Jewish Travellers / Explorers

• Wanderlust Extraordinary Travel Adventures by Explorers of Jewish Origin 1492-1992
• Mordochai Abi Serour 19th century rabbi, adventurer, merchant , author and guide from Morocco settled in fabled African city of Timbuktu.

Isaac the Jew

In as far back as 797 AD, Charlemagne, the founder of the Carolingian empire who was later crowned Holy Roman Emperor, sent a man named Isaac the Jew to the Baghdad caliph Harun al-Rashid. In 802, Isaac returned to Charlemagne’s court with an elephant as a gift to the king from the sultan.

Benjamin B. Jonah of Tudela

Sephardic Jew Benjamin B. Jonah of Tudela traveled in approximately 1160 to the Far East, about 100 years before Marco Polo.

The Hebrew account of his travels, Sefer ha-Massa’ot (Book of Travels), is one of the most important accounts of the Mediterranean world and Northeast Africa. It described the Jewish community in Rome under Pope Alexander III, holy places in the land of Israel and Jerusalem, and more. It is also an important historical document outlining the lives of medieval Jews.

• The Travels of Benajamin of Tudela The Text
• Itinerary of Benjamin of Tedula's Travels

Luis de Torres

In the 15th century, Sephardic Jew Luis de Torres worked as an interpreter who traveled with Christopher Columbus to Cuba. Torres and his fellow men were the first Europeans to witness the use of tobacco. Like Torres, many Spanish Jews of this period had converted to Christianity to escape persecution during the Spanish inquisition. Some continued secretly keeping the Jewish faith.

Hernando Alonso

Also in the Age of Discovery, Hernando Alonso was the first Jew to be burned at the stake in North America. He was a successful colonizer who served under Hernán Cortés and officially lived as a Christian until a Dominican friar accused him of secretly observing the Jewish faith.

Simon von Geldern

In central Europe, Simon von Geldern, the great-uncle of German writer Heinrich Heine, lived in the 18th century and traveled in Europe, Africa, the Near East and the land of Israel, where he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Joseph_Halévy

In the 19th century, French-Jewish explorer and scholar Joseph Halevy traveled to Africa to study a community of Ethiopian Jews. He wrote a report on his journey,Travels in Abyssinia, and afterward embarked on a new journey to Yemen, where he examined and deciphered hundreds of ancient inscriptions.

The Arctic: Israel Lyons & Isaac Israel Hayes

In the 19th century, Jews were involved in several arctic expeditions. Among these, British-Jewish mathematician and botanist Israel Lyons was appointed as an astronomer on a 1773 expedition to the North Pole. Isaac Israel Hayes also directed missions to the Pole and to Greenland, and Jewish physician Emil Bessels proved that Greenland is an island.

Nathaniel Isaacs

Jewish explorers also reached Africa. Nathaniel Isaacs is considered one of the founders of Natal, a region in South Africa. His record, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, described Zulu customs and lives.

Arminius Vambery

Hungarian orientalist Arminius Vambery came from a poor Jewish family and was lame in one leg. This didn’t prevent him from getting an education and teaching French in the mid 19th century in Constantinople (Istanbul) to the daughter of a sultan.
In an effort to study the relationship between the Hungarian language and the languages of central Asia, he disguised himself as a Muslim and joined a group of pilgrims on a journey through parts of modern Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Vambery also may have introduced Hungarian author Bram Stoker to the Dracula legend, and Vambery himself is said to have been a model for the character Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in Stoker’s famous novel.

Eduard Schnitzer

Another European Jew, Eduard Schnitzer, came from a German-Jewish family in what is now Poland and moved to the Ottoman Empire, where he worked as a doctor. He renamed himself Emin Pasha, an Ottoman name followed by the title of Pasha, which he had been accorded. Emin Pasha also spent time in Egypt, Khartoum, North Sudan, and Uganda. As a naturalist, he collected African plants but then was killed by Arab slave traders in 1892.

Alexander Salmon

Unlike the above mentioned scientists and explorers, in 1841 an English Jew named Alexander Salmon arrived in Tahiti as a simple sailor. He settled on the island and married a royal princess, eventually becoming the Tahitian queen’s secretary. He and his wife had nine children, and one of their sons later befriended Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island.

Ehrich Weisz

The son of a rabbi, Ehrich Weisz was born in 1874 in Hungary, but joined a traveling circus at the age of 9. He would grow up to become the world-famous magician Harry Houdini. Traveling with his show around the world, he was known for daring escape tricks including handcuffs, shackles, torture cells and water tanks.

Source

10th - 14th century

• אלדד הדני Eldad ha-Dani IX century east Africa
• יהודה בן מאיר ממגנצה Yehuda ben Meir HaKohen of Mainz (X – XI century)
• בנימין מטודלה Benjamin of Tudela (1130 – 1173)
• אישתורי הפרחי Haparchi the Florentine (1280 – 1355)
• פתחיה מרגנסבורג Petachiah of Regensburg Bohemian rabbi d. 1217

XV – XVIII century

• אליהו מפררה Elijah of Ferrar Italian talmudist & traveler early 15th century
• חיים יוסף דוד אזולאי Haim Yosef David Azulai ben Isaac Zerachia (1724 – 1806) Jerusalem scholar went to Western Europe, North Africa
• משה ברבי מרדכי באסולה Moshe Bassola (1480 – 1560) His XV century Travel book won wide popularity
• דוד כהן נשיא José Nunes da Fonseca (b.1612) XVII century professional colonizer

XIX century

• Nathaniel Isaacs (1808 – 1872) An English African adventurer
• שמואל קרסו Samuel Carasso XIX century wrote Zikron Teman ó el Viage en el Yémen
• Ephraim Deinard Prolific antiquarian travelled throughout Europe, the Orient, and America.

Space Exploration

• Judith Resnik 1986 - Challenger
• Ilan Ramon 2003 - Columbia. Ilan Ramon Scholarship & Endowment

Stay tuned, this is just the initial framework for an Explorers and Navigator's sub-project. Next step is to create Geni profiles for travelers listed. Please feel free join, edit and add your information and profiles.

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Adventurous Prominent Jewish Travellers

• Isaac the Jew, who accompanied Charlemagne's embassy to Hārūn al-Rashīd as an interpreter in 797, returned four years later with an elephant, Abulaboz, which was a gift from the sultan.

According to the ʿAjaʾib al-Hind ("The Wonders of India," c. 953), by Buzurg ibn Shahriyar of Ramhurmuz, Isḥāq (Isaac) the Jew traveled from Oman (Sohar, southeastern Arabia) to India. From there, he went to China, where he lived for 30 years and amassed a fortune. He returned to Oman in 912/13.
Isḥāq was subsequently killed at Serboza in Sumatra on orders of Oman's governor Ahmad ibn Hilāl. He is also supposed to have visited Lhó or Bhutan in the Himalayas.

• Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb of Tortosa (tenth century) visited France (including the area around the English Channel), Mainz, Fulda, Schleswig, apparently Bohemia, and the court of the German emperor, Otto 1, in 966.

According to Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th century), a Jewish traveler brought the "Arabic" numerals from India. Ibn Ezra himself visited Rome, a number of other Italian towns, Provence, France, England, Africa, Rhodes, and perhaps Ereẓ Israel and even India. His Reshit Ḥokhmah contains important information on Egypt, Arabia, Ereẓ Israel, Persia, and India. Genizah documents attest to considerable travel by Jewish merchants from the Middle East to India and other Asian countries.

• Benjamin b. Jonah of Tudela who journeyed in the second half of the 12th century. He wrote a book on his travels, which vividly depicts the many Jewish communities he visited and also gives a picture of general political and economic conditions. His contemporary, the German traveler
• Pethahiah of Regensburg, journeyed throughout the Middle East and his account, although incorporating certain legendary elements, gives much valuable information on the Jewish communities he encountered. An adventurous traveler was the Hebrew poet and translator Judah
• al-Ḥarizi. In his youth he traveled from his native Spain to Provence. In about 1216 he set out on his journey to the East. Some chapters of his classical work Taḥkemoni contain his observations, at times very critical, of the Jewish communities he visited between 1216 and 1230, which included those in Southern France, Egypt, Ereẓ Israel, Syria, and Mesopotamia.
• Yuceff Faquin: A document of King James IV of Majorca (1334) states that a Barcelona Jew, had circumnavigated the entire known world on the king's orders. Much Jewish travel concentrated on journeys to and from Israel.
• Eldad ha-Dani (c. 880) claimed to have made two voyages. The range of his travels seems to have extended from Baghdad and Kairouan to Spain. Jacob ibn Ṭāriq (ninth century) is supposed to have traveled from Baghdad to Ceylon to obtain books on astronomy, while an Arabian or Turkish ruler sent a Jacob Aben Sheara to India (c. 925), for the same purpose.

The Age of Discovery

• Luis de Torres, Columbus' interpreter, was a Jew who was baptized the day before the expedition's departure. De Torres, who reported the discovery of the phenomenon of tobacco, was the first person of Jewish origin to settle in Cuba.

The Portuguese, who attempted to find both a sea and an overland route to the Indies, sent João Perez of Covilhá and Alfonso de Paiva to search for such a route. When the pair had not been heard from for some time, Abraham of Beja, known for his fluency in several languages, and Joseph Copateiro, an experienced eastern traveler, were sent to find them.
They met Perez returning from India, in Cairo. De Paiva had died meanwhile. Abraham and Perez returned to Portugal via Ormuz, Damascus, and Aleppo, while Copateiro returned directly to Portugal with the information which indicated the existence of a sea route to the Far East; this information was then used by Vasco da Gama.
One of the pilots and navigators who helped Da Gama in his later journey was a Jew, variously described as from Posen and Alexandria, whom he picked up on an island 60 miles from Goa. Da Gama had the Jew baptized as Gaspar da Gama, and made him a pilot of the Portuguese fleet.

• Hernando Alonso (1460–1528) had a particularly adventurous career. He was born in Niebla, Spain, immigrated to Cuba where he met Hernando Cortez (1516), and became a member of Cortez' army that sailed for Mexico (1520).

A blacksmith and carpenter by trade, he helped build the ships that Cortez needed for the conquest of Tenochtitlán. He led the group that subdued the Indians of Pánuco and took part in the conquest of Guanajuato. Cortez awarded him the estate of Actopan, 40 miles outside of Mexico City, and he engaged in the lucrative business of supplying the town with meat. In 1528 he was denounced as a Judaizer and burned at the stake.

• David Reuveni, who appeared in Italy in 1524 claiming that his brother Joseph ruled over the tribes of Gad and Reuben and half the tribe of Manasseh in the wilderness of Habor and that he was the commander of his army.

He claimed to have traveled, disguised as a Muslim, through Ethiopia, Egypt, and Ereẓ Israel, and came to Europe to elicit the military assistance of the Christian powers for the liberation of the Holy Land from the Turks. His "project" failed and he is reported to have died in prison in Spain. His Hebrew diary, which reflects his claims, describes, among other things, his talks with the pope and the king of Portugal, his visits to Italian Jewish communities, and his meetings in Portugal with Marranos, who saw in him the bearer of their hope.

• Joseph Delmedigo, who was born in Crete and studied in Padua, traveled through Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Russia, and Lithuania in the course of his career. A Jewish interpreter accompanied Captain James Lancaster (1601) on the East India Company's first expedition.

He helped to negotiate the treaty between the English and the sultan of Achin in Sumatra, which served as the basis for British expansion in the Far East.

• Zechariah al-Dāḥirithe, 16th-century Yemenite poet, traveled widely. He journeyed to Yemen, India, Persia, Babylonia, Turkey, Syria, Ereẓ Israel, Egypt, and Ethiopia. His travel impressions form the literary background of his magnum opus Sefer ha-Musar.
• Pedro Teixeira (c. 1570–1650), a Marrano from Lisbon, may have been the first Jew to go around the world, and is believed to have been the first white man to make a continuous journey up the River Amazon.
• Antonio de Montezinos, in 1644, who had returned from a trip to the Americas, told the worthies of the Amsterdam community about Indians he had met near Quito, Ecuador, who knew the Shema and claimed that they were descended from the tribes of Reuben and Levi.

His report encouraged Manasseh Ben Israel to write "Hope of Israel" and later to negotiate with Oliver Cromwell to readmit the Jews to England in order to complete their dispersion to the "end of the earth," which was a prerequisite for the coming of the Messiah.

• Moses Pereira de Paiva, an Amsterdam Jew of Portuguese descent, who visited India. In 1687 there appeared in Amsterdam Notisias dos Judeos de Cochin, a report on the condition of the Jews of Cochin, by Paiva.

18th–20th Centuries

• Sason Hai of the House of Castiel was a native of Istanbul, who from his youth evinced a great desire to travel. From his travel account, in Hebrew, published by Izhak Ben-Zvi (Sefunot, 1 (1956), 141–84), it is difficult to determine the route of his travels.

He mentions his return to Istanbul in 1703 and that in 1709 he was in Basra. Among the countries he visited were Holland, Italy, Ethiopia, Tunisia and Morocco, Persia, and Afghanistan. Although his account abounds in legends, folk tales and hearsay, it nevertheless contains many accurate facts which he reports as an eyewitness.

• Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai the Ma'gal Tov of the famous rabbinical scholar and bibliographer. He twice toured European Jewish communities as an emissary of the Jewish community of Hebron.

On his first journey (1753–58), he sailed from Alexandria to Leghorn, where he returned after traveling through Italy, Tyrol, Germany, Holland, England, and France, and sailed from there to Smyrna.
He subsequently visited Istanbul, returning from there by boat to Ereẓ Israel. On his second journey (1772–78), he sailed from Alexandria to Tunis and from there to Leghorn. He traveled through Italy, France, Belgium, and Holland, finally settling in Leghorn.
His diaries are replete with acute observations on life in the cities he visited.

• Simon von Geldern. A native of Vienna, he grew up in Germany and studied at yeshivot there. He led an adventurous life, traveling through Europe and the Near East, visiting Israel several times. He was equally at home in the Jewish community and in high society and gentile scholarly circles in various European countries.

Von Geldern, who was a great-uncle of Heine, kept a diary. His life was described by Fritz Heymann (Der Chevalier von Geldern, 1937). Earlier David Kaufmann had published extracts from his diary in his Aus Heinrich Heines Ahnensaal (1896).

• Joseph Benjamin (Benjamin II). From his early youth he formed the desire to make a pilgrimage to Israel and to travel in search of traces of the lost ten tribes. After he failed in business in his home town Fălticeni, in the then Turkish province of Moldavia, he set out to realize his dream. He traveled through Turkey, Egypt, Ereẓ Israel, Syria, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, India, Afghanistan, and Persia, and also visited Singapore and Canton.

Shortly after his return to Europe, he set out on another voyage, traveling through North Africa. He published Cinque années de voyage en Orient 1846 – 1851 (Paris, 1856) about his travels in Asia. The book appeared later in German with additional chapters on his travels in Africa (Acht Jahre in Asien und Afrika, 1858) and was translated into English, Hebrew, and Ladino. From 1859 to 1862, Benjamin was in America, and he recorded his experiences there in Drei Jahre in Amerika (1862; Eng. edition: Three Years in America, 1956).

• Jacob Saphir was the first Jewish traveler to report on the life of the Jews of Yemen. Born in Lithuania in 1812, he settled with his parents in Israel when he was ten years old. In 1858–63 he visited Egypt, Aden, Yemen, Bombay, Cochin, Colombo in Ceylon, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Batavia, Australia, and New Zealand, as an emissary of the Jerusalem community.

He spent longer periods in Yemen and India and in his travel book Even Sappir (2 vols., 1866–74) gives detailed descriptions of the life and customs of the Jews of Yemen, the Bene Israel of India, and the black and white Jews of Cochin.

• Jehiel Fishl Kestelmann visited the Jewish communities of Syria, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and Persia as an emissary of the Jewish community of Safed in 1859–61. His description of his travels was published by A. Yaari under the title Massa'ot Shali'aḥ Ẓefat be-Arẓot ha-Mizraḥ (1942).
• Asher ha-Levi was born in Galicia. After an unhappy childhood, in 1866, at the age of 17, he left Jassy, where he had lived for several years, and traveled through the Balkans, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and India. Eventually he settled in a city in the Himalayan Mountains. He wrote several books in Hebrew, including an autobiography. His account of his travels in the Balkans in 1866–68 was published in 1938 by A. Yaari under the title Harpatka'otav shel Asher ha-Levi.
• Salomon Rinman was born in Galicia. After spending many years in Cochin he returned to Europe and at the urging of the Hebrew writer Wolf Schur he wrote a description of his travels in India, Burma, and China, Massa'ot Shelomo be-Ereẓ Hodu, Birman ve-Sinim (1884).
• Ephraim Neumark, visited in 1883–86, the Jewish communities in Syria, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Persia. His travel impressions Massa be-Ereẓ ha-Kedem were first printed in Ha-Asif (5, 1887). He was the first to report on the crypto-Jews of *Meshed in Persia.
• Joseph *Halévy, the Orientalist in 1868, was sent by the Alliance Israélite Universelle to study the conditions of the Falashas, describing his journey there in "Travels in Abyssinia" (Miscellany of Hebrew Literature, 2 (1877), 177–256).

Not long after his return he went to Yemen to inquire into the state of the Jews there and to examine the Sabean inscriptions. Halévy did not write a book about his travels to Yemen, but years after the expedition Ḥayyim Ḥabshush, a Yemenite Jew who had served as Halévy's guide, wrote an account of their travels there. Written partly in Hebrew and partly in Arabic, it was published in Hebrew in 1939 by S.D. Goitein under the title Massa'ot Ḥabshush.

• Ephraim Deinard wrote several travel books. His Massa Krim (1878) includes chapters on the life of the Karaites and the Krimchaks (original Jews of the Crimea). Sefer ha-Massa'ot be-Ereẓ Kavkaz u-vi-Medinot asher me-Ever le-Kavkaz (1884) by Joseph Judah *Chorny, printed after the death of the author, gives an account of his travels among the Jewish communities in the Caucasus and in Transcaucasia.

Arctic Explorers

• Israel Lyons (1739–1775) who served as chief astronomer with Captain Phipps' expedition to the Polar regions in 1773;
• Isaac Israel Hayes (1832–1881), surgeon to the "Advance" expedition searching for Sir John Franklin, discoverer and explorer of Grinnel Land, and leader of an 1860 expedition to Greenland which encountered another expedition led by August Sonntag;
• Emil Bessels (1847–1888), surgeon and naturalist of the ill-fated "Polaris" expedition to the North Pole;
• Edward Israel (1859–1884), astronomer with the Greely expedition to Greenland, where he died of malnutrition;
• Aldo Pontremoli (1896–1928), physics professor at the University of Milan and an aviation pioneer during the interwar period, who died on Nobile's 1928 Arctic dirigible expedition;
• Rudolph Samoilovich (1881–1939), who led the Russian relief expedition to the Nobile party's aid (1928), discovered the Spitzbergen coal deposit, and explored the Franz Josef Archipelago;
• Angelo Heilperin (1853–1907), who made geological expeditions to Florida (1886), Bermuda (1888), and Mexico (1890), led a relief expedition to Peary's aid in Greenland (1892), took part in expeditions to North Africa (1896) and to the Klondike (1898–99), and scaled and explored Mt. Pelee (1902–03).

Explorers of Africa

• Nathaniel Isaacs, a member of the King expedition sent to search for Farwell, wrecked off Natal in 1825, who explored Natal for seven years;
• Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer), General Gordon's aide, then his successor as governor of the Equatorial Province, who made important explorations and investigations in Central Africa;
• Edouard Foa, who traveled through Morocco, southern and central Africa, French Congo and Dahomey; and Louis Arthur Lucas, who traveled through the U.S. (1872), Egypt (1873), and navigated the northern part of Lake Albert Nyanza in 1876.

18th - 20th centuries

• Samuel Romanelli, born in Mantua, whose Massa ba-Arav (Berlin, 1792) is a vivid account of his four-year journey from Gibraltar to Algiers and Morocco; Captain Moses Ximenes (c. 1762–c. 1830), who led an expedition from England to the island of Bulama, West Africa, and made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony there;
• David D'Beth Hillel, author of The Travels From Jerusalem through Arabia, Koordistan, Part of Persia, and India, to Madras (1832), who searched for the remnants of the Ten Tribes, and described in detail the holy places and historical sites of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam from India to Israel, the Yazidis in Sinjār, the Sabeans, Wahhabis, Druze, the Dāwūdiyya sect in western Persia, and the differences between the Sunnite and Shi'ite Muslims;
• Alexander Salmon, an English sailor who married a Tahitian clan chieftainess and served as adviser to the rulers of Tahiti;
• Heinrich Bernstein (1828–1865), who explored the Moluccas, the Malay Peninsula, and New Guinea for Holland;
• William Gifford Palgrave (1826–1888), who worked as a Catholic missionary in India, Syria, and Arabia and wrote Narrative of a Year's Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (2 vols., 1865);
• Arminius Vambery who, disguised as a Muslim dervish, was the first European to travel from Trebizond to Teheran, Persia, and Samarkand in Central Asia (1861–63);
• Gottfried Merzbacher, who climbed mountains in the Caucasus and the Tien Shan range and studied the ecology of the latter for more than five years;
• Ney Elias, who traveled across the Gobi Desert, through the Pamir Mountains, and Chinese and Afghan Turkestan, and traced the Oxus River's upper course;
• Elio Modigliani, who explored the Malay Peninsula;
• Samuel *Fenichel, who explored New Guinea for bird and butterfly specimens;
• Nathaniel Wallich, who explored Assam, Hindustan, and Burma; Lamberto Loria, who traveled in Australia and New Guinea;
• Eduard Glaser, the Austrian explorer who made four expeditions to the Yemen, located San'a, and discovered numerous old manuscripts and inscriptions;
• Hermann Burchardt, German explorer and ethnographer, who traveled in the Near East, North Africa, Australia, America, India, and Iceland, and was murdered in Yemen;
• Julius Popper, who explored and reigned briefly over Tierra del Fuego;
• Sir Mark Aurel Stein, who headed expeditions in India, Chinese Turkestan, China, Persia, and the Middle East;
• Raimondo Franchetti, the "Italian Lawrence," who traveled in Indochina, Malaya, the Sudan, East Africa, and Ethiopia;
• Vladmir Jochelson, the ethnologist, who, in the course of a ten-year exile in Siberia (1884–94), studied the nomad Yokaghir tribe and latter accompanied expeditions to Kamchatka, Eastern Asia, and Alaska;
• Lev Yakovlevich Sternberg, who was also exiled to Siberia (1910–20) and studied the nomad Giyake tribe in northeastern Siberia;
• Charles Bernheimer, who explored the northern Arizona and Utah badlands for the American Museum of Natural History and undertook expeditions to Guatemala and Yucatan.

Authors of Travel Guides

Of the many travel books which appeared in the 20th century only a few can be mentioned:

• E.N. Adler's Jews in Many Lands (1905).
• Jacques *Faitlovitch, who devoted his life to the Falashas, wrote Quer durch Abessinien (1910; Hebrew: Massa el ha-Falashim, 1959).
• Zvi Kasdoi described his journeys in Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and the Far East in Mamlekhet Ararat (1912) and Mi-Yarketei Tevel (2 vols., 1914).
• Nahum Slouschz's many studies on North African Jewry was Travels in North Africa (1927).
• Ezriel Carlebach's Exotische Juden (1932) included, among other travel reports, chapters on the descendants of the Marranos of Portugal, the Chuetas of Majorca, the Doenmeh of Turkey and the Karaites of Lithuania.
• Marvin Lowenthal's A World Passed By (1933) by does not describe existing communities but landmarks and memories of the Jewish past in Europe and North Africa.
• Abraham Jacob Brawer gave an account of his travels in the Middle East in Avak Derakhim (2 vols., 1944–46).
• Shmuel Yavne'eli's Massa le-Teiman ("Journey to Yemen," 1952),
• Israel Cohen's Travels in Jewry (1953),
• David S. Sassoon's Massa Bavel ("Voyage to Babylonia," 1955),
• L. Rabinowitz's Far East Mission (1952), Far East
• Joseph Carmel's Massa el Aḥim Nidaḥim (1957) Far East
• H.Z. Hirschberg's Me-Ereẓ Mevo ha-Shemesh (1957) is on travels in North Africa.
• Jacob Beller's travel books on South America included Jews in Latin America (1969).
• Henry Shoshkes circled the globe many times. His travel accounts were published in the Yiddish press, and he was the author of several books, among them Your World and Mine (1952).
• Ida Cowen's Jews in Remote Corners of the World appeared In 1972. It described visits to Jewish communities in the Pacific and in the Far and Near East.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• M. Kayserling, Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries (1907);
• E.N. Adler (ed.), Jewish Travellers (1930);
• The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela
• L. Zunz, in: A. Asher (ed.), Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, 2 (1927?), 230–317, includes bibliography;
• C. Roth, Jewish Contribution to Civilisation (1938), 63–86, incl. bibl.;
• J.D. Eisenstein, Oẓar Massa'ot (1926);
• S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (1967), 42–70, 209–15, 273–352;
• L.I. Rabinowitz, Jewish Merchant Adventurers (1948);
• J.D. Eisenstein, Oẓar Massa'ot (1926);
• E.N. Adler, Jewish Travellers (1930);
• Yaari, Sheluḥei; A. Epstein, Eldad ha-Dani (1950);
• A.Z. Aescoly, Sippur David ha-Reuveni (1940);
• Zechariah al-Dahiri', Sefer ha-Musar, ed. by Y. Ratzaby (1965).

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Jewish travel through the Ages

Christopher Columbus?

Regarding Columbus, the most famous explorer who discovered America, scholars have recently put forth the theory that he too was a converted Jew. A British historian argued that a triangular signature of dots and letters on Columbus’s last will and testament might have been a secret substitute for the Kaddish prayer. The Hebrew letters bet-hei, meaning b’ezrat Hashem (with God’s help), have also been found on several letters Columbus wrote to his son.