S22, 24, 26 Ultra and edited on Lightroom Mobile.

Lately, editing these images—using AI to wipe away the low-res grime and using Lightroom to balance the exposure—feels less like a technical exercise and more like a meditative reclamation. You scrub through the luminance sliders, clear out the digital noise, and try to find the ground truth of the place.

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Swarm removals can easily turn into structural nightmares involving two-story ladders, hammers and saws, and even opening up drywall, but this one was textbook: the bees were low, accessible, and calm - a distinct behavior trait that usually signals the queen is securely in the center of the cluster. The extraction ran on a split-shift schedule, combining an early morning boxing with a late-night transport to minimize field-bee loss, landing them in a temporary “trailer park” setup inside a nucleus travel hive - aka, a “nuc" at Bet Neshika.

The Mechanics of the Move

We gently scooped the cluster off the walls of the compost bin directly into the plastic folding nuc box during the cool morning hours. Because they were so docile, the physical transfer went without a hitch. However, in beekeeping, a smooth boxing is only half the battle. We left the box on-site throughout the day to allow any stragglers and airborne foragers to track the colony’s scent and march back inside.

Once night fell (honeybees don't fly well in the dark) and the entire colony was inside until dawn, we returned with our red-filter headlamps (honeybee compound eyes don’t see the color red, so, while we can see them, they don’t see us) and carefully sealed the entrance for a late-night transport.

Right now, they are sitting in a temporary holding area at our workshop - what we dubbed the “trailer park” - allowing them to forage locally while we monitor their activity. We aren’t 100% certain we secured the queen, so this observation window is critical before we commit to moving them to a permanent apiary off-site early next week.

Success! Hopefully they'll survive and breed despite being a very small colony.

Tracking Swarm Psychology

Every swarm behaves differently based on weather, location, and the status of the queen. If you want to see how this calm garden extraction compares to other scenarios we’ve tackled, check out our previous field video on Swarm Retrieval Mechanics, which breaks down the raw physics of securing a wild cluster before it moves into a structural cavity.

When a colony goes rogue like this, it’s usually driven by crowded conditions in their old home. Managing that growth is a constant balancing act. For a look at how we manage hives to prevent this kind of exit in the first place, our video on how to read the frames to gauge a colony’s internal well-being.

Sometimes, the challenges aren’t just biological. The following clip shows what it takes to manage these delicate apiary logistics during a shooting war along the nearby northern border.

We will be peering into the travel nuc over the next few days for those distinct fanning behaviors that tell us the queen is present and commanding the workforce.

Stay tuned for the final relocation update next week!

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The Honey and the Sting

Randomly scrolling through my photos, this snap from two years ago caught my attention. I was sitting in the car, finishing up our beehives check, and noticed that a honeybee stinger was impaled cleanly into the top plastic bezel of my cellphone case.

Rarely, but occasionally, the bees get a bit “spicy.” Since I commonly use my phone as a camera to photograph the goings-on close-up, the worker tasked that day with defending the hive made a straight, ‘erm, “beeline” ( not/sorry) to the alien intruder, giving her life to defend the collective.

The screen beneath her stinger happened to be showing the Red Alert app. It listed the precise cities and locales where either Hezbollah, Iranian, Houthi, or maybe even Gaza-launched rockets—I’ve honestly lost track at this point—either struck or were ballistically tracked by the Iron Dome’s geo-synced radar map, flashing out to the app in real-time.

Another shot from a different afternoon shows Beekeeper Miri and me on our way back from our apiary north of Tzfat, recording the hive check while rockets fly overhead. We were making our way down Highway 90—the north-south spine running from Kiryat Shmona in the northern Galilee Panhandle some 532 kilometers (330 miles) all the way down to Eilat on the Red Sea.

The significance of these images is simple: whenever you read or hear a detached report that incoming terror rockets fell in an “open area,” well, that’d be prety much where we were standing out in the field. It’s along that stretch of road not covered by the Iron Dome’s defensive interceptors.

Good times. This isn’t a plea for pity or “oh you poor things” sympathy. It’s just an injection of awareness regarding our lives beyond the headlines, the thumb-sucking chatterati abroad, and the talking heads brigade opining about our existence as though Israel’s northern frontier were their moral Disneyland.

The Parallel Perimeters:

The sting on the bezel and the sirens on the screen are two variations of the same ancient calculus: the cost of defending a home.

The Biological Boundary:

For the bee, defense is an absolute, non-negotiable transactional cost. It is a localized, visceral boundary line. The barbed mechanism embedded in the phone case represents a biological design that favors the collective over the individual; she deploys her weapon knowing it requires leaving her life behind to protect the queen and honey. It is a defense mechanism born of necessity, triggered only when the immediate perimeter is breached.

The Mechanical Shield:

The high-tech shield reflected on the glass right below that stinger is the modern, synthetic extension of that exact same instinct. The radar-synced alerts tracking rockets across the Southern Golan and the Confrontation Line represent an industrialized perimeter. It is an algorithmic hive mind, calculating trajectories and projecting protective iron domes into the sky to preserve the collective life below.

Curses, Blessings, and the Northern Accord:

The parallel lies entirely in the friction of coexistence. You cannot harvest the land or build an apiary without accepting the reality of the venom; the honey doesn’t exist in a vacuum, explicitly guarded by a creature hardwired to fight for it. Similarly, living on this border means the background hum of daily life is fundamentally bound to a digital shield. The alerts on the screen are the modern tax on an historic landscape.

This tension feels particularly sharp given what we just read in synagogue for Parashat Balak. The Torah portion centers on Bil’aam, the prophet-for-hire stationed on a high ridge, looking down at the camp of Israel with the explicit intent to curse it. Yet every time he opened his mouth, the intended malice was flipped into a blessing. From that ancient encounter comes the classic Talmudic idiom, ”Lo me’duvshach v’lo me’uktzach”—”Neither your honey nor your sting do we require.” It was a declaration of fierce self-reliance, a statement that we would rather reject the sweetness of an outsider’s favor if it meant absorbing the venom that came packaged with it.

But as Naomi Shemer recognized in her iconic anthem Al Kol Eleh, those of us rooted in the soil of the frontier do not have the luxury of turning either away. Her lyrics turn the ancient phrase inside out: ”Al hadvash v’al ha’oketz, al hamar v’ahamatok”*—”Over the honey and the sting, over the bitter and the sweet.” It is a profound, defiant prayer of total acceptance. She understood that you cannot compartmentalize the land. To love the home you build, you have to be willing to withstand the venom aimed at it.

Her lyrics—famously sung in a massive, 12,000-person mass harmony event by the musical collective Koolulam—changed the old defense mechanism into a prayer of radical acceptance: “Over the honey and the sting, over the bitter and the sweet... G-d, protect what is good.”

​She understood that you cannot compartmentalize this landscape. To love the home you build, you have to be willing to withstand the venom aimed at it.

That cultural math feels entirely absent from the international theater playing out across the Atlantic. While Washington brokers trilateral framework agreements at the State Department—complete with diplomats celebrating paper metrics and the theoretical disarmament of non-state actors in southern Lebanon: the Iranian-backed terror proxy, Hezbollah—the immediate reality on the ground remains stubbornly unchanged. Ink dried on a page in DC does not retroactively shield Route 90, nor does it alter the biological necessity of defense. Until a signed framework translates to a dismantled threat in the hills directly above our hives, sovereignty will continue to be maintained not by committees, but by our sons and daughters on and beyond the frontier, and by the weary locals who, still, refuse to yield.

Ultimately, a random scroll through the camera roll captured a rare, quiet symmetry. A single piece of hand-held technology playing host to two different versions of the exact same truth: nothing sweet is kept without a willingness to defend it.

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Looking at these frames, for me, is a quiet reminder that a photographer’s true work is capturing an impression, even when the contemporary hardware falls short - and my professional insecurities and doubt behind the lens blind me to my own talents and skills.

Over twenty years of documenting this landscape, I have wrestled with the limitations of the day—blown-out highlights on early mobile phones, or the specific sensor constraints of classic bodies like the Nikon D300 and D750.

Revisiting these files with advanced AI upscaling and lighting enhancement isn't about subverting the past or fabricating pixels. It is an exercise in fidelity, restoring the exposure to what my eye actually witnessed on the Tel Aviv coast or among the northern valleys. Like the rain washes away the dust.

For those traveling through or living here in the Tzfat region, the Galilee, or the Golan, I invite you to join me on a dedicated photo trek. We will focus on the mechanics of seeing, reading the light, and mastering the tools—past, present, and future—to capture the authentic soul of the North. Wishing you a peaceful Shabbat.

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