Be'er Sheva is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. There are several etymologies for the origin of the name "Beersheba": The oath of Abraham and Abimelech (well of the oath); the seven wells dug by Isaac (seven wells), though only three or four have been identified; the oath of Isaac and Abimelech (well of the oath); the seven ewes that sealed Abraham and Abimelech's oath (well of the seven). Unlike a desert of loose sand, the Negev (or at least the small portion that I saw traveling south from Jesusalem (around the West Bank), the ground is hard-pan, cracked, and rocky (gee, I could spend alil' time building field stone walls here).
Our first stop was at Sde Boker, most well-known as a kibbutz in the Negev desert of southern Israel and as the retirement home of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. Sde Boker is also home of the field research satellite campus for Ben-Gurion University. The pics below include some of the research stations: solar energy, algae and fish farms (ayah, fish FAH-ming in the desert). Next, we visited Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, an internationally-recognized comprehensive university that engages in world-class multi-disciplinary research. The campus is beautiful, modern, and a mix of academics and desert fun.
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