State of Israel
Asia Occidental
Ancient · Sacred · Dynamic
Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees per capita in the world.
Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Tel Aviv, Haifa — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Jerusalem is the most contested city on Earth — Judaism's holiest city, Christianity's site of the crucifixion and resurrection, and Islam's third holiest site all occupying a 0.9-square-kilometre Old City where the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Al-Aqsa Mosque are separated by metres and centuries of competing theological claim.
Los principales idiomas hablados son hebreo, árabe, que reflejan el patrimonio cultural del país y abren puertas a una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Israel se contacta mediante el código +972. Israelis forged a modern state in 1948 from Jewish immigrants from over 100 countries — Yemenite Jews, Ethiopian Falasha, Moroccan Sephardim, Russian Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi from Iraq and Iran — who shared a religious heritage but little else, creating a society of vivid cultural hybridity unified by Hebrew's revival as a daily spoken language from its 2,000-year dormancy.
Israel comparte sus fronteras con Egipto, Líbano, Siria, Palestine, Jordania. El tráfico rodado circula por la derecha, en consonancia con la convención de
La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+02:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.
Israeli cuisine fused Ashkenazi European, Sephardic Mediterranean, Mizrahi Middle Eastern, and Palestinian Arab food traditions into a kitchen where hummus debates (who makes it best, how thick, served with what) are conducted with the seriousness of theological disputes, and shakshuka (eggs in tomato sauce) functions as the universal comfort food across cultural lines.
Football and basketball compete for Israel's sporting attention, with Maccabi Tel Aviv's five Euroleague basketball championships between 1977 and 2014 representing Israel's most significant European sporting achievement — a success story built partly on importing American-Jewish players in the 1970s before the league restricted foreign player numbers.
The Dead Sea at 430 metres below sea level is the lowest point on Earth's surface — a 50-kilometre hypersaline lake where buoyancy makes swimming impossible without floating and where the dry desert air and mineral-rich mud have supported a therapeutic tourism tradition since Herod the Great built a spa retreat here 2,000 years ago.