Star-of-Bethlehem.org

Welcome to our website!

www.stern-von-bethlehem.de

www.star-of-bethlehem.org

www.batofamily.com

Since April 2002 our website has been online in German. Soon it will be available in other languages besides German and English as well.

This homepage is about the description of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem , the birthplace of Jesus, and its surroundings with their unique and varied religious, historical and cultural sights. Over, you can get important information on the way in which the inhabitants of Bethlehem live and on the traditional crafts, e.g. the carving of mother-of-pearl and olive wood.

Marwan Al-Syriani (Bato) is the webmaster and the owner of this website and he is responsible for its idea, and its contents. He would like to thank every person committed to the creation of this website:

His father Mr. George Bato Al-Syriani, who corrected the English version.
His brother Mr. Issa Bato Al-Syriani, who corrected the English version also.
Mr. Manfred Bork, who did the first design of the homepage.
Mr. Rami Salsaa, who did the flash animation and improved the design of the site.
Mr. Rami Alghawali, who participated in the English and Arabic version.
Mrs. Helga Sharp, who participated in the English version.
Mr. Markus Krämer, who participated in the English version also.

Marwan Bato was born on July 30 th, 1977 in Bethlehem *. The boy grew up in a Christian family, for his late mother was Lutheran-protestant and his father is Syrian-orthodox. So he was exposed to a good mixture of both the Arabic and Aramaic cultures, although the Arabic culture is predominant, since in his youth he only got to know the narrow streets of Bethlehem in Palestine .

But through the memories of his grandparents and their stories about the Bato-family with its noble origin dating back centuries ago, having its roots in Mediate, capital of the Turabdin, Marwan was able to get an idea about the noble past of his family. He attended the Lutheran-Protestant primary school in Bethlehem till graduating in the 10 th grade, and then he went on to get his a-levels at the High School Talitha Kumi * in Beit-Jala. Currently Marwan is studying food technology and nutrition science at the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhems-Universität Bonn (Germany)*.

Maybe you have read on our website the information published on Turabdin and the Aramaic people, and you may have wondered about the connection between Bethlehem and Turabdin. Let us explain to you that we had the idea for this website a while ago, and our dream was to create a website which was to connect the origin of our Bato family, namely Turabdin, with the town of Bethlehem, where a part of our family lives nowadays in order to establish an inseparable bond between all members of our family – be they old or young. At the same time we try to connect our ancient Aramaic cultural heritage with the rich cultural heritage of Bethlehem