Efrat Sar-Shalom Visiting Card
Welcome to our Site
For more than 20 years I have been living in the Negev desert in Israel. I have come to know this environment in its various layers – its climate, its flora and fauna, its modern-day and former inhabitants, its unique archeology, cultural heritage, and esoteric nature, and its calming influence on those who live in it, and those who visit it. All of these elements have played a part in shaping the people who have lived here, and the cultures that have developed here.
The once vibrant, ancient desert trade routes brought together many peoples of different nations and cultures in a spirit of exchange and cooperation. The Negev has been a meeting place for Jews, Muslims and Christians. This history has inspired me in my work. Over the years I have participated in various committees involved in the formulation of the Israeli Desert Tourism Enterprises. My aim in those committees has always been to employ our desert tourism as a lever for regional cooperation. And I have wanted to draw on the desert's history of trade and cultural relationships, as a way to contribute to the peace process that is evolving in the Middle East nowadays.
I have been involved in world tourism, in both advising other countries on desert tourism, as well as learning about other deserts; with the end result of returning to our Judean desert to promote another center which we have named, "Desert Time", or in Hebrew, "Zman Midbar". The center is well consolidated to meet the aims for which it was established, and to provide programs of the kind of content and quality that we would like to offer all comers to our "Dwelling of peace".
These programs have an intellectual and emotional content, and are built on principles holy to me: respect for the desert, the protection of its environment, and the learning of and from it.
I am most certain that while visiting our "Dwelling of peace" you will realize that it is indeed so.
Enjoy your surfing.
Seffi Hanegbi
