A new and rare Asiatic lion is to land at Ben Gurion Airport on a flight from Sweden Thursday night and will take up lodgings at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, taking the place of the male lion that died last summer at the age of 16.

The newcomer, named Gir, is aged 2 and will join the zoo’s resident lioness Ileniya, who is 16 years old.

Zookeepers said they will make sure the youngster and the older female appear ready to get along with each other before letting them roam in the same den.

Here’s a bunch of tykes staring at a tiger at the Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo (full name: The Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem – The Biblical Zoo) during Chol Ha’Moed, the intermediary period between the two holiday ends of Sukkot.

The glass partition provides an intimate closeness to the scary beasts that I haven’t experienced in any other zoo I’ve visited. When our daughter was three, she stood for a long time staring up close at this tiger or his older relative, not paying attention to the tension that rose in the body of the gorgeous beast, until he leaped at her in a long and silent arc and smashed into the (thankfully) sturdy glass.

You’d think he’d know better after a few of those disappointing attempts to eat his small visitor. The tiger in this picture seems to have accepted the facts of life and modern animal confinement concepts…