The Judean Desert is full of amazing adventures. The Tze’elim Canyon is one of them: the striking landscapes of the desert, hidden headsprings and blossoming of the spring, all this and more of this await seasoned walkers who will choose the Tze’elim Canyon that starts at the Tzfira Pool and ends just next to the Dead Sea and Masada.
The Tze’elim Canyon is one of largest and most magnificent canyons of the Judean Desert. The upper tributaries of the Ze’elim Canyon start at the southeast area of the Hebron Mountains, and apart from its many water cisterns, in some of which water is stored during the whole year, there are four headsprings emanating in the canyon. The canyon received its Hebrew name during the 1950s, it is named after the tree, Tze’el:
He lieth under the lotus-trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The lotus-trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. (Job 40: 21-22).
As a matter of fact the “lotus-tree”, English translation, is the Tze’el tree in Biblical Hebrew which means a tree that gives shadow. Some have attributed this name to acacia (red thorn). In Arabic this canyon is called wadi a-Si’al which means “canyon of the great flash floods”.
