Jews and Journeys: Travel and the Performance of Jewish Identity 9780812297935

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Jews and Journeys

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania Series Editors: Shaul Magid, Francesca Trivellato, Steven Weitzman A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

JEWS AND JOURNEYS Travel and the Performance of Jewish Identity

Edited by Joshua Levinson and Orit Bashkin

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Herbert D. Katz Publications Fund of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Copyright © 2021 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10

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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8122-5295-8

C ontents

Acknowledgments

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Part I. Introduction

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Chapter 1. Departures Joshua Levinson

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Chapter 2. Why Do We Need a Cultural History of Travel—and What Do the Jews Have to Do with It? Joan-Pau Rubiés Part II. Traveling with the Bible Introduction by Joshua Levinson Chapter 3. The Travels and Travails of Abraham Joshua Levinson Chapter 4. Wondrous Nature: Landscape and Weather in Early Pilgrimage Narratives Ora Limor Chapter 5. Prophecy and Peregrination: Curious Encounters with Biblical Lands and Biblical Texts in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Elliott Horowitz Part III. Jewish Orientalism Introduction by Orit Bashkin Chapter 6. Flying Camels and Other Remarkable Species: Natural Marvels in Medieval Hebrew Travel Accounts Martin Jacobs

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Contents

Chapter 7. A Jewish Critique of European Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: Marco Navarra’s Lettere orientali Asher Salah

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Chapter 8. No Place Like Home: The Uses of Travel in Early Maskilic Translations Iris Idelson-Shein

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Part IV. Traveling With and Without Others: The Effects of the Familiar and Unfamiliar Introduction by Orit Bashkin

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Chapter 9. Travel and Poverty: The Itinerant Pauper in Medieval Jewish Society in Islamic Countries Miriam Frenkel

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Chapter 10. The Jewish Tradition of the Wandering Jew: The Poetics of Long Duration Galit Hasan-Rokem

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Chapter 11. Between the Wild and the Civilized: A Yiddish Travel Writer in Peru Jack Kugelmass

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Part V. Representations of Travel: Mapping and Remapping Introduction by Joshua Levinson

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Chapter 12. The New Zionist Road Map: From Old Gravesites to New Settlements Israel Bartal

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Chapter 13. Heritage Utterances in Jewish Destinations: Travelers, Texts, and Museum Visitor Books Chaim Noy

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Chapter 14. Traveling, Seeing, and Painting: Amsterdam and the Creation of Jewish Art in the Work of Max Liebermann and Hermann Struck Nils Roemer

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Contents

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Chapter 15. Jerusalem Journeys: Wandering Women in Contemporary Israeli Cinema Anat Zanger

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Notes

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Contributors

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Index

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Ac k now l e d g ments

This book, like its topic, was a long, yet fascinating, journey. The journey began with a research group at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania initiated by Ora Limor and Joshua Levinson. We thank the center’s director, the tireless David Ruderman, for his support of the project, his leadership, and his friendship. We also express our profound thanks to the Center’s associate director, Natalie B. Dohrmann, its dedicated staff, in par ticular, Carrie Love and Esther Lassman, its curator of Judaica collections, Arthur Kiron, and its current director, Steven Weitzman. This book would not have reached completion without the dedication and guidance of Jerome  E. Singerman from the University of Pennsylvania Press, as well as the insightful commentary provided by two of its readers. We are grateful to all the contributors in this collection for their cooperation and patience. We dedicate this book to the memory of our friend and colleague Elliott Horowitz, who started the journey with us but has left us too soon, before the project came to fruition. A scholar of Jewish cultural and social history and early modern Judaism, his remarkable erudition (and sense of humor) was an inestimable contribution to how we think about cultural complexity and transformation, movement, violence, and image. We miss him a great deal.

C h apter 1

Departures Joshua Levinson

There is no foreign land; it is only the traveller that is foreign. —Robert Louis Stevenson

Since Homer sang of Odysseus’s return from Troy, or the Bible recounted Abraham’s emigration from Ur to Canaan, the travel narrative has held a privileged place in the social imagination of many cultures. These two exemplary travel narratives seem to indicate that for both of these cultures being “not at home” was a foundational experience. Yet, while Odysseus travels home from a strange land, Abraham travels to a strange land from home. These two ancient tales already present us with two of the dominant themes of travel writing: a nostalgic yearning to return home and a desire to leave home and seek out a new world. Are these two different types of homo viator and two different trajectories of travel indicative of different strategies of self-fashioning in their respective cultures? Is it possible to speak not only of homo viator but also of homo viator judaicus? Unquestionably, travels of dislocation and return, discovery and conquest, hold a prominent place in formative Jewish and non-Jewish fictions of identity. It would almost seem that wherever a self or community is located it has always dreamed of being elsewhere and used travel writing as a cultural mechanism for exploring and shaping its own fictions of identity. What is it about travel writing that enables it to become one of the central cultural mechanisms for exploring and shaping themes of identity? How does this genre produce representations of an “other” and his world, against which and through which it explores and invents a par ticular sense of self? How do travel discourses work with and against other forms of cultural representation and give contour to

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Introduction

territory and experience? Do the different types of travel construct different types of self, of others, and self-other interaction, and how do the various types of travel writing interact and influence one another? In other words, what cultural and ideological work is performed by these texts? These are some of the questions explored in this volume. The genres of travel writing have assumed a myriad of literary forms throughout their long history. Indeed, the variety and breadth of travel writing are daunting. Already in antiquity, they ran the gamut from Homer and Hanno the Carthaginian’s Periplus (lit. “sailing around”) to Pausanias’s Periegesis (Description of Greece) and the travelogue of Theophanes, Egeria’s epistolary Itinerary, and even Lucian of Samosata’s True History where the narrator travels to the moon. The Middle Ages witnessed the opening of new vistas and new forms of travel writing with the accounts of Benjamin of Tudela, Marco Polo, and Mandev ille, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, alongside Ibn Battuta’s travels in the Islamic world of the fourteenth century. With the radical expansion of boundaries in the age of discovery and conquest, travel writing developed in new directions as, for example, the diaries and accounts of Columbus and Hakluyt enabled and fostered the European empires. Premodern and modern literature has given us Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and even Harrison Ford’s screen roles as Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Likewise, the image of the traveler himself or herself includes not only the pious pilgrims of late antiquity, but also errant knights and merchants, the explorers and colonizers of the age of exploration, as well as the ambassadors, adventurers, and tourists of the modern era. Even if we focus on Jewish literature throughout the ages, not only can we profitably examine travel motifs in many biblical and rabbinic narratives (the Hebrew Bible actually begins [Gen. 3:23] and ends [2 Chron. 36:23] with travel), but we find a remarkably broad spectrum of medieval and early modern writings that parallel Christian and Muslim-authored travel literature in both form and content. The Geniza documents tell us of a commercial-traveling Jewish society that took shape in the medieval Muslim world, and the first Hebrew travel narratives—best represented by the eclectic accounts of Benjamin of Tudela and Petahiah of Regensburg—emerged in the wake of the Crusades. Moreover, there are ample cultural artifacts of journeys, real and imagined, including poems by Judah Halevi, the maqamāt of Alharizi, or the accounts of Meshullam of Volterra and Obadiah of Bertinoro, two Jewish travelers from quattrocento Italy. Around the time of the French Revolution, Hayim Joseph David Azulai traveled to Europe in his capacity as an emissary of the Palestinian Jewish community; and Samuel Romanelli, a Mantuan Jew, left us a description of his travels in Morocco that constitutes a fascinating amalgam of the

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traditional Hebrew travelogue and Enlightenment thought. Last, the Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third by Mendele Mocher Sforim (S. Abramovich) portrays a kind of Jewish Don Quixote, who on his way to the Land of Israel hardly makes it beyond the boundaries of his shtetl. Given this embarrassment of cultural riches and the inherently hybrid nature of this literary form, it is notoriously difficult to define. In the strict sense of the term, travel writing is not a genre at all, because any genre can produce travel writing. It is written in prose and poetry and encompasses not only the itinerary and travelogue but almost every possible type of literary representation—high and low, mimetic and imaginative—from the epistolary and poetic to the ethnographic report, tour guide, or postcard. As even the few examples cited above illustrate, travel writing throughout the ages has served a variety of social and ideological functions. Each time the character or gender of the traveler changes, each means of representation, of direction, motivation, and destination—so the nature, purposes, and traits of travel writing are transformed. So, what then is travel writing? Are all movements to be regarded as travel, and are all forms of writing that emerge from this experience to be classified as travel literature? Would Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” qualify? There is no simple answer to these questions. It has become de rigueur for scholars to point out the hybrid nature of travel writing, its “dauntingly heterogeneous character” in matters of form and content and propensity to borrow freely from “the memoir, journalism, letters, guidebooks, confessional narrative, and, most impor tant, fiction.”1 Jonathan Raban, in an oft-quoted comment, remarked on the tendency of travel writing to freely mix forms of narrative and discursive writing that “as a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where very different genres are likely to end up in the same bed.”2 In fact, one of the issues that have doggedly perplexed contemporary research is precisely how to delineate the parameters of travel literature. Scholarly discussions often divide between exclusive and inclusive approaches.3 The exclusive approach strives to distinguish the travelogue proper from other forms of travel literature. Tim Youngs, for example, stresses that “travel writing consists of predominantly factual, first-person prose accounts of travels undertaken by the narrator-author.”4 The central components here are a first-person account of an actual journey that the reader assumes to have taken place and that the author, protagonist, and narrator are identical. Other, less mimetic forms of travel writing are thus considered secondary and derivative. In distinction, the inclusive approach includes fictional and nonfictional accounts that take travel as a dominant theme and refuses to privilege either the retrospective account of the author’s own experience of a journey or the historicist

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assumption that all other texts that have travel as a major theme are in some way modeled upon “real” travel writing.5 While there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, and both types of travel writing are discussed in this volume, there are both practical and theoretical reasons for adopting a more inclusive framework. First, the distinction between the factual and the fictional is extremely fuzzy, and certainly problematic for premodern texts. As Gérard Genette has remarked, the idea of pure fiction or nonfiction is only a theoretical construct that does not correspond to any given text, which cannot escape the transforming influence of mimesis.6 Even the most mimetic of travelogues employs rhetorical and literary devices and expresses itself through the medium of a narrative voice that is never identical with the author’s, even when called by the same name. The actual experience of a journey is always fictionalized the moment when it is represented in narrative form. As Barbara Korte has remarked, “as far as the text and its narrative techniques are concerned, there appears to be no essential distinction between the travel account proper and purely fictional forms of travel literature.”7 Equally challenging, certainly for premodern texts, is the referential pact between the author and reader, the required assumption on the part of the reader that the journey portrayed actually took place. For ancient and even medieval texts, the reconstruction of a reader’s horizon of expectations is a speculative endeavor. The way that texts are read changes over time. For example, Defoe presented Robinson Crusoe as an authentic first-person account with no “appearance of fiction in it,” and Melville’s Typee was received as a truthful narrative before his reputation as a novelist became better known.8 While, theoretically, there is a logical basis for including Joseph Conrad’s Congo Diary but excluding his Heart of Darkness, we should also be open to the possibility that the so-called “real” or mimetic narratives may themselves be derivative of their fictional counterparts. At the origin of any journey, real or imagined, there is always another journey or another story. The most real of travelers is already a viator in fabula, a traveler traveling in a story he has read or imagined.9 The fact that Columbus voyaged with well-worn and annotated copies of Marco Polo and John Mandev ille, both books recognized today as having considerable fictional components, had a profound effect on how he understood both himself and the New World he wrote about in his diaries.10 Just as many mimetic travelogues are modeled upon Homer’s Odyssey or Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which the exclusivist approach would reject, so too we should not discard the travel accounts of Sir John Mandeville or Benjamin of Tudela even though scholars seriously doubt that they ever visited many of the places they described. Even Youngs, who privileges the factual over the fictional travel

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narrative, has emphasized that each of these borrows from the other and uses similar techniques; “travel writing feeds from and back into other forms of literature. To try to identify boundaries between various forms would be impossible and I would be deeply suspicious of any attempt at the task.”11 Jan Borm makes an intuitively useful distinction between the travel book proper (récit de voyage) and travel literature as a whole. He defines the former in an exclusivist fashion as described above.12 He posits the term “travel literature” as “a collective term for a variety of texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel.”13 This constellation of texts would include not only guidebooks and maps, but also travel photography, road movies, and novels. Thus, the “dauntingly heterogeneous character” of travel writing is not merely an accommodating “open house.” Guillaume Thouroude has suggested that this hybridity constitutes a kind of magnetic “attracting field of writing, a literary territory which generates its own creative energy.”14 Seen in this light, it is precisely the discursive traffic and generic exchange in travel literature that enables it to function as a powerful cultural site for the circulation of social energy.15 Since our interest in travel literature lies precisely in the flexibility of its cultural forms and functions in a cultural system, as well as the relation between mimetic and imaginative discourses, we have little interest in policing generic borders and have chosen to avoid overly confining definitions. Following JoanPau Rubiés and others, we will concentrate on those writings (literary or documentary) that take travel (real or imagined) as an essential condition of their production or dramatic situation,16 that describe the movement of individuals across some kind of boundary (usually geographic, but not necessarily so). Often, this is a movement into what Mary Louise Pratt has called “contact zones,” those “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.”17 Although not without problems (how prominent does the travel dimension have to be for it to constitute a main theme?), this is at present the definition this collection uses in order to investigate how Jewish travel narratives function as a vehicle of cultural self-perception and produce representations of an other and his world, against which and through which it explores and invents a particular sense of self. In spite of its ancient cultural pedigree, travel writing has not always enjoyed a status commensurate with its literary longevity. While travel has always interested historians and ethnographers, the study of travel writing might have remained a marginal discipline applied to a minor form of literature if not for the intervention of contemporary theory in three different but complementary manifestations. The first was the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). His

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theories concerning the formation and function of the non-Western other for European identity (heavily influenced by Foucault)—and especially the lively critical debate they engendered—acted as a catalyst to reexamine travel writing as a means of identity formation, both to and from the edges of the empire. The role of travel narratives, which emerged from European voyages of discovery and prolonged contacts made through trade and war, was central to the Orientalist enterprise for obvious reasons, given that they were often the principal accounts of “other” places and peoples to be circulated to an audience back home.18 Second, when this theory of the non-Western other was augmented by feminist and postcolonial theories of identity, alterity, and agency, there emerged a powerful analytical perspective on travel writing. Finally, to this growing body of scholarly work, mention should be made of the so-called “linguistic turn” in the humanities and social sciences that resulted in a blurring of the borders not only between literary and historical disciplines but also between canonical and noncanonical forms of representation. In light of these developments, the past decade has seen the emergence of an intense interest in travel writing—in its mimetic, imaginative, and hybrid modes—as a complex range of practices and representations. Scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are represented in this collection. We look at various historical, political, and cultural contexts that inspired or forced travels of Jews and at the places they traveled to and from. In addition, our book explores what is Jewish about traveling Jews, Jews engaged in travel, and Jews producing narratives about travel. Just as the the cursus publicus unified the Roman world and enabled travelers to feel at home in remote places, so too the Jewish diasporas created a network of communities that enabled the homo viator judaicus (traders, preachers, emissaries, paupers, and pilgrims) to move from community to community in a way that undermines any simplistic dichotomies between self and other, here and there. Thus, from a cross-cultural perspective, we examine how concepts such as home and abroad, exile and domicile, roots and routes look like when fractured through a Jewish lens as opposed to a Christian or Muslim perspective. In other words, is there travel literature that can be characterized as distinctly “Jewish” apart from the fact that it has been penned by Jewish authors? How do we conceptualize home for a people whose existence for many centuries was as exiles? How, in other words, might we consider the many homes (from household to nation-state) Jews considered as their natural habitat? We try to think through these categories while rethinking the themes of the pains of exile, the desire to travel to the Land of Israel, the yearning for imagined and real homes, and the different religious, political, and theological conceptualizations of returning, traveling, diaspora, and residence.

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The essays in this volume reflect both these theoretical concerns and historical influences. They concentrate on the cultural and ideological work performed by these texts as a mechanism for exploring and shaping themes of personal and group identity and difference. In one form or another, travel narratives are about the construction and representation of identity; one’s own and an other’s. Since to begin any journey, to simply step out the door is to encounter alterity, all travel writing engages in a complex interplay between sameness and difference. These essays focus on travel writing as an opportunity for a culture to represent and dramatize its own fissures and fictions of identity in the negotiation between self and other that is brought about by movement in space. When Jews go elsewhere, when they imagine an elsewhere or are forced to go elsewhere, how does travel figure in their identity formation? This is the problematic that we will attempt to explore.

C h apter 2

Why Do We Need a Cultural History of Travel—and What Do the Jews Have to Do with It? Joan-Pau Rubiés

The collective volume Jews and Journeys exemplifies the consolidation of travel writing as a fundamental resource for cultural historians and an increasingly privileged focus for their research. Back in the 1990s the subject still needed some justification, in part because the interests and methodologies of literary critics, historians of exploration and colonialism, historians of science, and anthropologists, had often pointed in different directions.1 Where some looked for historical facts, others emphasized ideological biases, the analysis of voice and genre, or rites of passage. A couple of decades of intensive research have shown that, despite such disciplinary differences (which, of course, remain legitimate), there was a significant amount of common ground too. This common ground could be cultivated profitably by adopting overtly interdisciplinary methodologies that combined rhetorical and theoretical awareness with a wide-ranging effort at historical contextualization. Under this umbrella, travel has emerged not just as a practical activity of varying historical importance but also as the condition of possibility for a multifarious genre that constitutes a key resource for analyzing perceptions of ethnic and religious diversity. However, it is also obvious that any such perceptions of other places, peoples, and their cultures are not objective—that is, they involve a great deal of subjectivity. Hence travel writing has also become a privileged source for analyzing cultural identities, and in particular the mechanism by which “the self” (whether strictly individual or imagined as belonging to a nation, ethnic group, gender, or another collective) is defined in relation to an “other”—a cross-disciplinary

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concept rooted in philosophical hermeneutics and popularized from the late 1970s in a series of influential works by Edward Said, Michel de Certeau, Johannes Fabian, François Hartog, Stephen Greenblatt, and others.2 Whether this “other” is real or imaginary seems less important than revealing through discourse analysis and (increasingly since the 1990s) historical contextualization the dynamics by which, when “constructing” the other, the self also constructs itself. In fact, more often than not images of human diversity in travel writing—what we might define as an implicit ethnography—are neither strictly empirical nor entirely fictional, but rather are produced through a combination of the factual and elements of fantasy. What matters here is that through a history of travel writing—or, more precisely, through a cultural history of travel writing that takes account of the complexity of the genre—one can write the history of cultural identities, how they are formed and how they are transformed. The now dominant paradigm by which identities are understood to be multiple rather than single, changing rather than rigid, relational rather than self-generated, and often contradictory rather than coherent, therefore owes a great deal to the contribution of studies in the history of travel writing. Despite the apparent promise of the subject already in the 1990s, one fundamental limitation of the kind of work pos sible at the time Jaś Elsner and I edited Voyages and Visions (other than the utter impossibility of offering a comprehensive analysis of the whole period from antiquity to science fiction) was the difficulty of constructing a grand narrative that was not Eurocentric. While it was possible to sketch a longue durée perspective that focused on the emergence of modernity in travel writing, its Western focus seemed at that point inevitable and also logical, given the higher proportion of available sources originally written by European observers and in European languages. Although in reality much work was already taking place on travel writing in Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Hebrew, or Judeo-Arabic, what was missing was a collective impetus toward bringing together these various disciplines and developing shared methodologies—a process that even today, despite the consolidation of the topic, is far from complete.3 For this reason, we were perfectly aware that our attempt to offer the sketch of a grand narrative centered on European and American travel writing could only offer a starting point. This is especially true because we also understood that cultural and religious traditions (or even world civilizations) evolve through interactions and cannot be analyzed as entirely autonomous realities with rigid boundaries. Under the impetus of globalization, one of the most significant and welcome developments of the last twenty years has been a strong move toward an interactive model for understanding cultural encounters. Concepts such as contact zone, shared (or entangled) history, and connected history have helped steer the historiography

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toward understanding hybridity and interactions, thus balancing any analysis—however sophisticated—simply focused on deconstructing a modern or Western discourse. I may therefore offer as a first observation that the new cultural history of travel is increasingly interactive. However, this does not mean that it is sufficiently balanced. It is not the same to write about European perceptions of, let us say, Mughal India, the Incas of Peru, or sixteenth-century Japan by carefully contextualizing European ethnographic productions and taking account of native perspectives and cultural realities, as to assess the contribution of nonWestern cultures to the history of the genre. While some outstanding examples of travel writing in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, or Chinese have attracted the attention of various scholars, and we have an increasingly detailed understanding of (in particular) Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca across the ages, a lot still needs to be done in order to produce a comprehensive analysis comparable to the complex grand narrative of the evolution of the genre in the West. Thus the current challenge is to widen the perspective not simply by paying attention to the most interesting examples of travel writing in the Islamic world or China, but rather by developing a “thick” historiography of the history of the genre in different cultural contexts, one capable of producing a truly global comparative history of travel and travel writing. Obviously the biggest difficulty in such an enterprise is the relative paucity of sources in non-European languages. This cannot be fully eliminated, but the challenge of avoiding a crude form of Eurocentrism is being increasingly addressed through a combination of new scholarship concerning those sources we do have (editions and translations, with more careful contextualization) and learning how to read European sources concerning other peoples with a reasonable dose of skepticism. The essays in Jews and Journeys offer excellent examples of these two approaches. However, at this point one might ask, what exactly is the role of Jewish travel writing—together with travel writing about the Jews—in this project of developing a cultural of history of travel that resists the traditional bias toward Christian Eurocentrism? In fact, the kind of material analyzed in this collection is particularly useful, for two reasons: first, because the tradition of Jewish travel writing is rich enough—it has enough “mass”—to allow for a longue durée perspective. As Martin Jacobs notes in relation to the late medieval period, from Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century to Meshullam of Volterra in the fifteenth, it is possible to trace changes and continuities in the treatment of certain topics and to establish some correspondences with the Christian and Muslim cultures to which the authors of these texts in part belonged.4 For example, while recognizing how closely imbricated the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim eschatological traditions were, one may also

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talk of the emergence in the late Middle Ages of a distinctively westernized Jewish identity—increasingly acculturated to Latin Christian assumptions—in relation to Islam, here understood not only as a religious tradition, but also as a social and political system. This critical mass of Jewish travel writing only increased in later periods, as shown by other essays in this collection. More interesting perhaps, throughout the late antique, medieval, and early modern periods Jews occupied a privileged position as potential mediators between East and West. Here, of course, “East” and “West” are not strictly geographical, let alone religious, concepts, since most of Spain was under Muslim rule for much of the Middle Ages, North Africa remained so throughout the early modern and modern periods, and the Middle East was a complex mosaic of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other communities, as well as a contested political field that saw the gradual erosion of the Greek Roman Empire of Byzantium, and the emergence and consolidation of the Turks as a military and dynastic force. Moreover, in terms of the intellectual legacy of the ancient world, the impact of Greek philosophy, science, and the arts was shared by Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Zoroastrians, and the circulation was often from Syriac to Arabic and from Arabic to Latin (in this sense the European Renaissance was more of a reinvention than a discovery of the classical past). The East/West duality in effect involves a simplification of a high level of ethnic and cultural pluralism within all religious traditions and only makes sense in relation to the eventual transformation of Latin Christendom—only one segment of Christian culture—into the modern Eu ropean system of rival nation-states, one distinguished by the global reach of its colonialism and by the fact that countries divided by religion and politics nonetheless shared a highly innovative intellectual and scientific culture. It was primarily in relation to this radically transformative “West,” and because of the continuing importance of complex cultural interactions, that Jews were placed to play a unique role as potential mediators. This was notably the case in the Mediterranean, but also in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, thus also participating in the global turn of the early modern period, from Cochin and Goa to Pernambuco and New York, albeit usually in a politically subordinate position. The close interaction between the Eastern and Western Jewish communities, through the Sephardic diaspora, for example, may illuminate the circulation of people and ideas across cultural frontiers and help avoid the dualistic dichotomies that too often have dominated the historiography of global encounters and which, when taken to extremes, can be rather misleading. This is not to suggest that Jews alone help us challenge the traditional East/ West dichotomy: Oriental Christianity, for example, with all its plurality, was similarly connected to different worlds, and whether as objects of European

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observation or as individual subjects traveling to Western Europe, non-Latin Christians are receiving increasing attention.5 Particularly fascinating is the extent and cultural influence of the Nestorian diaspora, which flourished in Persia, India, and China in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries and was still relevant at the various Mongol courts in the thirteenth (a Nestorian Onggud monk from northern China, Rabban Sauma, famously wrote about his embassy to Rome and the Latin West on behalf of Arghun Khan in 1287).6 Similarly, Islam also reached across continents from Spain to India and China, often showing a high degree of accommodation to local customs and producing some of the most detailed examples of empirical travel writing in the High Middle Ages. Nevertheless, given the intensity and complexity of the experience of migration, exile, and persecution, including notorious episodes such as their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the importance of Jews as a bridge between worlds cannot be underestimated, and Jewish sources can help redress the great quantitative and often qualitative imbalance between European and non-European sources. While at some points Eu ropean Jewish writers (such as the Genoese doctor Joseph ha- Cohen) simply seemed to interpret for their own community the new geographical and scientific horizons of early modern European culture, others, like the Italian Marco Navarra whose fascinating Lettere orientali (Oriental Letters) of 1771 is studied by Asher Salah in this volume, participated in the debate of a self-conscious enlightened Europe by playing up the capacity of Jews to write from Syria, Isfahan, or India no less than the cities of Italy. Writing within the established European genre of philosophical letters by a fictional traveler, the Jewish writer echoed, but at the same time challenged, the influential works by Boyer d’Argens (Lettres juives, 1736) and, behind him, Montesquieu (Lettres persanes, 1721). Thus, he questioned the assumptions of European scientific and technological superiority over the Orient, but only in order to claim back the central role of Jews at the source of a transcultural Republic of Letters both East and West in the name of a prisca sapientia judaica. Although Navarra’s Italian work (primarily addressed to a Jewish audience) was not particularly influential—not certainly when compared to its French Christian models—it also exemplifies that the post-Enlightenment Western story of modernity cannot be told without reference to the contribution of Jews, in the same way that the Jewish story cannot always be separated from the dynamics underlying the intellectual transformation of Latin Christendom after the late Middle Ages. The very historical process of embedded participation in an exogenous modernity generated its own identity myths, so that, for example, the existence of a Jewish community in early modern Amsterdam became a point of reflection for “a modern transnational Jewish geography of belonging,” in Nils

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Roemer’s expression.7 Writing for a Jewish audience (for example, in Yiddish) while participating in the Western civilizing project in the New World— including the late romantic idealization of the figure of a noble Indian that no longer mattered politically—was perfectly consolidated in the twentieth century, as shown by the curious case of the Polish Argentinian Marcos Paryszewski and his imaginative account of travels in a multiracial Peru full of Jews.8 Not only will the cultural history of Jewish travel help rethink the global history of travel by enhancing its cross-cultural aspects, but placing the material in a comparative framework will also help avoid the risks of a self-centered ethnic and religious narrative, content to emphasize its real or imaginary exceptionalism. The various chapters in this collection suggest that many themes that appear in Jewish travel accounts invite comparisons: for example, the importance of ethnic or imperial foundation myths built upon an original journey or migration; the way the emphasis of such myths can vary in the retelling, where sometimes defining a point of arrival is more important than defining a point of departure; the connection between travel as a transformative event and anxieties about the loss of religious or ethnic identity; the use of the journey as a metaphor for spiritual progression; the diversity of meanings that a same location can elicit in different observers; or the way travel stories themselves travel and are appropriated by new audiences. The connected themes of arrival and return are a case in point. As Joshua Levinson shows, the travels of Abraham to Canaan—possibly the key foundational figure in the construction of a Jewish identity—could be interpreted in the rabbinic midrash of late antiquity in relation to their significance at the moment of arrival, rather than departure or (another alternative) the travails of the journey itself.9 Quoting Moshe Weinfeld, he also points out that the use of a journey as the foundational myth for ethnic or political identities is also apparent in some other cultural traditions, notably the ancient Greek and Roman (Aeneas, in particular, Trojan founder of Rome in Virgil’s great poem, offers an exciting parallel). No doubt one can go further in exploring the structural similarities and subtle differences in such possible comparisons. What emerges is not simply the possibility of placing the Jewish material alongside other cultural traditions, but also of identifying some key interpretative possibilities within each tradition, as the same mythical journeys may acquire different meanings in relation to an internal plurality. The theme of return in Homer’s Odyssey, for example, the inspired point of departure for the theme of the journey in ancient Greek literature as well as the model for Virgil’s Roman counternarrative (and also a text that may be as old as the book of Genesis), is not about national origins in a new land, but rather the opposite, about the challenge of restoring the hero to his original domestic space. Not only is this a very different kind of return from

16

Introduction

the one implied in the concept of aliyah, it is also a very different theme from the one Dante would develop when he sent an impious Ulysses beyond the pillars of Hercules and made him sink at the sight of Mount Purgatory.10 To emphasize comparability is not to deny differences, and, of course, many of the themes associated with the interpretation of travel often acquire a specific meaning in the history of Jewish peoples, notably the theme of quasipermanent exile. It was the recurrence of the experience of forced movement in Jewish memory and its connection to a mythical narrative of origins that made this theme special, generating, among other things, the ideal of return to Israel (“my heart is in the East, yet I am in the furthest West”).11 The extensive geography of the Jewish diaspora, while not unique (Armenians, Arabs, Genoese, and other mercantile communities also operated in many different places), is also distinctive for its persistence across many centuries. But the theme of displacement and restlessness also generated particularly insidious external manifestations—consider, for example, the Christian figure of the wandering Jew. Attested after the twelfth century in Europe in various monastic chronicles (often as reported by Armenian Christians or by Latin writers in the East, hence a product of the culture of the crusading kingdoms), this began as the story of a man called John Buddeus or Cartaphilus who had, it was said, taunted Jesus on the way to Calvary and was condemned to wait forever (and hence not to die) until Christ’s second coming, in order to bear witness of the truth of the Christian religion.12 Sometimes “encountered” by pilgrims in Jerusalem, but more often as an itinerant figure, the legendary Jew would find a new life in Germany and elsewhere in Northern Europe after the seventeenth century, under the name Ahasuerus, with a growing emphasis on the association of restless wandering with eternal punishment; by the eighteenth century the wandering Jew had become a symbol of the unsettled status of the Jewish nation, acquiring stronger anti-Semitic undertones and casting its shadow on “the Jewish Question” throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.13 Balancing elements specific to the Jewish cultural experience against more general aspects of the historical reality of displacement should be one of our primary tasks. As Peter Burke emphasized in his recent study of exiles and expatriates in the history of knowledge—the Stern lectures he delivered in Jerusalem in 2015—Jews were not the only group of ethnic or religious exiles in the early modern and modern worlds: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alone provide a long list of cases, including Greeks fleeing Constantinople; Muslims expelled from Spain before and, perhaps more surprisingly, also after being forcibly baptized into the Catholic faith (but not assimilated); Catholics and Protestants fleeing from each other’s persecution, notably impor tant in the case of the French Huguenots expelled by Louis XIV.14 Were we to look beyond

Why Do We Need a Cultural History of Travel?

17

Europe and the Americas colonized by Europeans, we would need to consider many other cases, for example, the Armenian Christians that the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas took to “New Julfa” in Isfahan, creating a new center of silk merchants, recently studied by Sebouh Aslanian.15 Here the potential for illuminating comparisons is obvious, and Aslanian’s detailed case study of an early modern mercantile community operating across long distances, but without the benefit of a military and political superstructure (unlike the European commercial empires of the same period), is worth comparing to the Sephardic Jews of Livorno brilliantly studied by Francesca Trivellato.16 Looking at all these various cases of forced migration together, we might conclude that what often characterized them was the transfer of skills and knowledge and sometimes, but more rarely, the consolidation of new ideas. This was notably the case of those seventeenth-century Protestant exiles who actively contributed to the consolidation of the Republic of Letters as a cosmopolitan, transnational, and nonconfessional—indeed, tolerant—community of learning. Similarly, from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century the experience of political exiles—both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary—was also of great ideological significance, shaping much of the political cultures of liberalism and socialism as transnational phenomena. In this case, however, we are primarily considering individuals rather than members of a religious or ethnic community. By contrast, what seems to have characterized the intellectual efforts of the Jewish diaspora expelled from Spain and Portugal after 1492 and 1497 to cities in Italy, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and, later, the Dutch Republic—either as Jews who refused to be converted or eventually as New Christians who had been persecuted by the Inquisition and reverted back to Judaism when they could do so—was the preservation of a religious community against external threats. This makes sense, because in the early modern period in Europe religious persecution and discrimination were the key generators of new diasporas, by contrast with more recent centuries, marked by overtly political ethnic conflicts.17 In this respect, Jewish writers affected by the new experience of exile primarily wrote about it for a Jewish audience. Hence the expulsion of 1492 was often experienced as a reenactment of the previous exodus from Egypt and led to a fresh historical consciousness, often tinged with messianic themes. There is nevertheless an impor tant difference between the more traditional emphasis on preserving a religious culture of those Sephardic Jews who settled in cities such as Salonika, Safed, or Constantinople; the growing exposure to humanistic culture and European historiography of others who remained in Italy (especially those who studied medicine in universities like Padua); and the direct participation in the European Republic of Letters of a few who, like

18

Introduction

Baruch Spinoza, grew up in Amsterdam and were influenced by modern philosophy. Obviously where one came from originally was not the only thing that mattered: the location and the timing of forced migration were probably of greater significance when determining cultural and intellectual outcomes. Without dismissing the great importance of the printing press in increasing the connections and expanding the horizons of early modern Jewish culture—a point that has been emphasized by David Ruderman—if we were to identify a key moment of rupture, that would be the European Enlightenment.18 As noted by Iris Idelson-Shein, late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Jewish adaptations by the maskilim (enlightened scholars) of German travel books presumably addressed to a young audience, notably their efforts to appropriate the popularization of accounts of discovery and conquest by Joachim Heinrich Campe (German translator of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and also a writer influenced by Rousseau), “the hazards and travails of travel served to illuminate the challenges” created by the external pressures toward Jewish modernization, and in particular the need by Ashkenazic reformers to define a point of departure between the savage and the civilized.19 Despite the overt effort to selectively “Judaize” some of the discourses of the European Enlightenment, the consequences of this kind of engagement would be deep and long lasting and fed into a crisis of rabbinical authority, which, in turn, generated an orthodox reaction.20 For those who were more thoroughly westernized, there was no turning back. As Israel Bartal notes, those Jewish immigrants and tourists who traveled from the West to Palestine in the post-Napoleonic era could no longer simply rely on biblical verses and Talmudic citations, since they brought with them a whole baggage of nontraditional views and opinions.21 While the themes of exodus, exile, and return are of great cultural significance, they are, of course, only one manifestation of Jewish “travel”—and certainly not the most characteristic forms of travel that generated travel writing, namely, pilgrimage, trade, education, and diplomacy (or, in more recent times, leisure tourism). Some of the more distinguished travelers—pilgrims, rabbis, kabbalists, poets, exiles—have long attracted the attention of scholars, while others—such as the itinerant paupers who carried messages across the Mediterranean noted by Miriam Frenkel—have remained largely invisible, despite the importance of their function in facilitating communication in the Middle Ages.22 Jewish travelers range from the religious intensity of the twelfth-century pilgrimage from Spain to Israel by Judah Halevi, to the subjective exploration of romanticism, religion, politics, and sexuality in Heinrich Heine’s Travel Pictures (1826–31), to the nostalgic analysis of the end of a cosmopolitan European civilization destroyed by modern nationalism in Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday (1942), also a work written in exile and a tragic testimony to the loss of a home-

Why Do We Need a Cultural History of Travel?

19

land without borders. Of course, any particular list of significant travelers could be seen as arbitrary, given the massive variety and transformations of Jewish identities over time and place. The point I want to emphasize here is that the wealth of Jewish travel writing offers much more than an additional perspective from which to explore a number of well-known themes in Jewish history: potentially, Jewish travel writing also has a unique role to play in the efforts to construct a less Eurocentric, genuinely comparative longue durée narrative of cultural change—that is, a history of literary and intellectual traditions in their contexts that does not assume a single linear path to modernity. By means of its intimate imbrication with the European tradition, but also through its continuous status as an internal outsider to that tradition, often overtly resistant to it, Jewish travel writing offers the kind of perspective that a global cosmopolis may profitably study.

Introduction Joshua Levinson

As mentioned in the opening chapter, the Bible recounts journeys of many different kinds: of exile and redemption, of conquerors and rebels, of women travelers, and sacred travel to holy sites. In fact, the entire biblical text is framed by travel, as it begins with the expulsion from Eden (Gen. 3:23) and concludes with Ezra’s return from exile (2 Chron. 36:23). It is not surprising, therefore, that David Clines has characterized the Pentateuch on the whole as a travel narrative where “everyone seems constantly on the move. The story of the Pentateuch can be told as a traveller’s tale: the preparations for a departure, the hazards of departure, privations and dangers on the journey, decisions to go back and to move on, moments of rest and days of march, failure to reach the goal even when it is within sight [after] years of fruitless wanderings and encampments.”1 These narratives of exodus and exile, return and restoration, are of single importance not only for understanding travel and travel writing within Jewish contexts, but also because throughout history many ethnic and religious communities have modeled their own fictions of identity on these biblical travel narratives, from the first Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land to “Go Down Moses” of black slaves in the antebellum South. The Bible that accompanied many travelers was not only a book, it was a conceptual and cultural map. It is not fortuitous that when Columbus witnessed the abundance of fresh water flowing from the Orinoco he made his infamous claim to have discovered the earthly paradise and the outlet of its four rivers.2 Thus, the ancient land of Israel would serve a host of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim travelers, from pilgrims and crusaders to geographers and colonial officers who would traverse its landscape, experience its geographical and spiritual features, and endow this space with old and new qualities according to their faiths and ideological leanings. The Bible as a traveler’s tale had its own peculiarities; it neither starts from home nor arrives at home.3 One of these paradigmatic biblical travel narratives

Introduction Joshua Levinson

As mentioned in the opening chapter, the Bible recounts journeys of many different kinds: of exile and redemption, of conquerors and rebels, of women travelers, and sacred travel to holy sites. In fact, the entire biblical text is framed by travel, as it begins with the expulsion from Eden (Gen. 3:23) and concludes with Ezra’s return from exile (2 Chron. 36:23). It is not surprising, therefore, that David Clines has characterized the Pentateuch on the whole as a travel narrative where “everyone seems constantly on the move. The story of the Pentateuch can be told as a traveller’s tale: the preparations for a departure, the hazards of departure, privations and dangers on the journey, decisions to go back and to move on, moments of rest and days of march, failure to reach the goal even when it is within sight [after] years of fruitless wanderings and encampments.”1 These narratives of exodus and exile, return and restoration, are of single importance not only for understanding travel and travel writing within Jewish contexts, but also because throughout history many ethnic and religious communities have modeled their own fictions of identity on these biblical travel narratives, from the first Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land to “Go Down Moses” of black slaves in the antebellum South. The Bible that accompanied many travelers was not only a book, it was a conceptual and cultural map. It is not fortuitous that when Columbus witnessed the abundance of fresh water flowing from the Orinoco he made his infamous claim to have discovered the earthly paradise and the outlet of its four rivers.2 Thus, the ancient land of Israel would serve a host of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim travelers, from pilgrims and crusaders to geographers and colonial officers who would traverse its landscape, experience its geographical and spiritual features, and endow this space with old and new qualities according to their faiths and ideological leanings. The Bible as a traveler’s tale had its own peculiarities; it neither starts from home nor arrives at home.3 One of these paradigmatic biblical travel narratives

24

Traveling with the Bible

is the tale of Abraham’s emigration from Ur to Canaan, which became over time one of the foundation narratives of many religious and political communities and a paradigm for many journeys. “The Travels and Travails of Abraham” follows the reception history of this tale as it moves through different historical reading formations; from the Bible to the Second Temple book of Jubilees and subsequently into rabbinic literature. One of the surprising aspects of the biblical account is that it portrays Abraham as an outsider, one who comes from elsewhere as a stranger to a strange land. This unexpected choice raises questions of legitimacy that could easily be avoided by telling a tale of indigenous origins. This essay explores some of the ideological gains of this move as this tale is retold and restructured in its reception history. “All travel narratives,” as I note, “are structured around the moments of arrival, departure, and what transpires between them, yet they can be characterized according to their narrative focus along this trajectory.” It is this focus of the narrative that changes from version to version, and consequently each account portrays a different fiction of identity, a different other, and a different meaning for home. Another theme raised here is the importance of vision in travel narratives, in seeing and being seen. Two elements that are indispensable for any travel narrative—more so than actual travel itself—are seeing and telling. Without seeing (real or imagined) there is nothing to tell, and without the telling no one besides the traveler can see. Since Laura Mulvey’s pioneering work on the male gaze, many scholars have stressed the importance of visual regimes for understanding travel literature, be it under the guise of the tourist gaze, the colonial or ethnographic gaze, or others.4 Furthermore, the agent of vision and of narrative voice need not necessarily coincide, as the text is produced through a complex process of seeing, telling, transmitting, and editing. Ora Limor explores this interaction between seeing and telling in late antique and early medieval pilgrim accounts. Pilgrimage itself was of course rooted in biblical and even Greek precedents. The Bible commands pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, and Pausanias’s second-century Description of Greece was arguably the first pilgrim travel guide to the sacred sites of his homeland. We should not forget that the Greek word theōria came to mean “theory” and “speculation” because its primary meaning is “seeing”; it thus came to be associated with sacred travel and pilgrimage, like trips to see the gods.5 The genre of the Christian itineraria, or travelogue, emerged from scholastic interests in locating places mentioned in scripture. Melito and others traveled to Palestine in order to see “the places where [these things] were preached and done.”6 Post-Constantinian late antiquity witnessed an impor tant transformation of the pilgrim itinerary when this scholastic curiosity yielded to a more

Introduction

25

tactile yearning in the fourth and fifth centuries. In this period, in both the East and the West, there emerged a heightened interest in physical movement and travel in the Mediterranean. This interest formed a component of how late antiquity incorporated the familiar Mediterranean oikoumene, or known world, into a universal Christian vision of the cosmos.7 The Christian adoption of the itinerarium genre began, according to the surviving texts, in the mid-fourth century with an anonymous text known as the Bordeaux Pilgrim (333 C.E.). Following the unitary Mediterranean rule of the emperor Constantine I (from 324) and the subsequent travels of his mother, Helena, in the Eastern Empire (326–327), the Holy Land became a desired destination for Christian travelers. “This advent of Christian travel to the East coincided with the monumentalization of the region, with imperially sponsored churches and other buildings.”8 Thus in the 380s, Egeria travels to what she calls “the places of my desire.” This desire “to see every thing which the Books of Moses tell us” was born out of an intense yearning to participate in the sacred moments from the biblical past and was undoubtedly one of the driving forces of sacred travel.9 As Paulinus of Nola said: “No other sentiment draws men to Jerusalem but the desire to see and touch.”10 The Holy Land became a space through which we can think about the relationships between travel and the imagination, between time and genre, between the sacred quality associated with spaces and their more mundane features like weather and topography. Many of the places in the Holy Land were venerated not only because of past events that occurred there (such as the stations of the cross in Jerusalem or the graves of biblical prophets and leaders), but also due to their role in a messianic future. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim eschatological and geographical literature dealt with the relations of past, present, and future in this context. Many locations in the Holy Land were thus mythical spaces that transcended time. Often, travelers depicted such spaces as heterotopias, or places whose own locations can be understood in relation to other sites, whose meanings they invent, invert, and mirror. These accounts, then, speak not of concrete geography but of an imagined spatiality linked to religious faith.11 One of the most prominent themes that pervade travel writing from antiquity to the present is that of the marvelous. It is this aspect of travel discourse that was already parodied in Lucian of Samosata’s second-century C.E. precursor of science fiction, A True History, where the narrator travels to the moon. Thus, he writes in the preface: “Iambulus also wrote a lot about the marvels to be found in the countries of the great sea: he concocted a lie which is obvious to everyone, yet his subject matter is not unattractive. Many others with the same idea have written ostensibly about their journeys and visits abroad, giving accounts of huge creatures and brutal men and strange ways of living. Their

26

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leader and teacher in such tomfoolery is Homer’s Odysseu. . . . But I am much more honest in this than the others: at least in one respect I shall be truthful, in admitting that I am lying.”12 One of the tensions inherent in this genre is precisely the need to negotiate between the familiar and the remarkable, the known and the unknown. John Elsner insightfully connects this theme to the “rhetoric of otherness” in travel literature. He argues that while travel writing is always an act of cultural appropriation and strives to make the other known, it must not succeed. “Travelwriting cannot afford to let the Other become wholly known. . . . One of the great tensions of travel-writing as a genre is that it is about making the Other comprehensible and yet making sure that it is Other enough to continue generating the attraction of the foreign, to continue to defy total domestication. In fact the travel-writer’s act of translation into his own culture must be simultaneously an ‘otherising’ which keeps the described outside his culture: it must ‘remarkablise’ as much as it brings down to earth.”13 The Christian travelogue adopted this “rhetoric of otherness” for its own theological ends, for “a distant place without marvels is not so distant after all.”14 As explored here by Ora Limor, the category of the marvelous assumes additional rhetorical and ideological functions in late antique and medieval accounts of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She shows how the Holy Land itself becomes an overdetermined signifier as the physical landscape and even the climate become a text to be interpreted. Limor concentrates mainly on Adomnán’s late seventhcentury On the Holy Places. This unique work, a combination of pilgrim narrative and list of sacred sites, is “the longest and the most substantial and sophisticated Holy Land description to have come down to us from the early Middle Ages.” Unlike earlier pilgrim narratives, like that of Egeria, which was written close after Helena’s own triumphant pilgrimage, Adomnán was a learned Scottish priest writing after the Arab conquest of the Holy Land. Limor shows how the author had to struggle to preserve Christian claims to the holy city even when ruled by strangers. Ironically, this is a bit like the Jewish situation after Constantine. To this end, he enlists the natural world and the marvelous as manifestations of a hidden transcript of continued Christian control. Late antique and medieval pilgrims read the land as a text, and the marvelous was a touchstone that ensured the “reality” of scripture. It is the marvelous (miracula), as Jerome says, that “verified things of which I had previously learned by report” (Apol. 3.22). Its very otherness guaranteed its veracity. In the wake of the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, Palestine became once again the ground for testing faith, but this time it was not the marvelous, but rather the sensus literalis that captured the traveler’s imagination and served his ideological discourse.

Introduction

27

Elliott Horowitz amasses an abundance of evidence from mostly eighteenthcentury British travelers to the Holy Land that described the landscape of Palestine and its inhabitants. One of the experiences that appears repeatedly in these writings is the feeling that the trip from Europe to the Middle East is a journey back in time. Anne McClintock has called this “anachronistic space”; defined as “a permanently anterior time within the geographic space of the empire” that is created by mapping difference onto a diachronic axis.15 Thus the Scottish painter Robert Ker Porter (1775–1842) describes the capacious tent of “a venerable Arabian sheik” as a scene identical to that “which must have presented itself, ages ago, in the fields of Haran, when [Abraham’s father] Tereh sat in his tent door, surrounded by his sons.”16 So too, George Bush in the preface to his Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures (1836) remarks: “Scarcely a traveller has set foot on oriental soil without professing himself to be at once struck with the remarkable coincidence between the picture of ancient manners, as drawn in the sacred writings, and the state of things which actually meets his eye.”17 These scenes, as Horowitz remarks, create a “uniformity of past and present,” as the narrated present provides a glimpse of the ancient past. This ability of travel in space to transport the traveler back in time also worked its magic in the opposite direction as the wild “Bedoweens” became a remnant and witness of the biblical Ishmael, and the barrenness of Judea was proof of the efficacy of the divine curse upon the land and its inhabitants. When Alexander Keith surveyed Palestine’s history in his Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion (1826), he wrote that “there was a curse on the land, that hath scathed it; a judgment on the people that hath scattered them throughout the world.”18 Jews and Muslims alike were “not less definitely marked, than the features of the land that had been smitten with a curse because of their iniquities.”19 This curse, which had “taken away the beauty of their land, seems also to have taken the valour from their spirit.”20 These sources create a picture of the Middle East that seems to evade the erosion of time, similar to the characteristics of the Wandering Jew discussed later in this volume by Galit Hasan-Rokem, but imprinted on the land itself. At first sight this “uniformity of past and present” seems very similar to the accounts of early Christian pilgrims. It has been said of Egeria that for her “present and past have merged into a single experience.”21 She also stood simultaneously in two worlds and moves through two times: the present of the late fourth-century Eastern Roman Empire as well as the illud tempus of the sacred biblical past. But the travelers cited by Horowitz do not seem to be motivated only by an intense yearning to participate in the sacred moments from the biblical past. This is the age when the curiosity cabinets of the Renaissance gave way to monuments of global empires, and the great public museums were erected in the imperial

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Traveling with the Bible

capitals of the world. This period, richly documented by Horowitz, spans the era between the establishment of the British Museum (1753) and the opening of the Great Exhibition of London (1851). At this same time the Holy Land itself, and those who dwell within it, have been transformed into an exhibition. This new European traveler, part church divine and part ethnographer, traverses the Holy Land as if walking inside a museum diorama for his amusement and edification.

C h apter 3

The Travels and Travails of Abraham Joshua Levinson

Socrates: But then what are the things about which they like to listen to you and which they applaud? Tell me yourself, for I cannot discover them. Hippias: They are very fond of hearing about the genealogies of heroes and men, Socrates, and the foundations of cities in ancient times. —Plato, Hippias Maior

As Socrates learned, one of the most culturally popular types of travel tales is foundation narratives that relate the establishment of a new city, race, or empire. Two influential exemplars would certainly be Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas leads a small band of survivors from Troy in search of a new home in Italy, and the biblical account of Abraham’s migration from Ur to the Promised Land of Canaan. These “myths of origin,” as Elisabeth Kennedy states, “are a powerful source of collective dignity and differentiation.”1 However, foundation narratives need not be travel narratives. In fact, Moshe Weinfeld has pointed out that these myths of descent are the exception. The cognate literatures from Mesopotamia and Egypt told tales of the autochthonous origins of their civilizations, while the Greek and Hebrew traditions both told very similar foundation narratives based on the immigration of the founding figure from elsewhere.2 He makes a typological comparison between the figures of Abraham and Aeneas, positing a shared genre of the “foundation story” (Ktisissagen). These narratives share a series of common motifs wherein “a deity who sends the hero and/or founder off and guides him

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in his journey, as well as the sanctuary established by the settlers to that deity in the new land.”3 Aeneas leaves famous Troy and stays for a while in Carthage, which later becomes Rome’s great enemy; fi nally his son Ascanius reaches Lavinium. . . . His descendants reach Rome, which is destined to rule the world. Similarly, Abraham leaves the great civilization of Mesopotamia, Ur of the Chaldeans, stays for a while in Aram, which later becomes Israel’s enemy, and reaches Canaan, the Land of promise, out of which his descendants will rule other peoples. In both cases, we have an ethnic tradition later developed into an imperial ideology; in both, we are presented with a divine promise given to the father of the nation who later becomes a messenger for a world mission.4 One of the unexpected aspects of these migration narratives already alluded to by Weinfeld is the fact that the founding father is an outsider. This is a surprising choice given the cultural advantages of relating a tale of indigenous origins that would avoid problems of legitimacy and authenticity. However, Weinfeld failed to notice that Aeneas, unlike Abraham, did not come to Italy as a stranger. While in Delos he prayed to Apollo “Grant us our own home. . . . Whom do we follow? Where do we go? Command us, where do we settle now?” Thereupon, he receives an oracle instructing him to seek out the land of his ancestors: “your father’s land that gave you birth will take you back again, restored to her fertile breast. Search for your ancient mother. There your house, the line of Aeneas, will rule all parts of the world.”5 This oracle is at first misinterpreted as referring to Crete, but upon arrival there, Aeneas receives another oracle: “These are not the shores Apollo of Delos urged. He never commanded you to settle here in Crete. There is a country—the Greeks called it Hesperia, Land of the West, an ancient land, mighty in war and rich in soil. Oenotrians settled it; now we hear their descendants call their kingdom Italy, after their leader, Italus. There lies our true home. There Dardanus was born, there Iasius. Fathers, founders of our people. Rise up now . . . sail for Italy.”6 Virgil solves the ideological problem of legitimacy by a narrative of double origins: Aeneas is both a foreign conqueror and a founder who returns as a rightful heir. Thus, while both Abraham and Aeneas are fulfilling a divine destiny, the latter is actually returning to his place of origin. Alongside the dominant biblical outsider paradigm, there may be some peripheral voices that champion autochthonous Israelite origins. For example, Ezekiel states concerning Jerusalem, “By origin and birth you are from the land

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of the Canaanites—your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” (Ezek. 16:3).7 In addition, Sarah Japhet and others have proposed that the book of Chronicles alludes to an autochthonous origin of Israel when it presents Joshua as born in Ephraimite territory (1 Chron. 7:25–27), and therefore “he did not conquer the land, he simply was there.”8 As she summarizes her findings, “it is a most distinctive and revolutionary concept: contrary to most established historical traditions of the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets, the Chronicler presents a concept of people and land which is autochthonic in its basic features.”9 For the Chronicler, it would appear that the true Israel was composed of those who remained in the land and not those returning.10 Some scholars have suggested that this counterhistory was intended to rival the claims of the returnees from Babylon, who promoted our travel narrative of Abraham according to the outsider paradigm of the Promised Land as a divine gift. In his study of these traditions, Peter Machinist has emphasized that “what is most striking about all this material is its point of view. Virtually unanimously the texts agree that Israel arrived in Palestine as outsiders.”11 Thus, as David Clines and Keith Whitelam have pointed out, it is not so surprising to find such a prevalence of the travel tales in the Pentateuch. “The significance of such a setting is that the Pentateuch functions as an address to exiles, or, perhaps it would be better to say, the self-expression of exiles, who find themselves at the same point as that reached by the Israelite tribes at the end of Deuteronomy: the promise of God stands behind them, the promised land before them.”12 As noted, between these two fictions of identity, the ideal of authentic, rooted, and autochthonous origins would seem to have distinct advantages over the outsider paradigm, which “downplays the territorial component of Israel’s collective identity, stressing instead that the ancestors of Israel originally were, and in some sense continued to be, alienated from the land which was their ethnoscape.”13 Nevertheless, Machinist has suggested that the outsider paradigm had distinct distinct ideological advantages for the ancient Israelites: First is the assumption . . . that the community of Israel can exist apart from this land, as its experience in Egypt and the Wilderness demonstrates. Second is the sharp differentiation between Israel and other inhabitants of the land, whether understood as autochthonous or also as outsiders. . . . Israel enters the land already as a distinctive social and cultural group—in other words, as a grouped formed outside of the contamination emanating from the other inhabitants of the land.14

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Unlike the fiction of identity reflected in Ezekiel or Chronicles where identity and place are interdependent, the dominant outsider paradigm portrays identity as portable and thus not connected to a defined place of residence. This separation of land and identity enables Israel to withstand periods of alienation from the land due to alternative sources of ethnic identity for group survival as contamination is now transferred to the autochthonous category of the Canaanites. Beyond the avoidance of contamination, the outsider paradigm has other advantages as well. “While sojourn may appear at some points to weaken Israel’s territorial myth, it serves to buttress its election myth.”15 Following Anthony Smith, who suggests that myths of migration promote the exclusion of indigenous peoples from the providential destiny of the ethnic group, Kennedy notes that “a tradition of outside origins formulates the connection of the ethnie to its land as a function of divine gift, an emphasis which in turn reinforces a sense of ethnic election.”16 The very marginality of the outsider becomes a mark of divine election that subsequently justifies the usurpation of the land of the indigenous cultures; “the status of the new and outsider . . . became the mark and proof of a special divine chosenness—its very marginality vis-à-vis the older cultures constituting the basis for replacing them.”17

Abraham’s Journey to Canaan Against this background, I would like to examine the reception and transformation of the biblical narrative of Abraham’s immigration from Ur to Canaan in Second Temple and rabbinic literatures. The relevant verses in chapters 11– 12 of Genesis read as follows: Now this is the line of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot [11:27]. Haran died in the lifetime of his father Terah, in his native land, Ur of the Chaldeans [11:28]. . . . Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughterin-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there [11:31]. The days of Terah came to 205 years; and Terah died in Haran [11:32]. The Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you [12:1]. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing” [12:2]. . . . Abram went forth as the Lord had commanded him

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[12:4] . . . and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in the land of Canaan [12:5], Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land [12:6]. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will assign this land to your heirs.” And he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him [12:7].18 These verses constitute an exemplary foundation narrative of outsider origins. Abraham, the founder of the Jewish people, is one who comes from elsewhere as a stranger to a strange land on the wings of divine promise. There are many well-known problems with these verses that troubled both ancient and modern interpreters: Why was Abraham the chosen one and Canaan the chosen land? Why did Abraham’s father Terah choose to leave Ur for Canaan, but then stop and settle in Haran?19 An additional problem emerges at the end of verse 12:6: the comment “the Canaanites were then in the land” disrupts the flow of the text, and its narrative function is not clear.20 We can clearly see here a two-stage journey; after the mysterious death of his son Haran in Ur, Terah took the remaining family and sets out for Canaan from Ur, but stops in Haran, and then at a second stage Abraham continues on alone to Canaan at divine behest. As a foundational travel narrative, these meager verses are clearly disappointing. In the space of one verse (12:5) we are told that Abraham departed and arrived, but beyond this skeletal framework we know nothing of the journey itself. The narrative middle—the story itself—is deemed by the biblical narrator to be of insufficient interest to be recounted. In order to follow the reception history of this text, I wish to utilize the distinction between a gap and a blank in reader-reception theory. A gap derives from a lack of information concerning the represented world, whether with regard to its events or characters or the causality of the plot itself. Its purpose is to activate the reader to create a coherent imagined world by filling it in. The blank, likewise, is a result of omission and lack of representation within the text, however it has no artistic motivation. As it is impossible to describe the represented world in all its details, and the narrator is not interested in doing so, he omits events and details that do not interest him.21 It is difficult to separate these two concepts because there is no formal distinction between them; all omissions look the same. Only after the reader posits a certain artistic intentionality or motivation can he or she attempt to distinguish between that which is missing in order to arouse interest and that which is missing due to lack of interest. In other words, the very choice between gap and blank is itself the result of a hermeneutic move and depends upon the

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reading formation in which the text is interpreted. For the Bible, it would seem that the travails of Abraham’s journey are a blank, of no interest for the narrator or the intended reader.

Jubilees One of the most fascinating aspects of text reception is its interpretive “afterlife,” how textual blanks are transformed into narrative gaps as the text moves into a new reading formation. Lubomír Doležel has called this type of rewriting a narrative expansion that constructs an alternative fictional world that “extends the scope of the protoworld by filling its gaps, constructing a prehistory or posthistory. The protoworld is put into a new co-text, and the established structure is thus shifted.”22 The second-century B.C.E. book of Jubilees expansively rewrites the story of Abraham’s emigration from Ur, transforming it into a different tale altogether.23 As the text itself is rather long, I will summarize its major events. Before we get to the travel narrative itself it is impor tant to note that one aspect of the account in Jubilees is similar to the Aeneid; here too Abraham is in fact returning to his homeland. It was previously recounted that Noah divided up the world between his sons, and Shem’s portion included “the center of the earth,” Canaan, Mount Zion, and the Garden of Eden, “the residence of the Lord” (8:12, 19).24 Noah then had his sons “swear by oath to curse each and every one who wanted to occupy the share which did not emerge by his lot” (9:14). Subsequently, when Canaan, the son of Ham, was on his way to Africa to possess his appointed lot, he “saw that the land of Lebanon as far as the stream of Egypt was very beautiful” (10:29) and chose to usurp Shem’s portion, incurring his father’s wrath and curse. “Do not act this way, for if you do act this way both you and your children will fall in the land and be cursed with rebellion. . . . Do not settle in Shem’s residence because it emerged by their lot for Shem and his sons. You are cursed and will be cursed more than all of Noah’s children” (10:30–32).25 Ham’s land grab not only explains why Noah cursed Canaan rather than Ham (Gen. 9:25), and the embarrassing fact that the land promised to Abraham is called in the Torah the “Land of Canaan,” but it also justifies the subsequent decree of their extermination (Deut. 7:2).26 More impor tant for our purposes, this revision solves the problem of the legitimacy of the outsider. Abraham is not a usurper, but in fact his arrival in Canaan is a restoration of his true inheritance. “The rewriting makes acquisition of the Land in the subsequent patriarchal narratives a ‘return’ rather than a theologically complex, if not troubled, claim to a land inhabited by others.”27 The author of Jubilees has combined the

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biblical outsider paradigm with an Aeneas-like founder who, while a stranger, is in fact returning to the land of his fathers. The narrative result is that of a stranger in his own land.28 Back to our narrative, we are told that the inhabitants of the city of Ur “began to make statues, images, and unclean things . . . so that they would commit sins, impurities, and transgressions” (11:4). In this environment, the precocious Abraham “separated himself from his father in order not to worship idols with him” (11:16). Here appears the famous tale of Abraham the iconoclast. He argues with his father and urges him to abandon idolatry and worship the true God “who created every thing by His word and all life comes from His presence” (12:4). To which Terah replies: “I, too, know this my son. What shall I do with the people who have ordered me to serve in their presence? If I tell them what is right, they will kill me. . . . Be quiet my son, so that they do not kill you” (12:6–7). When Abraham then tries to convince his brother Haran, he is angrily rebuffed. Subsequently, he steals into the temple at night and burns the idols, and when Haran dashed in to save them “he was burned in the fire and died in Ur before his father Terah” (Jubilees 12:14 = Gen. 11:28). This new prehistory now becomes the motivating context for the family’s hasty departure from Ur. Immediately following these events, Terah leaves for Canaan but settles in Haran for fourteen years.29 If read causally, then the First Family is fleeing to save itself from religious persecution as presaged in Terah’s warning words to his son (“if I tell them what is right, they will kill me”). A similar tradition appears both in Josephus and in the book of Judith, roughly contemporary with Jubilees: “For they had left the way of their ancestors, and they worshiped the God of heaven, the God they had come to know; hence they [the Chaldeans] drove them out from the presence of their gods and they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there for a long time. Then their God commanded them to leave the place where they were living and go to the land of Canaan” (Jth. 5:8–9).30 We can already see that the skeletal biblical travel narrative has been remotivated and substantially transformed by adding a prehistory or prequel that motivates both the departure from Ur and Abraham’s status as God’s chosen one.31 The ensuing narrative relates an all-night vigil of Abraham in Haran as he deliberates: “Shall I return to Ur of the Chaldeans who are looking for me to return to them? Or am I to remain here in this place?” (12:21). It is at this point that the prehistory of Jubilees rejoins the protoworld of the biblical narrative, and here God appears to Abraham and offers a third alternative. He commands him neither to return to Ur, nor to remain in Haran, but rather to set forth for “the land I will show you,” that is, the land of Canaan (Jubilees 12:22 = Gen. 12:1). The divine command to set out for Canaan, which was

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unmotivated in the biblical text, has now become a response to Abraham’s deliberations. As James Kugel has explained, the author is addressing the apparent textual contradiction mentioned earlier. On the one hand, God now commands him in Haran to depart from his native land and from his father’s house (Gen. 12:1), and yet he had already departed from his native land with his father as recounted in Gen. 11:31. It would make much more sense if these words were addressed to Abraham while he still resided in Ur, rather than Haran, since that was his native land. The triple command is now parsed: “Come forth from your land and your family [better: kindred], that is, do not go back to Ur, and from your father’s house here in Haran, [and go] to the land of Canaan, which I shall show you.”32 The biblical nontravel narrative has become rather convoluted. There are many aspects of this development that invite explanation and speculation, but I would like to concentrate on one aspect alone. The Bible tells of a two-stage journey from Ur to Haran and then on to Canaan—and only the latter is explicitly motivated by God’s command. We do not know why the family left Ur for Canaan, why they stopped in Haran, or why Abraham abandoned there his father and continued on alone to Canaan. Looking now at Jubilees, we can witness the creation of a new travel narrative that elegantly closes most of these gaps. They fled the idolatrous Ur because of religious persecution and set out for Canaan as their ancestral inheritance, but why did they stop in Haran for fourteen years? The author of Jubilees has elegantly remotivated and reinterpreted both the departure and arrival, but what is the ideological function of the middle section? I suggest that this new tale focuses on three characters and three places that create three different cultural identities. In Ur, we can see that Haran, the youngest son, is very much at home in the local idolatrous environment (“when he told these things to his two brothers they became angry at him” [12:8]). He even attempts to save the burning idols from destruction, perishing in “Ur (=fire) of the Chaldeans.” Abraham is the rebellious son who “separated himself from his father in order not to worship idols with him” (11:16) and tries to dissuade him from his wrongful path (“What help and advantage do we get from these idols before which you worship. . . . They are an error of the mind. Do not worship them” [12:2–3]). Terah, the father, wishes only to survive unnoticed (“I, too, know this my son, what shall I do with the people who have ordered me to serve in their presence. If I tell them what is right they will kill me. . . . Be quiet, my son, so that they do not kill you” [12:6–7]). These three characters and three distinct cultural identities are mirrored in the three places of Ur, Haran, and Canaan. Therefore, Haran the idolater must perish in idola-

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trous Ur, and Terah of ambiguous identity must be abandoned in the betwixt and between of Haran, the cultural space that is between Ur and Canaan. Only Abraham is worthy to complete the journey to the Promised Land. We already saw that the author of Jubilees has created an Aeneas-like founder who returns as an outsider to his rightful homeland. In this context, it is worthwhile noting that Carol Dougherty, in her study of ancient Greek colonial narratives, has proposed an underlying structure that is very close to that presented in Jubilees: “The colonial narrative opens at a moment of civic crisis— drought, plague, or civil unrest threatens the security and stability of the city. Alternatively, personal trauma—childlessness or fraternal conflict—substitutes for civic crisis within the narrative. In either case, the city (or individual) in distress consults the Delphic oracle to learn what must be done, and often Apollo suggests a colonial expedition as the necessary solution to the problem at hand.”33 Almost all of the nonbiblical motifs in Jubilees’ expansive narrative prequel can be found here. Dougherty even mentions among the motivating crises that precipitate the founder’s journey political or religious dissidents who are “forced to leave home in search of new territory, as the losing party in a city’s internal conflict or as victims of a new oppressive regime.” Moreover, just as the divine command comes to Abraham only in the betwixt and between of Haran, so too Dougherty points out that “the Delphic consultation, located midway between the mother city and the new world, occupies the transitional point in the colonization narrative—the pivot from civic crisis to civic foundation.”34 What in the Bible did not even merit narration has been transformed here into a full-fledged travel narrative of religious purification achieved through a process of separation. The border that is crossed, the border that defines the in and out of identity, is that of proper faith. Abraham the believer must travel spatially both from his homeland in Ur and his father’s house in Haran, as he separates himself from improper belief. He who wishes to assume his rightful inheritance in Canaan must first purify himself from the dross of idolatry. Identity is created through separation and difference from both others without and otherness within, and the three stops on the itinerary and the three characters are in fact three different religious identities. Ironically, although the ideological agenda of Jubilees is cultural isolation and separation, it seems to have adopted and adapted various Hellenistic motifs of the foundation travel narrative. While the joining of text and historical context is always a speculative endeavor, it is not difficult to imagine that in the second-century B.C.E. Hasmonian Palestine of Jubilees, these three identities are very real cultural

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options. Many scholars have pointed out that the book of Jubilees stresses repeatedly the theme of separation and ethnic purity. Thus, Abraham on his deathbed commands Jacob: “Separate from the nations and do not eat with them. Do not act as they do, and do not become their companion, for their actions are something that is impure, and all their ways are defiled and something abominable and detestable” (22:16).35 As James VanderKam has pointed out, this separation from the nations is part of the cosmic plan and similar language already appears in 2:19 where God declares: “ ‘I will now separate a people for myself among my nations. . . . I will sanctify them for myself; in this way I will bless them.’ Separation of Israel from the nations was God’s intention from the beginning.”36 Not surprisingly, we find this same “theology of separation” expressed in the Qumran Rule of the Community (1QS), but here it is applied to the community’s initiates: “When they have been confirmed in the foundation of the Community for two years in perfection of way, they shall be separated as holy within the Council of the men of the Community. . . . And when these become members of the Community in Israel according to all these rules, they shall be separated from the habitation of the men of injustice and shall go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of Him; as it is written, ‘In the wilderness [prepare the way of Truth, make straight] in the desert a highway for our God’ [Isa. 40:3].”37 In fact, Aaron Shemesh sees the ideology of Qumran as founded upon this principle: “If there is a single concept that characterizes the Qumran sect it is without a doubt the separatist world view to which they adhere and which— more than anything else—has shaped their way of life.”38 The fact that the members of the sect saw themselves as the true Children of Israel enabled them to relate to the outsider nonsectarian Jews as the Bible does to Gentiles. He has shown how the writings of Qumran apply the biblical decrees of separation from Gentiles to other “outsider” Jews who do not adopt sectarian beliefs; “the sect considers outside Jews as Gentiles and attributes to them the same sort of essential impurity.”39 Yair Furstenberg has demonstrated the prevalence of this transference of the biblical laws of impurity and separation to nonsectarian Jews in other Qumran texts and compared them to early rabbinic traditions: “Achieving purity is possible only by joining the sect, as it is a privilege denied to those who reject the sect’s teachings. . . . Thus, for example, the prohibition against ‘works like those of the Gentiles,’ which originally referred to idolatry and related practices, is reframed within a Jewish context, and read as an injunction to avoid following dissident opinions regarding the interpretation of the Torah. . . . In

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this scheme, impurity is an inherent result of the very distance—short or long—from the Essene elect.”40 While Jubilees holds a very distinct place in the Qumran library, the exact nature of the relationship between them is unclear (and further exacerbated by the complex redaction history of Jubilees itself). There is no doubt, however, that there is a strong linguistic, literary, and ideological affinity between them, and several Qumran texts may actually quote Jubilees by name.41 I suggest that the author of Jubilees has transformed the biblical travel narrative of Abraham into a sectarian foundational narrative. Abraham constructs his identity through a process of separation and purification, separation from an idolatrous world and separation from family. He is not the stranger who has come from afar, as the Bible has it, but is in fact going home to inhabit the land that is rightfully his. But before he can do so he must, like the initiates of Qumran, undergo an act of purification and separate himself “from the habitation of the men of injustice and shall go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of Him.” The narrative result of being a stranger in his own land provides him with the ability to be both an insider and an outsider at the same time.

Midrash Rabbinic literature of late antiquity also grappled with the gaps and blanks of these verses concerning Abraham’s emigration from Ur, and not surprisingly reconstitutes them to tell a different kind of travel tale altogether: R. Levi said: When Abraham our father was walking in Aram Naharaim and in Aram Nahor, he saw them eating and drinking and behaving wantonly. He said: I wish that my portion not be in this land. Once he arrived at the cliffs of Tyre [i.e., the northern boundary of the Land of Israel], he saw them weeding at the time of weeding and hoeing at the time of hoeing. He said: I wish that my portion will be in this land. Then the Holy One said to him: “to your descendants i will give this land” [Gen. 12:7].42 This is a cameo example of what the biblical narrator skips due to a total lack of interest that suddenly becomes impor tant to the rabbis; what did Abraham experience as he traveled from Aram to Canaan? I know of no earlier text that describes Abraham’s internal reactions and impressions while on his journey. Interestingly enough, while Jubilees felt compelled to remotivate Abraham’s

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two departures—fleeing religious persecution from Ur and the divine command in Haran—the midrash effectively collapses the differences between them and concentrates on the journey itself and its conclusion. In others words, while the prehistory of Jubilees supplements Abraham’s departure, the midrash focuses upon the moment of his arrival. This exegetical narrative divides into two parts, and each one is composed of three parallel components: walking, seeing, and response. This structure highlights the central difference between this rabbinic text from both of its biblical and postbiblical antecedents; here the narrative focus is on Abraham’s subjective response to what he encounters while traveling. Within the rabbinic reading formation, the dominant factor in transforming the biblical blank into a gap is the need to represent the inner realm of subjectivity.43 There is a double gap in the biblical text here that creates a contrapuntal tension. On the one hand, while the reader knows of Abraham’s final destination, Abraham himself does not. He sets out for “the land that I will show you” (12:1) and wanders in constant tension; which land will be the promised one? On the other hand, while the reader knows the destination, he or she does not know why God chose Abraham in the first place. The author exploits these tensions in order to transform the meaning of Abraham’s trial and with it the significance of his journey. He travels without knowing when and where God will tell him to stop. For this reason, he examines the behavior of those he encounters along the way with anxious anticipation. Upon witnessing the wanton behavior in the first leg of his journey, he expresses the hope that these lands will not be his final destination. In the second part of the story, Abraham arrives at the cliffs of Tyre, the northern border of Canaan, and sees a different sight altogether. Here, the indigenous Canaanites are not idlers like those of Aram but hardworking, engaged in the frustrating and difficult labors of preparation for the harvest. Only after observing them over a length of time, and seeing that they not only prune at the right time but also hoe in season, does he express his wish: “Would that my portion be in this land.”

The Traveling Gaze The act of seeing connects and separates both parts of the narrative. It is upon seeing the profligate behav ior of the inhabitants of Aram in the first section that Abraham expresses his disappointment, and arriving from the north (the cliffs of Tyre) he sees the industrious actions of the Canaanites. This double act of seeing by Abraham is framed by a doublet of divine sight; Abraham departs for “the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1)—and upon arrival God appears to him (12:7) to grant him the land of his choice.

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Seeing is not only the pivotal act that structures the narrative, but it is an essential component of this text as a travel narrative, for without seeing (real or imaginary) there is nothing to tell. However, looking relations are never innocent because what we see and how we interpret are always determined by the cultural system of the traveler.44 Since Laura Mulvey’s pioneering work on the male gaze, many scholars have stressed the importance of the visual by means of which the traveler perceives and interprets events, landscapes, and persons he or she encounters, be it under the guise of the tourist gaze, the colonial or ethnographic gaze, or others.45 The gaze is the lens through which the “other” is interpreted and subsequently depicted. In other words, it is not a passive recording of experiences but a reconstruction of events, people, and landscapes from the perspective of the travelers’ intentions and prejudices. It would seem that in our narrative the colonial gaze of Abraham as conqueror is the dominant mode, or perhaps the ethnographic gaze of a distanced neutrality that surveys and catalogs the vistas of the new world. These two visual regimes are like the male gaze, insofar as they accord their bearers a position of mastery and designate their objects as the site/sight of difference.46 However, Abraham here sees both difference in Aram and sameness in Canaan. His gaze seems to lack the perspective of superiority inherent in the colonial gaze or the categorizing detachment of the ethnographic gaze. He observes and appraises the behav ior of those he encounters not in order to displace or conquer them; rather his greatest anxiety is to be influenced by them. I suggest that we understand this visual encounter as a manifestation of what I call the immigrant’s gaze. I do not mean the controlling gaze of the authorities where the immigrant is its object, but rather of the immigrant himself who looks upon and observes the new world with mixed emotions of anxiety and hope. Like the colonial gaze, the immigrant observes the local population, but not from a position of superiority and power. The immigrant gaze does not construct itself as the center, but rather peers from the margins as a stranger seeking shelter, and observes his new neighbors with the hope of acceptance and integration. In the first part of the narrative, upon observing the profligate behav ior of the locals, Abraham expresses his hope not to receive this land. But what he sees from the cliffs of Tyre is a different sight altogether, and it is here that he pins his hopes. Because rabbinic midrash, unlike Second Temple literature, inscribes its own narrative between the lines of scripture but preserves the discursive distinction between them, it is easy to see that this midrashic prequel rejoins the biblical text with its concluding verse (Gen. 12:7). However, while the actual words of the verse do not change, they now acquire a different meaning. Throughout his

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journey, Abraham has been anxiously awaiting God’s word concerning “the land that I will show you.” The expression, “may my share be with . . .” reflects his misconception that his portion and destiny are not dependent upon himself, but rather upon an act of divine munificence. Just as he hoped that God would not tell him to settle in Aram Naharaim or Aram Nahor, so he hopes to receive the land of Canaan. After the recontextualization of the verse in the exegetical narrative, it now becomes clear both to the reader and to the character that the Promised Land depends upon his own choice. The verse is now understood as a response to Abraham’s request. Once he has chosen the land of Canaan, God says replies: “to your descendants I will give this land.” This recontextualization also transforms the meaning of Abraham’s trial. There is a prevalent Second-Temple tradition, based on Neh. 9:8 (“You found his heart faithful before You”), that Abraham is the paradigm of “the tested one.” Both Ben Sira (44:20 and 1 Mac. (2:52) describe him as one who “was tested and found faithful.” Jubilees already mentions ten trials, the first of which was apparently leaving his homeland (17:17), and the last was the Akedah (19:8), and the Mishnah mentions ten trials without elaborating them (m. Avot 5:3). Unlike both the biblical narrative and the postbiblical traditions, the trial in this midrash culminates in neither his departure from his homeland nor the separation from his family. By reframing the verse and placing the subjectivity of the protagonist at its center, Abraham is tested at every step of his journey. We find here, in a manner very characteristic of rabbinic literature as a whole, an internalization of the trial and its relocation to the character’s subjective consciousness. Only after Abraham has chosen the land of Canaan, does God respond “to your descendants I will give this land,” as if saying: I am now giving you this land because you have chosen it. At the end of the tale, Abraham learns that he himself needs to choose, while the reader learns why Abraham was chosen. The trial has been relocated to the character’s internal world, as specifically the moment of arrival and not of departure becomes the defining moment of the character’s identity. The chosen land is a result of the choosing subject, who must decide when to cease his travels. If, as Machinist has suggested, the advantage of the outsider paradigm is the emphasis it puts on divine election, the rabbinic text emphasizes Abraham’s choice and selection of the land. By the end of the story, not only has Abraham learned that he must choose the land of his destination, but the reader has learned that Abraham was chosen precisely because he knows how to choose correctly. One of the surprising results of this rewriting is the remotivation of the appearance of the Canaanites (“the Canaanites were then in the land” [12:6]), which, as mentioned above, disrupts the flow of the biblical narrative. The

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Canaanites are now those who engaged in pruning and hoeing at the proper times. Not only is there no deviation here from the flow of the narrative, but Abraham expresses his desire to receive this land specifically because of the behav ior of the native population. He arrives as a stranger but finds an affinity in the indigenous population. This remotivation of the biblical reference to the indigenous population stands in stark contrast to the theology of separation we saw in Jubilees and Qumran. In fact, despite its massive rewriting, Jubilees omits any reference to the Canaanites, skipping over verse 6 entirely. Combining both a rhetoric of exclusion and supplementation, in lieu of mentioning the Canaanites, there appears here a new description of the land’s bucolic fertility: “He saw that the land was spacious and most excellent and (that) every thing was growing on it: vines, fig trees, pomegranates, oak trees, holm oaks, terebinths, olive trees, cedars, cypresses, incense trees, and all kinds of wild trees; and there was water on the mountains. Then he blessed the Lord who had taken him from Ur of the Chaldeans and brought him to this mountain” (13:6–7). Here we do encounter the colonial gaze as the landscape offers itself for the voyeur’s visual consumption. It is worthwhile noting that Dougherty mentions that the final stage of the Greek colonial narrative often concludes with agricultural imagery at the final stage of colonialization: “Suppressing any hints of previous occupants or the violence of their removal, this strategy evokes images of colonization as healthy vines, fruit-laden trees, and fertile fields aplenty.”47 This pastoral description of the land, which foreshadows Moses’s blessing in Deut. 8:7–8, is an original expansion by the author of Jubilees. Although similar to the rabbinic midrash in that the reader is provided with a panoptic gaze of the Promised Land, here the population who had worked the land is erased and displaced by a lengthy description of the land itself, uninhabited and ripe for the taking.48 This description, which displaces the inhabitants of the land, is very similar to how Jeanne van Eeden describes the colonial gaze: Once colonial adventurers, explorers, and archaeologists had appropriated a territory, its status as a possession had to be expressed. The first stratagem was to proclaim the emptiness of the land, thus justifying the Western occupation of “unused” land. . . . The process of controlling the land always was contingent upon sight and surveillance. . . . The notion of the possessive gaze is linked to the manner in which landscapes were presented for visual consumption by the traveler’s eye, which is analogous to the “imperial eye . . . that by seeing names and dominates.”49

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What is absent here, but critical for the midrash, is the reason for Abraham’s choice, the Canaanites who labored in the land to produce its abundance.50

Conclusion All travel narratives are structured around the moments of arrival, departure, and what transpires between them, yet they can be characterized according to their narrative focus along this trajectory. Both the Second Temple and rabbinic traditions rewrite the same biblical travel tale of Abraham’s emigration, but each does so in a manner that reflects its own ideological agenda. Each of these travel tales constructs a different fiction of identity, a different other, and a different meaning for home. The biblical text concentrates solely on the moments of departure and arrival in order to highlight Abraham’s obedience. For this reason, there is no narrative representation of the travel itself, which only enables movement but does not define it. Both postbiblical rewritings utilize a similar narrative technique that transforms their quoted verses from divine initiatives into divine responses to Abraham’s deliberations, yet Jubilees transforms the moment of departure, and the midrash focuses on the moment of arrival. Jubilees recounts a travel tale of religious persecution and flight that stresses Abraham’s difference. Since the character’s identity is constructed through difference, the critical narrative moment is that of departure. It expands and remotivates the double departure of the Bible (from Ur and Haran) to tell a tale of separation and purification. Since Abraham’s identity is defined by his difference, his travel narrative is one of separation, of moving away from others. Here, Abraham is traveling home, but before he can assume his rightful inheritance, before he can become the founding father, he must undergo a process of purification by separating himself from all otherness of belief. By combining the biblical outsider paradigm with an Aeneas-like founder, who while a stranger is in fact returning to the land of his fathers, the author of Jubilees constructs the character’s identity through a double difference; he is different both from his place of origin and from his destination. This otherness enables him to be a stranger while in his own rightful home, as befits a sectarian foundation narrative of self-isolation. In distinction from the portrayal of the obedient servant in the Bible, or the oppositional character in Jubilees whose trial culminates in his departure, the rabbinic narrative is not of moving away but of travel toward. Therefore, the narrative crux is the moment of arrival and not of departure. Abraham is at home not in difference, but rather in a kind of exemplary sameness. In other words, if the danger to be avoided in Jubilees is that of “going native,” this is

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precisely the advantage of Canaan in Abraham’s eyes. The rabbinic text remotivates the moment of arrival, because unlike his departure, which was dictated by divine command, only the destination is a matter of the character’s choice. For the rabbis, the moment of arrival that defines identity is when human and divine choices coincide. It is when and why the traveler decides to cease traveling that defines him and the significance of his journey.

C h apter 4

Wondrous Nature: Landscape and Weather in Early Pilgrimage Narratives Ora Limor

Any traveler’s tale that claims to be a faithful report must contain a category of thoma. . . . It is as if it were postulated that far away, in these other countries, there were bound to be marvels/curiosities. —François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus

For medieval pilgrims, sacred space itself was a marvel, an exalted territory imbued with divine grace. Generally blind to landscapes, weather, flora and fauna, as well as to the living people they encountered on the route, the pilgrims took a deep interest in the natural phenomena that they considered testimonies to the sublime events that took place there in the formative past, in the founding moments of the faith. The stones on the ground, the fruit of the trees and the grain in the fields, the spring water and the flow of brooks were viewed as the imprint of sublime events, as preserving the divine; that is, as sacred landscapes. This sanctity is manifested in constantly occurring miracles. The Holy Land depicted in medieval pilgrimage accounts has an abundance of stones capable of healing or preventing barrenness; of fruit that ripens early or reaches unusual dimensions; of springs that heal incurable illnesses.1 Not only do various objects in the holy places express sanctity; the geography itself—the landscape, the hills and valleys and the mountain slopes—reveals divine grace. After climbing Mount Sinai, the late fourth-century pilgrim Egeria,

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whose famous letter to her “beloved sisters” opens the Christian itinerary genre, writes: I never thought I had seen mountains as high as those which stood around it [Mount Sinai], but the one in the middle where God’s glory came down was the highest of all, so much so that, when we were on top, all the other peaks we had seen and thought so high looked like little hillocks far below us. Another remarkable thing—it must have been planned by God—is that even though the central mountain, Sinai proper on which God’s glory came down, is higher than all the others, you cannot see it until you arrive at the very foot of it to begin your ascent. After you have seen every thing and come down, it can be seen facing you, but this cannot be done till you start your climb. I realized it was like this before we reached the Mount of God, since the brothers had already told me, and when we arrived there I saw very well what they meant.2 Egeria came from Galicia in Spain (or perhaps from southern France), and she had probably seen high mountains in her homeland as well as on her way to the Holy Land; still, holy mountains were considered different. Their height and structure bore a message. They were manifestations of the sublime. It is worthwhile noting that Egeria refrains from an allegorical reading of nature, one that would take the lofty, hidden mountain of God as a metaphor for the Christian truth concealed in the Bible. She is simply amazed at and enchanted by what she sees.3 The enchantment with the holy vista was shared by generations of pilgrims. A later example is the description of the Russian abbot Daniel, who came on pilgrimage in 1107 and wrote a detailed description of what he had seen in the holy places. The soil of Jerusalem is described in biblical terms: “And good crops grow about Jerusalem in that rocky land without rain; wheat and barley grow in abundance by God’s benevolent will—if you sow one measure you reap ninety or a hundred. Is not this holy land blessed by God?”4 Texts like these describe the Holy Land in terms of what W. J. T. Mitchell defined as “an icon of nature.” Mitchell writes: “Landscape is a medium not only for expressing value but also for expressing meaning, for communication between persons—most radically, for communication between the Human and the non-Human.”5 Like an icon, the holy landscape is an object of veneration and contemplation, and it exists simultaneously in the immediate earthly sphere and in the heavenly, symbolic one, heavily charged with significance, demonstrating God’s grace in his creation. Divine grace dwells in particular in places where it was once revealed to

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mortals in the past. Mount Sinai and Jerusalem are places of revelation, where human history, the march of time, and geography were changed forever. These unique qualities that pilgrimage accounts ascribe to sacred space and its marvels are manifest in a complex, rich way in Adomnán of Iona’s book De locis sanctis (hereafter DLS)—On the Holy Places.6 As this work stands at the center of the discussion, it is important to present the course of its composition at some length. This information is essential for a better understanding of how medieval pilgrims and authors grasped the special quality of the Holy Land and how they framed it. As I shall attempt to show, the narrative about the wondrous nature that has come down to us, the very representation of landscape, is formed through a complex process of seeing, transmitting, writing, and editing. Exposing the stages of the production of the narrative is essential for explaining its meaning and message, and for a thoughtful reading of pilgrimage accounts as such. Thus, although the following discussion deals with a Christian text, it addresses problems pertaining to travel narratives in general, such as voice, authorship, the value of information, and the relation between written witnesses and the experience of the eye. Furthermore, as I shall try to show, the stories at their core have also polemical implications, almost inevitable in texts dealing with Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Adomnán’s work was written in the eighties of the seventh century (probably between 679 and 688). The author, Adomnán (d. 704), was the ninth abbot of the celebrated monastery of Iona, off the coast of Scotland, established by St. Columba (d. 597).7 A renowned scholar, Adomnán was very knowledgeable in scripture and patristic writings and also active in liturgical and legal matters. He is famed for initiating regulations for the protection of women, children, and the clergy in time of war, known as “Adomnán’s Law of the Innocents.” It was his authorship of the biography of the monastery’s founder, St. Columba, that earned him his main literary fame.8 His interest in the holy places should be viewed as part of his biblical scholarship, which followed the tradition of St. Jerome, his role model, whom he admired and whose works he knew well.9 The Venerable Bede (d. 735) writes that Adomnán’s book was extremely useful, “especially [for] those who live at great distance from the places where the patriarchs and Apostles lived, and whose only source of information about them lies in books.”10 According to Bede, Adomnán had connections at the court of Northumbria, and after completing the book on the holy places, he presented a copy to King Aldfrid, an act that presumably increased the book’s circulation. Bede’s appreciation for Adomnán’s work did not end with these praises. He made use of Adomnán’s information in a short book he himself wrote on the holy places and also summarized some of it briefly in his History of the English Church.11

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The information gathered from the chapters of Adomnán’s DLS, combined with some additional details in Bede’s History of the English Church, sheds light (but also raises questions) on how travel became a narrative. According to Adomnán’s introduction, his book on the holy places is based on the report of a certain pilgrim from Gaul, a bishop named Arculf. Adomnán writes: “The Holy bishop Arculf, a Gaul by race, versed in diverse far-away regions, and a truthful and quite reliable witness, sojourned for nine months in the city of Jerusalem, traversing the holy places in daily visitations. In response to my careful inquiries he dictated to me, Adamnan, this faithful and accurate record of all his experiences which is to be set out below. I first wrote it down on tablets:12 It will now be written succinctly on parchment.”13 Judging from the praises that Adomnán heaped upon him, Arculf was well educated and a distinguished personage.14 He joined the tide of pilgrims who visited the holy places beginning in the middle of the fourth century in order to get closer to the dramatic events of the history of redemption that took place there. Though it was inspired both by Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple and by pagan travel to historical and religious sites, Christian pilgrimage was a new phenomenon. Unlike Jewish pilgrimage, Christian pilgrimage was not a religious commandment but a spontaneous act, and unlike pagan travels, its motives were more devotional than educational.15 Christian pilgrimage also gave rise to special genres, mainly the itineraria, that describe the pilgrimage route and the pilgrims’ experiences, as well as Holy Land descriptions. While Arculf experienced the journey, Adomnán did the writing. Arculf’s pilgrimage seems to be comprehensive. It lasted three years, nine months of which he spent in Jerusalem. Several details in DLS combined with Bede’s information have persuaded scholars to date the pilgrimage between 676 and 680; that is, some forty years after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem (638), making it the first pilgrimage account of the new era in its history. The circumstances under which Arculf and Adomnán met are rather vague. Adomnán does not specify them, but Bede says that upon returning from the Holy Land, Arculf’s ship was thrown off course by a storm at sea, which ultimately (and quite strangely, one must admit) brought him to the coast of Britain. The text does not say where the encounter between Adomnán and Arculf took place, whether in Iona or elsewhere.16 Adomnán’s work is the longest and the most substantial and sophisticated Holy Land description to have come down to us from the early Middle Ages. It is also the first evidence of conditions in the Holy Land not long after the Muslim conquest, a time for which there is relatively sparse evidence.17 As to travel facts, the book throws light on the very last stage of the journey—when the traveler shares his experiences with the community and the travel becomes a

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narrative. It tells us something about the recognition and admiration accorded pilgrims upon their return, how their stories were written down and transmitted, and how the memory of the journey was preserved after its completion.18 The traveler’s unique experiences, the knowledge acquired and the things seen “with his own eyes”—a phrase repeatedly used by Adomnán to strengthen Arculf’s evidence, earned travelers considerable prestige and, in Arculf’s case, even earned him (from Adomnán) the title of “sanctus,” whatever this may have meant. As to travel fiction, the book represents a special case of a travel narrative, a joint enterprise by a pilgrim and a writer. It is not written in the first person and does not report the events of the journey at first hand or according to its course, but is written in the third person, by a writer who had not made the trip but heard about it from the returned pilgrim. The author thus becomes a partner in producing the story of a journey in which he did not take part—a kind of intermediary between the pilgrim and reader. As is apparent from the vast number of itineraria works, pilgrimage is an experience that demands documentation. Like the actual undertaking of the pilgrimage, writing about it is expressive of individualism in a religious context, where most duties are communal. Hence the close resemblance between autobiography and travel journals. It was—and is—quite commonplace for pilgrims to describe their experiences in memoirs. Some of them, however, entrust the actual writing to another person.19 Arculf is an early (although not the earliest) instance of this in the Latin travel literature.20 He is the informant of the narrative authored by Adomnán. Consequently, the book raises questions of authority and of voice, questions that must be addressed before turning to Adomnán’s descriptions of weather and nature. Adomnán was a famed educator and a knowledgeable writer. His knowledge of the holy places leaned heavily on information he found in reliable books, some of which he mentions in his own work: Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, Hegesippus, Eucherius, and probably others, and his exegetical purposes seem to go far beyond the mere desire to tell a travel story.21 Like Jerome, who described the pilgrimage of his disciple and friend Paula, Adomnán considered the places an aid to understanding the events that occurred there. But while imitating Jerome in the appreciation of the places as didactic tools, he was also aware of Jerome’s reservations regarding travel and sightseeing in themselves. Pilgrimage was only justified as means to achieve loftier goals.22 These motives and deliberations are reflected in the literary format of DLS. The book is a hybridization—a pilgrimage narrative and a list of holy places.23 It is structured as a list, although for each place it provides rich information and for some places it is more detailed than any other work of its kind. It is divided into books and chapters, each chapter devoted to a single place. There is

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no information about the route taken by the pilgrim and the book is entirely devoid of any details about travel, direction, hardships, or encounters en route. It is obvious that Adomnán did not care much about the traveler’s private experience. But on the other hand, the pilgrim—Arculf—is always there, not in the background but in the forefront of the narrative. He is often mentioned by name as the source of the information and the author even tends to hide behind him, like a journalist who places his source in the forefront in order to make his information reliable. Arculf is not only reporting on places he visited, objects he observed, and traditions he learned about, but also describes liturgical events and customs in which he took part.24 His information is presented as a participant’s observation and is thus lively as well as trustworthy.25 The unique nature of the work raises many questions, such as the role of the traveler in the narrative, how the traveler/informant and the writer cooperated, the weight of influence the writer had on the stories told to him, and the extent to which the writer reworked the stories, filtered them, or further interpolated information from outside sources. In brief, whose voice is heard in the composition, the traveler’s or the writer’s? While scholars working on Jerusalem history and geography in the early Muslim period placed much weight on Arculf’s firsthand information and even considered him the author of the work, scholars working on Irish Christianity in that period have recently dismissed him. Some have said that his role in the narrative was quite limited and that the bulk of Adomnán’s information was derived from books; others have gone as far as viewing him as a semifictional witness, even an invented one.26 Among other details, the bizarre route—from the Mediterranean to Gaul via the west coast of Britain—gave birth to doubts. It would seem, however, that we need stronger arguments to dismiss Adomnán’s clear statements about Arculf. While there can be no doubt as to Adomnán’s authorship of the text, it is also apparent that much of his information reached him through an eyewitness, someone who came recently from the East. Why not Arculf? The book also raises questions about reception and about the role of travel narratives as a vehicle for transmission of traditions, legends, and beliefs, and the way the transmitted information was planted in its new ground and absorbed by it. Some of these questions will be discussed below, focusing on two chapters in Adomnán’s book, devoted to Jerusalem and its wondrous nature.

The Baptism of Jerusalem Adomnán’s work is composed of three books, each of which comprises several chapters. The first book is devoted to Jerusalem; the second, to other places in the Holy Land; and the third, to Constantinople and some stories originating

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there and ending with Mount Vulcan near Sicily. This structure was clearly determined by Adomnán, who shaped his work according to subjects and importance in a way that disrupted the sequence of the journey and, in fact, completely erased it. According to Thomas O’Loughlin’s appealing suggestion, the work’s structure was meant to fit the structure of the world as three concentric circles, following Jesus’s instruction to his disciples: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This three-part composition, starting from the innermost holy, could also have echoed the structure of the Temple in Jerusalem that inspired monastic structures in Ireland.27 The first chapter of the first book in DLS opens with a list of the city’s gates, followed by a vignette describing the first rain in Jerusalem, or—as Adomnán put it—the city’s baptism (baptizatio). The chapter itself should be understood as a gate, a solemn overture that sets the tone for the entire book.28 Like many other descriptions and stories, the story of the rain is ascribed by Adomnán to Arculf: “This item too which the holy Arculf related to us concerning the special honour in Christ of this city ought not, it seems, to be passed over.” The meaning of the story is exposed by Adomnán from the outset, leaving the reader no room for doubt as to the event described in great detail: Every September, on the twelfth day of the month, an international fair takes place in Jerusalem. Many people come to do business there and they all lodge in the city for some days. They come with their camels, horses, asses, and oxen that carry their different merchandise. Due to the many animals, filth spreads everywhere in the streets, walking is impeded, and the stench causes no small annoyance to the citizens. Then a miracle happens: on the night after the crowds depart with their beasts of burden, an immense downpour of rain is released from the clouds. It cleanses the city of all the dirt by purging it from the streets. This is made possible by the topography of Jerusalem that was arranged purposely by God so that the great flood of rain must flow from the higher parts of the city down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat in the east, bearing all the filth and nuisance with it. After the baptizatio of the city, the rain stops immediately. Adomnán calls Jerusalem “the chosen city” (electa civitas). It was built by God, its architect, so that it would remain beautiful and clean at all times. He refers to the September rain as “heavenly waters” and its action as the “baptism of Jerusalem.” Like baptism, the downpour is short and efficient, conferring divine grace upon God’s creatures. The rain is an expression of the opulence of God’s grace poured onto his holy city. It brings about a metamorphosis of Jerusalem, an act of purification and revival, of renewal by water that happens every year anew. Jerusalem is reborn every September. The purifying water

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washes off the dirt of buying and selling, restoring the city to its primeval state, as a purified landscape—a holy landscape that was never corrupted.29 The description of the rain that purges the dirt from Jerusalem’s streets, bringing it down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, may also have eschatological resonance. As is well known, the valley will be the place of judgment, where all vices will be purged from the world, leaving it clean and populated only by the just. The topography of Jerusalem is prepared for its eschatological task, and its annual rainfall is a kind of a liturgical act that celebrates past memories, present realities, and future expectations.30 At the end of the chapter, Adomnán adds, as if in passing, a short description of the mosque that was recently built by the Muslim rulers in Jerusalem: “However, in the celebrated place where once the temple (situated towards the east near the wall) arose in its magnificence, the Saracens now have a quadrangular prayer house. They built it roughly by erecting upright boards and great beams on some ruined remains. The building, it is said, can accommodate three thousand people at once.” This short paragraph, the first evidence of the initial building of the El-Aqsa mosque, has attracted much attention in historical and geographical research.31 Its location after the rain marvel, I would suggest, was not accidental, and it may hint at some anxiety in the face of the loss of the holy city to the Muslims. Adomnán may have intended to remind his readers of the lack of perfection of our universe: Although a sacred space, earthly Jerusalem was not yet the heavenly city for which Christians longed. The Muslim prayer building and the Muslim presence in general corrupted Jerusalem’s landscape. There seems to be a latent parallel between the physical filth in the first part of the chapter and the religious impurity in the second. The dirt and the annoying stench, it would seem, created some uneasiness on Adomnán’s part, reminding him of the contrast between the imagined ideal city he had in mind and its present reality. The marvelous baptismal rain serves as a partial remedy to the city’s deficiency.32 Rain in Jerusalem in September is not commonplace. If climate patterns in the seventh century were similar to those we know today, then rain pouring down on Jerusalem in mid-September was a rare, although not unfeasible, phenomenon. It is clear, however, that for Adomnán, the marvel did not relate to the date of the rain but to its constancy: it occurs on the same date every year and it occurs for a purpose. However, Adomnán’s description raises several questions. First, while Adomnán notes that the divine annual intervention in Jerusalem’s weather expresses the Father’s special regard for His Son, who was crucified and resurrected in this city, he fails to mention the religious reason for the great gathering that precedes it: the feast of Encaenia (Dedication), honoring Jerusalem’s main churches, the Golgotha and the Anastasis, that took

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place on September  13, and the finding of the Holy Cross on the following day.33 The many people who lodged in Jerusalem were pilgrims as well as peddlers who attended the fair that was held around the festive days. Egeria relates that multitudes of monks and nuns, as well as laypeople—men and women—came to Jerusalem for the great festival, including dozens of distinguished bishops from all regions and provinces, with their entourages; indeed, she writes, “not one of them fails to make for Jerusalem to share the celebration of this solemn feast. . . . In fact I should say that people regard it as a grave sin to miss taking part in this solemn feast, unless someone had been prevented from coming by an emergency.”34 Pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of September, according to her, was considered a duty, perhaps echoing the obligatory Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple at Sukkoth. As the feast of Encaenia was unknown in the West, Adomnán could have been unaware of it. Arculf, on the other hand, who brought the story with him from Jerusalem, should have known better. Not only did he describe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in great detail, he also left Adomnán a sketch of it, a very rare and early example of sketches of this kind.35 The absence of the festival from the text remains an enigma. Either Arculf took his listeners’ awareness of it for granted, or, as suggested by Rodney Aist, Adomnán described an event that he did not fully comprehend.36 This lacuna in the text may demonstrate the discrepancy caused by the split between the informant and the author. Another question concerns the sequence of events. According to Adomnán’s chronology, the fair began on September 12, the festivals (which he does not mention) follow on September 13 and 14, and only then, after the many visitors left, came the rain that rendered the city clean and pure. It may seem strange, as Rodney Aist noted recently, that the city was cleansed only after the festival, and not in preparation for it. This means that during the holy days the city remained filthy.37 We shall return to this problem shortly.

Stormy Wind on the Holy Mount While the first weather story deals with rain, the second, which takes place on the Mount of Olives, deals with wind, light, and earth.38 The importance of these two episodes for the author is emphasized by a similar introductory clause. For the rain episode: “This item too . . . ought not, it seems, to be passed over.” For the wind: “This item too, we think, ought not be suppressed.”39 Adomnán describes the Mount of Olives, which he terms “the holy mount,” toward the end of the first book. The chapter about the Church of the Ascension that stands atop it is long and detailed. It is clear that the church made a deep impression on Arculf and that he was able to convey his excitement to

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Adomnán. He also left Adomnán a sketch of the church, as he did for the Holy Sepulchre and for two other churches he visited. The chapter begins with a detailed architectural description of the round church, in particular its roofless inner structure that remained open to the sky in order to leave open Jesus’s path to heaven. This is an architectural decision forced by God, because any attempt to cover the place where Jesus’s feet last stood must fail, the sacred ground rejecting any human material laid on it. The footsteps are still visible in the dust, and although believers steal the holy earth every day, it remains unchanged and the footprints remain in their original form. Adomnán had already read about the footprints and the miracle of the stubborn ground in authoritative books,40 but now Arculf brought corroborative evidence of that marvel, a marvel he had witnessed with his own eyes. Adomnán now expands on the windows of the church and the radiant lamps hanging opposite them. Their light, he says, pours out copiously through the glass and illuminates the mountain as well as the stairway rising to the city of Jerusalem from the Valley of Jehoshaphat with wondrous clarity (mirabiliter inlustretur). It even illuminates a large part of the city, the part directly opposite the mount. To the description of the church, based on accepted authorities and strengthened by Arculf’s evidence, is now added a story based on Arculf alone: At the feast of the Ascension, at midday every year, after mass is celebrated in the church, “a blast of the strongest wind” arrives so forcefully that no one can stand or sit in the church or around it, but all must lie down on the ground with their face downward until the tempest passes. The wind is depicted in this story as the guardian of the holy place, and of the holy footprints in particular.41 The intensity of that “divinely sent wind” is also the reason that the place of the godly footprints cannot be covered, as the wind destroys any cover. To remove any doubt, Adomnán specifies that Arculf himself was actually present in the church on Mount Olivet at the very hour when that intense blast rushed in, on the day of the Lord’s Ascension. The description of the Church of the Ascension is one of the most detailed, elaborate and excited among Adomnán’s church descriptions. It ascribes meaning to the architectural scheme, explains its function and clarifies the impression that it was designated to create. Mount Olivet in Adomnán’s description is the mount of light and tempest, two forces of nature that accompany its considerable height above the city to the east. All these components—height, wind, and light—are related to the Ascension, to Jesus’s departure from our earthly universe to the heavenly one. A strong stormy wind is known as a vehicle for passage from earth to heaven, as in the case of Elijah who “went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11). In our case, it bears a message for believers,

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reminding them of Jesus’s ascension in the past while instilling in them hopes for his return in the future. Although not specified in the description, all believers know that the Mount of Olives is the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven and to which he is bound to return on the Day of Judgment, at the end of days. The summit of the mount is the place closest to heaven on earth. This is a strong, constant belief, shared by all three religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.42 In this case, the fact that Adomnán fails to mention the eschatological weight of the mount must be ascribed to the commonplace nature of this belief, its accepted truth. At the same time, the fact that the wind from heaven, the “divinely sent wind,” arrives each year on Ascension Day should be understood as a promise to the Christians assembled at the church, against the competing beliefs of Jews and Muslims.43

Natural Marvels as Polemical Evidence “Space is never ideologically neutral,” writes Robert Wilken.44 This is certainly true of Jerusalem. One should keep in mind that the Jerusalem that Arculf visited was dominated by Muslims, and that Jews had officially been permitted to return, after many years of enforced absence.45 Although the city still retained its distinct Christian character, crowded with magnificent churches and monasteries, and while most of its population was still Christian, a slow process of Islamization was beginning. After three hundred years of Christian exclusivity, Jerusalem was again a shared space. This is why Adomnán’s tales can be read not as naive descriptions related by an excited pilgrim, but rather as bearing ideological and polemical weight; that is, as a reassertion of the Christian claim to the holy city, even when it was ruled by strangers. This agenda stands out clearly in the wording and the location of the short paragraph concerning the roughly built Saracen prayer house standing on top of ruined remains, probably the remains of the Jewish Temple. Annexed to the solemn tale of the baptism of Jerusalem, it stands in conspicuous contradiction to the elaborate description of the glorious Christian basilica that follows it. The message is clear: the holy city does not belong to those who rule it at the moment but to those to whom God bequeathed it, as is shown annually through the agency of nature.46 Following this path, it is essential to read the rain and wind stories as interventions in a covert dialogue with earlier Jerusalem pilgrimage traditions. Early pilgrimage narratives bring evidence of the way the Jewish landscape, especially in Jerusalem, was turned into a Christian one. In analyzing the polemical stance of the Itinerarium burdigalense (Bordeaux Pilgrim’s text, 333), the first Christian Holy Land description that came down to us, Oded Irshai writes:

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“The pilgrims who flocked by the hordes to the holy city were the backbone of the unique religious and cultural transformation that is the Christianization of Jerusalem and of the Holy Land.”47 Irshai analyzes the Itinerarium burdigalense description of the Temple Mount as an Adversus Iudaeos text, testifying to the process of Christian appropriation of the city, touched by supersessionist ideology.48 Pilgrims to Jerusalem were exposed to new Christian symbols that were set against the symbols of the Jewish past. In Jerusalem, and first and foremost on the Temple Mount, “the bare flesh and bones of the past were being adorned with the new garment of Christian truth.”49 The description exposes the mechanism by which Christians in Jerusalem were engaged in the construction of a Christian city resting on the ruins of the Jewish past. A similar process of appropriation, although less overt and visible, can be discerned in the liturgy shaped and performed by the Jerusalem church.50 The dedication of the Christian churches (Encaenia) in September was deliberately fashioned to imitate, or reconstruct, the dedication of Solomon’s Temple that took place at the very same time in the year, at Sukkoth.51 Like the dedication of the Temple, so, too, was the Encaenia celebrated for eight days.52 Egeria puts forward the two layers of the festival, thus making explicit the link between past and present: “The date when the Church on Golgotha (called the Martyrium) was consecrated to God is called Encaenia, and on the same day the holy church of Anastasis was also consecrated, the place where the Lord rose again after the passion. . . . You will find in the Bible that the day of Encaenia was when the House of God was consecrated, and Solomon stood in prayer before God’s altar, as we read in the book of Chronicles.”53 The seasonal Christian pilgrimage in September echoed the Jewish pilgrimage of Sukkoth, just as the pilgrimage around Easter followed the Jewish Passover pilgrimage, in which Jesus himself participated.54 The connection between the Sukkoth pilgrimage and the first rain is specified in Mishnah, tractate Taanit (1.3): “On the third of Mar Cheshvan we begin to pray for rain. Rabban Gamliel says: On its seventh day, which is fifteen days after Sukkoth, so that the last [pilgrims] of Israel may reach the Euphrates River.” At Sukkoth, the Jews also celebrate the waterdrawing ceremony that symbolizes the expectation of rain.55 Jewish liturgy linked place (the Temple in Jerusalem), time (the feast of Sukkoth), and ritual (pilgrimage), to the beneficial act of God for his people (rain). Adomnán’s story about the baptism of Jerusalem does exactly the same. Jews start praying for rain only after the pilgrims arrive home. The pouring rain in Adomnán’s story also comes down only after the festival is over and the pilgrims and peddlers have left the city. This may explain the puzzling question raised above as to why the rain does not clean the city before the festival—God cares for the pilgrims and wants them to get home dry and safe.56 But there still is a difference

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between the Jewish and Christian traditions: while the Mishnah speaks of the prayer, that is, the human request for divine grace, the Christian text speaks of God’s consent, describing the first rain not only as an expression of divine providence but also as a Christian sacrament, baptism. One should note that during the feast, new believers were baptized, and thus the city was baptized together with its believers.57 The wind and light stories seem also to have ideological implications. Adomnán heard from Arculf that on the night of the Ascension, the greater part of the city—the part directly opposite the Mount of Olives—is illuminated with great clarity. The bright glow from the eight great lamps shining by night from the holy mount, he relates, “pours into the hearts of the faithful who behold it greater eagerness for divine love and imbues them with a sense of awe.” He returns to the same motif at the end of the chapter, emphasizing again that “under the terrible and wondrous gleaming of the light, pouring out copiously of the windows, all mount Olivet seems not alone to be illuminated, but even to be on fire, and the whole city, situated on the lower ground nearby, seems to be lit up.” Here too, just as in the rain story, the topography of Jerusalem is part of the wonder. The Mount of Olives remained mainly a Christian area even after the Muslim conquest, and the Church of the Ascension was still there, dominating the city from the east. Facing the Mount of Olives is the Temple Mount, formerly the Jewish and now the Muslim religious center. Thus, when Arculf related that “the whole city, situated on the lower ground nearby, seems to be lit up,” he actually implied that the dark part—that is, the Muslim part of Jerusalem below—was lit by the Christian mount above, a pillar of light that showed the way to the entire city. The eschatological weight of the mount gives the paragraph its full significance. Adomnán may indeed have had in mind the description of the heavenly city in Revelation: “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it” (Rev. 21:23–24).58 Travelers were always impressed by the special aura of the Mount of Olives. Indeed, in the late Middle Ages, the mount was called the Mount of Light. The Dominican friar Felix Fabri, who made an extensive pilgrimage to the East in the 1480s and wrote a captivating, detailed account of his experiences, gives seven reasons for this name. Parts of his description are copied from Adomnán’s book. The mount, he says, is called the Mount of Light because it is lighted by the lamps and lights of the church that stood thereon.59 He also cites the story of the wind on the day of the Ascension, a story he learned, as he writes, from an ancient saintly pilgrim who had been there and had seen it.60 Thus a Christian traveler of the fifteenth century who saw with his eyes of flesh the remains

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of the Ascension church reduced to the small shrine we see today, imagined in the eyes of his mind its glory in bygone days, basing his vision on the narrative of a fellow traveler of some eight hundred years before. This is a rare example of an inner discourse within travel literature, a description of space that ignores time and the changes it brings about. As a faithful representative of his time, miracles and marvels were part of Adomnán’s worldview, and he was intrigued by the exceptional, supernatural phenomena that he encountered or heard about. However, he was not interested in personal miracles that Arculf may have encountered on his way. Dangers at sea and on land, difficulties created by local rulers, sickness and other calamities that were part and parcel of travel and travel journals—none of these is reported in any detail. Even though Adomnán praises Arculf for overcoming hardships, he does not see fit to tell us about them. Arculf himself is not important. He is only a “medium,” a messenger who experienced, on behalf of the author and his readers, the marvels of the holy places that are their main concern.61 On the other hand, Adomnán pays much attention to those miracles and marvels that demonstrate God’s rule over the universe. God, he tells us, acts in the world directly, through rain, wind, and fire, and miracles are evidence of his rule.62 Like other observers of his time, Adomnán tended to magnify events, especially those that seemed rare and remarkable, convinced, in Paul Edward Dutton’s words, of the “theophanic capacity of natural history, that is, that the physical world contained material manifestations of God’s presence, the very secrets of his divine plan.”63 Within Adomnán’s Vita Columbae, there are fourteen accounts of visions of heavenly light.64 One of these is the pillar of fire that appeared in the sky in the middle of the night at the moment of Columba’s death.65 These miracles express the saint’s close connection to heaven. They were termed “vertical miracles.” In contrast to “horizontal miracles” that imply the saint’s heavenly connections by demonstrating his or her divinely derived powers (for example, healing powers), vertical miracles “manifest the saint’s heavenly connections through heavenly apparitions such as angels and heavenly light.”66 It would seem that Adomnán expands his understanding and ideas from the holy man, the saint, to the holy place, Jerusalem—a city where heavenly connections are manifested not only through holy places and relics, but also through landscape and weather. Adomnán’s rain and wind stories are what Benedicta Ward defines as quotidiana miracula; that is, “instances of the regular but mysterious intervention of God in the created order.”67 They were regular acts of God, but such that demonstrated the intervention of the divine in nature. They were also advertisements for Jerusalem and the Christian sites within it, demonstrating their special status in the eyes of God.68 What turns these natural phenomena into

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wonders, or marvels, and, moreover, signs, is the combination of their location and timing, as well as their persistence. They occur every year in the same place and on the same day, acting as a ritual performed by nature itself, or rather by God.69 Rain and wind become marvels, as emphasized by their exceptional strength: “an immense downpour of rain” (imensa pluviarum copia) and “a blast of the strongest wind” (valdissimi flaminis). They are also joined by light— that is, fire—and by earth, to the effect that all four elements take part in shaping Jerusalem as an icon of nature, a wondrous landscape, heavenly topography on earth.70 It becomes clear then, that more than bearing evidence of conditions in the Holy Land, Adomnán’s text reflects the theology and spirituality of his time. He followed Augustine in viewing miracles and nature as being closely related and belonging to the same category of creation. From Augustine he inherited the notion of the wonder of nature, as defined in chapter 21 of De civitate dei, dedicated to miracles: “the world itself is beyond doubt a marvel greater and more wonderful than all the wonders with which it is filled.”71 The nature stories he related were marvelous not because they were supernatural or against nature, but because they were signs, leading men to deepen their faith by inspiring admiration and pouring reverential awe into the hearts of those who witnessed or read about them.72 Rain and wind, though they are common weather phenomena that exist always and everywhere, can also be awesome atmospheric messages that need decoding, signposts that bear evidence of power beyond themselves; that is, of divine intervention. As Lorraine Daston writes, for medieval thinkers, “miracles convert and convince by their psychological effects; they are God’s oratory.”73

Wonders, Voice, and Authority In our stories, it would seem, the psychological effect of wonderment is augmented by the process of transmission and by the double sense of geographical distance created by the long and dangerous route traveled by the eyewitness (Arculf) on one hand, and the remoteness and isolation of the northern monastic community (Adomnán and his colleagues) on the other. Although Adomnán observed the holy landscape through a distant mirror, this distance functioned like a telescope, strengthening the impressions and turning the description into a drama of nature. The excitement and intensity of these two descriptions reinforce the question of voice and authority raised above. Whose voice is heard here, that of the traveler or that of the learned writer? The decision to devote two long chapters to natural phenomena and to place the rain story at the opening of the book, as

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kind of a motto, a spotlight that gives direction to the entire text, is Adomnán’s.74 As author, Adomnán shaped and designed a textual space he had not seen for himself. This textual space was not identical to the space in which we live, but existed only in his consciousness and imagination.75 It was the final product, created from external materials that the author collected from reading and hearsay, materials that gained meaning through his text. Adomnán created an image of Jerusalem that fit the symbolic meaning of the city he bore in his mind. The height of the Mount of Olives, the “gentle slope” of the city, the lowness of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that carries all the dirt to the Dead Sea, the smell of the city before its cleansing by heavenly waters, the bright light poured from the church on top of the mount, the rough Saracen building that functions as an inversion of the rain story: all carry semiotic meaning connected to high and low, victory and defeat, heaven and earth.76 The importance of marvels and miracles for Adomnán amplifies the importance of Arculf as a witness to these miracles. Adomnán mentions Arculf by name eighty-six times, and he repeatedly praises his witness’s sterling qualities, saying that his story is “faithful and accurate.” Arculf is a diligent (sedulus) pilgrim and holy (sanctus). True, according to the accepted conventions of the time, the evidence of one’s eyes is always less reliable than written evidence, and Adomnán’s preference for the authoritative written sources is clear. Yet, it is hard to overstate the importance of the eyewitness contribution, particularly in regard to exceptional phenomena involving the supernatural and the astounding. The small community of Iona, as well as Adomnán’s immediate readers, had very little opportunity, and more often none at all, to get to know places outside of their close surroundings. Their knowledge of remote places was based on information they read in books or heard from occasional intermediaries; that is, travelers who went and came back. Pilgrims such as Arculf were the very few who saw and experienced far away geographies, and their stories gained credibility and reliability because they belonged to the same cultural and religious group and spoke the same cultural language. They were part of the same “narrating community.”77 Arculf is introduced by Adomnán as “the holy bishop Arculf, a Gaul by race.” He is a Christian from a neighboring land, a servant of the church; that is, “one of us.” This makes him qualified and capable of bringing the events and sights he saw closer to the audience and to give them credence.78 His familiarity is essential for creating a conceptual common ground and trustful communication between him and his listeners; his stories are important not only because they reinforced information derived from authoritative books, but because they provided data on specific amazing things that could not be found in books at all, such as the stories of rain and wind. Indeed, Adomnán’s extensive reading about the Holy Land conditioned his view about

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it in a much deeper way than the pilgrim’s tales, yet these tales became a vehicle for depicting the same concepts and ideas he found in authoritative books in a lively, appealing way.79 Adomnán’s striving for accuracy sometimes allows us to uncover weak points in the story or to trace the phases of its transmission. In the Mount of Olives chapter, Adomnán mentions Arculf’s name six times. He stresses the fact that “he (Arculf) himself was actually present in the church on Mount Olivet at the very hour when the intense blast rushed in on the day of the Lord’s Ascension.” This is not the case regarding the rain story. There, Adomnán does not mention Arculf as an eyewitness, only as the transmitter. The failure to mention the feast of Encaenia may imply that Arculf was not present in Jerusalem at the time. As he stayed in Jerusalem only nine months, this seems quite plausible. It would seem that while for the Ascension Day we have eyewitness testimony (that is, Arculf’s firsthand observations), for the rain episode we have only a local tradition recounted to the pilgrim by local informants, a fact that may explain the gaps in his story.80 The chain of transmission thus begins with the citizens of Jerusalem (tour guides, priests), who informed the traveler, who in turn brought the stories back with him to Europe, where he entrusted them to a learned writer with good connections. The completed book was presented by the writer to the king, thus ensuring that it would not be lost. This was probably how the celebrated historian of the English people, Bede, found it and used it for his short tract on the holy places written some decades later. Adomnán’s work survived in twentytwo manuscripts and fragments, an impressive number for works of the time. Bede’s short DLS survived in forty-seven manuscripts. One of these manuscripts, or perhaps one that did not come down to us, reached Felix Fabri in the fifteenth century. And this is how two exemplary stories about the marvels of Jerusalem were transported to a Western monastic community and gained longevity. Although they did not last in Jerusalem itself and are not recorded in any other source, they became eternal thanks to Adomnán and Bede, their copiers and readers, fortifying ideas and beliefs of the wondrous nature of Jerusalem’s holy space.

C h apter 5

Prophecy and Peregrination: Curious Encounters with Biblical Lands and Biblical Texts in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Elliott Horowitz

This chapter looks at descriptions of Palestine in the early modern and the modern period. It suggests that Orientalist literature underlined not only the unchanging nature of the East but also the unchanging imagery of the eastern terrain and its people. Focusing on travel accounts, geography books, poems, paintings, and biblical commentary, and especially on Thomas Shaw’s Travels, or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (1738), the chapter examines the ways in which Anglo-American writers underscored continuities between ancient Palestine and its present. While scholars of Orientalism have shown how English writers ascribed the decline of the Holy Land to the primitiveness of its Muslim and Arab dwellers, this essay sheds light on how the destitute and barren nature of the land was conceptualized as resulting from a divine decree or a divine curse. In this context, the Palestinian Arabs also embodied the ancient people of the Holy Land. The intertwining of ancient and modern geographies in these writings, moreover, points to new ways of theorizing the connections between nature and scripture. The slippage between images associated directly to the Holy Land, its traditions, and the physical qualities of its people, on the one hand, and the nature of the Orient in its entirety, on the other. Attention to the barren nature of the Holy Land are lucidly articulated in A New System of Geography, first published in 1763, by Daniel Fenning and Joseph Collyer. The two scoffingly referred to “our modern unbelievers,” who

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“have dwelt much on the rocks of Palestine, the barrenness of the country, and the disagreeableness of the climate, in order to invalidate the accounts given in Scripture of the fertility of that land of promise, which is represented there as flowing with milk and honey.”1 The British geographers seem to have had Voltaire chiefly in mind, although the historian Edward Gibbon (1737–94) would soon sneeringly describe Palestine, which he had never visited, as “a territory scarcely superior to Wales, either in fertility or extent.”2 Fenning and Collyer contrasted those unnamed “unbelievers” with their late countryman, the Oxford don Thomas Shaw (1694–1751), of whose Travels, or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (1738) they made extensive use in their massive work, and whom they considered both “learned and judicious.”3 Shaw, they noted, “seems to have examined the country [of Palestine] with an uncommon degree of accuracy” and was also “qualified by the soundest [natural] philosophy to make the most just observations.” Well before becoming Oxford’s regius professor of Greek, he had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society for his 1729 contribution to their Philosophical Transactions on the geography of Tunisia. Fenning and Collyer thus had good reason to respect Shaw as a fellow geographer and to confidently pass on his opinion, in their paraphrase, that were “the Holy Land as well cultivated as in former time, it would be more fertile than the very best parts of Syria and Phoenicia, because the soil is much richer.” Shaw, they further reported, felt that Palestine’s current barrenness “does not proceed from the natu ral unfruitfulness of the country, but from the want of inhabitants, the indolence which prevails . . . and the perpetual discords and depredations of the petty princes who share this fine country.”4 Not long after Shaw was used by Fenning and Collyer to undermine the claims of “modern unbelievers” regarding Palestine, his travel account, which had been translated into French in 1743 (and later into German), was similarly used by the priest Antoine Guénée, writing pseudonymously, to challenge Voltaire’s description of the biblical Midian as “un canton sterile.”5 Shaw’s remarks on the fertility of Palestine had already received attention, shortly after their initial publication, in that wonderful eighteenth-century periodical The History of the Works of the Learned, wherein his book was referred to as “full of remarks no less curious than new,” and its author praised for having presented “such new and happy discoveries in ancient and modern geography, and made such judicious and entertaining observations on the countries he has travel’d through, as justly deserves the thanks of the learned.”6 In describing Shaw’s work as containing “remarks no less curious than new,” the periodical used the word “curious” in its period sense not only of “interesting” but also “exact” or “precise.” In the very same year Thomas Simpson

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published his Essays on Several Curious and Useful Subjects, in Speculative and Mix’d Mathematicks (1740). Twelve years later Sir John Pringle received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal for his “curious and useful experiments and observations on septic and anti-septic substances,” and five years after that Lord Charles Cavendish received the same award for his “very curious and useful invention of making thermometers.”7 In the world of eighteenth-century learning, curiosity, precision, and utility could go hand in hand not only in the scientist’s work in his laboratory but in the traveler’s observations concerning distant lands. In 1759 the Critical Review, edited by Tobias Smollett, in reviewing one of the (ultimately twenty) volumes of The World Displayed; or, A Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels—in which portions of Shaw’s Travels would soon be published—observed that “there cannot be an easier or more wholesome diet for boundless curiosity, than the mental entertainment to be found in this species of reading, where pleasure and instruction go hand in hand.”8 The curious consumers of that “wholesome diet” were to include poets, such as Robert Southey and Thomas Moore, who sought to root their Orientalist creations in the ostensibly rigorous observations of learned travelers, and Bible scholars who believed that those observations could be utilized for the purpose of elucidating scripture. Among those in the latter category special mention should be made of Thomas Harmer, whose Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture first appeared in 1765 and was subsequently issued in expanded editions. Harmer, a Congregationalist pastor, believed that “examining . . . the narratives of what travellers have observed in the Holy-Land” was not only “amusing to the imagination” but also “instructive,” since many ancient customs “remain unaltered, and references to those ancient customs appear every where in the Scriptures.” In Harmer’s view the author who “has given us the greatest entertainment of this kind is the late Dr. Shaw, in that curious and useful book of Travels.” In fact, it was from Shaw himself that Harmer learned that the ancient East—which for the former included North Africa—had remained largely unaltered.9 By the early nineteenth century the Yorkshire curate James Franks, who used Harmer’s method to elucidate the book of Genesis, could assert that “it has pleased . . . Divine Providence so to order it that the people of the East should be remarkably tenacious in their modes of living.”10 Travelers themselves, especially after the publication of works such as Harmer’s, also frequently perceived connections between biblical texts and the realities before their eyes. This was true with regard to not only the habits and appearance of the people they encountered but also the nature the terrain, particularly in Palestine, whose “barrenness ” or “desolation” could be cited as

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proof of the accuracy of biblical prophecies—and even of a lasting divine curse upon the land. Often enough, however, such ostensible observations by nineteenth-century travelers were actually lifted from the works of their predecessors who themselves were strongly influenced by what they had read in the Bible. Parallel then, to the “unchanging East” was the unchanging image of the East that had gained currency in the eighteenth century and was well represented in Shaw’s Travels, which did much to perpetuate it. It was from the “learned and judicious” Shaw that the geographers Fenning and Collyer learned that the “Bedoweens, a name given to the Arabs who live in tents, still retain many of the customs we read of in sacred and profane literature; for except their religion, they are the same people they were two or three thousand years ago.”11 They had clearly used the first edition of his Travels. Their contemporary, the Scottish biblical scholar James Macknight, who had consulted Shaw’s second edition of 1757, quoted from there that “the Arabs retain a great many” of their ancient “manners and customs” and were essentially “the very same people that they were two or three thousand years ago” (my emphasis).12 The British diplomat and future novelist James Morier (1780– 1849), who traveled through Persia, Armenia, and Turkey between 1810 and 1816, had also carefully studied Shaw’s Travels, observing similarly that “the manners of the East, amidst all the changes of Government and of Religion, are . . . living impressions from an original mould.” Morier, who later achieved fame for his novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan (1824), asserted further that “at every step some object . . . or some custom of common life reminds the traveller of antient times,” thereby confirming “the beauty, the accuracy, and the propriety of the language and the history of the Bible.”13 Those words were quoted approvingly by the Reverend George Bush (1796– 1859), professor of Hebrew and Oriental literature at New York University, in the preface to his Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures (1836), an anthology that drew upon both the writings of travelers and the works of scholars such as Harmer. Regarding the verse in Genesis (16:12) in which Hagar was told by the angel that her son Ishmael would be a “a wild man, his hand . . . against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him,” Bush—following a line of authors leading back to Shaw—asserted that the angel’s “prediction embraced also the character and circumstances” of Ishmael’s descendants. He then added: “The manners and customs of the Arabians, except in the article of religion, have suffered almost no alteration during the long period of three thousand years. They have occupied the same country, and followed the same mode of life, from the days of their great ancestor [Ishmael], down to the present times . . . as rude, and savage, and intractable as the wild ass himself.”14 As Bush made clear, he himself was quoting the Scottish scholar George Paxton of Edinburgh,

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who had made extensive use Shaw, and whose own Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures had first appeared in 1819.15

The Wild Man and His Descendants Shaw’s comments on Ishmael’s divinely ordained character and its reflection in the conduct of his descendants had already attracted the notice of his learned countrymen within a decade of their initial appearance. In his influential Exposition of the Old Testament, the first volume of which appeared in 1748, the Baptist minister John Gill (1697–1771) explained the prophecy to Hagar as signifying that Ishmael “would be of a quarrelsome temper and warlike disposition, continually involved in fighting with his neighbours, and they with him in their own defence.” He then switched to the present, noting that “the Arabs his posterity always have been, and still are, given to rapine and plunder, harassing their neighbours by continual excursions and robberies, and pillaging passengers of all nations.” Alluding, as his footnote made clear, to Shaw, Gill reported further that “a late traveller into those parts observes that they are not to be accused of plundering strangers only,” but that “the greatest as well as the smallest tribes” were “perpetually at variance with one another . . . as if they were from the very days of their first ancestor naturally prone to discord and contention.”16 Less than a decade after the appearance of Gill’s comments on Ishmael and “the Arabs his posterity,” the theme was further developed—relying also on Shaw’s Travels—by the Anglican divine and theologian Thomas Newton (1704–82), soon to become bishop of Bristol. In the first volume of his Dissertations on the Prophecies (1754–58), Newton too cited the biblical prophecy to Hagar, concerning which he wrote: “Ishmael therefore and his posterity were to be wild, fierce, savage, ranging in the deserts, and not easily softened and tamed to society,” adding that “whoever had read or known any thing of this people, knoweth this to be their true and genuin [sic] character.” He also cited the Bible’s later description of Ishmael (Gen. 21:20) as someone who had “dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer,” remarking similarly that “the same is no less true of his descendants than himself.” Just as Ishmael “dwelt in the wilderness” so too, Newton asserted, “his sons inhabit the same wilderness, and many of them neither sow nor plant, according to the best accounts ancient and modern.”17 The authorities cited were indeed both ancient and modern: The fourthcentury Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus and John Harris’s Compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels (1705), from which Newton cited the account of Persia by the French Huguenot traveler J. B. Tavernier (1605–89). He went on

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to gloss the aforementioned prophecy that Ishmael’s “hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him,” explaining that “the one is the natural, and almost necessary consequence of the other.” Just as “Ishmael lived by prey and rapin [= rapine] in the wilderness,” so too “his posterity have all along infested Arabia and the neighbouring countries with their robberies and incursions.” Ishmael’s descendants, Newton further asserted, “live in a state of continual war with the rest of the world, and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea.” And “as they have been such enemies to mankind, it is no wonder that mankind have been enemies to them again.”18 Later in that same “dissertation” he cited, as further evidence, the testimonies of “two of our nation” who had “lately traveled into” those lands in which Ishmael’s descendants resided, “and have written and published their travels.” These were “Dr. [Thomas] Shaw” and “Dr. [Richard] Pococke,” whom he described as “men of litterature . . . reverend divines, and writers of credit and character.” Pococke’s two-volume Description of the East (1743–45) had appeared less than a decade after Shaw’s Travels, or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (1738), of which its author was somewhat critical, and in his posthumously published second edition (1757) Shaw replied to some of those criticisms. Newton, who made use of Shaw’s first edition, quoted from it that, “with regard to the manners and customs of the Bedoweens, . . . it is to be observed that they retain a great many of those we read of in sacred as well as profane history; being, if we except their [Muslim] religion, the same people they were two or three thousand years ago”—information that was soon to be passed on by Newton’s contemporaries, the geographers Fenning and Collyer. For his part, Newton found such testimonies of continuity between biblical times and the present to be “somewhat wonderful,” contrasting the striking similarities between Ishmael and his descendants with the degree to which “the modern Italians degenerated from the courage and virtues of the old Romans.” Although “men and manners change with times,” this, quite miraculously in his view, did not occur among the Arabs, who “still remain the same fierce savage intractable people, like their great ancestor in every thing.”19 Several decades later, as noted above, George Paxton asserted that the “rude and savage” Arabs had “followed the same mode of life, from the days of their great ancestor [Ishmael], down to the present times.” Paxton too had not been to the lands of Ishmael, but like Newton, Fenning, and Collyer he felt that he could rely on such learned travelers as Shaw, who had returned from the Levant some fourscore years earlier. If the Arabs had not changed between the days of Abraham and those of Shaw, it was not likely that much had altered during the intervening years. In 1839, two decades after Paxton published his Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, his countryman John Gardner Kinnear set

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off for the Middle East together with his fellow Edinburgh native, the artist David Roberts (1796–1864). Kinnear had clearly been preprogrammed to consider every thing associated with the Arabs as “wild.” While traveling along the Mahmoudi Canal near Alexandria he was struck by the “wild chant with which the Arab boatmen cheer their labour.” Soon afterward, in the Sinai desert he noted the “wild faces and picturesque costume” of the “Bedaweens,” and later, in describing one of their encampments, wrote of “the wild figures who were moving about.” At yet another encampment in the desert of Moab he was struck by the “wild faces of the Bedaweens, reflecting the light of the fire round which they were seated,” which together with “their wild voices and strange guttural language . . . combined to produce an effect so startling” that the Scotsman fi nally felt his “complete separation from the civilised world.”20 While in that desert, to the east of the Jordan, Kinnear reflected more broadly on how “the Bedaweens still retain the same purity of life and simplicity of manners as in the days of the patriarchs.” This led him to compare them with the Jews, whose present state also reflected biblical prophecies: “Like the Jews, the descendants of Ishmael remain a standing evidence to the truth of the prophecies regarding their race. They are a wild people; their hand against every man, and every man’s hand against them [Gen. 16:12].” He added that: “Notwithstanding their apparent subjection for a time . . . they have in reality maintained a continued independence, and remain unsubdued and unaltered.” Those Ishmaelites with their “wild faces” and “wild voices” were a far cry from the Jews Kinnear had recently seen in Cairo, who were “a miserable, sicklylooking race . . . with sore eyes and bloated faces.”21 Indeed, nineteenth-century travelers often described the Jews they saw in dichotomously opposite terms to the “unsubdued” Arabs, sometimes—as in the case of the Anglican divine Charles Elliott—finding it “singularly strange that a people who have preserved nearly all their other national peculiarities, should so completely have lost that ferocity and courage which characterized them in the days of Joshua, the Maccabees, and Josephus.”22 Elliott’s contemporary and fellow Cambridge alumnus Lord Alexander Lindsay (1812–80), the future earl of Crawford, commented in a letter sent to his cousin James Lindsay, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, on a Jew he had recently seen in Gibraltar, who had the “very air of a Maccabee” in contrast to his local coreligionists, who possessed the “black skull-cap, beard, and Israelitish face” characteristic of their brethren “the wide world over.” The Maccabee-like Jew was distinguished by his “haughty mien and the scorn thrown on his erect brow,” both “contrasting with the subdued gate of his brethren.”23 In his Gazetteer of the Old and New Testaments (1837), published shortly before Kinnear set off on his travels, his fellow Scotsman William Fleming

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wrote of the Arabs that they “not only subsist unconquered to this day, but the prophesied and primitive wildness of their race, and their hostility to all, remain unsubdued and unaltered,” adding (in italics for emphasis) that “they are a wild people; their hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against them.” Fleming (1794–1866), who was a professor of Oriental languages at the University of Glasgow (where he later held the chair of Moral Philosophy) dutifully informed readers of his Gazetteer that his “extract on the Arabians” had been taken “from the thirteenth edition of Dr Keith’s well-known work.”24 By that he meant his countryman Alexander Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion: Derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy, Particularly as Illustrated by the History of the Jews and the Discoveries of Recent Travellers, which had first appeared in 1826, and eventually appeared in “well over fifty editions,” including two each in French, German, Dutch, and Welsh.25 Reverend Keith had, in fact, italicized the same words that Fleming later did.26 Whether Kinnear, in describing the Arabs as still “unsubdued and unaltered,” drew upon Fleming’s Gazetteer or directly upon Keith’s earlier work, it was hardly the only use he had made of literary sources in his 1841 travelogue.

“The Finest Orientalism We Have Had Yet” In describing “the sublimity of the desolation and perfect solitude” he had experienced in the Sinai, Kinnear was moved to quote the following lines: No palm-tree to spot the wilderness, The dark blue sky closed around, And rested like a dome, Upon the circling waste. Kinnear had apparently assumed that the more well read among his readers would recognize the stanza from Robert Southey’s epic poem Thalaba the Destroyer, which had appeared in 1801, some twelve years before Southey was appointed poet laureate.27 Similarly, when describing a “patriarchal” scene of Bedouin hospitality, with a freshly killed kid and a young girl “baking Arab bread,” Kinnear made use of Southey’s Orientalist poem—a copy of which he would appear to have brought with him on his eastern travels—to portray the latter. Tost the thin cake on spreading palm: Or fix’d it on the glowing oven’s side With bare wet arm, and safe dexterity.28

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Before composing Thalaba, which was ostensibly set in ancient Babylon, Southey had immersed himself in the works of recent travelers to the Middle East, particularly Thomas Shaw and Carsten Niebuhr (the latter of whom was still alive), who appear frequently in the poem’s many footnotes. On their basis he could reliably inform his readers that, for example, “the Arabs are still great rhymers” and furthermore that “no nation in the world is so much given to superstition.”29 The general effect was to collapse, with the assistance of those travelers, all difference in the enchanted East between what T. S Eliot— another poet enamored of learned footnotes—was to call “time present and time past.” That very act of conflation, moreover, allowed Kinnear to confidently quote Southey’s poem, some four decades later, in describing his own desert experiences. By that time the Irish romantic poet Thomas Moore had, like Southey before him, drawn upon such works as Shaw’s Travels—which had again been reissued in 1808—in composing his own narrative poem set in the Orient, Lalla Rookh (1817). Like Southey’s poem, moreover, Moore’s too was used by travelers to communicate to their readers what they had seen in the East. The poet’s contemporary John Carne, who had studied at Cambridge (Queens) but never received a degree, reported in the New Monthly Magazine, after visiting the ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon, that the “description in Lalla Rookh of the plain and its ruins is exquisitely faithful.”30 For other contemporaries, the poem’s moral landscape was of greater importance than its topographical one. In reviewing Lalla Rookh for the Edinburgh Review, of which he had been a cofounder, the Scottish critic and jurist Francis Jeffrey remarked that although “a great deal of our recent poetry” had been “derived from the East,” Moore’s was “the finest Orientalism we have had yet,” a matter that Jeffrey curiously linked with the poet’s origins “in that Green Isle of the West; whose Genius has long been suspected to be derived from a warmer clime.” There was nothing “in the volume now before us,” he asserted, “which belongs to European experience; or does not indicate an entire familiarity with the life, the dead nature, and the learning of the East.” The East, according to Jeffrey, was characterized not only by its “dead nature,” by which he presumably meant its resistance to change, but by “childishness, cruelty, and profligacy.” This, he acknowledged, “may seem a harsh and presumptuous sentence, to some of our Cosmopolite readers,” as it is surely to all my own, “but from all that we have been able to gather from history or recent observations, we should be inclined to say that there was no sound sense, firmness of purpose, or principled goodness, except among the natives of Europe and their genuine descendants.”31 Among the “recent observations” with which Jeffrey was familiar may well have been Thomas Shaw’s aforementioned Travels, or Observations Relating to

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Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, which had been reprinted in 1808 and which—as he had presumably noticed—Moore had cited in his notes to Lalla Rookh. The poem’s female protagonist is the daughter of a seventeenth-century Mughal emperor who is engaged to the king of Bucharia, and whose handmaids devote much attention to preparing her toilet—“some bring leaves of Henna, to imbue / The fingers’ ends with a bright roseate hue,” while “others mix the Kohol’s jetty dye, / To give that long, dark languish to the eye.” In his notes Moore quoted Shaw’s remark that “none of these ladies . . . take themselves to be completely dressed, till they have tinged the hair and edges of their eyelids with the powder of lead-ore.”32 The mascaraed matrons described by Shaw were denizens of nineteenth-century Tunisia, but the poet felt that he could assign their cosmetological customs to seventeenth-century India—not only because both countries belonged to the “Orient,” but because the learned Oxford don had deemed their method of eye adornment as “no doubt of great antiquity,” having been earlier practiced by Queen Jezebel (2 Kings 9:30) and also alluded to by the prophet Jeremiah (4:30). Shaw’s use of contemporary Tunisian practice to explain that when Jezebel “painted her face” she actually “set off her eyes with the powder of lead ore” was cited by the Scottish scholar James Macknight in his Harmony of the Four Gospels (1756) and shortly thereafter was shared by Fenning and Collyer with the readers of their New System of Geography.33 In the eighteenth century the fields of ethnology, biblical interpretation, and geography were much more closely interwoven than they would later be in the ensuing era of arcane academic specialization. Shaw’s ethnologically derived explanation of Jezebel’s mascara method was also approvingly cited by Bishop Robert Lowth (1710–87), who had served as Oxford’s professor of poetry during the final decade in which his colleague was regius professor of Greek, and whose translation of (and commentary on) Isaiah, first published in 1784, also contained many references to the latter’s work.34 Shaw’s Travels had also been carefully read by the Scottish adventurer James Bruce (1730–94), who in 1768 set off on his famous journey down the Nile to Ethiopia. In his account of that arduous journey, which met with considerable incredulity when first published in 1790, Bruce often mentioned Shaw, whom he considered “in judgment, learning, and candour” equal to “any of those that have travelled into Egypt” and whose work he recommended that travelers take with them.35 Despite his considerable admiration for Shaw, he occasionally—but always politely—criticized the Oxford don’s arguments or omissions.36 In some matters, however, Shaw’s influence is clear. Bruce considered “the prophecy concerning Ishmael, and his descendants the Arabs, as one of the most extraordinary that we meet with in the Old Testament.” Ishmael’s

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hand, he reminded his readers, “was to be against every man, and every man’s hand against him,” erroneously adding, however, that “by his sword he was to live”—which was actually Isaac’s “blessing” to Esau (Gen. 27:40). “Never,” continued Bruce, “has prophecy been so completely fulfilled,” asserting further that “this prophecy alone” concerning Ishmael and his descendants was “of itself a sufficient proof, without other, of the Divine authority of Scripture.”37 Robert Ker Porter (1775–1842), when visiting Kurdistan late in the second decade of the nineteenth century, was entertained by “a venerable Arabian sheik” in whose capacious tent he (believed himself to have) experienced a scene identical to that “which must have presented itself, ages ago, in the fields of Haran, when [Abraham’s father] Tereh sat in his tent door, surrounded by his sons.” The British painter was convinced that “such must have been the manners of these people, for more than three thousand years,” fulfilling the prediction concerning Ishmael “at his birth, that he, in his posterity, should ‘be a wild man’ and always continue to be so.” For Porter, however, the wildness of Ishmael and his descendants was reflected in their relentlessly rustic lifestyle rather than in their warlike ways. Like Bruce before him, that continuity over millennia fortified his belief in biblical prophecy, for “that an acute and active people, surrounded for ages by polished and luxurious nations, should, from their earliest to their latest times, be still found a wild people, dwelling in the midst of all their brethren . . . unsubdued and unchangeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle.” It was “one of those mysterious facts,” he added, “which establishes the truth of prophecy.”38 Porter’s comments, first published in 1822, would soon be utilized by Alexander Keith, whose aforementioned Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion was preceded by his somewhat slimmer Sketch of the Evidence of Prophecy; Containing an Account of Those Prophecies Which Were Distinctly Foretold, and Which Have Been Clearly or Literally Fulfilled (1823). Keith’s expanded work, which drew more extensively (though not always honestly) on the evidence of travelers, was cited, together with those of Harmer and Paxton, in the extensive bibliography of George Bush’s Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures (1836). Bush, who had been trained in Germany, recognized that the Bible was “essentially an Eastern book,” and, as such, it was “obvious that the natural phenomena, and the moral condition of the East, should be made largely tributary to its elucidation.” He felt, therefore, that the reader “must surround himself with, and transfuse himself into, all the forms, habitudes, and usages of oriental life.” Beyond “critical and philological research” it was necessary, he argued, to make use of the “collateral illustrations” to be found in the accounts of travelers. “The tide of travel,” Bush noted, “has turned remarkably to the East,” and thus “animated by either the noble spirit of missionary enterprise, of

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commercial speculation, of military adventure, or laudable curiosity, men of intelligence and observation have made their way into every region on which the light of revelation originally shone.”39 The fruits of their labors were valuable to students of the Bible because of what Bush—like Shaw before him—considered to be “the conformity, or rather, identity, of the modern with the ancient usages of the East,” to the degree that “scarcely a traveller has set foot on oriental soil without professing himself to be at once struck with the remarkable coincidence between the picture of ancient manners, as drawn in the sacred writings, and the state of things which actually meets his eye.” As a pragmatic American, Bush recognized in 1836 that this “remarkable coincidence” would probably not last forever. He therefore predicted that “this steadfast resistance to the spirit of innovation and change,” still characteristic of Eastern nations, would “probably, in the providence of God, remain unsubdued, till it shall have answered all the important purposes of biblical elucidation.”40 As late as 1894 the American Congregationalist minister Henry Clay Trumbull could confidently assert: “The prime advantage of a study of Oriental social life is that the past is found reproduced in the present. The Oriental social life of today is the Oriental social life of former days.” This uniformity of past and present, Trumbull claimed, extended from “from Chaldea to Egypt, where the scenes of the days of Abraham are the every-day scenes of now.”41 The consequences of that view for American policy in the Middle East are beyond the confines of this chapter.

Divinely Decreed Desolation Although Anglo-American travelers and Orientalists from Shaw to Trumbull were much concerned with continuities between ancient Palestine and its present, there was one subject in which emphasis came to be placed rather on the changes that had allegedly occurred since biblical times. The land of Judea, and the city of Jerusalem in particular, many believed, had been rendered desolate by a divine decree, which some even described as a curse. Early in the seventeenth century the English trader and traveler Henry Timberlake (1570–1625) had observed that “within fifteen miles of Jerusalem the country is wholly and full of rocks,” adding that except for “the plain of Jericho” he knew “not any part of the country that is fruitful.” Timberlake’s own opinion was that when the land was fruitful, it was because God had “blessed it . . . but now, being inhabited by infidels . . . God curseth it, and so it is made barren.”42 Timberlake’s view may have influenced that of his learned countryman, the antiquarian and divine Thomas Fuller. In his Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (1650), Fuller, who had

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not traveled to the Holy Land, acknowledged Judea’s barrenness, but added that “by the confession of travellers some spots and parcels of ground transcendently fruitful are everywhere to be found, retaining and transmitting to posterity the memory of the universal fruitfulness of Judea before God had justly cursed it for the sins of the people.”43 The curse of which both Timberlake and Fuller spoke may have been behind Thomas Shaw’s later insistence that “the Holy Land, were it as well inhabited and cultivated as formerly, would still be more fruitful than the very best part of the coast of Syria or Phoenice.” Shaw acknowledged that the region around Jerusalem was indeed “rocky and mountainous,” but denied that it was also “barren and unfruitful,” pointing to the “goodness” of the small amounts of wine “still made at Jerusalem and Hebron” and predicting (correctly) that “these barren rocks (as they are called) would yield a much greater quantity” if the “abstemious Turk and Arab should permit the vine to be further propagated and improved.”44 Timberlake’s True and Strange Discourse of the Travailes of Two English Pilgrimes, which had first appeared in 1603, was reprinted—from the 1616 edition—in the Harleian Miscellany (1744). That miscellany itself, drawn from manuscripts and rare books belonging to the Earl of Oxford, was reprinted in 1808, and it there that James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855), who traveled to the Middle East eight years later, encountered Timberlake’s comment positing a divine curse as the explanation for Judea’s barrenness. Buckingham, in his Travels in Palestine (1821), quoted the comment in its entirety “as a proof that even those who are very pious may entertain contemptible opinions of the extent and riches of the Holy Land.”45 Among those “very pious” mention may be made of Alexander Macwhorter (1734–1807), the Princeton-educated pastor of Newark’s First Presbyterian Church, who had asserted in one of his sermons: “That the land of Judea is a waste, barren, and desolate country at the present time is testified to us by all historians and travellers . . . though it was once a land flowing with milk and honey.”46 Similarly, the celebrated Irish poet Thomas Moore had opened one of his “sacred songs” with the words: Fallen is thy Throne, oh Israel! Silence is o’er thy plains; Thy dwellings all lie desolate, Thy children weep in chains. Moore, like Macwhorter, had never been to the Holy Land, but he too evidently felt that he could rely on the accounts of travelers who reported that its plains were silent and dwellings desolate. His poem’s second stanza, which drew heavily

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on the book of Jeremiah, referred specifically to Jerusalem—also called Salem (Gen. 14:18): Lord! Thou didst love Jerusalem— Once she was all thy own; Her love thy fairest heritage, Her power thy glory’s throne: Till evil came, and blighted Thy long-loved olive-tree; And Salem’s shrine were lighted For other Gods than thee.47 Several years after Moore’s Sacred Songs appeared his English contemporary Josiah Conder (1789–1855), who had been editor of the Eclectic Review since 1814, published The Star in the East; with Other Poems (1824). The opening lines of Conder’s lead poem expressed a similar view of the Holy City. City of David! Thou art desecrate; And fall’n Jerusalem sits captive now In dust and darkness. Every holy one Has long forsaken the polluted land.48 In the very same year in which that collection appeared, Conder, a wideranging Congregationalist man of letters, also published the first volume—on Palestine—in his famed “Modern Traveller” series, which was to run to thirty volumes. In his dedication to “the King” (George IV), Conder stressed that “this attempt to present an accurate and authentic description of the various countries of the globe” was “drawn chiefly from the reports of British travellers.” These included, in his volume on Palestine, the aforementioned travelers Shaw, Pococke, and Buckingham, as well as the latter’s contemporaries—and Conder’s own—Edward Clarke, Thomas Jolliffe, and James Connor, to all of whom we shall return. After providing, in that volume, a brief history of Palestine until its having been, in the fourteenth century, “swallowed up into the Turkish empire,” Conder quoted the following lines (without attribution): Trodden down By all in turn, Pagan, and Frank, and Tartar,— So runs the dread anathema,—trodden down Beneath the’ oppressor; darkness shrouding thee

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From every blessed influence of heaven; Thus hast thou lain for ages, iron-bound As with a curse. Thus are thou doomed to lie, Yet not forever.49 Those dark and dismal lines were taken, as Conder presumably hoped some readers would recognize, from his recently published Star in the East. His 1824 volume on Palestine thus reflects how travel literature, poetry, and reference works providing “geographical, historical, and topographical information” had become closely intertwined, so that poetry inspired by travel literature could be utilized in such a volume. Conder’s contemporary John Carne, when citing Moore’s Lalla Rookh to describe the ruins at Baalbek, presents a parallel instance of travelers making use of poetry they presumed would be familiar to their readers. When Carne continued south to Mount Carmel, he found it “the finest and most beautiful mountain in Palestine.” Its beauty, however, was perplexing since “this scene certainly did not fulfil the descriptions given of the desolation and barrenness of Palestine, although it was mournful to behold scarcely a village or a cottage in the whole extent.”50 Carne had clearly been reading the same sorts of travel accounts as had Conder. Concerning Caesarea, for example, the latter quoted his countryman Edward Clarke (1769–1822), who in his Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, had observed that perhaps no city in the world exhibited “a more awful contrast to its former magnificence, by the present desolation of its ruins.”51 Conder also presented, at considerable length, the comments of that same “lively traveller” on first seeing Jerusalem: We had not been prepared . . . for the grandeur of the spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and monasteries; all of which, glittering in the sun’s rays, shone with inconceivable splendour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance.52 Having read other accounts, however, Conder had reservations regarding Clarke’s, although the Cambridge don had since become the university’s first professor of mineralogy.53 “Dr. Clarke,” he wrote,” was fortunate in catching the first view of Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant evening sunshine, but his description is decidedly overcharged.” Among less “overcharged” descriptions,

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Conder approvingly quoted that by Buckingham, who had found “the appearance of this celebrated city . . . greatly inferior to my expectations,” and had added—with a clear allusion to Clarke—that it “had certainly nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnifence, about it.”54 The Congregationalist poet also quoted approvingly from Frederick Henniker’s more recent description of Jerusalem in his Notes During a Visit to Egypt, Nubia . . . and Jerusalem (London, 1823). Its streets, wrote Clarke’s fellow Cambridge alumnus—perhaps in reaction to the latter’s “overcharged” account—“are narrow and deserted, the houses dirty and ragged, the shops few and forsaken,” adding that “throughout the whole [city] there is not one symptom of either commerce, comfort, or happiness.”55

“The Brilliant Delineations of Poetry” Conder’s preference for Henniker’s description of Jerusalem over that of Clarke was shared by the Scottish Episcopal divine Michael Russell. “The reader who has perused with attention some of the more recent works on Palestine,” wrote Russell in 1831, “must have been struck with the diversity, and apparent contradiction, which prevails in their descriptions of Jerusalem.” Whereas one writer might describe the “magnificence” of its buildings as rivaling “the most splendid edifices of modern times,” another, he noted, “could perceive nothing but filth and ruins, surmounted by a gaudy mosque and a few glittering minarets.” Russell, realized that this was not a consequence of travelers having visited at different times, but, rather, that “the greater number . . . have drawn from their imagination the tints in which they have been pleased to exhibit the metropolis of Judea; trusting more to the impressions conveyed by the brilliant delineations of poetry, than to a minute inspection of what they might have seen with their own eyes.”56 Among those in the latter category Russell included the already maligned Clarke. After quoting from the latter’s glittering description of Jerusalem as seen from afar, the Scottish divine provided—somewhat cheekily—the lines from Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, in John Hoole’s mellifluous translation, which supplied “it may be suspected, the model which has been so faithfully copied by the English tourist.” Referring to the late Cambridge professor as “the English tourist” was certainly no compliment. “As a contrast to the description of Dr Clarke,” he added, “the reader may not be displeased to peruse the notes of Sir Frederick Henniker.”57 Russell’s preference for Henniker’s laconic account of Jerusalem may well have derived less from Clarke’s alleged imitation of Tasso’s poetic style than from the perplexing paucity of evidence he provided for the city’s current desolation.

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Curiously, Russell did not mention the Reverend Thomas Jolliffe (1780– 1872), whose Letters from Palestine, first published in 1819, had already appeared in a third edition. And although Conder frequently cited the Anglican divine in his 1824 work and included him among those travelers whose accounts of Jerusalem were more reliable than Clarke’s, he refrained from quoting Jolliffe’s striking comments concerning the city—which proved, nonetheless, quite influential. “Were a person carried blindfold from England and placed in the centre of Jerusalem, or on any of the hills which overlook the city,” began one of his eloquent letters, “nothing perhaps would exceed his astonishment on the sudden removal of the bandage.” The English visitor, asserted Jolliffe (who unlike Carne had left Cambridge with a degree), “would see a wild, rugged, mountainous desert . . . no forests clothing the acclivities, no water flowing through the valleys; but one rude scene of savage melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory of Judaea bows her head in widowed desolation.”58 As some of Jolliffe’s contemporaries must have recognized, his highly rhetorical description of Jerusalem drew on the Elizabethan drama Pericles, Prince of Tyre, partly written by Shakespeare, as well as Shelley’s recently published poem “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude,” both of which took place in “Oriental” settings. In the former, Pericles says to Cleon, the governor of Tarsus: We have heard your miseries as far as Tyre, Since entering your unshut gates have witnessed The widowed desolation of your streets.59 In Shelley’s poem, which appeared the year before Moore’s Lalla Rookh, the protagonist, following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, wanders “through Arabie and Persia” and continues east through “the vale of Cashmire” before arriving upon the lone Chorasmian shore . . . a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes.60 In drawing, consciously or unconsciously, upon these literary works, Jolliffe was following the conventions of contemporary literary style, but had his account of Jerusalem not included such poetic word combinations as “melancholy waste” and “widowed desolation” it may not have been quite as influential. Within a decade it had been quoted by William Carpenter in his Popular Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures (1826) and by Archibald Alexander, of Princeton’s Theological Seminary, in his Pocket Dictionary of the Holy

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Bible (1829).61 Perhaps most significant, however, Jolliffe had been quoted (and duly cited) by Alexander Keith in his immensely popular Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, the fifth edition of which had appeared by 1832. Keith had made use of Jolliffe’s Letters from Palestine, among other works, to buttress his wider claim that “the land mourns and is laid waste, and has become a desolate wilderness.”62 By the middle of the nineteenth century Jolliffe’s “gloomy, but at the same time striking” description—to quote Archibald Alexander—had also been quoted by the English geographer William Hughes in his Illuminated Atlas of Scripture Geography (1840) and by his countryman the Baptist minister Samuel Green in his Biblical and Theological Dictionary (1841).63 It had also been utilized by the American Universalist minister John Greenleaf Adams (1810– 87) in a book for children edited by his wife, the former Mary Hall Barrett. “Of all places in our wide world,” Adams informed his young readers, “no one is more replete with interest at the present hour than the city of Jerusalem.” A major part of that interest was the lesson to be learned from the city’s decline into desolation since its distant days of glory: “Around the west and north of the city the country is dreary and barren; and the city itself is but a mockery compared with its former magnificence and glory. . . . The inhabitants are few, poor, oppressed, and miserable.” Adams added that “a modern writer has given us this strange description, true, I suppose, to the life,” and then proceeded to quote: “No suburbs, no surrounding population, none of the stir and activity of enterprising life is to be witnessed, but only one rude scene of melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory of Judea bows her widowed head in desolation.”64 The American minister actually drew upon not one “modern writer” but two, having spliced (a slightly altered version of) Jolliffe’s by then well-known account with that of his younger countryman and fellow Anglican divine George Fisk, who had visited Jerusalem in 1842. Like many others before him— particularly the aristocratic Frenchman Chateaubriand in his highly influential Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1810–11)—Fisk too made use of Lamentations in presenting his brief “portraiture of the Holy City and her adjacent territory.” In the manner of skilled preachers, he both opened and closed his elegiac description of the holy city with the initial words of that biblical book: “How doth the city sit solitary!” All who have walked around Jerusalem must have felt this. No suburbs—no surrounding busy population— none of the stir and activity of enterprising life is to be seen. . . . She is captive and hopeless. A few goats and sheep, straggling about the rocks which overhang the shattered village of Siloam—a few swarthy shep-

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herds plying their listless occupation—with here and there a fierce and armed Bedawee from the surrounding deserts . . . and now and then a cowled monk or wandering pilgrim—steal in the picture. . . . Alas, alas! “How doth the city sit solitary!”65

Two Missionaries and Their Lamentations That verse, together with others from Lamentations, had earlier been used— perhaps under Chateaubriand’s influence—by the Anglican missionary James Connor, then stationed in Constantinople, to describe the “solitary” city he had visited during the spring of 1820. “From the side of [Mount] Olivet,” Connor noted, “you have a very commanding view of Jerusalem,” adding that “the Mosque of Omar appears particularly fine from this situation.” On the other hand, he wrote, “the greater part of the surrounding country is most desolate and dreary,” its “hills of white parched rock,” only “dotted here and there with patches of cultivated land.” Connor, who shortly after completing his studies at Oxford had proceeded to Malta, where he continued his missionary training, contrasted “desolate and dreary” Judea with the “many beautiful and fertile spots” to be found in northern Palestine. For this difference he had a ready explanation: “The breath of Jehovah’s wrath seems, in a peculiar manner, to have blasted and withered the territory of the daughter of Zion!”66 Although Connor did not explicitly refer to a “curse,” mentioning only “the breath of Jehovah’s wrath,” his comments reflect the incipient return of the nearly forgotten notion that a divine curse rested upon the land of Palestine, or parts thereof. Not long after Connor’s brief account was published, as an appendix to his senior colleague William Jowett’s Christian Researches in the Mediterranean (1822), Josiah Conder, in his 1824 poem, described the land as  having “lain for ages, iron bound / As with a curse.” Conder, as we have seen, included those lines in the volume on Palestine he published that same year. Among the sources from which he acknowledged, in his prefatory “advertisement,” having “gleaned some valuable information” were “the Notes of Mr. Connor, given in Mr. Jowett’s Christian Researches.” Connor’s comments may, in fact, have inspired the poet to describe Palestine “as iron bound / As with a curse.” Shortly after his Christian Researches in the Mediterranean appeared Jowett published its sequel, Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land (1825). His “researches” had been pursued, as the subtitles of both works made clear, “in furtherance of the objects of the Church Missionary Society.” Prior to embarking upon his missionary career, during which he was based in Malta, Jowett had been a fellow of St. John’s College (Cambridge), where he had excelled in

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mathematics, but he also won the university’s Hulsean Prize for an essay on Jews and idolatry. The wide range of his intellectual sympathies continued to be reflected in both volumes of Christian Researches. In his earlier work Jowett described his visit to Athens and reported his thoughts while viewing “the spot from which St. Paul preached [Acts 17]—and, at a distance, among the olive groves, the supposed site of the Academy, where Socrates and Plato discoursed.” While walking alone among the decayed remains of the once flourishing Athenian Academy, the missionary’s thoughts had turned to his alma mater: “Is it possible,” he wondered, “that Cambridge, which now feeds on the harvest that ripened in this spot, should ever become desolate, semi-barbarized, and forgetful of her great men!” Proceeding afterward to the “confused pile of ruins” at the Acropolis, Jowett was moved to write: “Whoever has set foot on the Acropolis, or has observed how the antiquities are scattered about . . . Athens, will understand the vivid picture drawn by Jeremiah in the Lamentations [4:1]—The stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.”67 Not surprisingly, Jowett made use of that same biblical book three years later in describing his visit to Jerusalem. Having entered Palestine from the north, he first commented on the Nahr el Kalb valley north of Beirut, which reminded him “sometimes of Derbyshire scenery—though not of the softer parts, such as Dovedale.” When drawing nearer to Jerusalem the landscape turned considerably grimmer, and Jowett’s mind turned, accordingly, to the Old Testament. “Uncultivated hilly tracts, in every direction, seemed to announce that, not only Jerusalem, but its vicinity for miles around, was destined to sadden the heart of every visitor.” This, for the learned missionary, was a fulfillment of Deut. 29:22 [29:21 in the Massoretic text], which predicted that “the stranger that shall come from a far land” would be “amazed at the plagues laid upon this country.” Jowett added that this prediction “became, more than ever, literally fulfilled, in my feelings, as I drew nearer to the Metropolis of this chosen nation.”68 Like his colleague Connor before him, Jowett was struck by the beauty of the Mosque of Omar when seen from a distance: “Among the vast assemblage of domes which adorn the roofs of the Convents, Churches, and Houses, and give to this forlorn city an air even of magnificence,” he wrote, “none seemed more splendid than that which has usurped the place of Solomon’s Temple.” Yet, he continued, “as we drew nearer to the City of the Great King [Ps. 48:2], more and more manifest were the proofs of the displeasure of that Great King resting upon his city.” Jowett’s solution to the differing reactions of recent travelers was to distinguish between “the distant view of Jerusalem” and the “forlorn city” as seen from the inside. While the former was “inexpressibly

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beautiful,” the latter was characterized by “meanness, and filth, and misery.” This prompted Jowett to quote again from the book of Lamentations: “How is the fine gold become dim!” (4:1).69

The Curse Although Jowett had clearly stated that there was a “judicial curse” upon the land of Palestine, he believed that it could potentially be reversed. “I cannot but own,” he wrote, “that a peculiarly melancholy impression is made on the feelings, by seeing so much land left desolate, and so few people scattered over the face of the country.” Yet, Jowett insisted, there was “no fair reason” for regarding the land as “naturally unproductive”—a claim that had been made, as he knew, by such prominent unbelievers as Gibbon and Voltaire. Palestine’s present state, he asserted, was the consequence of a “righteous God” having “turned, in the fulfilment of his long-suspended threatenings, a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein [Ps. 107:34].”70 The “curse” mentioned by Jowett in 1825 continued to echo in subsequent travel writing on Palestine, though not necessarily—as we shall see—due to his own influence. In his Recollections of the East (1830), John Carne returned to the subject of Mount Carmel, which he had described in his earlier Letters from the East. In his later work, the mountain itself was still “beautiful” and still possessed “its ancient ‘excellency’ of flowers, trees, and a perpetual verdure,” but he now reported that “barrenness spreads on every side, and the curse of the withered soil is felt on hill, valley, and shore.”71 The “barrenness” and the “curse” had somehow eluded him in his earlier account of the scene. As his more learned readers readily realized, in referring to the Carmel’s earlier “excellency” Carne was alluding to Isaiah 35:2 (as rendered in the King James Bible), and in mentioning its “withered soil” he alluded to the prophecy of Amos (1:3) that “the Lord will roar from Zion . . . and the top of Carmel shall wither.” Carne’s biblically inspired comments concerning Mount Carmel were soon quoted by his countryman John Kitto in his Pictorial Bible.72 They seem even earlier to have influenced the Scottish divine Michael Russell, who in his Palestine, or the Holy Land, first published in 1831, wrote similarly that “the excellency of Carmel . . . has in great measure passed away,” explaining that “the curse denounced by Amos has fallen upon it.”73 Russell, who later became (Episcopal) bishop of Glasgow, had never been to Palestine, and thus clearly drew on either Carne’s Recollections or another literary source. The Methodist missionary Robert Spence Hardy (1803–68), who passed through the Holy Land in 1832–33, had clearly read either Carne or Russell (if not both), for in recording his impressions of northern Palestine he too reported that “the excellency of

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the Carmel” had “withered before the curse of heaven.”74 Just as Carne’s comments concerning Mount Carmel soon resurfaced (with attribution) in Kitto’s Pictorial Bible, so too were Hardy’s quoted later that same decade by the aforementioned American scholar George Bush.75 William Jowett’s notion of a “judicial curse” that had fallen upon all of Palestine was thus gaining wide currency. That currency, however, did not derive from the popularity of Jowett’s 1825 Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land, which was reprinted only once, but from Alexander Keith’s far more popular Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, the fifth edition of which had appeared by 1832. In surveying Palestine’s history during the centuries following the death of Christ, Keith wrote that “there was a curse on the land, that hath scathed it; a judgment on the people that hath scattered them throughout the world.”76 Later in that work the Presbyterian pastor took issue with the French aristocrat Count Constantine Volney, who soon after publishing his Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785—the original of which had appeared in 1787—composed his influential meditation The Ruins; or, A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, well described by Malcolm Bradbury as a “work about the mouldering of civilizations, the collapse of empires, and the fall of eternal things into decay.”77 Volney wondered in his Ruins whether the “present desolation” of those Levantine lands in which he had recently traveled would not “one day be the lot of our own country.” Giving himself up “to the most gloomy meditations on human affairs,” Volney decided that “a mysterious God” who “exercises his incomprehensible judgments” had “doubtless pronounced a secret malediction against the earth,” striking “with a curse the present race of men, in revenge of past generations.”78 Keith, who had carefully studied both of Volney’s works, confidently asserted—in contrast to that “great advocate of infidelity”—that it was no “secret malediction” which had been “pronounced against Judea” but rather “the curse of a broken covenant that rests upon the land.” The term “curse,” it should be stressed, had been used by Volney himself. The Scotsmen then reiterated that “the character and condition of the people” residing in Palestine—by which he meant both Jews and those “believers in the impostor Mahomet”—were “not less definitely marked, than the features of the land, that has been smitten with a curse because of their iniquities.”79 John Carne had evidently consulted Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion after returning from his travels and prior to composing his Recollections of the East, for in reflecting, in that 1830 work, on the Jews themselves he suggested that “the curse, that has taken away the beauty of their land, seems also to have taken the valour from their spirit.” As evidence Carne noted

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that “no instance exists, since their desolation, of Jews being found in arms,” whether for their own cause “or in the ser vice of any potentate in whose dominions they dwelt.”80 The ostensible unsuitability of Jews for military ser vice and its wider meaning was a question that had concerned both British travelers and scholars since the seventeenth century.81 In his Voyage into the Levant (1636), Henry Blount asserted that “the Jewish complexion is so prodigiously timide, as cannot be capable of Armes,” contrasting “the valour of David’s worthies [2 Sam. 23]” with the less courageous “modern Hebrew.” This revealed, in his opinion, “how much a long thraldom [= servitude] may cow posterity beneath the spirits of their ancestors.”82 Blount’s work, which had been frequently reprinted through 1671, may well have influenced the Bible scholar Simon Patrick (1626–1707), the bishop of Ely. Patrick noted in his 1698 commentary on Leviticus that it was “scarce ever heard, that a Jew listed himself for a soldier, or engaged in the defense of the country where he lives.” The bishop was commenting on the verse (26:36) in which God threatened the Israelites that if they disobeyed him he would “send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies.”83 Patrick’s own comments on that verse were later quoted by the eighteenth-century Baptist scholar John Gill in his Exposition of the Old Testament. Drawing upon the sixteenthcentury (Protestant) Latin translation of Junius and Tremellius in which “faintness” was rendered as “softness” (mollitiem), Gill explained the Levitical prophecy as meaning that “they should be effeminate, pusillanimous, and cowardly, have nothing of a manly spirit and courage in them; but be mean-spirited and fainthearted, as the Jews are noted to be at this day.”84 Neither Blount nor the two Bible scholars referred explicitly, however, to a divine curse. Blount, in fact, did not see Jewish timidity in theological terms at all, attributing it rather to the Jews’ long period of servitude. It was Carne who, in his 1830 Recollections, first suggested that “the curse, that has taken away the beauty of their land, seems also to have taken the valour from their spirit.” That suggestion seems to have been made under the influence of Keith’s immensely popular Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, in which it was asserted— more than once—that both the land of Palestine and the people who dwelled therein had been cursed by God. Keith’s own argument had emerged, as noted above, from his critical engagement with that “great advocate of infidelity,” the Frenchman Volney. It was evidently also under Keith’s (direct or indirect) influence that the Methodist missionary Robert Hardy, in his 1835 Notices of the Holy Land, wrote of Judea’s “barren hills” that he had seen upon them “the impress of the curse of God.” Three years later the traveler Charles Elliott described Judea as “a land of such high former glory, such high future expectations, and such perfect

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degradation.” It had once been other wise, explained Elliott, who, like his Anglican colleagues Jolliffe and Jowett, had studied at Cambridge, “but when the land fell under the curse of the Almighty, the terraces became dilapidated, and the soil . . . was washed down by the first abundant rain; so that the hills, once clothed with vineyards, fig trees, and olives, then ceased to present to the eye anything but their own arid rocks.”85 Like his older contemporary Keith—and perhaps under his influence—Elliott too believed that both the Jews and their land were under a divine curse. Writing of the Jews in the Galilee, he referred to “the irreconcilable hatred with which the rest of the world regard a nation who have imprecated upon themselves the curse of God.”86 Not surprisingly, when Keith himself eventually made his first trip to Palestine he too saw evidence of a divine curse. Shortly after returning from that trip—which had been cut short by a colleague’s injury after falling from a camel— Keith published The Land of Israel, According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob (1843). “The hill country of Judea, which has been waste for ages past,” he reported, “seems not only utterly desolate as soon as the summer’s sun has scorched any partial vernal verdure, but absolutely sterile,” causing the traveler to marvel as to “how those hills could ever have been covered by the shadow of the vine.” The Scottish preacher was convinced that “the curse” about which he had earlier written “has lighted indeed” on both Judea’s once great cities and its “rounded yet rocky hills.” There was, however, hope for change: “Large and venerable olive-trees,” he noted, “keep their place in the garden of Gethsemane, once stained with that blood which shall redeem from the curse the land, the people, and the world.”87 In the same year in which Alexander Keith’s Land of Israel appeared his countryman Lord Lindsay published a third edition of his aforementioned Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land. Lindsay may have had not only Keith’s earlier work in mind but also more recent ones, such as those by Hardy and Elliott—with the latter of whom he had overlapped at Cambridge— when adding the following footnote: “Many, I believe, entertain the idea that an actual curse rests on the soil of Palestine, and may be startled, therefore, at the testimony I have borne to its actual richness.” Continuing in the same evangelistic vein—from which he would later distance himself—the Scottish aristocrat noted that the land “only awaits the return of her banished children, and the application of industry commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance.”88 Lindsay’s testimony to Palestine “actual richness” was actually limited to several parts thereof. In a letter from Jerusalem to his future mother-in-law Anne Lindsay, wife of his aforementioned cousin James,89 he wrote: “All Judea, except the hills of Hebron and the vales immediately about Jerusalem, is desolate and barren; but the

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prospect brightens as soon as you quit it, and Samaria and Galilee smile like the land of Promise.”90 As Lindsay may well have known, among those who had referred to an actual curse on the land was the Trappist monk Marie-Joseph de Géramb in his Pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt, and Syria, which was also a collection of letters. Géramb, who had traveled in Palestine during the early 1830s, had divided the country into cursed and uncursed parts. Writing from Bethlehem in early 1832, he contrasted his feelings upon entering that city just before Christmas with his earlier entry into Jerusalem: “Then I was drawing near to a city under a curse, to a city where every thing reminds you of the excruciating torments and ignominious death of the Saviour.” Later, writing from Jerusalem, he reiterated that “every thing” there bore “the mark of the curse with which that hapless city has been stricken.”91 Géramb acknowledged, however, that “even at this day, it seems as if Providence has determined to maintain in that desolate land visible signs of what it would be, but for the curse that rests upon it.” In the country’s “cultivated parts,” he noted, “the wheat is remarkably beautiful, the bunches of grapes enormous, the culinary vegetables so excellent that in no country have I eaten better.”92 Reservations similar to those of Lindsay regarding the alleged curse were later expressed by the Anglican divine, biblical scholar, and ornithologist Henry Baker Tristram (1822–1906), who had first visited Palestine in 1858, and returned five years later for a more extended stay. Tristram, as a pious clergyman, was not averse to discerning in Samaria evidence of Micah’s prophecy that God would render it “as an heap of the field,” reporting that “the curse has been fully accomplished.” Regarding Judea, however, his reaction was quite different. When visiting Mount Zion in February of 1864 he saw gardens “which formerly were mere cabbage plots,” reporting also that the almond tree had “been in blossom for a fortnight, the peach-tree for a week, and the apricots are just budding into bloom.” These, and similar agricultural phenomena—such as the “enormous size” of the local cauliflowers—led Tristram conclude that “the curse is upon the land, but it is the curse of poverty, not on its soil, but on its indolent, degraded, and oppressed inhabitants.”93

Epilogue: American Travelers and the Curse By the time of Tristram’s second visit to Palestine the notion of a curse upon both the Jews and their ancient land—or at least parts thereof—had made its way to American travel accounts. During the late 1840s the young Episcopal priest Jesse Ames Spencer visited Egypt and the Holy Land, later publishing an epistolary account of his travels. While traveling by horseback north toward

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Jericho, Spencer reported, he and his companions “were fully alive to the beauty of this region as it once was in its days of glory.” After continuing from there to Jerusalem, however, the Columbia graduate was somewhat more disconsolate. “Barrenness and deadness,” he wrote, “are indeed everywhere,” adding that “no man can traverse a path like this without . . . feeling that a curse does indeed rest upon the face of the land.” Later, while visiting the Samarian mountains of Gerizim and Ebal—associated with the biblical scene of “blessings and cursings”—he thought of the cursed state of the Jews themselves: “And what, think you, it was to us,” Spencer asked rhetorically, “to stand here so many ages afterwards, and to see and know that . . . the curse in all its force has come upon the chosen people?”94 In 1862 the Ohio Baptist minister David Austin Randall, who had also visited Palestine, published The Handwriting of God in Egypt, Sinai, and the Holy Land. Like Spencer and some of the other aforementioned authors, Randall clearly believed that there was still a curse upon both the Jews and their ancient land. Of his experience of entry into Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter he wrote: “Alas, son of Abraham, how heavily the curse has settled on thee.” Later in his account Randall was struck by how much the Jordan river basin near Jericho had changed since “the days of the prophets and the Savior, when populous cities, groves of palm, and beautiful gardens abounded.” It had now “become a wilderness,” in which “solitude and desolation hold undisputed reign.” Randall, who like many evangelicals looked forward to better days, wondered “when will the desolating curse that now rests upon it be removed, and the voice of civilization . . . again be heard along its banks?”95 Randall’s Handwriting of God, it has been noted, was one of the contemporary works of travel consulted by Mark Twain when composing The Innocents Abroad (1869).96 In July of 1867 Twain set sail from New York as part of the “Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion,” which had been largely orga nized by the Brooklyn preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who was prevented, as Twain noted, by “urgent duties” from taking part. Beecher, however, had seen to it that participants were advised to bring along “a few guide-books, a Bible, and some standard works of travel.”97 Toward the end of his often jaded account in The Innocents of his Holy Land visit, Twain stated with (either sincere or mock) solemnity: “Palestine sits in ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.” Although several scholars have discussed this passage, one describing it as “half conventional bathos, half parody,” its roots in earlier nineteenth-century travel accounts have not been sufficiently stressed.98 Besides that of Randall, who wondered when “the desolating curse” would be removed, “and the voice of civilization . . . be heard again” along the Jordan’s

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banks, mention may be made of John Carne’s Recollections of the East (1830), in which he wrote of Mount Carmel—which Twain planned to visit but never saw—that “barrenness spreads on every side, and the curse of the withered soil is felt on hill, valley, and shore.” Carne’s brooding comment had, as noted above, been quoted in Kitto’s frequently reprinted Pictorial Bible, a new edition of which appeared in 1866—just before Twain set off on his “innocent” journey abroad.99 Could the American visitor have been persuaded by what he read and what he saw that Palestine was truly under “the spell of a curse” without necessarily believing that it originated in (what an earlier traveler had called) “the breath of Jehovah’s wrath?” This is only one of several questions that I hope this essay has raised.

Introduction Orit Bashkin

Our book pays close heed to how Jews portray other Jews in their travels and how these questions relate to questions of power. Writing on what he termed “imaginative geography,” Edward Said suggests that geography is neither a “neutral” nor an “objective” methodology concentrating on the physical and ecological aspects of a certain space. Rather, it is a set of assumptions produced within particular discourses. Imaginative geographies is “the universal practice of designating, in one’s mind, a familiar space which is ‘ours,’ as opposed to an unfamiliar space, which is ‘theirs.’ ” Therefore, Said’s “geographical inquiry into historical experience” studies the construction of symbolic territories and the geographical imagery attached to a conceptual map of identities devised by power relations.1 Said is most identified with the term that was the title of his most famous book, Orientalism. Orientalism, to Said, is a body of discourses and practices through which Westerners of various sorts, travelers, but also authors, historians, colonial officials, and bureaucrats, missionaries, novelists, poets, and journalists, generated knowledge about the Orient. The existence of many travel accounts, guidebooks, and travelogues allowed Westerners who traveled to the Orient to feel they possessed unshakable knowledge about the civilization they were about to visit. Canonical texts about the Orient, whose power originated from the authority of academic institutions and governments, thus formed not only knowledge but also the very reality they appeared to describe. The set of qualities which was often associated with the Orient in such discourses, like despotism, backwardness, and oppression, and its construction as a space inhabited once by greater civilization and now standing in perpetual ruins, meant that the Orient was every thing that Western, enlightened, and modern Europe was not. It was Europe’s “other,” and as such, could only be salvaged by European guidance under the guise of colonial power.2 The essays in Part III explore the ways in which Jewish travel narratives complicate these divisions between Orient and Occident, especially as Jews

Introduction Orit Bashkin

Our book pays close heed to how Jews portray other Jews in their travels and how these questions relate to questions of power. Writing on what he termed “imaginative geography,” Edward Said suggests that geography is neither a “neutral” nor an “objective” methodology concentrating on the physical and ecological aspects of a certain space. Rather, it is a set of assumptions produced within particular discourses. Imaginative geographies is “the universal practice of designating, in one’s mind, a familiar space which is ‘ours,’ as opposed to an unfamiliar space, which is ‘theirs.’ ” Therefore, Said’s “geographical inquiry into historical experience” studies the construction of symbolic territories and the geographical imagery attached to a conceptual map of identities devised by power relations.1 Said is most identified with the term that was the title of his most famous book, Orientalism. Orientalism, to Said, is a body of discourses and practices through which Westerners of various sorts, travelers, but also authors, historians, colonial officials, and bureaucrats, missionaries, novelists, poets, and journalists, generated knowledge about the Orient. The existence of many travel accounts, guidebooks, and travelogues allowed Westerners who traveled to the Orient to feel they possessed unshakable knowledge about the civilization they were about to visit. Canonical texts about the Orient, whose power originated from the authority of academic institutions and governments, thus formed not only knowledge but also the very reality they appeared to describe. The set of qualities which was often associated with the Orient in such discourses, like despotism, backwardness, and oppression, and its construction as a space inhabited once by greater civilization and now standing in perpetual ruins, meant that the Orient was every thing that Western, enlightened, and modern Europe was not. It was Europe’s “other,” and as such, could only be salvaged by European guidance under the guise of colonial power.2 The essays in Part III explore the ways in which Jewish travel narratives complicate these divisions between Orient and Occident, especially as Jews

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traveled in between Christendom and Islamdom. We investigate how Jewish travel narratives both adopted and challenged Orientalist tropes and narratives and study how Ashkenazi writers reacted to the challenges of Orientalism. As Jewish travelers sought communities of other Jews in their journeys, at times what typifies forms of Jewish travel narratives in various parts of the globe is not a feeling of strangeness and otherness, but rather one of familiarity and the ability to pay attention to the recognizable, even as Jews traveled in vast lands and saw many different peoples. The Jewish faith, with its sacred texts and rituals, often eased the difficulties of arriving in unknown places and spaces. On the other hand, the cultures of the communities in which Jews lived, the different languages Jews spoke, and the binaries between East/West, men/women, and youth/old age shaped very different travel narratives, in which Jews themselves othered different Jewish communities. Some have referred to such travel narratives as “Jewish Orientalism.”3 The comparisons between the world of Islam and the world of Christendom, moreover, were vital to Jews on a practical level. Said’s book famously linked travel and empire. In the Jewish context, discussions of empire have been complicated and nuanced for several historical reasons. Long before the arrival of the comparative study of empires, which have emerged as an important research field in the humanities and the social sciences, Jews were constantly engaged in comparing states and empires: were Muslim empires better for Jews compared to Christian empires? Where was the best place for a Jew to dwell within the existential realm of exile? Which kind of imperial administration best suited their economic and religious needs? These comparisons were not simply an intellectual or a literary exercise centered on the characters of Edom or Esau; they owed their existence to the fact that Jews were forced to travel in, and were often banished from, various provinces within the same empire, and at other times, they moved from empire to empire because of persecution. Constant comparison between spaces, empires, and states characterizes many forms of Jewish travel accounts and works of geography and scientific discussions about climate, flora, and fauna current in the scientific discourses of the time. Jewish travel narratives, then, complicate the Orient/Occident binary in a number of ways. First, while Jews were settlers and merchants who took part in and benefited from the colonial system, they were never at the heart of the colonial enterprise and were likewise subjects of colonized states and domains. Second, Jews were the religious other in the Christian West. They too were perceived as primitive, dogmatic, clinging to irrational and misguided beliefs and traditions, and incapable of change. As the Oriental other in Europe, Jews were stereotyped as dark, unclean, and perilous. Concerned Christian reformers

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and travelers visited their segregated neighborhoods and wrote about the different, strange, and criminal nature of these spaces. With the rise of scientific anti-Semitism and race theories in the nineteenth century, Jews were lumped together with the Arabs as inferior Semites. Third, while some European Jewish intellectuals identified with colonized Arab and Muslim peoples and their struggles, others identified with the West as a place and an idea, rather than as its ultimate victims. Many Jews who were deeply engaged in producing travel narratives about the Orient never traveled there and wrote about the exotic and the mysterious East while being othered themselves as non-Christian subjects in their home countries. While Orientalism covers the construction of the East/West binary throughout the centuries, its major contribution concerns the modern era, when Western guidance, occupation, and discipline were perceived as the modes through which the passive and oppressed Orient could redeem itself. Our investigation begins earlier. As several essays show, medieval Jewish literature contained certain paradigms, binaries, and representations regarding the races and peoples of the Orient that were formed in multiethnic and multilinguistic Islamic and European empires and inspired by the local scientific and geographic literature of the time. This medieval Jewish literature was characterized by a host of positive and negative representations related to the inhabitants of the Orient, Jews and non-Jews alike. Martin Jacobs’s chapter tackles the validity of Orientalist categories and taxonomies in the premodern Jewish world. Looking at medieval European Jewish travelers to the East, Jacobs reconsiders the binaries of East and West, while highlighting the variety of images and narratives characteristic of the Jewish representations of the Orient. Jacobs focuses on the construction of the exotic in depictions of animals and plants that appeared in Jewish medieval travel literature about the Orient. Like Ora Limor, he is interested in the supernatural and in the marvels captured by Jewish travelers from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries, who wrote about the Middle East, China, and Africa. These travelers’ accounts of the unusual things they have seen and imagined incorporate elements originating from the classical mirabilia literature (The Marvels of the East, an eleventh-century Old English text depicting the bizarre creatures of the Orient), and works in Arabic depicting the marvelous creations in the cosmos (‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt), as well as noncanonical traditions circulating through Europe and the Middle East. Jacobs’s queries challenge Said’s assumptions. According to Jacobs, European Jewish travel narratives about the Orient marveled at the fantastic, and yet, be it the court of the Muslim caliph or a supernatural creature, the unfamiliar was not necessarily synonymous with negative stereotypes; sometimes

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the exotic was affiliated with the magical and the magnificent. Jewish European travelers, like their European Christian peers, referenced a rich Jewish textual universe. In this universe, what we perceive today as the fantastic was often considered scientific. As Persis Berlekamp has demonstrated, the depictions of wondrous creatures and animals in the ‘ajā’ib literature were influenced by philosophical and intellectual conventions that shifted from Neoplatonic perceptions regarding the divine order of the cosmos to the celebration of the human ability to grasp nature through the sciences. Thus, to understand what the Jewish travelers saw in the Orient, and how they understood what they saw, we need to reach to a body of texts regarding the exotic that was detached from the modern geographical representations produced in order to maintain European power and hegemony.4 Furthermore, in the Judeo-Muslim world that Jacobs depicts, images of the Orient were informed by the Orient itself, as Jewish writers from Spain were familiar with Arabic and Muslim scientific conventions. A Jewish traveler like Benjamin of Tudela who visited the Middle East might be considered a “European” visiting the courts of Muslim caliphs. At the same, however, this traveler belonged to a society where Hebrew poetry, Jewish philosophy, Hebrew grammar, and biblical exegesis were profoundly influenced by Arabo-Muslim societies. Finally, these Jewish travelers wrote in Hebrew, a language accessible to the Jewish Hebrew speakers of the Middle East. This meant that Jews in the Middle East, especially after the introduction of print to the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, could access these texts and use them as a source. Indeed, early modern Jewish geography blurs the categories of East and West. These distinctions become even more problematic after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497. The expulsion of the Jews and the Muslims had enormous effects on Europe. The Jewish exiles changed the nature of European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities, as these refugees spread across the Ottoman Empire, England, Holland, and France, creating new networks of craftsmen, doctors, merchants, rabbis, diplomats, and pirates. As the communities of Spanish Jews developed in Europe, the divisions between different kinds of Jewish communities were no longer an outcome of travel; rather, they resulted from these refugees arriving in European lands, speaking different languages, and successfully rebuilding their lives. These communities, moreover, would become elite communities in many places, such as the Netherlands, where they would separate themselves from the Eastern European Jews, whom they deemed inferior. (This is, perhaps another twist on Jewish Orientalism between host and guest societies, a kind of internal Jewish Orientalism.) In the early modern period, then, a Sephardi Jew from England or France shared much in common with Jewish exiles in Istanbul, Jerusalem,

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and North Africa. Such divisions do not correspond to Orientalist divisions between the Orient and the Occident, or the European and the Eastern; they are temporal and contextual to the early modern period. What happens, however, in the modern period? In this era, the movement of Jews to cities and their social mobility was intertwined with their struggle for emancipation and equality before the law. This struggle had important spatial dimensions as Jews struggled to live outside the spaces designated to them, such as the ghetto, the mallah, and the Pale of Settlement. In this context, they battled their own Orientalization and stereotyping in Europe. Moreover, in the early modern and modern periods, Jews were part of imperial and colonial efforts, as settlers and merchants.5 Jews, however, were also subjects of lands that became colonized and witnessed the arrival of several groups of foreigners— colonial experts, bureaucrats, and officials—in their communities in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Concurrently, more Eu ropean Jews arrived in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Given these contexts, we ask whether modern Jewish travel narratives were more affected by Orientalism, when the divisions between East and West become solidified and connected to European geopolitical power; we reflect, in other words, on whether European Jewish authors of travel narratives succumbed to the comfortable set of images and stereotypes offered by modern Orientalism. These queries relate also to questions of circulation and reception. The spread of what Benedict Anderson has called “print-capitalism” affected the Jewish world.6 Jewish travelers published their accounts in different platforms, such as books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Many travel narratives were published in the Hebrew-language press, as well as in the local languages of various Jewish communities across the world, in Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, and Ladino, as well as in Italian, German, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Both Iris Idelson-Shein and Asher Salah position Jewish travel narratives within the worlds of Eu ropean Orientalism and the Jewish Haskalah. This European movement took root in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and its authors and intellectuals championed the study of Eu ropean sciences, languages, political theories, and cultural mores, as well as selective integration into non-Jewish societies, in order to enhance Jewish culture and renewal. Idelson-Shein and Salah explore how for these Jewish writers the tensions between East and West were intertwined with discussions about the colonized world and the relationship between Jews and others in Eu rope and the  Middle East. Both authors consider Jews as consumers of Enlightenment products, like the political works by Montesquieu, the pedagogical works of Rousseau, and novels such as Rudolph Erich Raspe’s Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Both show that

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the worldview of the Jewish authors and translators created different Orients and that the presence of a Jew as a middle category between the Oriental and the Occidental complicated Oriental travel fantasies. Idelson-Shein and Salah, in other words, accentuate the fact that the authors of these Jewish travel narratives were struggling against their own marginalization, and therefore produced a different kind of Jewish enlightened travel narratives about the Orient. Exploring a modest print market of Hebrew and Yiddish books on travels to faraway locations, Idelson-Shein argues that Jewish authors used tales about conquest and colonialism, especially for children, for both pedagogical and political goals. Jewish authors identified with the travelers they described in their adaptations of European travel narratives and in their own narrative prose about the colonized world, as they equated Jewish acculturation to hazardous voyages overseas. At the same time, however, Jews saw themselves as savages and as children, or as subjects less “advanced” than other Europeans, who had the potential to evolve, to assimilate, and to grow up. Jewish authors, however, also celebrated the incompetence and partiality of these processes of acculturation and the stubbornness of the savages facing the civilizing mission of the travelers. These images, then, worked in extremely productive ways, which enabled Jews to identify with both European travelers and the peoples marked as subjects of European discipline and observation. Asher Salah situates the Enlightenment in a different site, that of eighteenthcentury Italy. Salah presents a close reading of the Almanacco Orientale (Venice, 1771), a text written in Italian by a Veronese Jew, Marco Navarra. An imaginary correspondence between a Persian and a Syrian Jew, the text reveals the limitations of imposing Orientalist tropes on Jewish literature. On the surface, this is a classic Orientalist text typical of the Enlightenment period. Its protagonists, from Damascus, Isfahan, and Delhi, reflect on the European interests in Oriental languages and literatures and the representation of the Orient as the place of dwelling of the barbarians. The text makes reference to the West’s cultural and technical superiority over the East, and it uses the Orient as a convenient platform to discuss a host of European concerns, relating to the themes of political theory and reason. In this realm, it belongs to the same textual universe as Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (1721), and a print market where stories about harems, Oriental despots, slaves, and masters were evoked to discuss concerns relating to the European politics, gender, and governance. Yet Salah also shows that the concern in the place of the Jews in these worlds actually produced a critique of Orientalism; that the Jewish protagonists of the text identified the tensions between interest in Oriental languages and cultures and the representation of the Orient as barbarous and vicious. In that, he proposes, the Enlightenment generated a more nuanced

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system of representations that was far more complicated than the strict binaries between East and West, colonized and colonizer. The Jew, as noted, was the Oriental inside Europe. In the modern period, Jews faced a paradox. On the one hand, the early modern and modern periods were connected with travel: travel from villages to cities, which grew in size and number, walks in modern cities thanks to the construction of boulevards and streets,7 travels from cities to colonies, and, with the rise of the middle classes, capitalist narratives of travel from rags to riches. On the other hand, with the rise of nationalism, the merits of staying put and of being a part of an imagined community, its ancient traditions, and its authentic folk, became of the utmost importance. Works of folklore and local ethnographies reawakened romantic interests in European medieval literature and folktales, which represented the unchanging mores of the nation, unharmed by modernity. These processes often placed the Jews outside the nation, as subjects who were alien in their culture and traditions to the genuine majority culture.

C h apter 6

Flying Camels and Other Remarkable Species: Natural Marvels in Medieval Hebrew Travel Accounts Martin Jacobs

Spanning cultures and times, the curiosity and interest created by travelers’ descriptions of exotic animals and plants has proved to be a universal phenomenon. This is true not only of travelers’ real encounters with remarkable species, but also of imagined ones (both species and encounters). In fact, the popularity of medieval travel literature—whether penned by Jewish, Christian, or Muslim authors—was due, in no small amount, to its accounts of foreign fauna and flora. In this literature, what we call “exotic” species are considered mirabilia, ‘ajā’ib, or pela’ot, to use the better-known Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew terms, whose meanings can range from “astonishing,” “marvelous,” and “wondrous” to “miraculous.”1 This broad spectrum of connotations reflects a premodern worldview that deemed wonders to be integral parts of reality rather than a suspension of natural laws, in a post-Enlightenment sense.2 The enduring fascination exerted by such-defined natural marvels raises questions concerning the relationship between observation, tradition, and imagination; tangible reality and the fantastic realm, within the travel genre. Focusing on Hebrew travel writings from the late twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries, this chapter explores medieval Jewish representations of foreign fauna and flora in the sense of both the wondrous and the exotic. It also raises a number of additional questions: In what contexts and for what reasons did medieval Jewish travel writers employ images of natural marvels? How were extraordinary species refracted through the prism of medieval Hebrew literature, when compared to pertinent Latin, vernacular, and Arabic sources? Besides offering

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further examples of cross-cultural folklore, is there anything particularly Jewish about Jewish authors’ accounts of strange beasts? How do descriptions of the natural world serve the Jewish travelers’ aim of self-representation? As the following discussion will show, literary portraits of exotic animals and plants played a pivotal role in medieval conceptualizations of the center and the margins of the world.3 In the aftermath of the First Crusade (1096–99), as transportation ser vices between the eastern and western parts of the Mediterranean basin improved,4 Christian and Jewish travelers from Europe would similarly use descriptions of flora and fauna in their attempts to define the relationship between the Levant and their countries of origin. Was the Holy Land part of the known world, its center, or its periphery?5 Or was it a liminal region, on the boundary between the familiar and the foreign? While Jewish authors shared with their Christian and Muslim contemporaries empirical and imaginary data about distant lands, they aimed to appropriate this information for the sake of a Hebrew reading audience and tied it to the Jewish literary canon as the ultimate source of all knowledge.6

The Travelers and Their Works Before discussing a number of textual examples for Jewish representations of foreign species, a few remarks are in order concerning the genre of medieval Jewish travel writing, which I do not limit to factual travel records, in the narrow sense. Rather, the terms medieval Jewish “travel literature” and “travel writing” are here used interchangeably to include more or less imaginary accounts that nevertheless take “travel as an essential condition of [their] production.”7 The following paragraphs aim to introduce the reader, in chronological order, to a number of key texts from this broadly defined corpus, which I have selected due to their relevance to the topic at hand: the eclectic accounts of Benjamin of Tudela and Petahiah of Regensburg, both of which date to the late twelfth century; the Holy Land itinerary of Menaḥem ben Pereṣ of Hebron (1215); the fifteenth-century travel diaries of Meshullam of Volterra and Obadiah of Bertinoro; and David ha-Re’uveni’s imaginary narrative of his adventures in East Africa, from the early sixteenth century. By including in my discussion works from three and a half centuries, both continuities and changes in the representation of exotic species will become visible. To start with Benjamin of Tudela: Here is not the place to discuss anew the exact time frame and geographic scope of the Iberian Jew’s far-flung journey. For present purposes, the following data that can be derived from his work with some certainty will have to suffice. Benjamin originated from the city of Tudela in Navarre (in the northeast of modern Spain) and returned from his

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Middle Eastern peregrinations (to neighboring Castile) in 1173.8 His travels appear to have taken him to both the crusader states of the Levant and Abbasid Iraq, but no further. His comments on regions farther east, including India and China, are based on hearsay, as will be evident in the following.9 What is more, the common classification of his work as a travelogue, as in its—clearly secondary—Hebrew title Sefer massa‘ot (Book of Travels, henceforth Massa‘ot), deserves further clarification. For besides a few introductory lines using the first-person pronoun, Benjamin is neither the narrator nor the protagonist of his travels; and his work seems to have been significantly edited by others.10 Unlike most of the later sources to be analyzed here, this crusader-period work allows almost no glimpse into the Tudelan’s personal experiences on the road. In fact, in parts of Massa‘ot the itinerary gives way to encyclopedist and aggregative tendencies, as the sequence of place descriptions serves as a convenient system to organize diverse kinds of knowledge about faraway countries and places—including their fauna and flora. Whereas Massa‘ot rarely makes clear whether Benjamin personally visited a given place, Petahiah of Regensburg’s Sibbuv (Circuit, or Circular Voyage) frequently states that its protagonist indeed “traveled” through specific regions and towns.11 Similar to Benjamin, Petahiah’s voyage—which must have taken place prior to Saladin’s decisive victory over the crusaders (1187)—included both the Levant and Mesopotamia. That said, the Ashkenazi rabbi’s account raises additional questions with respect to authorship and editing, as the work was not put down into writing by Petahiah himself, but seems to be based on an oral report that he delivered before an audience back home. Consequently, Sibbuv is composed entirely in the third person. As a result, the reader is often left wondering whose voice speaks in the final product—the traveler’s, writer’s, or the collective voice of its recipients.12 For the topic under discussion, this means that the book’s exotic images may be said to reflect the worldview of an entire (Ashkenazi) Jewish readership, as opposed to an individual author. The itinerary of Menaḥem ben Pereṣ ha-Ḥevroni (“of Hebron”), apparently a French Jew and sometime resident of Hebron, dates to the early thirteenth century.13 Written in the first person singular, this pilgrimage account focuses on the tombs of biblical figures and ancient rabbis that its author ostensibly visited in Palestine around the year 1215. However, the impractical route taken— as well as some of the fabliaux included in the same context—have caused the work to be deemed a “forgery.”14 Although the author may not have followed the described path and borrowed from earlier itineraries, he should be considered a compiler rather than a plagiarist, for the latter evokes anachronistic notions of intellectual property and authorial creativity. The itinerary proper is followed by an assortment of tales about strange beasts, exotic peoples, and

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other marvels that here are also related to the travels of Menaḥem ben Pereṣ. Obviously, it is these narrative traditions that are most pertinent to my discussion. What links both parts of the work, besides their (artificial) association with Menaḥem’s pilgrimage, seems to be the assumption that holy places and natural marvels are equally awe-inspiring testimonies to God’s miraculous powers. Among the later sources to be included here are the epistolary travel accounts by Meshullam of Volterra and Obadiah of Bertinoro, two fifteenth-century Italian Jews. Another element their writings have in common is the fact that each of them took a sea passage to Mamluk Egypt, from which they (independently) proceeded to Palestine, then also a part of the Mamluk Empire. Scion of a distinguished banking dynasty from Tuscany, Meshullam of Volterra enjoyed a bicultural upbringing that embraced elements of both traditional Jewish and non-Jewish education. In 1481, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in fulfillment of a vow; yet the first leg of his voyage, a sea trip from Italy to Egypt, also served mercantile interests (see below). Written in a Hebrew loaded with Italian loanwords, his travel diary seems to be addressed to family members and would-be travelers of similar socioreligious background.15 Unlike the rather pedestrian itineraries from the crusader period, this quattrocento travelogue has to be considered a conscious literary creation that points to the author’s dual aim to commemorate his journey for posterity and to establish himself as a gifted writer, in the spirit of his time. On the one hand, the diarist offers his readers numerous firsthand observations on ancient monuments (such as the pyramids),16 and exotic flora and fauna; on the other hand, his writing reflects the extent to which his own cultural, social, and linguistic background limited his abilities to fully understand what he saw. Within the context of his descriptions of everyday life, Meshullam explicitly assumes the superiority of Italians over Muslims and Middle Eastern Jews and thereby the writer’s positional superiority vis-à-vis his subjects. In construing the Islamicate world, the norms and values of the Tuscan Jewish elite serve Meshullam as an unquestioned point of comparison.17 Obadiah of Bertinoro’s fame is foremost due to his popular Mishnah commentary that, since its initial publication (Venice, 1549), has been printed alongside every traditional edition of the Mishnah. Here, however, the esteemed rabbi shall be mentioned on account of his travel diary that was written, like Meshullam’s, in epistolary form.18 Obadiah, who hailed from the region of Romagna, was a contemporary of Meshullam, and the two men met on at least one occasion. In the fall of 1486, Obadiah set out on his own journey to Jerusalem, where he was to settle permanently and become a prominent leader of the city’s Jewish community. Relatively unprejudiced toward foreign customs and religious differences, the Italian rabbi voices an early ethnographic interest in the various peoples he encountered on the road.19 In his letters, the late Mamluk Empire

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comes across as a multiethnic society in which the Muslim majority cohabitates with a plethora of religious and ethnic minorities. Comparatively impartial to other people, local customs, and religious differences, Obadiah’s account reflects an eminent scholar’s values and sensibilities and offers genuine examples of cross-cultural understanding. In his comments on exotic species, however, the rabbi reveals a much more traditional, biblically schooled mindset than that of Meshullam, as will become evident below. The latest among my sources is the travel tale of David ha-Re’uveni (the Reubenite). Upon his arrival in Venice (1523), this fascinating figure pretended to be an emissary of some of the Lost Tribes who, in his words, were living in the “wilderness of Ḥabor,” somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula.20 As outlandish as ha-Re’uveni’s claims about his origin may seem to the modern reader, many of his contemporaries did not summarily dismiss them. In fact, he even secured audiences with Pope Clement VII (1478–1574) and Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo (1469–1532), a well-known Christian Hebraist active at the papal court. The relative seriousness with which ha-Re’uveni was taken has to be understood within the context of the age of European exploration, when rumors about hitherto unknown or rediscovered ancient peoples were given far more credence than might be expected today.21 That he allegedly had crossed the Red Sea from Jiddah toward East Africa caught the attention of King John III of Portugal (1502–57) on account of his strategic interests in the region, through which much of the spice trade was directed. The first part of ha-Re’uveni’s account traces his peregrinations from the “wilderness of Ḥabor,” through Northeast Africa, Palestine, and on to Alexandria. The second part covers his subsequent diplomatic odyssey through Europe, where the self-styled emissary of the Lost Tribes sought to promote a military alliance between Christian forces and his alleged Jewish warriors from Arabia with the aim to “liberate” the Holy Land from Ottoman rule.22 As fascinating as this bizarre mission may be, I will concentrate here on the first part of ha-Re’uveni’s story on account of the exotic images that it conjures up. Notwithstanding its rather crude Hebrew, this part of the travel narrative contains elements of a chivalric romance, an adventure story, and a utopian travel tale. Ha-Re’uveni’s imaginary forays into East Africa must be understood as a colorful story of a hero overcoming the most perilous of circumstances.

Strange and Marvelous Creatures Having clarified the medieval sources to be analyzed and some of their literary characteristics, let us now turn to their descriptions of species from foreign climes. As will be evident at this point, I do not treat these writings as mere

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repositories of empirical information gathered by the travelers abroad. Rather I read them as tentative conceptualizations by the Jewish authors of the thenknown world and its periphery. In these conceptualizations, references to exotic fauna and flora indeed play a crucial role, for they are part of a medieval tendency to depict distant lands as a “privileged place of novelty, variety, and exuberant natural transgression.”23 A case in point is Petahiah of Regensburg’s representation of an elephant, which he reportedly encountered in northern Mesopotamia (Iraq): A. In Nineveh [Mosul] there was an elephant. Its head is not protruding at all. It is big, eats two wagon loads of straw at one time; its mouth is in [its] chest, and when it wants to eat it stretches out its lip [trunk] about two cubits [three feet], gathers with it the straw and puts [it] into its mouth. B. When the sultan condemns a person to death they tell the elephant, “This one is condemned.” And it will take him with its lip and cast him aloft and kill him. C. Whatever a human does with [his] hand [the elephant] does with its lip. This is strange [Hebrew: meshuneh] and marvelous [mefu’ar]. D. [Placed on] the [back of the] elephant is a city-[like] structure [castle] and twelve knights are in it with [their] armor. [The elephant] stretches out its lip and they climb up on it like on a bridge.24 The cited passage consists of a number of loosely connected elements, which may point to different sources: the somewhat clumsy description of a “strange and marvelous” creature (A and C), its training for the purpose of executions (B),25 and its use as a beast of war (D). Indeed, the fact that such a strong and ferocious animal could be tamed and trained to serve in combat (and otherwise) increased the sense of wonder that Petahiah’s account of Mosul was doubtlessly meant to elicit. Since the pachyderm’s extraordinary strength is here employed in the ser vice of the sultan (B), it, moreover, symbolizes the immense power of this ruler of distant lands—even over the animal kingdom. In Petahiah’s Sibbuv, twelfth-century Mosul emerges not only as the home of astonishing animals but also as a centralized polity under a strong government. In David ha-Re’uveni’s narrative, from the early sixteenth century, the (untamed) elephant serves a very different cultural function. Here the pachyderm is not employed in the ser vice of political power (civilization) but part of an uncivilized region’s wild nature. On his perilous journey through East Africa,

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the self-declared messenger from the Lost Tribes claims to have “crossed many rivers” somewhere near the “source of the Nile,” where he passed through the “grazing grounds” of large elephant herds.26 In his representation of the court of King ‘Amarah,27 the ruler of Cush, haRe’uveni employs additional tropes of exoticism: nudity and colorful jewelry. “The king . . . had female and male servants, most of whom were naked.”28 The queen, concubines, princesses, and maidservants all sport golden armlets, bracelets, and anklets, as well as golden chastity belts. Ha-Re’uveni himself was given four female and four male slaves, whom he insisted on clothing in an apparent effort to civilize the savages. The state of barbarism in which the country’s inhabitants ostensibly lived is furthermore underscored by their diet consisting of elephants, wolves, tigers, dogs, camels, mice, frogs, and snakes.29 While the Jewish reader may have recoiled at the mere imagination of such a nonkosher diet, the author tops it all off when accusing the Africans of consuming “ human flesh.”30 Oscillating between repugnance and fascination with “savage” nudity and alleged cannibalism, ha-Re’uveni’s representation of East Africa seems to reflect his era’s ambivalence toward the so-called Dark Continent. To return to Petahiah: besides elephants, the Ashkenazi rabbi reports the sighting of a particularly elusive creature when visiting Iraq: a “flying camel.” However, this was not a winged quadruped of ancient my thology. Though the animal was “low” and its legs were “slender,” it was so swift that “when a person wishes to ride [it] he [has to] tie himself to it in order not to fall.”31 By means of the “flying camel” a rider could cover in just one day a distance that other wise would take him fifteen days on foot—or, as another manuscript version has it, for which even a good horse would need more than fifteen days.32 Be this as it may, in speaking of a “flying camel” (Aramaic: gamla farḥa), Petahiah’s recollections of his Mesopotamian leg prove to be tinged by his reading practice. For in the Babylonian Talmud this term relates to an extraordinarily swift camel by the help of which one might reduce from two days to one the travel time between Sura and Nehardea—then two major Jewish settlements in the Euphrates valley.33 Given the geographical reference in the Talmud, it is not surprising that it was in Baghdad where Petahiah “witnessed” the mentioned prodigy. As illustrated by this example, the exotic can be marvelous and expected at the same time: the “flying camel” had no equal in the traveler’s domestic fauna; even so, he knew it existed on the authority of the Talmud. However, since Talmudic times, the marvelous mount had become even swifter, if we give credence to the rabbi’s account. For the “flying camel” could gallop a mile “in one moment,” if a rider were able to stand it.34 Next to elephants and camels, crocodiles have always excited the curiosity of travelers to Egypt; and neither Meshullam of Volterra nor Obadiah of Berti-

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noro missed their opportunity to address this popular topic.35 Both Italian Jews describe them by means of broad comparisons with other species, real or purely literary. Revealing his rabbinic mindset, Obadiah, for instance, identifies the crocodile with the ṣefarde‘a that, in the Exodus narrative, is counted among the Ten Plagues.36 Today, the Hebrew term is commonly translated as “frog”; other scriptural passages (Ezek. 29:3, 32:2) suggest that tanim (tanin) is the biblical word for Crocodylus niloticus. Nonetheless, Obadiah equates the ṣefarde‘a with the crocodile (Arabic: al-timsāḥ). In this identification, the erudite rabbi follows the Exodus commentary by Naḥmanides (Rabbi Mosheh ben Naḥman, or Ramban; 1194–1270), from which he also derives the reptile’s Arabic name: “On the Nile, I saw the ṣefarde‘a, which is called al-timsāḥ in Arabic. It was bigger than a bear and on its skin [it had] some kind of blisters [scales]. The boatmen told me that some of them are double that size. This was one of the ṣefarde‘im [plural of ṣefarde‘a] that ‘remain [only in the Nile]’ [Exod. 8:5] since the time of Moses, as the Ramban remarks in his commentary.”37 For Obadiah, as this reference shows, scholastic knowledge provided added significance to his empirical observations. Instead of rabbinic authorities, Meshullam, the highly acculturated Tuscan Jew, invokes the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder (23–79 C.E.). In further contrast to Obadiah, he likens crocodiles to aquatic serpents,38 rather than biblical ṣefarde‘im: In midst of the Nile, I saw on some islets [Italian: isolette] big serpents, as big and heavy as myself. They have short feet and their skin is as hard as scales so that one cannot kill them with any weapon, except in winter when they sleep on an island [isola] stretched out on the ground and their belly is to be seen. Then, from a boat, one can shoot them in the belly with arrows and kill them. The Ishmaelites [Muslims or Arabs] cut off its head and tail, though the tail is short, and eat its meat and say that it is extremely tasty.39 The Ishmaelites call [the animal] al-timsāḥ [Arabic: crocodile]. It keeps its upper jaw open and only feeds on fish. Pliny, who used a foreign language [Hebrew: lo‘ez], calls it coccodrillo [Italian: crocodile] and says that it grows up to eighteen paces. However, I have seen quite big ones, God be my witness, even bigger ones than myself, and my servant Raphael [saw them] too.40 Meshullam goes on to describe how the crocodile is dependent on a bird to get rid of its excrement: “These serpents have no orifice and [thus] cannot defecate. However, the Lord created a certain fowl for that purpose. [It looks] like a goose and has a small head and its beak [Italian: becco] is sharp and long, and it is all

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white.” When the crocodile opens its mouth “one hundred” such birds come down and the first one to arrive enters the beast’s gaping mouth, notwithstanding its teeth that are “sharp like a dog’s,” and eats the reptile’s waste. As highlighted by Meshullam, both animals have a symbiotic relationship, for “the snake [crocodile] cannot exist without the bird and the bird solely feeds on the said excrement.”41 In fact, while Pliny mentions a bird picking food out of the crocodile’s mouth, he does not claim that the reptile is dependent on the bird to get rid of its waste; instead, Pliny says that the bird cleans its host’s mouth and teeth.42 Thus, one may question how closely Meshullam has studied the Roman author’s work— in all likelihood, he is parroting secondhand information.43 For, used in numerous translations, encyclopedias, and cosmographies, Pliny’s Naturalis historia for centuries continued to be one of the most authoritative sources for accredited knowledge about the flora and fauna of overseas countries.44 Whatever his exact source, it seems noteworthy that Meshullam explicitly invokes the testimony of Pliny—who had dedicated his work to none other than the Roman emperor Titus, the infamous destroyer (in 70 C.E.) of the Jerusalem Temple. In fact, Meshullam aims at lending his description authority based on three distinct arguments. First, in quoting Pliny, “who calls [the bird] torchilo” (trochilus in the Latin original), he is casting himself as a well-educated Italian versed in the classical authors. Second, stating (erroneously) that the bird is called apis (‘PYS, perhaps “ibis”) “in the Ishmaelite language” (Arabic),45 the traveler lays claim to information received from knowledgeable locals. Last but not least, he presents himself as a trustworthy purveyor of natural history: “But as I know that people who hear this will not believe it, I am swearing by my life, I have seen them, more than a hundred of these serpents [crocodiles] and more than a thousand of these birds.”46 Though the imaginary and the observed clearly blur in his description of the crocodile bird, it is the traveler’s insistence on personal experience that was ultimately meant to impart authority to his zoological description. For in this sense, his repeated protestations of truth have to be understood: “Truth will be established, and with all this I am doing nothing else but writing the truth.”47 Within Jewish travel literature, the claim that the crocodile bird frees the reptile from its waist occurs for the first time in the pilgrimage account of Menaḥem ben Pereṣ, which was written two and half centuries prior to Meshullam’s; however, here the crocodile is situated in Palestine, not in Egypt: Rabbi Menaḥem ben Pereṣ of Hebron further told us that he saw in the Land of Israel a large beast that preys upon, seizes and eats other animals and eats them limb by limb when it is hungry. But it has no orifice

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to excrete anything from its body. So, when its body is filled up with food and it wants to empty it and relieve [itself] and excrete from its body it will go to the shore of the sea or a river bank, then it rests and opens its mouth in a very, very wide opening as far as it is able to do so. And the birds will come down [directly] into its mouth and will eat every thing they will find in its bowels and will take out of its body all food and excrement that they will find there and [then] will leave.48 Crocodiles have a very slow metabolism and thus can survive long periods without food, which seems to have given rise to the assumption that they do not evacuate. While the tradition about the crocodile bird entering the reptile’s gaping mouth traces back to antiquity, Menaḥem’s early thirteenth-century version of this motif connects the bird’s astonishing behav ior with the crocodile’s reputed inability to excrete. It is unclear whether Menaḥem’s account served as Meshullam’s source; the tradition may have reached the fifteenthcentury Tuscan Jew by other channels. In any event, Menaḥem, like Meshullam, lays claim to reliable observation—a claim that may be easily debunked in the case of the former. For the monstrous beast described by Menaḥem seems to be a sort of hybrid between crocodile and rhinoceros: “Rabbi Menaḥem of Hebron saw this animal, behold, it is as big as an ox, its feet are cleft into three parts and its nails pointed and long and on its head it has a pointed horn and under its lower jaw is also a pointed horn.”49 Notwithstanding its naïveté (from the modern reader’s perspective), Menaḥem’s grotesque description proves relevant to the discussion of the various distances in which the realm of marvels is imagined with respect to the traveler’s home. Namely, on his scale of otherness, Palestine represents a remote country that is still little known and mysterious. This may seem surprising, for since the Crusades, the Holy Land was not unfamiliar anymore to Western audiences, Jewish as well as Christian.50 That said, it occupied a liminal space between the known and the unknown world and as such already housed all kinds of remarkable species. These natural marvels bore testimony to the wonders of creation and hence led to the cognition of the marvelous might of God. According to Menaḥem, the crocodile bird had been specifically “created” by God for the purpose of freeing the reptile of its excrement. In the late fifteenth century, Meshullam still expressed this religious belief—notwithstanding the fact that he also relied on secular learning, in the form of Pliny’s Natural History. Benjamin of Tudela’s tale about the griffin offers another striking example of medieval travel literature’s tendency to populate the edges of the world with fabulous beasts. For he mentions the griffin in reference to China, “which is the

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extremity of the East”51 and clearly beyond any real experience to which the Iberian traveler could lay claim. In fact, he explicitly states that any information provided about the Sea of China was based on hearsay only: “Some say that the sea there is frozen [Hebrew: niqpa].”52 The strong winds blowing in these regions drive ships into the frozen sea from which they cannot extract themselves, leaving the crews all but to starve. The only chance for a sailor to escape the “evil place,” says Benjamin, consists of the following imaginative device: the sailor has to sew himself up in cattle hides and plunge into the cold waters. Having spotted the ostensible prey, the “big eagle that is called grifo” (suggesting a Romance source) will then carry him to dry land in order to devour him; at which moment the mariner has to quickly kill the giant bird with a knife. In order to strengthen the fanciful tale’s credibility, Benjamin (or his source) remarks in closing that “many people were rescued this way.”53 The motif of the shipwrecked traveler being carried away by a griffin (or rūkh, a mythical bird of ancient Middle Eastern origin) is particularly widespread. It can be found in medieval narratives of such diverse origin as Sindbad’s tales (known from the Arabian Nights)54 and Herzog Ernst’s adventures, a popular epic in Middle German from the second half of the twelfth century. (The appearance of Middle Eastern legends in medieval European literatures is a by-product of the Crusades). In fact, the latter has a version of the tale that most closely resembles the Tudelan’s, whose account dates to about the same time.55 But here is not the place for a comprehensive study of cross-cultural folklore.56 I am interested in the cultural function of this motif within Benjamin’s Massa‘ot since it allows him to mark the China Sea as the edge of the world. In fact, a century after the Jewish traveler, Marco Polo makes similar use of the fabulous bird. But he locates the griffin on inaccessible islands beyond Mogadishu (often mistaken for Madagascar in the common translations) and Zanzibar, where sailors are said to venture only rarely as the constant south current largely precludes any return voyage. That said, “eyewitnesses” testified, according to Polo, that the griffin resembled an eagle and could carry off a load as heavy as an elephant.57 In both Benjamin’s and Polo’s travel books, fanciful narratives about sailor-snatching griffins allow the traveler-cum-storyteller to imagine the margins of the world as a realm of marvels and unknown dangers such as did not exist in the regions more familiar to their respective audiences.

Exotic Animal and Plant Products Next to the East’s highly diverse animal world, its natural products and luxury goods evoked wonder and cupidity among Western audiences, Christian and Jewish alike. In the following paragraphs, I take a look at the travelers’ refer-

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ences to pepper, pearls, and balsam that are also described as natural marvels in the travel accounts. At the same time, they speak to the mercantile desires of their authors and intended audiences. Since ancient times, pepper was one of the most sought-after and highly prized commodities of maritime trade between India and Europe. However, medieval European merchants did not have direct access to this trade; the same has to be assumed in the case of Benjamin. The secondhand character of his information is easily recognizable in his description of pepper plantations, which seems to reflect market lore as opposed to personal observation. It is in this sense that one has to read his account of Kūlam (Qawlam, Quilon), a famous export port on the south Indian Kerala Coast, which in the Middle Ages indeed served as a primary supplier for pepper and other spices: “There the pepper [Hebrew: pilpel] is to be found. They plant its trees in the field[s], and each man of the town knows his own plantation. The trees are small, and the pepper is white as snow. But after having gathered it, they put it in tubs and pour boiling water over it, so that it may become strong. Afterwards they take it out of the water and dry it in the sun, and it turns black. Calamus, and ginger, and many [other] kinds of spices are to be found there too.”58 Benjamin’s account is correct insofar as pepper only turns black through a process of fermentation. However, the fruits that are harvested unripe are usually green or reddish but not white when picked. In some places, they are dipped into boiling water, whereby the said fermentation takes place, and the formerly green pepper fruits then turn black. Afterward the drying follows, employing much the same procedure described by Benjamin.59 However, what sounds like expert knowledge seems to go back to hearsay. For the Tudelan was obviously unfamiliar with pepper in its botanical form, as evidenced by his description of the pepper plant as a small tree cultivated in fields. In fact, Piper nigrum is a vine that climbs tree trunks. However, Benjamin does not repeat the widespread tale (that can be traced back to Isidore of Seville, the seventh-century bishop and encyclopedist) according to which the pepper “trees” are guarded by poisonous snakes that the natives have to drive away by the help of fires in order to harvest the precious spice.60 The high risk that this tale associates with the pepper harvest was probably meant to explain the commodity’s extraordinary price. Pearls were another natural product contributing to the Middle East’s aura of desire and wealth. The Tudelan traveler mentions pearl diving in relation to Qaṭīf, an oasis on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf (northeastern Saudi Arabia of today). The fact that Benjamin uses an Arabic term for pearls (lu’lu’)— while there would have been rabbinic equivalents at hand61—points to the possible provenience of the story he tells about their origin. He may have obtained

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the following tale from some merchant-mariner when visiting Basra, north of the Gulf’s mouth. At any rate, the explanation Benjamin offers for the formation of pearls within oysters is certainly meant to entertain his audience: On the 24th of Nisan [sometime in April], there falls rain on the surface of the water, and there float on the surface of the water a kind of  [ritually unclean] sea-animals [Hebrew: shereṣ] who absorb the rain, then shut themselves up, and sink to the ground. In the middle of Tishri [late September or early October] people descend to the sea ground by ropes, and collect the animals from the sea ground, split them open and extract from them the pearls [literally: lulu stones]. [The pearl fishery] belongs to the king of the country and is inspected by a Jew.62 The correct explanation for the formation of pearls—namely, the intrusion of parasitic bodies into the shell—was not unknown to medieval Muslim authors. However, the tale according to which the shell is somehow impregnated by the rain seems to have been very popu lar. In its most elaborate version, it also occurs in the famous thirteenth-century Cosmography by Zakarīyyā’ bin Muḥammad al- Qazwīnī. Its Arabic title, ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt, translates as Marvels of Things Created and Strange Things Existing63—a title that also fits Benjamin’s version of the story cited above. Differing from other examples of this widely disseminated folklore, Benjamin’s version represents a creative adaptation (oikotypification) for the sake of a Jewish audience: the seasons are dated according to the Jewish calendar, roughly between the end of Passover and the start of Sukkoth; oysters are designated nonkosher (shereṣ); and the pearl fishery is here overseen by a Jew—details that are part of Benjamin’s effort to add a Jewish dimension to information he must have gained from other, most likely oral sources. Meshullam of Volterra, the only one among the discussed travelers who engaged in (limited) trade on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, acquired pearls during a stopover in Cairo, together with precious stones.64 Due to their light weight he could easily carry them on his protracted journey to first Palestine and then back home, where he probably intended to sell these luxury items with a significant markup. The Tuscan’s account thus underscores the commercial interest that travelers and their readers took in any information related to exotic pearls. Even rarer than pearls and hence higher priced were certain plant products such as Egyptian balsam, an aromatic resin that due to the miraculous

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healing powers ascribed to it was considered to be an “elixir of life.” In the late Middle Ages, Balsamum verum (true balsam, as distinguished from other gum resins as well as counterfeits) was cultivated at the famed balsam grove of Matarea (Maṭariyya), northeast of Cairo. In order to differentiate his testimony from mere hearsay—for the balsam garden was a staple in the accounts of medieval (Christian) travelers to Egypt—Meshullam determines the garden’s exact location: five miles from Cairo, on the principle road to the Delta region, a small obelisk was to be found on the left side; “opposite is a garden where they make the balsam [Hebrew: loṭ].”65 He then offers a rather detailed picture of the balsam shrubs, whose growth was believed to be limited to this location, and the method of its resin’s extraction: “In this garden I saw about a hundred very small trees that have thin branches and small foliage [Italian: foglie]. . . . They remove the bark from the tree and cut the small branches; and from there trickles [the liquid] into the vessel placed beneath.”66 However, there is reason to doubt as to how closely Meshullam was able to approach the rare botanical species. For he also tells that the sultan, who had a monopoly over the plants’ precious product, had stationed a heavy guard at the garden: “Although the garden is surrounded by a wall, every tree has four [!] guards, and nobody can touch them. All the balsam that is extracted once a year is brought to the sultan [Italian: soldano]. . . . The sultan gives a little of it to those who rank first in the kingdom.”67 The Tuscan merchant’s interest in balsam, in other words, was rooted in its exclusivity as well as the extraordinary powers attributed to it: “As sure as I live, I saw in the house of the great dragoman [Italian: turcimanno] a little of it that the sultan had given to him. One of [the dragoman’s] servants, whose name is Muḥammad, when he was chopping wood, cut off the big toe of his left foot with an ax, and he put on the wound some balsam oil. In three days, it was completely healed, no trace remaining. I never saw such a great miracle [Hebrew: pele] in my life.”68 As “no trace” of the cut was “remaining,” a rather credulous Meshullam seems to repeat what he will have been told by others (perhaps the dragoman), thereby blurring the distinction between observation and hearsay. Even so, the traveler now poses as an expert who is able to distinguish the true oleoresin from its substitutes or counterfeits: “This oil is turbid and similar to castor oil [Italian: ricino]. If someone brings balsam to Tuscany, do not believe him, because it is impossible that anyone should get hold of it but the big lords, and [even then] in small quantities [only].”69 Indeed, a few years after Meshullam’s return to Italy, the Mamluk sultan Qā’it Bāy would send such a rare diplomatic gift (“una grande ampolla di balsamo”) to none other than

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Lorenzo de’ Medici, Meshullam’s ruler.70 In this case, the select character of the vegetal product served to highlight and reinforce the unique standing of both parties engaged in the diplomatic exchange.71

Conclusion Woven into the weft and warp of their narratives, medieval Jewish travel accounts include numerous references to exotic species both actual and fabled. In fact, they frequently combine empirical and fantastic elements, and include marvels traditions that can be traced to classical mirabilia, the Arabic ‘ajā’ib, and related literary topoi. A comparison of a limited number of such crosscultural motifs has pointed to their affinity—rather than identity—across Jewish, Christian, and Muslim-authored travel writings. Jewish authors tend to adapt these traditions to the cultural expectations and religious norms of their audience; they describe their world through the lens of rabbinic Judaism and include references to the Jewish calendar, or dietary laws. Even so, they frequently resort to non-Hebrew loanwords when writing about foreign species, thereby acknowledging that certain topics could not be sufficiently discussed in the holy tongue. Over time, certain foreign animals became more familiar to Europeans (Jews and Christians alike)—much like the regions they inhabited—while the fascination they exerted did not diminish. During the crusader period, the  crocodile still seemed a monstrous creature to Menaḥem of Hebron; the fifteenth-century merchant Meshullam of Volterra, by contrast, offers a much more reliable description of the reptile. (Even so, he still repeats the bizarre claim that the crocodile cannot excrete.) Similarly, the degree to which the described territory is exoticized in the narratives varies; and the fabulous East full of the “marvels material”72 is located at different distances relative to the respective author’s home: while it was Iraq to Petahiah of Regensburg, where he sighted a “flying camel,” Benjamin of Tudela pushed it as far as China, where he placed the griffin—and probably never went. In positioning the exotic East far beyond the better-known Middle East, he echoes a similar phenomenon in medieval Christian sources that Suzanne Conklin Akbari describes as a shift “from Jerusalem to India.”73 David ha-Re’uveni’s imagined adventures among savage people, elephants, and other exotic beasts reflect the cultural stereotypes held by early modern Europeans about sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the analyzed examples echo medieval fantasies of wealth and luxury that were commonly associated with the Middle East. For imbued with an aura of romance, certain animal and plant products, such as pepper and pearls, were highly prized commodities on the European market. But such fantasies

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were still far removed from later colonialist exploits, which were yet inconceivable during the period under discussion.74 In fact, only the latest of the Jewish travel accounts discussed here falls in the time of the European expansion: ha-Re’uveni’s tale of his purported adventures in the Red Sea region spoke to Portuguese interests to monopolize the spice trade. The accounts tell as much about the authors, their intended audiences, and times, as about the ways the species were perceived, interpreted, and imagined. Some of the later authors (first and foremost Meshullam) put a stronger emphasis on empirical observation than their predecessors from the crusader period. At the same time, they continue a scholastic tradition that highly values the (sometimes questionable) authority of earlier literature.75 As David Malkiel describes this phenomenon, Meshullam and Obadiah’s “eyewitness accounts embroidered what they saw with information gleaned from other sources, in a complex interplay of tradition and empiricism.”76 In Meshullam’s travel diary, descriptions of exotic flora and fauna serve the Tuscan merchant as a means to present himself as a kind of humanist traveler who has studied non-Jewish sources (Pliny). Obadiah of Bertinoro, by contrast, relates his observations to classical Jewish commentaries, thereby expressing a worldview according to which all worthwhile knowledge was to be found in the corpus of rabbinic learning. In different ways, the description of the natural world thus allows both travelers to situate themselves socially and intellectually.

C h apter 7

A Jewish Critique of European Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: Marco Navarra’s Lettere orientali Asher Salah

The past three decades have witnessed major attempts at approaching Jewish history in a transnational perspective, stepping beyond the established model of local history.1 Therefore, the increased interest in themes related to matrimonial strategies and business networks, to Jewish mobility, to the circulation of texts and ideas, to the topography of conversions, with works focusing on travel narratives as their main proof texts might not come as a surprise.2 While, in general, scrutiny of cross-cultural experiences has relied upon real accounts of voyages, “virtual” or imaginary travelogues can be just as fruitful for the study of difference, otherness, and liminality engrained in the idea of travel. The object of this essay is a completely unknown text that refers to journeys in a fictional way and offers a quite exceptional example of a narrative of encounter, that is an account of a cultural contact between others, marked by dialogic boundaries and inequality. The text in question is an imaginary correspondence between a Persian and a Syrian Jew written in Italian by Marco Navarra, a Jew from Verona, and published in Venice in 1771.3 Extant today in a mere four copies of 223 octavo pages,4 Navarra’s Lettere orientali has eluded the attention of the scholarly community since its publication, having been mentioned precisely once in the two and a half centuries since its publication.5 However, and this perhaps explains its oblivion, Navarra’s letters represent a notable exception to the still dominant assumption that, at least from the late eighteenth century forward, Europeans’ attitudes to the East embodied a mixture of patronizing chauvinism and racist contempt masked by

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a cosmopolitan defense of tolerance. Navarra’s work thus offers an outstanding case study with which to illustrate, and even to challenge, our paradigmatic understandings of the relationship between Orient and Occident, between Jewish and Christian culture, between travel fiction and travel facts in the context of the emergence of new forms of subjectivity among Italian Jews in the second half of the eighteenth century.6

Contextualizing Marco Navarra What do we know of Marco Navarra’s biography? Not much, indeed, though the scant information about his life suggests a remarkable personality, characterized by an astonishing variety of interests, promoter of innovative cultural enterprises in a Jewish literary arena that even in the late eighteenth century had remained virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages. According to his own testimony he was born in Verona, a community of approximately nine hundred Jews, enclosed within the walls of the ghetto since 1600. He belonged to the same family of the more renowned rabbi, physician, and poet Menahem Navarra.7 Although his name does not appear in the genealogical tree reconstructed by Cecil Roth, he most likely was a younger sibling of Menahem. According to archival records in Genoa from 1751, he was the youngest of Isaac (already dead at the time) and Ester Consigli’s four children, the others being Emanuel (a doctor), Sara, and Salomon.8 Since Emanuel is a frequently attested Italian equivalent of the Hebrew Menahem9 and only two Navarras graduated with medical degrees from the University of Padua in the eighteenth century,10 we can draw the conclusion that Marco Navarra was the brother of the famous rabbi and physician, whose father’s name was also Isaac and whose mother belonged to the Consigli or Consiglio family. The possibility of identifying Marco with Menahem’s son, the physician and writer Hizqiah Mordekhai (b. 1759, and also known in Italian as Marco), must be excluded because he would have been too young to be the author of the Lettere orientali, which was printed when he was only twelve years old. Our Marco Navarra had been active in the printing industry already in the sixties and must have been born after Menahem Navarra in 1717 but not later than the latter’s wedding with Ester Basevi celebrated the twelfth of Tevet of 1744. In all likelihood, then, he was born at some time in the 1720s or 1730s. During his sojourn in the Republic of Genoa, Marco had business connections with the rabbi of the city Isaac Pincherle, also a native of Verona.11 We find him again in another document dated February 12, 1774, as a resident of Turin, where he must have moved at least a decade earlier. We do not know the

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reasons for the wanderings that brought him from Verona to Genoa and later to Turin—he may have been preceded by other members of his family who settled in Piedmont12—but he was involved in some kind of commercial activity, a fact attested in his writings by his competence in questions pertaining to international trade. In Turin he founded and directed the publication of the Almanacco Orientale, a yearbook that appeared continuously from 1761 to at least 1777.13 Unfortunately only two issues of the Almanacco are still extant, but they are sufficient to glean some idea of its content.14 In addition to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim calendars indicating the main European fairs, the Almanacco included essays on various topics such as a résumé of natu ral philosophy (“l’Epitome della filosofia naturale”), a treaty of commerce (“trattato del commerzio e della sua origine”), short stories and pseudoepigraphic anecdotes (“l’anfiteatro morale,” attributed to an Oriental philosopher named Holmajà), and horoscopes for the current year. The originality of this enterprise cannot be underestimated and deserves to be briefly expounded. Navarra’s almanac differs considerably from other Jewish almanacs of its time, anticipating forms of proto-journalism that were extremely rare among European Jews prior to the nineteenth century.15 Marco Navarra’s longrunning Almanacco Orientale is an exceptional example of a yearbook with commercial, scientific, and philosophical articles modeled on the non-Jewish almanacchi con compendio (almanacs with essays published in installments) that were gaining popularity precisely in the second half of the eighteenth century. Its originality, as compared to other more traditional almanacs and calendars intended for Jewish audiences, appears in three of its main features. First, it is written almost entirely in Italian and contains but a few words in Hebrew—a characteristic shared to my knowledge only with the Calandrier hébraïque published by Marochée Ventura in Avignon in 1745. Second, it has a clearly erudite and cosmopolitan approach, containing information about the festivals of ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt, as well as contemporary Ethiopia, Turkey, Persia, alongside chronographies of Jewish and general history. Third, the calendar occupies a secondary place in comparison to the importance of other topics, appearing in the last pages of the volume. The fact of its dedication to merchants without any further specification gives the impression that Navarra hoped to reach a larger readership beyond the Jewish community. It is noteworthy that the first nine issues of the Almanacco Orientale were published by the Stamperia Reale, a press created in 1740 in order “to serve the interests of the Prince” and to grant the monopoly to the king of particularly profitable editorial enterprises.16 This means that Marco Navarra’s name must

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be added to Lazzaro Basevi’s, till now considered the only Jewish printer active in Piedmont in the eighteenth century. Three years earlier, in 1758, Basevi had obtained permission to open a Hebrew printing house in collaboration with the Christian typographer Rocco Fantino; their press remained active for the next twenty years.17 There are reasons to believe that Navarra’s enterprise was linked to Basevi’s. Not only were both natives of Verona, where the Navarra family was related to the Basevis; the Almanacco Orientale also seems to have supplanted another successful almanac, the Corriere del tempo, astrologo immascherato, founded in 1730 by Lazzaro Basevi and which ceased its publication precisely in 1761. Marco Navarra belonged, therefore, to an impor tant circle of intellectuals and entrepreneurs comprising members of three prominent Verona families, the Navarras, the Basevis, and the Pincherles, and which played a considerable role in shaping the economic and cultural life of many Jewish communities of northern Italy of the time. Marco was acquainted with (and probably also related to) the Gentili family of Venice. The book Lettere orientali is dedicated to Anselmo Gentili’s son Isaac,18 a prominent Venetian merchant who owned a silk and wool factory employing almost a thousand workers.19 This Isaac was the uncle of Asher Gentili, son of Uri, who studied in the bet ha-midrash of Verona and married, in 1771—the same year of the publication of the Lettere orientali—Sara Navarra, daughter of the rabbi Menahem Navarra and Marco’s niece. Perhaps this dedication should be seen as a further literary homage for a wedding that was celebrated with a profusion of epithalamiums included in the volume printed in Verona by Marco Maroni under the title Shirei Zimrah in 1771 and also dedicated to the groom’s uncle Isaac. In any case, the publication of Navarra’s book was made possible by the economic and political support of the Gentili family.20 It must have been completed by 1769, since he received authorization to publish it from the Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, the Venetian authority in charge of the censorship of every printed text in the republic, on January 13, 1770. Among the signatories of this authorization was Andrea Tron,21 an important figure of the Venetian Enlightenment22 but also a fierce anti-Semite known as a “stern enemy of foreigners and Jews” (nemico irriducibile di forestieri ed ebrei); only six years after the publication of Navarra’s book he would manage to expel most of the Jews residing in Venetian territory.23 Presumably Navarra’s book must have been considered compliant with the spirit of mild reformism implemented by the Serenissima’s authorities.24 According to a reference in the 1777 issue of the Almanacco Orientale, Navarra also published an (as yet unidentified) two-volume dissertation on the Jewish calendar entitled Dissertazione storico-critica sopra il calendario ebraico, and wrote Italian verses inspired by Luigi Alemanni (1495–1556).25

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Nevertheless, the Lettere orientali remains his main literary contribution, in spite of the lack of recognition it received from his contemporaries and in the following centuries.

The Debate About the Orient in the Lettere orientali The book comprises fifteen letters exchanged between two Oriental Jews, Nissim Benvenisti of Damascus and Miniomi Tabà of Isfahan, plus one (the tenth in the series) by a certain Beerì ben Elcana from Delhi in the Indian kingdom of the Mughals; this last letter contains a work supposed to have been written in the “Mughalese” language on scrolls made of fish skin by a certain Jogli, a descendant of the lost Israelite tribes in India, with five short novels translated from Arabic into Italian by an other wise unknown Zerobabel.26 The letters refer to common friends, such as Aminadav Alfandari of Baghdad,27 who seem to have been introduced in order to anticipate the need for future fictional correspondents in the event that this first volume were to meet with popu lar acclaim. This did not happen, and the second volume— intended to treat “even graver subjects” (suggetti ancor più gravi),28 perhaps related to natu ral philosophy and its compatibility with revealed truths, which Navarra admitted “sleeps neglected, maybe for lack of favor” (dormono, poiché soggiacciono ad inosservanza per dissalta forse di favore)—never materialized.29 From the geography of the correspondence the Orient to which Navarra refers goes far beyond the Middle East or the Ottoman Empire, including also the Persian Empire and the Mughal kingdom and thus coinciding with the Asian continent (or at least with an extended and culturally complex Near East).30 Nevertheless the spokesmen of this Orient are all Jews, which introduces a third element in the dichotomy between an Asian East and European West that further problematizes it. Although I was not able to find a convincing explanation for the names chosen by Navarra for his fictional characters,31 numerous clues suggest that they are inspired by real figures of the Jewish literary scene in Italy. In my opinion, hidden under the cover of Miniomi Tabà, we should detect the Venetian rabbi and man of letters Jacob Raphael Saraval (1708–82),32 who was engaged in various branches of secular culture and was quite famous in his time for his translations; these included the libretto of Handel’s oratorio Esther, 33 the Hovot ha-Levavot,34 and the extremely popular Italian version of the Pirqei Avot (Venice, 1729), a collaboration with Simone (Simhah) Calimani (1699–1784). Saraval wrote an apologetic work 35 and kept up a correspondence with the English scholar Benjamin Kennicott (1718–83) on subjects of biblical philology, as

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well as with the Italian Christian Hebraist Giovan Bernardo De Rossi (1742– 1831) and the polyhistor Biagio Ugolino (1700–1771). During the 1730s he traveled to Holland and England, leaving a description of this trip in seven letters published posthumously in 1807.36 All of these facts are consistent with the biography of Miniomi, a widely traveled intellectual who sojourned in Holland.37 Not only are the Lettere orientali’s numerous quotations of the Pirqei Avot taken from Saraval’s translation, but Miniomi, as Saraval, is described as having been deeply involved in implementing a policy of systematic translation of the classics written in Hebrew and other European languages into Italian.38 Miniomi is also said to have authored different works in Italian, including a study of the so-called letter of Aristeas—a matter that Saraval had discussed with Kennicott—and an unpublished French work that might be a refutation of Voltaire inspired either by Israël-Bernard Valabregue’s Lettre d’un Milord contre l’admission des Juifs aux brevets (London, 1768)—a work translated into Italian by Saraval and published in Venice under the pseudonym of Dorcade Lamonio39—or Isaac Pinto’s Apologie pour la Nation Juive (1762)—which had served Saraval as the model for his Lettera apologetica (1775).40 Last but not least, Nissim describes the epistolary style of his friend and mentor Miniomi as excessively long-winded and verbose, a characteristic for which Saraval was famous in his sermons.41 In any case a bibliometric analysis of the critical apparatus of Navarra’s book shows that it is heavily dependent on Saraval’s translation of Valabregue’s pamphlet, from which were taken roughly 50 percent of its notes referring to modern Christian authors. In Nissim Benvenisti, introduced as Miniomi’s pupil,42 I am tempted to see the alter ego of Marco Navarra himself, since Nissim quotes extensively from the Almanacco Orientale and claims to be writing an epistolary novel in Italian and in French that could be the Lettere orientali itself.43 Moreover, Nissim is proud to tell his correspondent that he has in his library all the works of the celebrated rabbi of Verona Menahem Navarra, Marco’s older brother. If this identification is correct, we could deduce that Marco, as his literary counterpart Nissim, traveled outside Italy and visited Paris and London, which could explain his interest and facility in French and English language and culture. Nissim says about himself that he obtained a degree in medicine at the University of Padua,44 a feat that only his homonymous and younger parent achieved in 1784.45 This is not incompatible, however, with the possibility that the author of the Lettere orientali had been enrolled in the university without completing all the requirements. The correspondence is triggered by travel as an occasion of reciprocal knowledge among different nations. Nissim Benvenisti says that he sojourned in Europe for a decade, while Miniomi remained twelve years on the continent.46

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Nissim and Miniomi’s friendship is corroborated by a common interest in what they call “natural philosophy” and in the literature of European nations, whose features are discussed at length in their exchanges. In the first letter Nissim Benvenisti engages his friend Miniomi into a debate about the virtues and vices of the Orientals as opposed to those of the Westerners, in the spirit of other more famous “querelles” of the time—such as that of the “ancients and moderns,” which Navarra mentions in different occasions. How is it possible, asks Nissim alias Marco, for enlightened circles in Europe to demonstrate an unprecedented curiosity toward extra-European literary traditions and Oriental languages, at the same time as they scorn as barbarian and primitive anything that does not correspond to European standards of civilization?47 This disparaging attitude concerns the Jews as well, as can be seen in the entry “Juifs” in the Encyclopedie where Diderot writes that “personne n’ignore que les Juifs n’ont jamais passé pour un peuple savant.”48 In other words, the correspondence asserts itself as a critical reflection about the European biases of what we would call today “Orientalism.” The discussion is articulated around two main axes. The first confronts the question of whether the contempt of a good part of the European intelligentsia toward the East is justified by the West’s effective cultural and technical superiority. The second concerns the place of the Jews within this dichotomized world of two ontologically opposed entities. The question of Europe’s alleged superiority is the focus of the first part of the correspondence. Two positions confront each other. On one side, Nissim Benvenisti is spurred by an unconditional admiration of Western culture and of the “marvels of Europe” (meraviglie d’Europa),49 going as far as to define his stay “in that part of the world where the true, the beautiful and the good are situated” (in quella parte del mondo dove trovasi il vero, il bello e il buono) as a “pilgrimage.”50 On the other, Miniomi Tabà asserts the excellence and superiority of the Orient over all the cultures of the world. Nissim is well aware of the prejudices of European intellectuals, “almost all of whom call the Orientals barbarians” (quasi tutti denominano barbari gli Orientali),51 and who accuse non-European nations of an impermeability to change, ignorance, confusion, and even a dubious virility, qualities that seem to have been copied from Edward Said’s characterization of modern Orientalism.52 However, in light of European success in all the fields of knowledge, it is impossible not to recognize their superiority in comparison to the distant past and to other present human races. For Nissim, European superiority is obvious in Europe’s scientific and technical achievements, from optics to transportation, in mechanics and in electricity, in its political organization, in its admin-

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istration of justice, and even in its forms of leisure,53 intellectual and physical, in contrast with the churlish coarseness, arbitrariness, weakness, and backwardness of Orientals’ military and print cultures.54 Miniomi, on the contrary, dismantles each one of Nissim’s arguments under the general claim that the vices the Europeans attribute to the Orientals exist only in the eye of the beholder and derive from their utter ignorance of the reality of Eastern world. Even granting that Asia had experienced a phase of decline, this was only a temporary situation and should not be generalized to include every aspect of Oriental life. He therefore undertakes to demonstrate the extent to which European culture is reliant on the Orient, although Europeans are not always ready to acknowledge that “all the arts and all the sciences originated from our Asia” (tutte le arti e tutte le scienze trassero la loro origine dalla nostra Asia).55 In order to refute the very same idea of Western superiority, he agrees to attack European conceit with its own intellectual tools, first and foremost its language.56 To the image proposed by Nissim, who compares the Orient to a large but rough diamond and the West to a smaller though more precious polished diamond, Miniomi responds with the image of Asia, a beautiful lady modestly dressed, opposed to the one of Eu rope, an ugly woman covered by an elegant cloak.57 Furthermore, Miniomi applies the term “Oriental” to a straightforward and clear mind, in contrast to the unnecessary sophistication and the voluble hy pocrisy of Westerners, deliberately twisting against them their own stereotypical image of the Orientals.58 Miniomi attacks Nissim Benvenisti, accusing him of succumbing, as had many other Jews of his time, to Eu rope’s superficial allure and of yearning to follow ephemeral and false intellectual modes like a “sick soul spoiled by travel” (animo pregiudicato da’ viaggi).59 To be sure, Miniomi, whose voice represents wisdom as opposed to the impulsiveness of Nissim, is not free of orientalist prejudices; he accepts the East/ West dichotomy itself and takes for granted the present state of decadence of Asia and the “backwardness of Turkish and Persian literature” (stato selvaggio delle lettere turchesche e persiane),60 a state occasioned by the scarcity of books in the East at a moment when “every student in Europe has twice as many books as I do” (ogni scolaro in Europa ha il doppio di libri di quel che ho io).61 Moreover, Miniomi agrees with Nissim that the century in which they are fortunate enough to live is “very enlightened” (molto illuminato), as demonstrated by the wisdom of political constitutions in Europe and the welfare of its inhabitants.62 Nevertheless, Miniomi is not ready to concede to Nissim that Europe is technologically more advanced than Asia, adducing the example of the

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development of textile manufactures in Siam and in Japan, avidly sought by the Europeans themselves.63 But there is something more in Navarra’s strategy, which is foreshadowed by the sudden and abrupt conversion of Nissim, who admits as early as the eighth letter that European claims to superiority and progress are only an illusion, thereby giving Miniomi the victory. Miniomi warns his friend against the dangers of an excessive patriotism as well as of an exaggerated love of the foreigner. From that moment on, the question of Eastern or Western superiority recedes and the Syrian and the Persian Jew proceed as one to praise the virtues of what could be seen as a sort of “multiculturalism” ante litteram, criticizing the habit of establishing hierarchies of superior and inferior cultures and stressing that this attitude, when applied to internal aliens, has been responsible for all the European wars of the century. One is reminded of John MacKenzie’s critique of Said’s thesis, that is, that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Britain’s principal “other” was France, not the Orient; and vice versa.64 But we should be careful to avoid the pitfall of considering Navarra a cultural relativist. In fact, for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Europeans unequivocally drew the chief global dividing line between civilization and savagery not between East and West, but between North and South, a prejudice that Navarra shared.65 Actually, the second part of his book, after the caesura represented by the enigmatic tales received from an Indian Jew, puts aside any polemics as the two correspondents proceed to examine the real enjeu hidden beneath the question of East/West relationships—that is, the position of the Jews. The previous defense of Asia is revealed to have been merely prefatory to an apology for Judaism, as Nissim and Miniomi disclose their belief that “all of the arts and sciences ultimately spring from the Orient, that is to say, from our Jews.”66 They claim that all of the sciences were known to the ancient Jews and that the Bible contains the description of every form of religion, economy, art, and government extant in the world. This paean to the prisca sapientia Judaica is definitely not new in Jewish history;67 in this context, however, it is used to demonstrate that the main debates that fractured intellectual circles in eighteenth-century Europe—the querelle des anciens et des modernes or the opposition of Orient and Occident— are nothing but an illusion of perspective, at the most two sides of the same coin, since all wisdom, past and present, in the East and in the West, ultimately derives from the same source. The very idea of progress, it would seem, is a misapprehension; every invention is nothing but a rediscovery, and historical changes are only the effect of ephemeral modes.

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In fact, a mild dose of skepticism serves Navarra in order to reinstate the authority of the Bible without denying the benefits of the new age.68 Since every conception is always subject to be contested and revised in the future, science cannot claim to establish incontrovertible facts; therefore its achievements do not jeopardize revealed truth, an attitude reminiscent of another Italian maskil, Benedetto Frizzi, who combined a conservative approach toward tradition with a firm faith in scientific progress.69 This conception of history and civilization has some impor tant consequences as far as Judaism is concerned. Concretely, it means that the Jews have a double role to play within their various host societies. First, they testify in their body to the compatibility of all human cultures, since they have contributed to create them; second, they are the main actors of every transcultural process, as demonstrated concretely by their ability to translate ideas from one cultural context to the other and to contribute to the development of every national culture to which they belong.70 Navarra’s perception of the Jews could remind us of Herder’s definition of them as “the Asiatics of Europe,” seeking to bridge the gap between the ancient Orient and the modern Occident. But while for authors such as Herder or Michaelis, the reasons for doing so were “to liberate the European past from the power of its Oriental past,” Navarra believes in the possibility of conciliating both. He tries to demonstrate this by piling up endless heaps of Jewish authors who have contributed to universal culture in different geographical settings, as well as by exhibiting his own capacity to quote from a wide range of non-Jewish sources.71 Navarra’s cultural heroes not surprisingly include Jewish figures such as David de Pomis (1525–93), Menashe Ben Israel (1604–57), Isaac Cardoso (1604–83), and David Nieto (1654–1728), all of whom addressed Gentile audiences and used vernacular languages to expound their philosophy. Among Navarra’s favorite Gentile authors, one finds Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757), whose literal reading of the biblical text represented for Navarra the finest example of a possible convergence of Jewish and Christian exegesis in the spirit of enlightenment. This is a vivid example of the replacement of the medieval genre of the disputatio between representatives of different faiths by a new kind of religious apology in which believers, independently of their denomination, come together to cast aspersions upon atheists and radical rationalists. The sense of this cultural and political operation appears even more clearly against the backdrop of the work that inspired the Lettere orientali. This model is the Lettres juives, or The Jewish Spy (1738–42), by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens. An enormously popular epistolary novel in its day,72 the work comprises 180 letters purportedly translated from the correspondence between five distinguished rabbis residing in different cities. Though the Marquis

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d’Argens presents himself as the translator, he is doubtless the author, using exactly the same literary device as the one adopted by Navarra. Though much shorter and less bawdy than d’Argens’s popu lar oeuvre, Navarra’s book differs from its model in another, more substantial way, so much so as to make his entire literary enterprise appear like a polemical counterpoint to d’Argens’s. Navarra is aware that The Jewish Spy, as well as the Lettres persanes by Montesquieu and many other works belonging to the same epistolary genre,73 is not about Jews as much as it is about the French and, perhaps especially, about Christianity. D’Argens’s Orientalism, in other words, is not so much a comment on the “other” as it is an analysis of the “self” as reflected in the convex mirror of the East. On the contrary, Navarra’s alter ego Benvenisti affirms—against d’Argens’s Lettres juives and Lettres cabalistiques74—that time has come for the Jews to make themselves heard in the scientific and artistic general forums of the world.75 They ought not to suffer the mediation of Gentile authors who use Jewish characters as mere literary devices for their own ideological purposes. For Navarra, his epistolary novel, despite its popu lar and somewhat vulgar genre,76 represented a means of reinstating Judaism at the heart of European cultural debate, of presenting its tradition favorably before the bar of enlightened circles and demonstrating the absolute compatibility of Jewish faith with the cosmopolitan and universal values of the century, beyond any apparent but false cultural divides.77 I am therefore inclined to read Navarra’s Lettere orientali less as a defense of Asian superiority over Europe (which it certainly is, to some extent) than as an apology for the Jewish right of citizenship—if not civil, at least cultural—in a sort of universal Republic of Letters centered in Italy, the crossroads of different cultures.78 While this apology may have been intended for non-Jewish audiences, it may also have been conceived polemically against those radical Jewish enlightened circles who contested the validity of their own cultural and spiritual heritage.79

Conclusion Navarra’s book reveals an early critique of Orientalism, using its prejudices subversively rather than to reinforce strategies of power and domination.80 This by itself should suffice to induce us to accept a more creative, more openminded, and more reciprocal image of the Enlightenment than that which is generally admitted in postcolonial scholarship. Beyond the exceptionality of this text, it reinforces the thesis of those scholars who, after Tzvetan Todorov and Wilhelm Halbfass, try to reevaluate the image of the eighteenth century as

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an epoch when intellectuals first began to experiment with radical forms of self-critique, skepticism, and relativism.81 That the Jews should be the juridical, philosophical, and religious battleground upon which different forms of Enlightenment ideologies engaged, revealing their ambiguities and shortcomings, is not particularly surprising given Jews’ unique status as the only consistent non-Christian minority in Europe. Much more unusual—almost unique, in fact—is that we hear the critical voice of an unemancipated Jew conscious of his in-between position and willing to participate a debate taking place in the non-Jewish arena. The result is a surprising and early apology for the emancipation of the Jews by an Italian Jew and a defense of Jewish particularism in the name of its universalistic potential. Navarra abandons any kind of doctrinal and religious polemics—a central element of Yehuda Briel and Aviad Basilea’s defenses of Judaism still in the first decade of the eighteenth century82—and that by the means of a cosmopolitan erudition tries to find common grounds of understanding with and not of opposition to the surrounding society.83 This runs exactly contrary to the Enlightenment project that was ready to concede civil rights to the Jews at the price of abandoning any alleged diversity. Navarra’s Lettere orientali tries to confront one vision of multiculturalism without running into either the pitfall of the skeptical relativism of d’Argens or the universalistic totalitarianism of Voltaire. Stances such as Navarra’s, though they certainly were in the minority among Italian Jews, disrupt the monolithic vision of what Rana Kabbani has termed “imperial fictions,”84 the Orientalist attitude embracing the whole of European culture, a self-sustaining myth and an internally structured archive shaping European thought and opinion. Marco Navarra’s example attests to the fact that at least as late as the second half of the eighteenth century, Orientalism has not yet become a discourse in the Foucauldian sense—that is, a systemic discipline, a complexly disseminated historical phenomenon—in short, a created body of theory and practice designed only to serve the interests of the European imperial powers. In fact, it could be used as a means of liberation for a discriminated minority. The study of Navarra’s work compels us to recall that the Western, Eurocentric gaze at the other is constituted by a plurality of subjects that cannot be reduced to a single model oriented toward conquest and cultural abuse. His fictional correspondence can be an example of what Mary Louise Pratt has called “transculturation” in the frame of an “autoethnographic impulse,” signaling the subaltern’s appropriation of the colonizer’s gaze.85 However, the originality of Navarra’s perspective derives from his belonging at the same time to both the center and the periphery of the transcultural process. Navarra

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helps us to reassess an overdetermined and one-sided history of Western imperialism and to discover discontinuities, contradictions, and weaknesses in the European gaze of the other, where the Jews are not only its “internal other” but appear to be significant protagonists of what James Clifford has called “concrete mediations,” enacting “differently centered worlds and interconnected cosmopolitanisms.”86

C h apter 8

No Place Like Home: The Uses of Travel in Early Maskilic Translations Iris Idelson-Shein

Whatever people may say, travelling is one of the saddest pleasures in life. To cross unknown countries, to hear people speak a language you barely understand, to see human faces that have no connection either with your past or your future, means loneliness and isolation without peace or dignity. — Germaine de Staël

According to his own testimony, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the undisputed hero of eighteenth-century pedagogy, hated books. “They only teach one to talk about what one does not know,” he wrote in 1762.1 Particularly loathsome in Rousseau’s view were travel books, which, he argued, relay hardly anything about the countries they describe and are full of lies, prejudices, and deceit.2 Rousseau was not the first author to point to the problematic nature of travel literature. Indeed, similar criticisms were voiced already in antiquity and continued to be voiced throughout the early modern period. In 1598 the English poet Joseph Hall complained about “the brainsick youth, that feeds his tickled ear / with sweet-sauced lies of some false traveller.”3 In 1711 Lord Shaftesbury similarly observed that “our relish or taste must of necessity grow barbarous while barbarian customs . . . employ our leisure hours and are the chief materials to furnish out a library.”4 Later in the eighteenth century, Richard Hurd remarked that “the boasted way of travel is the worst that can be contrived for the proper instruction of our young countrymen.”5 Other authors complained about the unlimited degree of literary license that travelers (let alone armchair

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travelers) took in reporting their journeys and the peoples and lands they had encountered throughout. Perhaps most famous among the latter was Rudolph Erich Raspe, whose 1785 Adventures of Baron Munchausen satirized the heroic self-images of European travelers and their fanciful adventures overseas. And yet, when Rousseau cast about for the ideal reading material for children, he came to a startling conclusion. “There exists one [book] which, to my taste, provides the most felicitous treatise on natural education,” Rousseau observed in his pedagogical classic Émile; this book was none other than the arch travel book of English literature, Daniel Defoe’s 1719 Robinson Crusoe.6 Rousseau’s recommendation fell on fertile ground, and throughout the last third of the eighteenth century, there appeared a wide range of books for children that were inspired, to a varying degree, by Defoe’s magnum opus. In the decades following Émile, travel became one of the most prominent genres of European children’s literature, and it assumed a prominent position in the writings of such children’s authors as Thomas Day, Stephanie Genlis, and Joachim Heinrich Campe. Even travelers who began their journeys in more “prestigious” literary seas, like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, or (ironically) the Baron Munchausen, were swept up by the tide of late eighteenth-century writing for children and soon found themselves safely anchored to the shelves of the nursery cupboard. The maskilim, writers of the Jewish Enlightenment, were quick to follow their Christian contemporaries’ lead, and—beginning in 1784, with the anonymous publication of a German-in-Hebrew-characters adaptation of Campe’s German version of Robinson Crusoe—there emerged a modest library of Jewish (predominantly Hebrew) translations dominated almost entirely by travel.7 The vast majority of these texts were more or less “Judaized” adaptations of German travel books for children, with an emphasis on tales of conquest and colonization.8 Particular attention was given by the maskilim to the works of Campe. A disciple of Rousseau and a prominent figure of the German Aufklӓrung, Campe’s pedagogical travel tales, particularly his tales of colonial “discovery” and conquest, were translated and mimicked by Jewish authors from the late eighteenth century and well into the twentieth century.9 Curiously, in contrast to their German source texts, most maskilic translations of German children’s literature never truly targeted children; they were written in biblical Hebrew, densely packed with biblical allusions and overtly didactic detours.10 In addition, with few exceptions, Jewish translators often employed much duller storytelling techniques than the ones used by their source texts, and their works, accordingly, appear to have been read only rarely by contemporaries—let alone by children, for whom the biblical Hebrew must have seemed almost as strange and exotic as the colonial peoples it described.11 And yet, the appeal of the children’s travel tale for the maskilim was so great that

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during the first three decades of the nineteenth century the translation of such works became something of a maskilic initiation rite. Zohar Shavit counts nine separate Hebrew translations of Campe’s works published during the first three decades of the nineteenth century.12 To these Hebrew translations, we must add two editions of Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere in German in Hebrew characters, which appeared in 1784 and 1813, as well as at least three more Yiddish translations that appeared during these years.13 Given the limited scope of maskilic publications in this period, these are truly staggering numbers. How, then, are we to explain this intense maskilic interest in children’s travel books? Why did so many maskilim participate in creating this strange corpus of works, which was rarely consumed and whose target readership was never truly defined? In what follows, I offer a view into the encounter that took place in early children’s literature between childhood and colonialism and review the unique forms this encounter took in the Jewish—and particularly the Hebrew-speaking—world. I argue that for the maskilim, the main value inherent in the translation of children’s travel books was not pedagogic but rather performative. In their translations, maskilic authors harnessed notions of travel, colonialism, and childhood to an internal political agenda. Travel served the maskilim as a metaphor for the Haskalah project itself, and the perils and anguish of the journey were used as a means to convey the hardships of their own cultural endeavors. At the same time, the stories of the acculturation and cultural assimilation of “savage peoples,” or the cultivation of “wild frontiers” throughout the world, served as a platform to discuss and promote the maskilim’s more subtle form of colonial aspirations—the desire for the acculturation and cultural integration of the Jews.14 And yet, the analogy between the domestication of the New World and the acculturation of the Jews was not as simple as may appear at first glance. In fact, as Jews and as cultural mediators, maskilic translators could never fully identify with either the colonizers or with the colonized described in their texts. Rather, they tended to view themselves and their Jewish readership as located somewhere in between the “savage” and the civilized. It was, I will argue, this sense of being in between that made the genre of children’s travel literature particularly appealing for the maskilim. Children’s travel literature offered a much more complex version of colonialism than the savage/civilized, East/West binary that dominated travel books for adults. Aimed at the acculturation of an internal other (the child) rather than the subjugation and conquest of the external other (the “savage”)—children’s literature afforded a more “domestic” form of colonialism, which was a perfect fit for the maskilim’s vision of Jewish acculturation. Indeed, as I argue below, the image of the child offered a much more powerful, much more persuasive analogy for Jewish acculturation than both the image of “the savage” and that of

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the colonist. Thus, in the course of the maskilic mas‘a, translation intertwined with travel, colonialism, and childhood, as a means for envisioning, performing, and promoting Haskalah.

Travel and the Rise of the Children’s Book It was a clear morning in the South Pacific when a lonely Robinson Crusoe observed a shipwreck on the horizon. The prospect of other Europeans having been in such close proximity filled the desolate Crusoe with dismal thoughts: “I fancy’d, they were all gone off to Sea in the Boat, and . . . were carry’d out into the great Ocean, where there was nothing but Misery and Perishing; and that perhaps they might by this Time think of Starving, and of being in a Condition to eat one another.”15 Crusoe’s melancholy musings give poignant expression to the anxieties inherent in travel. If, as Gloria Anzaldúa explains, “borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them,” it necessarily follows that crossing borders destabilizes identity, exposes the fragility of the self, and challenges the possibility of difference.16 For Enlightenment authors, this problem was particularly acute. Indeed, as scholars such as Roxann Wheeler and Dror Wahrman have shown, the eighteenthcentury self was, in and of itself, a radically unstable construct, and the borders between self and other were only tentatively defined.17 Thus, in his seminal Histoire naturelle the leading naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon argued that: “As the principal cause of the colour of mankind, we ought to consider the climate; the effects of nourishment are less upon the colour, yet upon the form they are prodigious. . . . The air and soil have also great influence on the form of men, animals and vegetables.”18 Of course, such belief in the all-encompassing effects of climate (and to a lesser degree—conventions) was a cause for colonial concern. It was widely believed that European travelers to the “torrid zones,” particularly Africa and the Americas, tended to become darker and would gradually begin to resemble the native population.19 The destabilizing effects of travel made it one of the most subversive literary genres of the period. As Paul Hazard remarked in his classic La crise de la conscience européenne, through the lens of travel “perspectives changed. Concepts, which had occupied the lofty sphere of the transcendental were brought down to the level of things governed by circumstance. Practices deemed to be based on reason were found to be matters of custom.”20 Indeed, for the eighteenthcentury travel writer, to travel was to doubt, to question, to deconstruct. Travel was thus a ubiquitous trope in the works of those authors who wished to challenge existing norms and beliefs in radical ways—deists and free thinkers, skeptics and libertines, preadamites and pornographers.

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But the infatuation with travel also characterized more conservative forms of writing, particularly children’s literature. Indeed, the conviction that travel is a necessary component of the cultivation of the young European mind dominated early pedagogic thought, and travel constituted one of the most ubiquitous genres of writing for children well into the modern period.21 This does not mean that children’s authors were oblivious of the hazards of travel. Popular children’s writer Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), for instance, claimed that tales such as Robinson Crusoe induce in children an unfortunate longing for adventure and a penchant for wildness.22 Some authors suggested various literary measures or reading techniques that were meant to contain the threat posed by travel. Thus, the English author Charles Lloyd opened his 1814 Travels at Home, and Voyages by the FireSide with detailed instructions as to “the manner in which young persons should peruse the . . . work.” Lloyd stressed the importance of having “a parent or master” to guide the young readers through their journey and emphasized the remarkable utility of supplying children with an imaginary (and thus contained) voyage rather than a real one or the account of a real one.23 In the immensely popular works of Campe, the narrative of the voyage is located within a larger frame narrative, in which a father (or father figure) recites the tale throughout a series of evening readings to an assembly of child listeners. As Richard Apgar explains, this technique enabled the author to “tame” the travel tale by continuously monitoring and controlling the children’s relationship with the narrative.24 The interest in travel among eighteenth-century children’s authors corresponds with contemporaneous trends among authors of adult literature. Indeed, travel—and particularly “exotic” travel—constituted one of the most popu lar literary genres of the eighteenth century, the genre of choice for some of the period’s most widely read books (such as Defoe’s Crusoe, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne). Its popularity was such that other genres of writing and art often piggybacked on public demand for travel narratives. Travel was a ubiquitous setting for works of philosophy (famous examples include Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes or Diderot’s Supplement aux voyage de Bougainville), theater (e.g., Samuel Morton’s Columbus; Kotzebue’s Die Spanier in Peru), opera (e.g., George Colman’s operatic rendition of Inkle and Yarico), and even pornography (e.g., Thomas Stretzer’s A New Description of Merryland or La Souricière by “Timothy Touchit”).25 This fascination with travel was complemented by an equally pervasive fascination with all things exotic. Indeed, the popularity of travel books was equaled, at times even surpassed, by world histories, natural histories, or geographies describing faraway peoples, lands, flora, and fauna.26 The popularity of these genres of writing should be understood against the context of Enlightenment thinkers’ larger fascination with nature, acculturation,

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and the contrast between savagery and civilization. These considerations would have held particular sway among children’s authors, whose own works addressed a readership perceived as closer to nature, effectually wild, and in need of acculturation. The appropriation of colonial travel books by early children’s authors was thus closely connected to the colonial aspect of European pedagogy as it emerged in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. As Susanne Zantop has explained, early children’s travel books tended to equate colonization with education, “the domestication of little savages.”27 Some scholars of contemporary children’s literature have gone a step further, to suggest that children’s literature is always, in and of itself, a form of colonization. Written for children by those who are emphatically not children, children’s literature, so the argument goes, “sets up the child as an outsider to its own process, and then aims, unashamedly, to take the child in”—to secure, to place, and to frame it.28 The question of the possibility or impossibility of children’s literature aside, it seems clear that in appropriating tales of colonial conquest for young readers, early children’s authors equated education with empire and drew a powerful connection between colonialism and childhood. Of course, there was another side to this colonial equation, for it was not only children who were metaphorically equated with “savages,” but also nonEuropeans who were conflated (both approvingly and disapprovingly) with children.29 Schiller’s classic 1789 depiction of Europe as parent and the colonies as its children is often seen as paradigmatic of turn-of-the-century colonialist attitudes, which legitimized the exertion of colonial power by likening it to the practice of parental authority.30 The reasoning behind the child/“savage,” parent/colonist analogy is simple: incapable of governing themselves responsibly, non-European peoples require the moral guidance of Europeans to protect them from their own lasciviousness, their own immaturity. Colonial discourse thus played a decisive role in the choice to designate travel writing as a genre for children during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In what follows, I argue that the colonial aspect of this literature bore particular significance in the context of maskilic translations of non-Jewish children’s books, which, as noted above, were designed for a much more ambiguous readership.

Travel as a Metaphor for the Haskalah For eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Jews, anxieties surrounding travel seem to have been particularly intense. A traveling Jew had not only the horror of savagery to fear, but also the lure of civilization. Indeed, during the early modern period, travel necessitated the breaking down of gender, socioeconomic, and religious boundaries. In the course of their travels, Jews would often spend

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the night in non-Jewish inns or taverns, where these travelers were known to engage in various social activities (including drinking and gambling) with Christians.31 Rumors or stories of traveling Jewish men or women who had engaged in sexual liaisons (freely or by coercion) with non-Jews (Christians, “savages,” at times also demons) were also ubiquitous during the period.32 The eighteenth-century rabbinical scholar Hayim Joseph David Azulay (Hida), for instance, an avid traveler in his own right, told of a Dutch acquaintance of his who had traveled to America several times and had taken for himself “a Mulatta, who is a gentile woman born of a Black woman and a White man, and she has become his mistress and has borne him a son.”33 A Yiddish folktale that appeared in the seventeenth century Mayse bukh told of a young woman who, while traveling with her husband, was attacked by bandits and fell in love with one of them. She then helped the bandits tie her husband up and spent a passionate night in the arms of the assailant.34 Similar stories of travel and exogamy appeared in various responsa, memoirs, children’s books, and other texts ranging from the early modern to the modern period.35 Of course, these stories reflect growing tensions surrounding developing notions of racial difference, which combined with a specifically Jewish anxiety surrounding the loss of Jewish identity through exposure to other cultures. Read against the context of these concerns, maskilic translations of nonJewish travel tales appear almost as an act of reappropriation. Indeed, travel often serves in maskilic prose as a means to combat Jewish separatism and to ridicule rabbinical objections to the Haskalah. Thus, for instance, the Lithuanian maskil Yehudah Horowitz told in his Megilat sdarim (1793) of a Jewish student who, after returning from his studies abroad, is suspected by his brothers of having abandoned the faith: “and they were fearful . . . of the stones and the sticks, which he had brought from the lands of the Greeks, to build constructions of heretical bricks.”36 In Horowitz’s account, the image of the traveler represents the young maskil and in the same vein as other maskilic travel narratives is modeled after the image of the author himself. The suspicions raised against him represent the opposition of some within the religious elite of the time to the acquisition of extra-Jewish knowledge promoted by the early maskilim. Of course, not all members of the halakhic elite were staunch opponents of the ḥokhmot (secular studies)—R. Jacob Emden and the Vilna Gaon are just two examples of leading Jewish authorities who exhibited a much more favorable attitude to non-Jewish learning.37 However, there existed also an opposing view according to which such studies constitute not only a waste of time but also a gateway to cultural, social, and subsequently religious assimilation.38 And yet, in Horowitz’s account it is revealed that those “stones and sticks” imported by the traveler/maskil serve not to undermine Jewish faith, but rather to fortify it.

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The story ends with the family’s realization that the young maskil “is more pious than many who strive for secrets and present themselves as learned in the Torah.39 A similar message is offered by the German maskil Moshe Mendelssohn-Frankfurt’s 1807 Hebrew translation of Campe’s The Discovery of Amer ica. This time, the Jewish maskil is represented by none other than the great European traveler Columbus, who yearns to venture into new lands but encounters only suspicion and resentment among his people.40 “But this,” writes Mendelssohn-Frankfurt, “is the way of the wise man, whose soul yearns for discoveries. . . . And even if his brothers turn a blind eye to his efforts, even if they do him evil and are forever ignorant of his efforts on their behalf . . . still he will not sleep, and will work tirelessly to better their situation; he will endure their scorn and wrath, and . . . will forever courageously attempt to help them.”41

Domesticity and the Children’s Travel Tale And yet, similar to their non-Jewish peers, so, too, the maskilim were not unaware of the hazards embedded in intercultural encounter. In fact, many maskilic travel narratives convey their own degree of vigilance concerning travel and suggest that only certain types of travel are to be desired. In Menachem Mendel Lefin’s 1818 translation of Campe’s Discovery of Palau, for instance, the reader is confronted with two Palauan natives, both of whom yearn to accompany the British sailors back to their European home. Consistent with the use of travel as a metaphor for the Haskalah, the first traveler, the Palauan prince Libou, is tailored after the image of the “maskilic voyager,” Lefin himself, whose sole purpose in his journey is to acquire from the Christians “those things required for the advancement of his people.”42 Conversely, the second native is described as a young man “who clings to the ways of the British with all his might, and does his utmost to resemble them.”43 This youth represents not the responsible maskil, who ventures into new lands in order to advance the Jewish community and fortify its faith, but rather the reckless hedonist, whose travels outside the borders of Palau/Judaism serve only his own libertine desires. The image of the hedonistic voyager recurs in other maskilic texts, such as Isaac Euchel’s letters to his student Michael Friedländer, published in the maskilic journal Ha-meassef in 1785. Like Lefin, Euchel too juxtaposes two types of travelers: those who wish to see and those who wish to be seen; those who desire to learn from wise men and those who wish to resemble them; those who travel to acquire knowledge and those who merely acquire goods.44

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The latter seems to serve as a parable for what maskilim such as Lefin or Euchel viewed as a “fake Haskalah,” which uses the pretense of Enlightenment to promote radical assimilationism, libertinism, and hedonism.45 Significantly, both authors attribute a kind of Janus-faced mimicry to this fake traveler/ maskil; he attempts to mimic the true traveler/maskil in order to conceal his aspirations to mimic, and eventually blend into, foreign/non-Jewish society. This fake traveler is, in fact, not a traveler at all, but an immigrant. In the hands of such “mimic men,” the maskilic journey toward modernity becomes a detrimental and reckless adventure. Indeed, given the par ticu lar aims of the maskilic journey—which had little to do with the colonization of a non-European other and every thing to do with the colonization of the Jewish self—for the voyage to be meaningful, the traveler must, at the end of his journey, return home. Domesticity is thus one of the most distinctive, albeit perhaps paradoxical, characteristics of early maskilic travel literature. This domesticity coincides with the norms of the genre of children’s literature in general, which, as Perry Nodelman observes, is deeply domestic in nature; as a rule, “the majority of stories for children share the message that, despite one’s dislike of the constraints one feels there, home is still the best, the safest place to be.”46 The domestic character of children’s literature crystallizes in the afterlife of Crusoe as a hero of children’s books. In Defoe’s original version, aimed at an adult readership, the hero’s adventures do not end with his return from the island. Indeed, not only did life on the island not quench Crusoe’s thirst for adventure; but it instilled in him a penchant for endless wandering, which would serve as the basis for a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719.47 Campe’s ending, however, is vastly different. The German Robinson returns to his home in Hamburg to become a carpenter, building a small workshop with the newly acculturated Freitag.48 This ending is repeated in the various Jewish adaptations of the book, with some versions taking the narrative’s domesticity a step further by having Robinson marry and (in two of the versions) raise children.49 The 1812 German-in-Hebrew-characters edition goes so far as to stress the domestic message of the book in its very title: History of the seafarer Robinzohn who was born in Hamburg, and spent twelve years on an uninhabited island with wild men, and suffered many shipwrecks, until finally returning happily to his parents in Hamburg [historiye fun den zeefahrer Robinzohn velkher oys Hamburg gebertig vahr, und tsvolf yahr oyf ayner unbevohnten inzel bay den vilden menshen tsu brakhte, und zehr fil shif brukh erleten hot, und nakher vider gliklikh tsu zaynen eltern in Hamburg erlangte]. Significantly, this inherent domesticity closely corresponds to the ideology of the early maskilim, who ventured

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into the non-Jewish world always intending to return home to the Jewish community with the fruits of their voyage.

Whitening Jews The genre of travel literature, then, bore some unique benefits for the maskilim alongside its inherent hazards. As argued above, maskilic authors used the motif of the journey as a metaphor for the Haskalah project itself, and the hazards and travails of travel served to illuminate the challenges faced by the increased exposure to extra-Jewish knowledge and thought. The genre of children’s travel tales was particularly appealing for the maskilim, as it offered a unique kind of colonial journey, aimed not at European expansion overseas but rather at internal improvement and education. This inherent domesticity was ideally suited for the maskilim, whose own version of colonialism was focused inward, toward the Jewish community itself. Of course, the genre of travel bore several other advantages for maskilic authors. Thus, scholars have demonstrated how travel served the maskilim as a means to challenge Jewish separatism and to call for the integration of Jews into European culture and life.50 In the Eastern European context, furthermore, travel was harnessed in order to deliver anti-hasidic messages, and promote an ideology of self-reliance and industriousness which challenged the hasidic focus on miracles and divine intervention.51 Maskilic travel tales were also used to promote the reform of the Jewish curriculum and to emphasize the importance of secular learning.52 Stranded on a desert island, or confronted with savage cannibals, the European traveler had little use for rabbinical learning. His survival depended on his carpentry and hunting skills and on his familiarity with geography, medicine, botany, zoology, and other sciences. Similarly, the image of the “savage” served as a means to demonstrate the depths to which human beings may degenerate without learning, in complete seclusion from (Eu ropean) civilization. Thus, in his Hebrew translation of Campe’s Robinson, Polish maskil David Zamość used cannibalism as an indicator of “how low is the situation of a man who is raised without education, without having learned any science, and having followed only his heart.”53 Needless to say, such statements would have held a highly symbolic value for the contemporaneous Hebrew reader, who lived in a world in which secular learning did not enjoy full legitimacy. But there was also another, less immediately discernible advantage offered to the maskilim by the genre of travel. In fact, while travel poses some dire challenges to European identity, it also serves to construct it. There is, indeed, something strangely reassuring about travel, something which solidifies iden-

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tity. This is particularly true for Jews, who (paradoxically) are allowed to become more European, it seems, in proportion to the distance traveled from Europe. A poignant example is offered by the early nineteenth-century Yiddish translation of Campe’s Robinson Crusoe. In this relatively popular version, Robinson is reinvented as a Jewish merchant who goes by the name of Alter Leb. The setting of the tale is extensively Judaized, with the new Robinson/Alter Leb intensely concerned with questions of kashrut or with keeping the Shabbes, which, incidentally, is also the name given to the Caribbean Friday in this version.54 And yet, notwithstanding the Judaization of the narrative, the book’s frontispiece features what can only be understood as a very white Alter Leb and a very black Shabbes.55 Of course, in Defoe’s original Friday is not black at all, but rather Caribbean, but all this is of little significance to the Jewish translator and his illustrator, who uses the black skin of the colonial other as a kind of enhancing background for his own whiteness, so to speak.56 A similar use of the colonial other is found in an 1827 Hebrew Robinsonade written by David Zamość and included in his collection of tales entitled Agudat shoshanim (Garland of Roses). Zamość tells of two Jewish children who are stranded alone on an East Indian island. The children spend over a decade alone on the island, until one day they are discovered by a tribe of “savages,” who take them with them to their home island. Of particular interest to our discussion is the fact that from the moment of their encounter with the “savages,” the Jewish children begin to be referred to as “white”—rather than, say, “Jews,” “children,” or “Europeans”—whereas the “savages” are “black.”57 Thus, religious, gender, or generational differences are absorbed into the “black mass” that is the non-European other. A more subtle example is offered by the Italian maskil Shmuel Romanelli’s 1792 narrative of his travels through Morocco. In a compelling reading of the book, Andrea Schatz has argued that contrary to other, non-Jewish travel writers of his time, Romanelli’s Jewish background enabled (or rather dictated) a view of Europe as a fragmented rather than unified entity.58 Schatz’s reading is reinforced by the opening scene of the book, which finds the author standing on the Gibraltar shore, weighing his options; he can either head back into Europe through Spain, or venture south, into Morocco. Romanelli opts for Morocco, exhibiting a distrust of Spain typical of many of his contemporaries. Throughout the narrative of the journey, he expresses his appreciation for the local Sephardic Jews. He is deeply impressed by their language, religion, and culture, and often uses them to criticize his Ashkenazi contemporaries.59 However, when it comes to the non-Jewish natives of Morocco, Romanelli’s approach is entirely different. He writes extensively about their “primitive” lifestyle and beliefs and obsesses over their unhygienic practices. Significantly,

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he makes a point of contrasting these Moroccans with Jewish Moroccans, on the one hand, and Europeans (Jewish as well as Christian) on the other. These juxtapositions result in a more conventional understanding of “the West” as a unified entity—a view that culminates in the author’s observation that here, in Morocco, “we Europeans became all one society.”60 To be sure, Romanelli’s views on Europe are hardly naive; yet in Morocco, something changes in his understanding of the relationship between Christians and Jews, and the differences between the two groups become inconsequential.61 The emergence of this Jewish-Christian “we” is facilitated by the experience of the Moroccan “other.” Indeed, as Romanelli and Zamość’s travel tales suggest, contrary to eighteenthcentury intuitions, in the damp chills of America or under the scorching African sun, Jews did not darken—they became white.62

Stubborn Savages, Obstinate Jews An important aspect of early maskilic travel literature was, then, that it enabled the maskilim to identify as European. And yet, we should bear in mind that in contrast to the travelers they described, the maskilim could never be truly unequivocal symbols of European civilization and culture. Rather, they were much closer to the image of Lefin’s Palauan prince, who is at once a colonizer of his own people and a colonized subject of a hegemonic, Christian people. Accordingly, in their translations of non-Jewish travel books, maskilic authors identified at once with the European travelers described in their source texts and with the “primitive savages” they encountered.63 Exposed for the very first time to Western culture and offered the promise of advancement and acculturation, these “savages” served as an almost unavoidable analogy for European Jewry of the time. The ambivalent position of the Jewish reader/author vis-à-vis the colonialism of the text is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the deliberate obfuscation of the target audience of maskilic travel books. As noted, though the majority of maskilic travel books were in fact translations of non-Jewish (predominantly German) children’s books, most translators were deliberately ambiguous as to their target audience, and their verbose translations were consumed primarily by adults, and particularly by proponents of the Haskalah.64 Of course, in blurring the boundaries between the (Jewish) adult and (Christian) child, the maskilim conveyed a paternalistic approach to the Jewish reader, thus accentuating what they perceived to be the dire need for Jewish acculturation. And yet, there is perhaps another, less immediate aspect to the conflation of children and Jews in maskilic translations. Like the Jewish reader, so, too, the (non-Jewish) child was envisioned by early pedagogues as assuming a kind of intermediate position between the col-

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onizer and the colonized. Indeed, while the child—given its purported closeness to nature—was expected to identify intuitively with the “savages” described in the text, at the same time, as future colonizers and heirs of the empire, Eu ropean children were required to identify with—and subsequently evolve into—European colonizers in their own right.65 An example of these dualistic expectations is offered by Campe’s travel books, whose dialogic framework allows a clear view into the author’s expectations from his readers. Richard Apgar notes that in Campe’s discussion of the discovery of America, one of the children, Fritz, is commended for taking the first steps toward “becoming a Kolumbus.” Later, however, the same child is “asked if he wants to submit himself to the tests that will make him an Inca.”66 Apgar views this dualism as an expression of what he takes to be Campe’s purely domestic interests. Fritz, he explains, “can just as easily see Kolumbus as an example as he could become an Inca [because neither is] possible, and precisely because of this impossibility the Father uses them.”67 Yet, I would argue that this double identification of the children with both colonized and colonizer is facilitated not by the impossibility of actual travel and conquest but, rather, by the fluidity of childhood. Underlying this fluidity is the assumption of an inherent and fundamental difference between the child-reader and the “savages,” a difference that is forever implied in children’s travel literature. To be sure, late eighteenth-century writers equated “savages” with children almost compulsively, attributing naturality, naïveté, simplicity, or health to both groups, but they denied the “savage” perhaps the most fundamental marker of childhood: perfectibility, the ability to grow up. Indeed, as Clare Bradford has argued, there exists an inherent dialectic in the child-savage analogy in children’s literature, as the target of the book, the children, “are always seen as occupying a stage that will lead to adulthood,” whereas the object of the text, the colonial other, is hardly expected to transmute into a colonist.68 It is precisely at this point that the colonial child-savage analogy collapses; in direct contrast to the European child, the colonial subject—a product of unnatural conception between conquerors and conquered, East and West—can never truly be assimilated. In fact, while the element of change is ingrained within the concept of childhood, the defining feature of savagery is resistance to change; frozen in time, the “savage” is preserved in a kind of cultural formaldehyde, showing us what the world used to be.69 Indeed, there was something inherently wrong with the “ family” formed by colonial discourse; it offered its children the promise of security, education, and benevolence, but withheld from them the possibility of adulthood, of complete assimilation into the colonizing elite. This inability is embedded within the colonialist “child analogy” itself. Unlike the European child, the colonial child-savage was hardly a product

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of natural conception; rather, he was the progeny of exclusively masculine labor, the kind of labor that, as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein warns us, produces monsters, hybrids, and unnatural births.70 Indeed, it was Shelley herself who made the connection between colonialism, the creation of her famous monster, and the absence of maternal care. Ruined, consumed by remorse and selfloathing, Victor Frankenstein looks back at the many hours he spent in isolation creating his monster and observes: “if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections . . . America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”71 We have strayed somewhat far from the hubs of the Haskalah, but the detour may prove useful if we consider the par ticular significance that the inherent dialectic of the child-savage analogy bore for the maskilim. As Ronald Schechter has shown, similar to the role of “savages” in eighteenth-century thought, the image of the Jew was understood as equally unchanging. Jews, explains Schechter, were perceived by Enlightenment thinkers as symbols of obstinacy, unable or stubbornly unwilling to change, forever hostile to the advances of science, of philosophy, of culture. This changelessness posited Jews as ideal material for the philosophical experiments of the Enlightenment, which was deeply interested in questions of perfectibility and reform.72 And yet, for thinkers of the Jewish Enlightenment, the problem of Jewish stasis was so much more than a philosophical adventure. It was a question of immediate and dire political significance. Indeed, it was the answer to this question on which the very possibility of Jewish emancipation hinged. The similarity in contemporaneous perceptions of Jews and “savages” reveals the added value inherent in the blurring of boundaries between Jews and children in maskilic prose. By depicting Jews as children, the maskilim inscribed the notion of change into the image of the Jew, thus accentuating the fact that even though Jews, like “savages,” were less “advanced” than other Europeans, they, too, like children, were endowed with the innate ability to evolve, to assimilate, to grow up. For a poignant example, let us return to Zamość’s “Terrible Tale,” in which, it will be recalled, we encounter two Jewish children who grow up (for the better part of their lives) alone on an East Indian island. After their encounter with the neighboring “black savages,” the children attempt to acculturate them, and to eliminate their cannibalistic and polytheistic customs through education. However, they fail miserably and are eventually saved by a neighboring colony of Spanish Christians. One of the main points of interest in the story is that it explicitly equates Jews with children, drawing a positive (though perhaps inadvertent) picture of their assimilation, indeed their exogamy, while clearly withholding the promise of perfectibility from

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“savages.” In fact, while both children and “savages” are raised in the very same conditions, the children grow up to become intelligent, rational beings, whereas the “savages” remain forever irrational, cannibalistic beasts. The story thus proposes an essential, innate difference between “white Jews” and “black savages.”

Conclusion Our own journey through maskilic translations brings us back, once again, to Anzaldúa’s notion of the borderland. A borderland, she explains, “is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.”73 These unsafe zones are populated by myriad figures that seep in and out of the borders, in and out of one another. “Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed, the half-dead.”74 And yet, it is, I would argue, one of the borderlands’ seemingly least menacing residents who offers the ultimate challenge to the borders themselves. Not entirely formed, in a state of constant transition, the child is the most ubiquitous—and most adventurous—crosser of borders. In her playful malleability, the child mocks the unstable divide between nature and culture, savagery and civilization, hegemonic and subaltern, “us” and “them.” We have all been children, have all been on the brink of savagery, of naturality, of chaos, of nonexistence. It is this transgressive potential of the child that made her such a powerful ally of the Haskalah. Like the child, so too the Jew, finds himself located in the unstable, ever-changing borderland stretching between Europe and its others. Maskilic translations are an attempt to bridge this divide, and like all attempts to cross borders, they are plagued with ambivalence, uncertainty, and fear. These ambivalences permeate the maskilic travel tale, forming a text that confirms recent readings of colonialism as a much more multilayered, polyphonic, and complex discourse than previously imagined. Indeed, as the appropriation of colonialist discourse by the maskilim demonstrates, colonialism was never merely a simple, one-dimensional phenomenon, pertaining only to European interests overseas. Rather, it was a complex and multivalent discourse, which bore critical domestic implications, and was often directed internally, toward nonhegemonic groups within the European sphere, such as women, children, or Jews. More important, these same groups often perceived themselves and the world around them through a colonialist lens and harnessed the language of colonialism to their own unique agendas. The borderlands, then, are home to many; but not all residents are equal. In fact, there is a certain degree of deception in the early children’s travel book. It evolves around two essential impossibilities: the domestication of the “savage”

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and the domesticity of the journey. The stubbornness of “savages” is precisely what makes them interesting to children. More important, it is what allows colonialism to endure. Children who can never truly grow up will always require their parents’ supervision. The fantasy of acculturation is therefore a sham. No less deceitful is the domestic message of the children’s travel book. The journey toward adulthood is one that takes us away from home, never to return again. There is thus an inherent frustration in the colonialist children’s story. Try as he may, the traveler can never truly assimilate the “savage”; try as he may, he can never truly go home. It is at this very same impasse that we find the Haskalah. The journey on which the maskilim embarked in the second half of the eighteenth century ended much farther from traditional Jewish life, community, and religion than they could ever have imagined. Going home became impossible. And yet, the Jewish journey toward acculturation was also a hopeless attempt to arrive at a place to which entry would for a long time be denied. As far into European culture as they may have ventured, Jews were still an ocean away from becoming “real Europeans.” It would take many years before they would be allowed to end their journey and to establish for themselves a home in Europe.

Introduction Orit Bashkin

In Part III, we underscored the relationships between Orientalism, travel, and empire. In Part IV, we explore more deeply how narratives of Jewish travel produced a multiplicity of “others,” which echoed intra-Jewish relations as well as the relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Within the Jewish world, binaries relating to self and other, which were constructed as Jews traveled and represented their travels, conveyed divisions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, religious divisions between Jewish believers and nonbelievers, class divisions between rich and poor, and gendered divisions between men and women, and heteronormative and “deviant” modes of sexuality. These binaries were always relational. The East/West binary could refer to the differences between Jews from Eastern and Western Europe who lived in the same cities in Germany or France, and concurrently could signify the differences between European Jews and Mizrahim in the State of Israel. The biblical story of Adam and Eve, which led to man’s very first travel from the Garden of Eden, shaped primordial differences between the genders. At the same time, gendered differences colored the interactions between various Jewish communities, in which “other” Jewish women (their bodies, sexual conduct, and approaches to men and to their families) were evoked in religious, national, and imperial discourses. The journeys to encounter these “other” Jews could be very long. Medieval Egyptian Jews traveling to India, Jews making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land from across the globe, or Jews traveling in the ser vice of Western empires to Africa, developed travel narratives that birthed various representations of difference. But these travels could also be very short as well. An affluent American Jew visiting the Lower East Side in the 1900s encountered a world of Jews whose dress and conduct separated them from Jews who immigrated to the United States long before. An Israeli Jew from a city or a kibbutz in the 1950s, who traveled to the transit camp next to his or her place of dwelling, encountered Holocaust survivors and denationalized Jews from Arab lands who resided in great

Introduction Orit Bashkin

In Part III, we underscored the relationships between Orientalism, travel, and empire. In Part IV, we explore more deeply how narratives of Jewish travel produced a multiplicity of “others,” which echoed intra-Jewish relations as well as the relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Within the Jewish world, binaries relating to self and other, which were constructed as Jews traveled and represented their travels, conveyed divisions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, religious divisions between Jewish believers and nonbelievers, class divisions between rich and poor, and gendered divisions between men and women, and heteronormative and “deviant” modes of sexuality. These binaries were always relational. The East/West binary could refer to the differences between Jews from Eastern and Western Europe who lived in the same cities in Germany or France, and concurrently could signify the differences between European Jews and Mizrahim in the State of Israel. The biblical story of Adam and Eve, which led to man’s very first travel from the Garden of Eden, shaped primordial differences between the genders. At the same time, gendered differences colored the interactions between various Jewish communities, in which “other” Jewish women (their bodies, sexual conduct, and approaches to men and to their families) were evoked in religious, national, and imperial discourses. The journeys to encounter these “other” Jews could be very long. Medieval Egyptian Jews traveling to India, Jews making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land from across the globe, or Jews traveling in the ser vice of Western empires to Africa, developed travel narratives that birthed various representations of difference. But these travels could also be very short as well. An affluent American Jew visiting the Lower East Side in the 1900s encountered a world of Jews whose dress and conduct separated them from Jews who immigrated to the United States long before. An Israeli Jew from a city or a kibbutz in the 1950s, who traveled to the transit camp next to his or her place of dwelling, encountered Holocaust survivors and denationalized Jews from Arab lands who resided in great

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poverty, and whose identities were represented as different from those of European Zionists who migrated to Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine. A Francophile Jew from Aleppo who taught Jewish schoolchildren in Mosul met Jews whose lifestyle might have seemed backward to him. All these travels, long and short, produced notions of difference and otherness within the Jewish world, between the secular and the religious, the modern and the unmodern, the excessive and the modest, the strong and the weak, the patriot and the migrant. Representations of self and other also colored the travels of Jews to nonJewish places, on the one hand, and the travels of Christians and Muslims to Jewish places, on the other. As noted, Jews were often the “other” in non-Jewish societies. Jews were a religious other: they refused to accept either Christ or Muhammad; they chose, or were forced to, wear a different garb; and they practiced and performed their religion differently, as they prayed in different languages and followed a different set of religious laws. Jews were a national other: national elites accentuated the fact that Jews were incapable of integrating into the nation-state: from Alfred Dreyfus to the very image of the Wandering Jew (of which we will learn a great deal in Part IV), Jews were reminded that they could not be or become an integral part of the communities in which they lived. Jews were also an ethnic and linguistic other: they spoke a variety of languages (from Yiddish to Ladino to Aramaic to Hebrew) that seem foreign and exotic, and modern race theory and eugenics utilized a scientific apparatus to explain how Jews were physically and mentally different from non-Jews. We are, of course, aware of the fact that essentializing these experiences is dangerous; the mere existence, and the degree, of mechanisms of othering changed from context to context, from time to time, and from space to space. Moreover, Jews used the very same ideologies that were turned against them to obliterate their otherness: they converted; they accepted the ideologies of imperial patriotism and nationalism to argue that they were loyal Germans, Ottomans, French, Americans, or Iraqis; they adopted the languages and cultures of their surrounding communities, producing works of art and criticism in German, English, French, and Arabic; and they tried to improve their socioeconomic conditions and used tools of socioeconomic mobility to acquire various forms of capital. Various names signify these processes: integration, acculturation, assimilation, and adaptation. Each of these names carries with it a great deal of ideological and political baggage. And yet, they all refer to the attempts of Jews, in modern and medieval times, to obliterate boundaries between self and other, attempts that their travel narratives capture and mirror. Here, too, the question of degree matters. Jews often wanted to keep their religion without being discriminated against. In the medieval and early modern world, Jews learned the languages and cultural traditions of the surrounding

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societies; merchants spoke local languages, while philosophers and scientists, from Moses ibn Ezra to Baruch Spinoza, learned about the latest innovations in the cultures of the Muslims and Christians. In the modern world, they evoked new notions of citizenship developed during and after the French Revolution to become equal others in new national communities. Travel narratives of Jews to non-Jewish spaces, of non-Jews depicting Jews, of nationalists, anti-Semites, and policymakers in charge of migration, immigration, and integration policies, all reflect the ability of the travel narrative to both sustain and unsettle tensions between self and other. Finally, spaces can be conceptualized as conveying differences between self and other. The Land of Israel and the space of exile differed from one another conceptuality, religiously, and physically. Zionism produced its own nationalized differences between Holy Land and exile, which we explore in a different section. Moreover, within the realm of “exile,” spaces were pitted against one another in countless travel narratives: various parts of the same Jewish household, neighborhood, or synagogue, were seen as different from one another, while the ghettos and the mellahs were marked as marinating norms and forms of behav ior unique to their peoples. Jewish travelers moved between these spaces and explored what they shared in common and what separated them from each other. Traveling in a world of empires, “others” and “otherness” were often convenient terms to signify those unfamiliar people and objects travelers encounter, or imagined that they had encountered, during their journeys. At times, especially when power relations are at play, the other represents the opposite of the self, especially in the Orient-Occident interactions. But, as previously noted, in many other cases it is sameness and not otherness that attracts travelers, as they seek the familiar in the form of a fellow Jew, a familiar worshipping site, or a person who shares the travelers’ values and worldview. Frequently, travel narratives locate other peoples and spaces on a civilizational scale; at times people populating faraway places are perceived as paragons of advanced civilizations, at others, they are seen as the primitive/unfortunate objects in need of a civilizing mission. Yet in all such cases, the writing about the other enables the travelers to consider different degrees of civility and barbarism, as they discuss and unpack the tensions between the civilized and the uncivilized through different genres. The encounter with the other and the familiar generates various kinds of emotions. In this volume, many authors consider how the travelers’ minds, bodies, and feelings change upon the transformation to an unfamiliar locale. The essays in this part pay heed to the ways in which the travelers capture these emotions in their narratives, through writing letters, novels, poems, chronicles,

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and through processes involving producing photos, captions, films, and paintings. As we ponder these travel narratives, we notice that happiness, sadness, fear, anguish, pleasure, pain, satisfaction, surprise, sympathy, compassion, disgust, wonderment, desire, and repulsion were all part of travel experiences. In these travel narratives, moreover, emotions are intimately connected to the corporal: emotions change as the bodies of the travelers change; they are burned by the sun, they shiver from the cold, they become yellowish and feel sick aboard a ship, and they gain or lose weight. Travel narratives, then, are central to chronicling, depicting, and producing emotions; they capture the emotions of the travelers themselves and mediate them to their readers, yet they also provide travelers with ideas about how to feel and what to feel in certain places. The connections between travel and otherness, and the way in which the travelers’ emotions both produce and dismantle otherness, engender different affective responses to peoples and places and generate fantasies about the temporal. Travel narratives often suppress the element of surprise of meeting another human being, since they shape collective memory and ideas about faraway spaces through the information they provide. At the same time, they intensify anxieties, because of their accentuation of the elements of surprise, wonderment, and often danger that their authors faced. Travelers, and their travel narratives, compare unknown spaces and people to their home countries. When the space that they capture in their travel accounts seems more advanced than their home country, travelers fear the future and underscore a sense of urgency to fix what they see as lacking in their own familiar space. At the same time, the more advanced or civilized space also generates a sense of reassurance, or fantasies about the future, assuming that a better future awaits the travelers at their homes. They could be or become what they have seen elsewhere. When travelers encounter less civilized spaces than their home countries, they feel empowered and often perceive the other as an object for civilization and reform. This sense of superiority generates desires to conquer, expand, and represent. Concurrently, however, anxieties about barbarism crossing over to one’s home and romantic desires for simpler forms of life (“the noble savage”) shape the construction of spaces deemed primitive. The Jewishness of these interactions also produces notions of communal solidarity, or what Lauren Berlant has called “affective likeness”;1 when Jewish travelers see fellow Jews doing the same things they know from their homelands, they are reassured and freed of perilous ambivalence. Nonetheless, the impossibility of feeling this solidarity in its fullness with fellow Jews spawns anx ieties about the Jew as the other, and sometimes about the future of Judaism as a whole. Miriam Frenkel’s chapter illustrates how pain, destitution, and compassion frame the lives of Mediterranean medieval Jewish travelers. Her analysis takes

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into account otherness produced by class (rich Jews vis-à-vis poor ones) and gender. Frenkel reminds us that in the late antique, medieval, and early modern periods, Jews mostly traveled because of expulsions, economic conditions, and religious persecutions. As  S.  D. Goitein and others have demonstrated, medieval Jews formed communities of merchants, stretching from the Far East to the Middle East to Europe.2 These Jewish voyagers created a legal literature that manifested itself in questions addressed to rabbis, dealing with how to endure the difficulties of travel and the need to adhere to Jewish law under difficult conditions, and the innovative answers rabbis provided to them. The issues of how to travel, namely, how to eat, fast, dwell, lodge, be purified, and be buried in faraway places, as well as the need to take care of those left behind, created a new field of travel knowledge. A collection of medieval and early modern documents found in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, a historical treasure trove, termed “sacred trash” by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole3 and the Cairo Geniza by others, represents perhaps the richest writing about travel by Jewish travelers. Containing such diverse pieces as a letter in Yiddish connecting two members of a Jewish family across the Mediterranean, letters of merchants from various points of their itineraries, and correspondences between family members, these diverse modes of travel writing are narrated not only by rabbis but also by merchants, family members left behind, and diplomats. In Frenkel’s analysis of these Geniza documents concerning merchants, pilgrims, and prisoners, destitution and poverty play a central role in motivating people to travel. She turns our attention to Jewish vagrants, drifters, refugees, slaves, and captives, expressing subaltern voices not preserved in most of the hegemonic Jewish travel texts. Here notions of otherness are based on class and income, and these social categories divide people of the same community and push some of them to travel. At the same time, these individuals, because they are part of a religious Jewish community, even though they might be physically distant from it, can never be fully outsiders, and Frenkel chronicles the ways in which the community holds on to them. The need to distance and embrace these internal Jewish others and their own desires to better their living standards create a whole network of travel and care, which is in itself influenced by economic interests. Frenkel masterfully shows how these others depicted themselves to the community, evoking emotions. For example, destitute women forced to travel appealed to the compassion of fellow Jews in their letters. Solitary women, she notes, depicted themselves, as wretched and woeful and evoked metaphors accentuating their loneliness and their need to belong. “I wander about like a lonesome bird on a rooftop. . . . I am naked, thirsty, destitute, and have no means of sustenance,” writes one of these women. The compassion of the community for its weakest elements is evoked in many of the

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letters of the Geniza that Frenkel studies. She underscores how the authors of these documents conjured up emotions of sympathy and solidarity, in order to attend to those Jews cast away from society because they were refugees, captives, and men fleeing debts and excessive poll taxes or escaping the brutality of zealous regimes. Members of the Jewish community chronicled their travels and reflected on how they were othered by Muslims and Christians and how they should be rescued. In Frenkel’s essay, the act of writing itself diffuses otherness; letters remind people they are members of the same Jewish faith, that they are obliged to certain ethics and to feeling compassion, mercy, and kindness toward others. In this case, it is useful to read Frenkel’s chapter with and against Galit Hasan-Rokem’s. In the latter, the Jew in the anti-Semitic imagination is the ultimate other, and as such, he evokes fears from his greed and dishonesty. Hasan-Rokem tackles one of the most well-known narratives in anti-Semitic literature; the mere fact that Jews traveled (because of banishments, exile, persecution, or socioeconomic reasons) was used against them to accentuate not only their inability to integrate but also the immediate and permanent danger they posed to the Christian community. In her analysis of the Wandering Jew, Hasan-Rokem explains how anti-Semitism constructed the image of the Jew as a sexual predator, and as a constant traveler who never belongs, he endangers the community’s harmony, stability, and virtue. She shows, in other words, how the arrival of the unfamiliar religious other bred fears, anxieties, and stereotyping. Frenkel highlights how Jews used these very same depictions to evoke positive emotions with respect to their fellow Jews: mercy, compassion, sympathy, and especially solidarity, with these objects of anti-Semitic categorizations. Investigating how non-Jews represented Jews as others, in other words, allowed Jewish writers to become closer, temporally and mentally, to various figures of persecuted Jews, which now served as modern symbols of collective belonging. The role of the Jew as a middleman, as someone civilized, but still not quite as civilized as fellow European white Christians),4 added a certain ambiguity to processes of othering and complicated binaries and conflicting emotions. Jack Kugelmass illustrates how Jews unsettled colonial narratives and their constructed tensions between the wild and the civilized as he explores a Yiddish travel account of Peru. Travel narratives, as we have seen in Martin Jacobs’s essay, engaged with the exotic. Kugelmass, however, studies the production of gendered and Oriental others in adventure narratives. Looking into the 1944 account of Marcos Paryszewki (b. 1891) of his travel to Peru, Kugelmass explores how the narrative’s images of self and other were deeply imbedded in European notions of civilization, barbarism, and progress. At the same time,

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this Jewish traveler loved the indigenous population of Peru, or at least some of them. Emotions pop up frequently in the Yiddish travel narrative: wonderment at natural phenomena; horror at the sight of a pure-bred German shepherd; piety in Yom Kippur; as well as love, intimacy, friendship, sexual desire, and guilt, in his interactions with an indigenous young girl. Gender and race inform the ways in which the story is constructed, as the traveler encounters Germans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Spaniards, groups with whom Jews had very complicated relations when the account was published. Paryszewki’s tale underscores the instability of otherness, as the love story between the author and the Native American girl is both a manifestation of colonial and global discourses about the sexuality and primitiveness of indigenous people and an expression of intimacy and compassion. What renders this travel account unique, then, is the ways in which this Yiddish writer intertwines credibility and fantasy, and the manners in which his emotions, especially love, desire, and wonder, produce an affective ethnographic/geographic adventure story that can move (emotionally and perhaps physically) contemporarily readers of the global Yiddish press. There is something very Jewish about these travel narratives; they are written by a Jew and for Jews in a quintessential Jewish language. At the same time, however, they absorb images of self and other current in European and American travel narratives, which circulated in photographs and postcards, poems, short stories and novels, Hollywood films, and pulp fiction and cemented the difference between white settlers and Native Americans, native women and white men, and civilized and uncivilized spaces. The fact that these Yiddish travel narratives might sound funny to us, as modern English readers, is not surprising; a modern filmmaker, Mel Brooks, had parodied Yiddish-speaking Native Americans in his 1974 Blazing Saddles. And yet, our book invites our readers to think why today such encounters belong to the realm of the parody, while in the first half of the twentieth century, when Yiddish was still a language spoken by many Jews, these encounters made much sense.

C h apter 9

Travel and Poverty: The Itinerant Pauper in Medieval Jewish Society in Islamic Countries Miriam Frenkel

In his magnum opus about the Mediterranean world in the sixteenth century, Fernand Braudel describes the problem of distance as “the first enemy,” a structural longue durée feature of the Mediterranean world: “Every activity had to overcome the obstacle of physical distance. It is with a constant awareness of the problems of distance that the Mediterranean economy with its inevitable delays, endless preparations, and recurrent breakdowns must be approached.”1 Braudel’s insight about the early modern Mediterranean applies equally, if not more so, to the medieval world. In the Middle Ages spatial distance constituted a major concern not only for travelers but indeed for anyone with a stake, no matter how indirect, in the transport of goods or the transmission of signals, messages, and ideas. All were part of the same process, dependent on flesh-and-blood travelers—people moving from one place to another. Medieval travelers were mainly merchants, pilgrims, or part of an ever-growing mass of destitute people, forced to roam in search of a livelihood. The dividing lines among these categories of travelers were by no means fixed. Merchants would combine pilgrimage with their commercial voyages; pilgrims and paupers carried a variety of tradable goods. All of them were transmitters of signals and ideas through the letters, books, and oral messages they carried with them from one place to another.2 In the present chapter I analyze the communicative function of medieval Jewish vagrants in Islamic countries. Most of our knowledge about Jewish society in the Muslim world during the High Middle Ages (tenth to thirteenth centuries) is derived from the repository of discarded Jewish writings found in a side room of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat-Cairo, known as the Cairo

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Geniza. For this reason, that society is sometimes referred to as the “Geniza society.”3 Existing research has already made us aware of the conspicuous poverty of this society. S. D. Goitein, the founding father of Geniza study, estimates that as much as “one fourth [of the Geniza population] . . . seems to have been either entirely destitute or very poor. In times of high prices and plagues, one would say hyperbolically that the takers were more numerous than the givers. . . . The ‘wretched poor,’ widows, divorcées, orphans, especially female orphans without fathers or brothers, as well as neglected and abandoned wives, formed a very prominent segment of the indigent population.”4 Mark Cohen, in a later comprehensive study focused on poverty, accepts this assertion and agrees that “poverty constituted a substantial social problem,” which, “as represented in the Geniza documents, graphically and to a certain extent statistically, was not an exceptional phenomenon.”5 Cohen offers a taxonomy of poverty, distinguishing between “structural poor,” the indigents, who appear (for the most part) in communal alms lists, and the “conjunctural poor,” working and well-off individuals from “good families” who, following some crisis, “fell from their wealth” and were thrust into temporary indigence. Those in the second category, Cohen claims, were too ashamed to go on the dole; thus, evidence of their existence is found mainly in discreet personal letters appealing for private assistance. The taxonomy suggested by Cohen ameliorates, to some extent, the gravity of poverty; it places some of the poor, the “conjunctural,” in a temporary position from which their charitable and welloff coreligionists could, in theory, rescue them. In this chapter I will draw attention to an additional dimension of poverty that has been neglected in previous studies: namely, the widespread activity of wandering paupers, destitute individuals who spent their lives on the road, sometimes traversing long distances in search of a livelihood. Scholars could easily miss these marginal people living on the seams between different communities. I suggest, in contrast, that a focused attempt to detect these marginal people exposes their significant social function as itinerants. Moreover, their mobility corresponds with the high connectivity of medieval Mediterranean societies6 and specifically with that of the Geniza society, described by Goitein as a community with “freedom of communication.”7 The main sources at our disposal are various letters from the classical Geniza, dated from the tenth to thirteenth centuries: letters of recommendation for the poor, requests to receive such letters, appeals to the community to assist a pauper, and various private letters. These documents, which traveled themselves with the paupers, shed important light on performance and ideas about the meaning of travel and class in the Geniza society. Unlike other medieval travel

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narratives, they are not initially intended to tell a story about travel, but rather contain functional information directed at achieving the reader’s empathy and at arousing his willingness to assist the pauper. Travel per se is not the central topic of the letter and is usually mentioned incidentally. Sometimes we have to deduce it from other information provided in the letter. Nevertheless, these letters occasionally tell whole life stories in which travel occupies a central motive. They usually depict travel as a time of tribulation and toil. The sheer need to travel is described as cruel destiny imposed on the traveler and opposed to his previous sedentary life. My main claim is that the mobility of itinerant paupers, which was initially imposed on them, turned out to be a permanent feature of poverty in that society, as it was used to solve the persistent problem of overcoming distance, which was “the first enemy” of the Mediterranean world, as described above by Braudel. Vagrants were sent to collect alms equipped with letters of recommendation and also with many other goods and messages that had to be sent to remote places. Thus, they functioned as living means of transportation and fulfilled a basic communicative function. The solution they offered to the chronic need of transportation was too convenient to be given up, which explains the high number of letters of recommendation and the widespread phenomenon of wandering paupers. The permanently urgent quest for means of communication and the efficient solution offered by vagrancy made it a prominent feature of the Geniza society. The chapter begins by introducing the various types of vagrants: solitary women, captives, and refugees. It then follows their tracks and concludes with an attempt to define their social communicative function.

Who Were the Wandering Paupers? Solitary Women The Geniza society (tenth to thirteenth centuries) was a typical androcentric one, in which “women were attached to the groups of their fathers and husbands, but they did not belong.”8 Women were by and large illiterate, and, indeed, most of the writings preserved in the Geniza were written by men. Hence women’s voices are almost always mediated. Even documents concerning women’s lives, such as those presented in this paragraph, do not really sound the genuine voices of those women. Although women of all classes did have properties of their own that they had inherited or received as dowries and with which they could trade and handle commercial undertakings, being illiterate, they found it in many cases difficult or even impossible to handle their properties

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without the assistance of a male relative.9 Women in that society did not have freedom of movement and were not at liberty to exit their homes, unless for a few definite purposes. Although we hear about a few pilgrim women, most women did not travel unless they were forced to, and they were not supposed to mingle in male entourages.10 In this patriarchal society, women with no family to protect them were extremely vulnerable and could easily fall into destitution.11 The close association between solitary women and vagrancy is reflected in the following words of a woman who suffered from leprosy, in a letter addressed to David b. Daniel Nāsī, the exilarch of Egyptian Jewry (1082–94): “Your slave woman, poor, wretched, woeful, worried, and afflicted on account of my sins—I cast my entreaty . . . before you, so that you heed the words of your maidservant, for many are my sighs and my heart is sick. I am on my own, I have neither husband nor son nor daughter nor brother nor sister, and I wander about like a lonesome bird on a rooftop. . . . I am naked, thirsty, destitute, and have no means of sustenance. Nobody cares for me even if I were to die.”12 What is most palpable in the dramatic words of this woman is the deep sense of solitude and a total detachment from any familial connections: “I have neither husband nor son nor daughter nor brother nor sister.” For a woman in this society, lacking familial supportive and a protective framework meant total helplessness. Although former married women were entitled to receive their dowries and their delayed marriage payments recorded in the marriage contract, collecting the money was not always possible and the sums not always sufficient. The only solution for women in such a situation was to assume a life of vagrancy, wandering from one community to another equipped with letters of recommendation, begging for their daily sustenance. Many of the wandering paupers were indeed solitary women. While their proportion among the itinerant poor remains to be determined, their conspicuous presence in this group is evident. We learn about them mainly from their letters of appeal or from letters of recommendation, usually written by highranking individuals, which they carried with them. Many such letters, which describe their personal misfortune in order to justify their status as beggars and arouse compassion, found their way to the Cairo Geniza. Some of them tell life stories in which travel constitutes a constant feature. For example, the eleventh-century woman Hayfāʾ, daughter of Sulaymān ibn al-ʻArīq, was married to a silk weaver by the name of Sa‘īd ben Muʻammar. The marriage was not a happy one and Sa‘īd was most of the time absent from home, leaving his young wife to struggle alone with the hardships of poverty and of raising alone her young boy. When the couple could not pay their rent, they were thrown out of their house and had to find refuge in Jaffa. Hayfāʾ found herself in a foreign town, detached from her nuclear family, and when

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her husband took off once again she was left all by herself with a small baby less than one year old. She tried to go back to her paternal family only to find out that she was not welcomed there any more: “From them, however, I suffered their hard words, which only God knows.” At this point Hayfāʾ decided to “uncover her face,” that is, to go out of her home and beg for charity. She did it along the lengthy track from Palestine to Egypt, heading toward Malīj in the Nile Delta, where she was hoping to find her runaway husband. On the road, she passed from one Jewish community to the other hoping to collect enough alms to sustain herself and her child. Upon arriving in Malīj, she was told that her husband had already left for Palestine. Hayfāʾ did not immediately follow her husband, but rather turned south and arrived at Fustat, a central city with a big congregation of Palestinian Jews, from whom she could hope to get some help. Here she approached their head, ʻEli b. Amram, through the letter of appeal that tells her story.13 Hayfāʾ’s letter exemplifies how solitary women could turn into wandering vagrants, spending their lives roaming from one Jewish community to another, thus covering considerable geographical spans. The case of Shaikh Futūh’s ex-wife, who lived in the thirteenth century, demonstrates similar characteristics. This divorced woman of Egyptian origin, whose name we do not even know, followed her husband to Palestine and remained there, alone and impoverished, after he divorced her. The only solution for a woman in this condition was to take to the road together with her little daughter and try to survive by wandering from one community to the next, begging for alms. We can follow her itinerary from Palestine to Fustat-Cairo, probably by land. In Cairo, she approached the head of all the Jewish communities in Egypt, the Nagid R. Abraham Maimuni, Maimonides’s son and successor, and asked him for help. The Nagid decided to send her back to Palestine, where her elder daughter still lived, via the port city of Alexandria. In order to facilitate her travel, he supplied her with the letter of recommendation that tells her whole story. Although the letter was addressed to the community of Alexandria, we may assume that, like so many other paupers, she did not head directly to the port city, but made use of the letter of recommendation in her hands to beg for charity in the many communities along the road between Cairo and Alexandria. When the letter was written, this woman was actually embarking on the journey between Egypt and Palestine for the third time in her life. Even if she finally reached her daughter in Palestine, as planned, she was doomed to a long period of wandering.14 An even longer trek by another woman beggar is recorded in a letter of recommendation from the twelfth century, addressed to the chief rabbinical judge (dayān) in Cairo, R. Isaac ben Sāsōn. The anonymous writer tells about a widow

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who arrived from Damascus with her two children, passed through Ascalon, in southern Palestine, and then continued to Bilbays in the Nile Delta, and was on her way to Cairo. In each of these stations, the widow received material help and letters of recommendation “testifying to her grave situation and her poverty and her many children.” The addressee, the chief judge of Cairo, is asked to add yet another letter of his own.15 We can see then that letters of recommendation, which traveled with the vagrants, not only helped them to receive material support but also created networks of correspondence between the various Jewish communities, generating connections and bonds between individuals and communities in dispersed places, linking peripheries to the center and local leaders to the central leadership in Cairo. So far we have followed three lonely women—a deserted wife, a divorcée, and a widow—who lived as mendicants, wandering among the Jewish communities of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and beyond, trying to survive by appealing to the locals’ mercy. Their letters of recommendation traveled with them and formed an indispensable part of their vagrant way of life. These letters, while certainly helping them to gain their daily sustenance, also perpetuated their status as vagrants. Hayfāʾ, while still hoping to find her runaway husband, found herself wandering between the Jewish communities of Egypt begging through the letters of recommendation in her hands. Shaikh Futūh’s ex-wife encountered the same fate while supposedly traveling to her daughter in Palestine, and the Damascene widow seemed to be deeper into vagrancy as she accumulated more and more letters of recommendation. Many other names of women originally from other countries, which fill the lists of the beneficiaries of public welfare in Fustat, suggest that they, too, begged for alms, wandering from one community to the next in order to survive.16 Captives The period discussed in this chapter was one of intensive piracy in the Mediterranean. Piracy was an integral part of the war between the Muslim world and Christendom, as Christian European freebooters seized the passengers of Muslim ships and vice versa. Eastern Libya, the territory between Barqa and Tobruk, became an active base of Muslim pirates who attacked both Christian and Muslim ships. They did so in collaboration with the Fatimid rulers, who used them to assail not only their Christian enemies in Byzantium but also their Sunni Muslim enemies in the West. The emirs of Barqa demanded protection money (ghifāra) from seafarers to protect them against pirates. Jewish passengers on both Muslim and Christian ships were exposed to the dangers of piracy. The Geniza documents testify to Jewish captives from Byzantium and

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Christian Europe brought to the major Islamic centers, such as Alexandria and Ramla, to be ransomed there by their coreligionists; they also tell of Jewish captives from Egypt and Palestine ransomed in Constantinople.17 Piracy was not the only means through which Jewish travelers were taken captive; there were also war captives, taken during Bedouin raids on Palestine, during its occupation by the Seljuks, and mostly during the Crusades. Ransoming captives of all kinds fell exclusively on the captives’ coreligionists.18 Indeed, this was one of the most costly demands on communities. The ransom demanded for a captive was generally 33⅓ dinars—no mean sum—and occasionally more.19 Once the captive had been released, moreover, the community would have to see to his to her clothing and upkeep, and fund his or her return home. The community had to pay the poll tax ( jizya) for the ransomed person to the Muslim government; the journey home was also expensive and might include port charges. It is no wonder, then, that the communities, especially those in the port cities to which most of the captives were brought—such as Alexandria— found it extremely difficult to cope with this problem and sought various solutions, the most common of which entailed transporting at least some of the captives to other communities. This tactic resulted in convoys of captives wandering among the various Jewish communities to collect alms for their ransom. These wandering captives constituted a unique group of travelers, being at the same time humans and commodities. The phenomenon is illustrated in a letter written in 1050 by the head of the Alexandria community, Yeshūʻā ben Joseph, to his friend the philanthropist Judah ben Sighmar. Yeshūʻā informs his addressee about a convoy of Jewish captives making its way from Alexandria to Fustat. The unusually intensive activity of pirates in the southern Mediterranean that year brought many Jewish captives to Alexandria, and the local community found it difficult to cope with the burden. It decided to send them to Cairo, hoping that the somewhat richer community there would be able to look after these miserable unfortunates. Yet, this convoy did not head directly for the capital; instead, it passed through all the Jewish communities of the Rif, on the route between Alexandria and Cairo, to collect alms on the way. The group was accompanied by a special envoy, a young man by the name of Abraham al Şiqilli, a young merchant and a junior business partner of Yeshūʻā, the head of the Alexandrian community. Young Abraham did not receive a salary for accompanying the group of captives, but his expenses on the way—food and beverages, sleeping accommodations, an animal to ride, and so on were fully covered by a generous donation given especially for this purpose by Judah b. Sighmar. Abraham set off equipped with a large packet of heartbreaking letters of recommendation for the captives, written with great care by the head of the community. He traveled in company with the captives, who were misera-

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ble, gloomy, and shabby, as could be expected after so many months of captivity and their difficult journey. With the eloquent letters and the wretched-looking captives, Abraham managed to collect a considerable sum of money on the route between Alexandria and Cairo, some of which was used for the joint commercial enterprises of R. Abraham and the head of the Alexandria community.20 Captives traveling around the country were not an exceptional sight. Some found themselves wandering from one community to the next after being freed in order to collect the money needed for their journey back home, for their daily sustenance, or just because they could not find any permanent place to stay. A letter from the very beginning of the twelfth century, carried by a female captive who had been captured by the crusaders, is a good example of such cases. The letter is addressed to the “Holy Congregation” and was probably meant to be read aloud at the various synagogues she stopped at along her journey to collect alms. Its bearer was “a captive woman from among the captives of the Land of Israel.” Accompanied by her young son, she arrived in Fustat from Sunbāṭ, one of the smaller Jewish communities on the Delta, and was completely destitute, or, as the letter put it, “naked with nothing to sleep on or to be covered with” (la ghatāʾ wa la waṭāʾ); it asks the congregation to help and treat her as they would any wayfarer (ʻōver va-shav). The letter ends with a short supplication in Aramaic: “May the Holy one, blessed be He, repay you many times and assist you so that you shall never be driven from your homes.” This captive woman was making her way from Palestine via Sunbāṭ to Fustat, where her letter was found. The term “wayfarer” and the words of supplication added at the end of the letter suggest that she was on the road for long time, wandering among the various Jewish communities and trying to eke out a living with letters of this kind. Another girl, who was held captive by Frankish crusaders in Nablus, Palestine, was ransomed for an exorbitant price. She circulated among the Jewish communities of Egypt, accompanied by her brother, bearing a letter of appeal and trying to raise the balance of the money still owed to the Franks. Should she fail to obtain the outstanding sum, she would have to return to her captor.21 These few cases represent a larger phenomenon of captives, who before or after the payment of their ransom were obliged to adopt a vagrant lifestyle inside Egypt and beyond. Refugees The eleventh and twelfth centuries were marked by recurrent natural disasters or man-made catastrophes. It was a period of massive population movements, which affected Jews as well as other segments of the local population and resulted in major demographic changes, which are clearly reflected in the Geniza

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documents. Many of the wandering paupers who flooded the eastern Mediterranean had been uprooted from their original homelands and forced to find refuge from war, persecution, plague, or famine. A large number of them struggled to settle down, continuing as vagabonds for many years. Many sought to escape the Almohad persecutions and forced conversions in North Africa and Spain. Such was the case with Shaikh Mūsā ibn Khalīfa, a refugee of Maghrebi origin probably trying to escape the harsh discriminatory regime of the Almohad caliph Abu Yūsuf ibn Yaʿkūb (1184–99).22 He arrived in Alexandria via Sicily. In the port city, he fell ill and underwent eye surgery, which failed. After that he remained in Alexandria for many months, suffering from his injuries and beset by hallucinations. Though depicted as having been rich, in Alexandria Shaikh Mūsā and his family had to go on the dole. He was supported by the Jewish charities in Alexandria until someone discovered that he had local relatives. The support was immediately cut off, but when the family members refused to support him, he was provided with a letter of recommendation and sent to Fustat to try to make a living there. Whether or not he had been wealthy, Shaikh Mūsā had become a chronic pauper who wandered for years with his family from one community to another, from the Maghreb, via Sicily to Alexandria, and on to Fustat, relying on communal charity as well as the benevolence of private individuals whose letters he carried from place to place. He was also equipped with an additional letter of recommendation that he could present to the recipient, hoping to receive some charity.23 Other refugees were runaway debtors hoping to evade the heavy burden of the poll tax ( jizya) imposed on non-Muslims. One such individual was a silk dyer from Byzantium, whose children had been taken as security against his heavy debts. He traveled to Alexandria, hoping to collect money in order to free them, but fell ill there; the community leaders, unable to help him, provided him with letters of recommendation and sent him off to try his luck in Fustat.24 The Palestinian cantor, Japheth b. Amram al Jāzfīnī, wrote in 1040 to Hillel, the elder son of the prominent merchant Joseph ibn ʻAwkal, requesting financial help. Due to heavy debts he had been obliged to pawn all his properties and now requested financial support to rescue at least some of his belongings. He did so by wandering from one community to the other between Palestine, Alexandria, and Fustat. In each community, special pledges (pesīqā) were arranged for him, but they did not suffice for him to recover his property. He then requested financial assistance so he could return to Palestine.25 Such cases were numerous. A blind woman with a blind child, who presented herself as “Samuel’s wife,” asked the Gaon Maṣlīaḥ ha-Kohen (1127–39) to help her pay her poll tax: “They demanded from me the poll tax and we two do not even have bread.” Samuel’s wife arrived in Fustat from Al-Maḥalla on

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the Nile Delta and was probably wandering from place to place trying to evade the tax collectors.26 A letter bearer who called himself “Judah” asked for help, because “during these difficult times that befell everyone, all was lost,” and he was being sought for two poll-tax payments, for himself and for his son, as well as for another debt. Judah came to Fustat from Sunbāṭ and was probably wandering to elude his creditors while requesting assistance with this letter.27 So far, we have followed lonely women, captives, refugees, and other people in flight who were living as mendicants; it should be noted, however, that the classification offered thus far is purely methodological and cannot faithfully reflect any real distinction among the various poor wayfarers. The attempt to sketch a taxonomy of the wandering paupers seems to be nearly impossible. For example, in a letter of recommendation for Solomon ben Benjamin, written by Nathan ha-Kohen ben Mevōrākh, the head of the community of Ascalon, Solomon is introduced as a Torah scholar, a respectable man “from a good family of noteworthy householders whose table was always set and whose houses were always wide open. However, on account of the many troubles that befell them they fell from their wealth and became poor [niddaldelū mi-nikhseihem u-maṭṭa yadam].” He is described as a war refugee and also a pilgrim who wishes to visit the holy city of Jerusalem, but (as stated in an interlinear postscript) one who “is forced to travel around in search of sustenance for himself, and will go there later.” It is difficult to decide whether all these terms really applied to Solomon. Was he indeed a war refugee who had lost his wealth and sincerely wished to perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem? Or was he a professional beggar, wandering between Egypt and Palestine, and introduced as a war refugee or a pilgrim in an effort to persuade the addressee to help him?28 In any case, it is almost impossible to place Solomon, or other paupers, into any definite rubric.

Itineraries and Tracks Although some of the paupers came to Fustat from distant places such as Europe, Byzantium, or the Maghreb, most of them seem to have followed more limited itineraries.29 As described above, the route between Palestine and Egypt was especially busy and crowded with paupers. Inside Egypt, most of the vagrants journeyed along the country’s main artery, between the capital of Fustat-Cairo and the main port city of Alexandria.30 Yaḥyā al-Iskandarani ben Amram, for example, in his letter of application to ʻUllā ha-Levi ha-Neʾemān in Fustat, describes how he was compelled to flee his home city of Alexandria to evade the tax collectors. Because he did not manage to make a living in Fustat, he wished to return to Alexandria to see his elderly ailing mother and asked the Fustat community, through its representative ʻUllā ha-Levi, to help him

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finance the travel costs. Even if Yaḥyā al-Iskandarani had indeed been a respectable and generous person at one point, as presented in the letter, he was now a nomadic pauper, living for years on charity collected on the road between Alexandria and Fustat.31 Some itinerants would not head directly to one of these destinations, but would rather take a slower trajectory that passed through the smaller settlements scattered along the Nile Delta, trying to extract the most from the journey. This is evident in the letter sent by Abū al-Barakāt to the renowned philanthropist Abū Naṣr al-Tustarī (d. 1049) in Cairo.32 In the letter he eloquently recounts his experiences, describing how he had arrived from Alexandria in hope of making a living in Fustat; for more than seven months, however, he could not find any source of income, nor did he have any reason to expect he would do so in the future—“not even one penny [peruṭah].” For this reason, he decided to continue to the Egyptian Rif to try his luck there, and asked Abū Naṣr for three dirhems to hire a saddle animal in order to get there, or to obtain one for him from a friend. Abū al-Barakāt seems to have been a wandering pauper, trying to survive by traveling from place to place around Egypt, and contacting well-known benefactors, like Abū Naṣr al-Tustarī, wherever he went. He probably spent no more than several months in each place, given that he considered the seven months in Fustat to be a very long period of time. The three dirhems Abū al-Barakāt requested would not get him very far, suggesting that his modus operandi was to travel in short stages, stopping at every Jewish community on the road. We see that the nomadic paupers followed more or less regular itineraries, most of them corresponding to the main roads between major Jewish communities.

The Social Function of Itinerant Paupers Because of the chronic need for communication in all medieval Mediterranean societies, travel always played multiple roles; medieval Jewish society in Muslim lands was no exception in this regard. This was manifested in the aforementioned case of the captives’ convoy, in which commercial interests were deeply involved. It can also be illustrated through the case of a well-known medieval traveler, the poet and philosopher Judah Halevi. In his fifties, Halevi underwent a deep spiritual transformation, which led him to decide to embark on a daring journey to the Holy Land. This was undoubtedly a spiritual trip for Halevi as well as a significant event for the Jewish communities of Alexandria and Cairo, which he visited while en route to his destination. Yet, when we examine the many letters written during Halevi’s visit to Egypt and found in the Geniza, we discover that Halevi also traveled with letters as well as tradable commodities, including silk and other textiles.33

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The itinerant paupers, who were constantly moving along the major routes of communication in search of sustenance, fulfilled very similar functions, carry ing not only their own letters of recommendation but also other letters, books, epistles, poems, and other cultural items. James Carey, in his seminal essay on communication and culture, highlights the two dimensions of communication: communication as the transmission of people, goods, and signals to distant places; and communication as a symbolic process of communion in which information flows among members of a certain community—information that produces, reaffirms, and preserves that community’s shared worldviews and its political, social, and economic order.34 I would argue that the letters of recommendation and other letters carried by the Jewish vagrants fulfilled both functions. The paupers’ mobility and their constant travel along major and regular tracks transformed them into human means of transportation; at the same time, their letters of recommendation, read and reread by so many people in different places, served as an act of communion that reaffirmed Jewish society’s shared norms and values. Itinerant paupers’ role as human means of communication in the first sense of the term—that is, of transportation over a distance—may be seen in the correspondence between two thirteenth-century cantors from Egypt’s Jewish intellectual elite. Judah ibn al-‘Ammānī came from the prominent Alexandrian al-‘Ammānī family. Although he did not serve as a community official, he was a prominent public figure—a teacher, physician, cantor, and court scribe. He was also very active in organizing charity projects and deeply involved in the politics of the local and intercommunal Jewish leadership. His social ties were wideranging, as manifested by his intensive correspondence with a broad spectrum of prominent persons. In many ways he was a typical local Jewish notable, well integrated into the governing Jewish elite of the time.35 Of special interest to our topic was his extensive correspondence with the cantor of Fustat, Meir b. Abū al-Thābit bar Yākhīn, which was carried by traveling paupers with whom they were personally acquainted from their work as leading members of the communal charity apparatus in their cities. As can be seen from their letters, Judah ibn al-ʻAmmānī would send liturgical poems he came across to Meir, who needed them to vary his liturgical repertoire in the synagogue. The efforts involved in finding, collecting, transcribing, and sending them were quite considerable, as manifested in the following letter from Judah to Meir: I was very happy to learn that the penitential poem [seliḥah] that starts with the words: “We shall never know” has arrived. As for the other poem, I have already informed you of the reason I am not sending it

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and I am very sad about it. May God help me obtain it. But, dear sir, I paid attention to my uncle when he prayed it in the early morning service [ashmoret] and noted that it begins “Your belief will be declared by them.” Perhaps you should meet Abū al-Sadīd again and try to get it from him. By your good life, I sent everywhere to get it. Only to Marseilles I did not manage to contact. Sir, if he sang it on a weekday I would have copied it, but he keeps singing it on the second night of Rosh Hashanah or on Friday nights when I cannot write it down at all.36 Discovering and copying liturgical poems was part of the complex reciprocal relationship between the two, in which Meir sent Judah rabbinic responsa in exchange for the poems; although it is plausible that he also paid him for his efforts.37 In the next letter, Judah ibn al-ʻAmmānī writes Meir bar Yākhīn about a collection of liturgical poems for Rosh Hashanah, which he had written himself and was sending to Meir at the latter’s request: You mention that I have not sent you the penitential prayers you have requested. . . . [In fact,] I sent them to you with a man by the name of Samuel ha-Kohen of Baghdad. He is dark-skinned and thin, the man with whom you sent me a letter of recommendation for himself written by the elder, Abu al-Hasan the teacher, and another letter of recommendation for him to the judge [dayyān], in which it is said that he knows the Aramaic translation of the Torah [Targūm] by heart. I am very sorry (and not just a little) that the penitential prayers did not reach you for Rosh Hashanah, because I sent them more than twenty days before then. By God, I had severe eyestrain and great difficulty writing the letter, some of it while teaching my pupils and some at night, when I was tired. All of this because I was hoping that they would reach you on time and complete. . . . When that man, Samuel, told me: “I am going to Al-Mahalla and will stay there for two or three days, after which I will then head directly to Fustat without any delay,” I said to him: “Be careful not to forget the penitential prayers when they are needed, because if you fail to deliver them, all my efforts and your efforts will have been in vain.” I was afraid that he might not go to Fustat at all, but rather to Cairo, to beg there and then go on begging in the small towns nearby, and then head on his way until he returns to his home in the Holy Land. Please, be so kind as to track him down and get the letter from him. The penitential prayers are attached in a small codex.38

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Samuel ha-Kohen, probably a refugee from Baghdad and a man of some learning, was selected by members of the intellectual elite, provided with letters of recommendation, and sent to travel along a more or less regular route to seek alms for his own sustenance and to serve as a carrier of letters and cultural items, such as the liturgical poems written, distributed, and sung by the two cantors. Samuel was not the only vagrant pauper who worked for the two cantors. Shaikh Mūsā ibn Khalīfa was another. In another letter, Judah ibn al-‘Ammānī attaches a recommendation for him as well. The letter was appended to another letter of recommendation signed by ten of the most prominent communal leaders in Alexandria and addressed to “all communities.” Judah explains: In the end he could not be saved and unfortunately lost his sight. He has a family, an adolescent daughter and a small boy of six months, along with him and his wife—making four of them for the community [qāhāl] [to support]. They helped him for a year and a half as best as they could. Had we been able to get up a collection for him among the community, he would not have stumbled down and would not have to leave his home. He is a good man, poor and ill-fated. Once, he used to be a benefactor, and loved to give charity [gemilūt ḥasadīm]; many of the prominent elders [shuyūkh] of Fustat know him well.39 The blind Maghrebi refugee was sent to Fustat, in the hope that the richer community there would be able to support him. This was not a feasible solution, however, as noted in a remark appended to the end of the letter: “After this letter was written, it turned out that Shaikh Mūsā ibn Khalīfa is not able to come to Fustat. The money he received sufficed only for hiring a mount, but they told him that if he went to Fustat he would have to pay a double poll tax [jāliya], once upon arrival and then again after a month, because he does not have any receipts. So, his journey has been delayed.”40 Though supposedly sent to Fustat, Shaikh Mūsā was actually doomed to the life of an itinerant pauper, armed with a collection of letters of recommendation and carry ing messages that had to be transmitted from one place to another: letters of all kinds, prayers, poems, halakhic questions, and other literary items. Thus, wandering paupers, armed with letters of recommendation, served as convenient channels of communication through which money, merchandise, intellectual and artistic property, and information could all be transmitted. However, these frequent travelers who carried their letters of recommendation

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were also performing an act of communication in the second sense of the term. In previous publications, I demonstrated how letters of recommendation for the poor and other letters concerning charity matters served as a means of strengthening the bonds among members of the elite, who were in constant need of channels of communication in order to keep in touch with one another and to maintain group solidarity within Jewish society.41 One could take this assertion further to argue that writing, sending, and reading letters of recommendation for the poor served as ritual acts of communication. Both the writers and the readers acted in a play, where they were invited to perform the role of generous benevolent heroes in a world in which both rich and poor knew their rightful places on stage. The letters reestablished and reconfirmed a prevailing worldview and molded life in its familiar pattern. They served as an act of communication in the sense of a symbolic process of communion in which common values and ideas were reaffirmed. The opening lines of a letter written in 1229 by Solomon b. Elijah, teacher, cantor, and court clerk in Fustat, on behalf of Abraham al Baghdādī, an indigent foreigner from the East, serve as a good example of the way shared cultural items were transmitted through these letters: To the holy communities in Egypt, may they be saved and guarded and protected against all evil and fear surrounding them. May He fulfill through them the verse, “Then my people shall dwell in peaceful homes, in secure dwellings [Isa. 32:18]. . . . Their noble teaching obliges people to help the poor, especially when [foreign origin] and utter poverty are combined. One of their sayings is: “Repentance and good works are a shield against retribution” [Mishna Avot 4:11] . . . I call this a charitable act, because a man does not recover from illness . . . eliminated because of this mixture of bodily illness. Thus said lord Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, “Redeem your sins by beneficence . . .” [Dan. 4:24], especially for the deserving poor. Because charity was not done in the [proper] places, namely, for those who deserved to receive it—considering that it saves from unnatural death, as is written, “but charity saves from death . . .” [Prov. 10:2]. The prophet, lord Jeremiah, peace be upon him, for everything that Israel did to him and to themselves, prayed against them a terrible prayer, saying to the Master of Heaven and his Benefactor, [Let them be made] to stumble before you, act against them in Your hour of wrath” [Jer. 18:23]. The sages, may their memory be blessed, interpreted this to mean that he called out to God the exalted not to bring their way a man deserving of charity, considering that charity has the benefit that would result from it. The sages, may their memory be blessed therefore

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decided that whoever can, should give to whomever asks, be he deserving or undeserving.42 Although not all letters of recommendation were so dense with rabbinic quotations and blunt exhortations, most of them are full of aphorisms and truisms about the merits of charity, the hazards of life, the role of givers and recipients, and many other notions that propagated the hegemonic cultural perceptions about poverty and wealth.

Conclusion A silent life of vagrancy hustled and bustled in between the sedentary Jewish communities around the medieval Mediterranean. Destitute people of all kinds; solitary women with no family bonds to assist them, captives of piracy and wars detached of their former homelands and communities, refugees of wars and natural disasters, as well as runaway debtors crammed the routes between the various Jewish communities of the Fatimid Empire, begging for some kind of relief wherever they arrived. Their mobility along more or less regular itineraries corresponding to the main roads between major Jewish communities made them into valuable human means of communication, so badly and chronically needed in the medieval Mediterranean. They were carrying with them their own letters of recommendation, the writing, reading, and exchanging of which produced networks of written correspondence between leaders of various Jewish communities dispersed along wide geographical areas, thus strengthening the bonds between members of the Jewish cosmopolitan elite. The traveling poor fulfilled urgent communicative functions. Being permanent travelers, they were frequently endorsed with the task of carry ing other letters, usually appended to their letters of recommendation, as well as oral messages, books, poems, and even tradable good. Thus, they were acting as human means of transportation helping to overcome the basic medieval problem of spatial distance. Moreover, the writing and reading, sometimes in public, of these letters replete with truisms that propagated the hegemonic worldview served also as an act of communication in the sense of a symbolic process of communion in which common values and ideas were disseminated and reaffirmed. These vital communicative functions filled by the wandering paupers made them into indispensable tools of communication, too expedient to be given up, thus establishing vagrancy as a permanent enduring social phenomenon. By shifting our glance from classical medieval Jewish itineraries toward mundane Geniza documents, such as court records, private letters, and particularly

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letters of recommendation for the poor, new patterns and functions of travel are revealed. We find out that travelers did not necessarily follow the long distant routes proceeding from one big city to the other as described in the itineraries of famous medieval travelers such as Benjamin of Tudela or Judah al Ḥarīzī. More limited routes were frequently used; from the Maghreb to Egypt, inside Egypt along the Alexandria-Cairo artery and all over the Delta region, from Egypt to Palestine and from Palestine to Syria. Some of these were sea lanes, others were country side roads connecting one small town to the other. These limited tracks linked between micro regions, creating networks of connectivity between dispersed Jewish communities of the Islamic world and beyond. To use Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s vocabulary, they cohered micro regions into large aggregates around the Mediterranean, showing how “micro regions coalesce on a grand scale.”43 Hence, the evidence gathered from the Cairo Geniza, actually confirms Horden and Purcell’s concept of Mediterranean connectivity.44 Travels were not confined to brave outstanding travelers, nor to the upper classes. The documents reflect a society in which every thing seems to be on the move: people, letters, books, poems, money, values, and ideas. Many travelers belonged to marginal groups such as the poor, women, and children. Moreover, the travels of the most destitute turns out to fulfill a crucial social function serving as an essential means of communication that enabled the consolidation of the Geniza society and the perpetuation of its hegemonic worldview.

C h apter 10

The Jewish Tradition of the Wandering Jew: The Poetics of Long Duration Galit Hasan-Rokem

The Wandering Jew is the most well-known and widely distributed figurative expression of the various ways in which Jews have been conceptualized as mobile and itinerant in a wide range of texts from popular anonymous chapbooks to masterpieces of early modern and modern art and literature.1 The Wandering Jew figure characteristically bridges the cultural modes of canonical, folk, and popular creativity, appearing in oral folk narratives, short stories, and novels in modern literature, visual representations in folk arts, as well as in the so-called fine arts of painting and sculpture. Unlike the general view that the Wandering Jew figure is a fictional projection of Christians on Jews, I suggest a model of co-production, involving Jews and others, mainly Christians.2 I study this co-production in the long duration of the cultural association between Jews and wandering in the relevant cultures, applying a folklore-based methodology, that addresses the transfer between the canonical and the marginal, as well as between the written and the oral.3 The legendary figure’s main characteristics are longevity—indeed, immortality—and incessant mobility, a wandering without end. Its long life in diverse cultures confirms the persistence of cultural products that occupy a chronotope à la Bakhtin, engaging a more or less invariable combination of elements of time and space.4 At the same time, the theme itself, forever wandering, connotes an essential instability of time and place.5 The Wandering Jew is the chronotope of everyplace and all time, the demonstrable semiotic opposite/antonym of the never-never land of folktales described by Stith Thompson.6 Unlike the world of folk or fairy tales in which dreams, nightmares, and wish fulfillment reign, safely separated by various stylistic

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and content devices from reality, the Wandering Jew roams in the much more ubiquitous world of humans’ quotidian fears and prejudice, expressed in folk literary terms usually by the genre of legend in which uncanny elements and figures appear within the realm of the real.7 The Wandering Jew’s legitimate citizenship in the world of the legend genre is reinforced by the figure’s strong association with canonical texts, the Hebrew Bible, and especially the New Testament, since his wandering is a punishment meted out by Jesus on his way to be crucified. Unlike the folktale that is marked by consistently fantastic locations and unidentifiable time, legends engage in places with names and histories and in recognizable historical periods and dates.8 The narrators and audiences of the Wandering Jew traditions may thus reasonably expect to meet this figure in their own milieus, and most narratives about him describe such meetings, in addition to a standard prelude describing the encounter with Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. The structural repetition of the encounter scene of Jesus and the Wandering Jew at the crucifixion, and the latter’s encounters with the citizens of Europe, brings out the tacit parallel between the two, both of whom, albeit differently, were doomed or blessed for eternal life.9

Mobility as Blessing and Punishment: Sources and Genealogies Mobility is an ancient key idiom of human activity, interpreted both as a source of great blessings and as a major punishment. I have earlier emphasized the role of the Wandering Jew figure as a projection created by Christian Europeans seeking to boost their own sometimes doubtful indigenousness.10 But it has become clearer to me that it mainly unearths the complex European culturalhistorical subject of which the Jews are not an “other,” but rather a central part.11 The Wandering Jew traditions are an exemplar of this co-production of culture, “so central because it is rooted in the relation between the Jews and the Christians.”12 To substantiate the claim of a Wandering Jew tradition coauthored by Jews, it is necessary to demonstrate briefly how deeply ingrained wandering is in the Jewish self-narrative. Jews have described themselves in terms of wandering before they called themselves Jews in the books of the Hebrew Bible that became the mythopoetic chronicle of their ancient past. Long before Christianity articulated exile as a punishment for those who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, the biblical vision of Israel—from Deuteronomy’s poetical prophecy (chapter 32, “Ha’azinu”) to the great literary prophets’ major ideological constructions—has been predicated on the opposition between peaceful settlement in the Promised Land (Canaan in the Pentateuch, later Israel, and sometimes Judah) as a boon re-

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warding adequate behav ior, versus exile outside its precincts as a punishment for disobedience to God’s will.13 The Jewish self-identification as wanderers begins with the very founding myth of the Israelite, and consequently of the Jewish people, the legend of Abraham’s wandering from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan.14 Even the superimposition of Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land does not dim the primacy of Abraham’s status as the exemplary, peripatetic forefather. Positing Abraham at the very beginning of the construction of the wandering Jewish subject opens up several options of bridging Jewish particularity with other identities, perhaps even universality. The Arabs, too, trace their lineage to the figure of Abraham; the modern notion “Abrahamic religions,” which also includes Christianity, proposes a possible genealogy that widens the scope of the particular “national” or “racial” memories while introducing a diversification of the notion of wandering that distinguishes between Jewish itinerancy and the nomadism identified as a dominant feature of Arab culture.15 This is how Abraham is introduced in Genesis 12:1–3: “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you: And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing: I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ ” The ambiguity of particularity and universality remains powerful in this passage since the universalistic “all the families of the earth” is juxtaposed with the particularistic “I will bless those who bless you.” Unlike most foundation legends, which establish a continuous relationship between a specific location and a given collective entity, the foundation legends of the tribe of Abraham draw a map of migrations repeated by the three founding generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, especially between Mesopotamia and Canaan, which culminate in the house of slavery in Egypt and a renewed entry into the land that has been promised to the patriarchs and their descendants. In the case of Israel, the relationship between people and land is not conceived of as autochthonous.16 It is thus not surprising that Abraham is in a late antique rabbinic text compared to a migratory bird, always ready to move along, even while seeming to rest.17 The link between exile as a historical concept and the practice of wandering enters into late antique and medieval discourses on Jews animated by Christian theological themes, such as the Jews’ exile as a punishment for not acknowledging the divinity of Jesus.18 These themes enter Jewish texts as well, substantiated by the fact that exile was prescribed as a punishment already in Deuteronomy19 and even more explicitly by most of the prophets.

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In more modern cases, mobility in general, Jewish mobility in par ticular, has come to be appreciated as an opportunity for cultural dynamism and fertile interaction with other cultures.20 The Wandering Jew has assumed these modern, positive views of mobility in such diverse cases as James Joyce’s Ulysses and lately in a number of new works of contemporary Hebrew literature.21 But this is to run ahead of the narrative, since the cultural meaning accumulated by the Wandering Jew figure until modernity was mainly based on the idea of wandering as punishment, carved for generations of retellings in the Genesis chapter 4 narrative of Cain who murdered his brother. The story appears powerfully in Augustine, who in one of his most acrimonious attacks on Jews, compared them with the first murderer Cain to argue that they also deserved the same punishment of eternal wandering.22

The Long Duration and the Ecotypical Poetics of Folklore The definition of our object of study as the traditions of the Wandering Jew figure calls for adequate methods to deal with cultural creativity transmitted over long periods of time and distributed over wide geographical areas. Originating in the work of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the concept of the long duration was theorized and explicated by their student Fernand Braudel and brought to its fruition in the French Annales School.23 Braudel emphasized the need to privilege the study of lingering institutions and structures instead of particular events. His ability to balance an unbounded approach to time and space with a deep sense of history, as well as his serious study of everyday culture and popular creativity, particularly suit the study of the Wandering Jew traditions. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theoretical approach produces a helpful methodology for analyzing sign regimes alternately in focused moments such as “November  20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics,” specific years such as “Year Zero: Faciality” or longer periods such as “587 B.C.–A.D. 70: On Several Regimes of Signs.”24 Studying the Wandering Jew tradition, I enlist this dynamic movement between focused moments and the long duration to create a historical and semiotic hermeneutic. The ensuing interpretative strategy coalesces and correlates the analysis of particular texts and images in particular contexts with the analysis of continuities and discontinuities over longer periods. Folklore studies have produced a variety of methodological tools to address the unfolding of cultural elements conceived of as simultaneously continuous and changing. The analytical concept that I find the most adequate for the study of the Wandering Jew traditions is the ecotype (oikotyp)—a mechanism of adaptation to changing times and spaces.

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As a body of knowledge and creativity that is transmitted primarily by the spoken word and behavioral example, much of folklore belongs to the domain of tacit and embodied information, especially open to adaptation to new conditions and environments. It thus stands to reason that ecotype is one of the most productive concepts to arise from twentieth-century folklorists’ investigation of the processes and mechanisms of tradition and change in performance. The term “ecotype” refers to the cultural configurations shaped by adaptation to new conditions, new environments, and new ecosystems, both physically and symbolically speaking.25 While the concept of ecotype has often served the identification of folklore in the construction and enhancement of particular group identities,26 linked with a critically informed notion of tradition, it may also enable us to uncouple tradition from its frequent linkage to specific identities and to deal with traditions not necessarily as emerging within groups but rather in interactions and interchanges between groups.27 This perspective is utterly vital when studying the Wandering Jew traditions that, as I claim, have been co-created by Christians and Jews. In a similar vein I have earlier identified the Wandering Jew as an embodiment of the Jews’ internal colonization and Orientalization by Christian Europeans,28 as the two groups jointly performed what Homi Bhabha has characterized as acts of mimicry.29 My discussion of the Wandering Jew as a fully European (including Jewish European) cultural expression emphasizes the multidirectional and multifunctional cultural work that it performs in its varied manifestations of media and genres. The Wandering Jew has adapted to various milieus, climates, periods, and social formations not only as a concrete example of the folkloristic pattern and process of ecotypization, but also as a personification of the phenomenon itself—as an exemplary ecotype, constantly moving, changing, and adapting according to its persistent and multifaceted hermeneutic function within European culture. In his ecotypical function, the legendary Wandering Jew learns the languages of all the places that he visits, effortlessly crossing state boundaries and even combat fronts.30 But the narrative itself also adapts ecotypically to locality, so that in Switzerland he leaves traces in the snow of the Alps,31 in Finland he may wear the shape of an uncanny forest spirit, the fire fox,32 and in southern Sweden he raises whirlwinds.33 The function of such ecotypical adaptations is exactly to create the impression that traditions, circulating between groups, may be identified as “ours,” belonging to “us.” The particularly itinerant and diasporic character of the Wandering Jew traditions also speaks to Michel de Certeau’s model for the construction of space, best articulated in the chapter “Walking in the City” in his classic The Practice of Everyday Life,34 where he suggests that when a person walks, rather than producing a trajectory in a given framework of space, the framework

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emerges from the walking itself in an aggregated and cumulative manner. Similarly, the diasporic space emerges as an ever-extending universe every time a new location is inhabited by individuals or groups from an entity experiencing and experienced as having another location. This is how the production of a decentered ontology of diaspora may be conceived without necessarily associating it with the pain, despair, judgment, and hopes of cessation connected with the concept of exile.35 However, the continuous creation of Wandering Jew traditions among Jews and Christians alike may prove that their view of the Jewish diaspora has never been devoid of the painful stamp of exile. The virtual absence of Wandering Jew traditions in the sphere of Islam is very telling in this regard.36

The History of a Wandering Tale I traced above a double genealogy of the Wandering Jew: first, the emphatically peripatetic foundation legend of the biblical Hebrews that was adopted by late antique Jews as their sacred as well as political history; second, the Christian allegorical tradition that condemns Jews to wandering as punishment for deicide following the example of Cain suggested in their shared Scripture. A clearly personified manifestation of the Wandering Jew cannot be easily traced in Christian texts from late antiquity and Byzantium, and George Anderson in his monumental monograph laying out the history of the figure admits that the reconstruction of the beginnings is uncertain.37 A medieval Jewish text in Hebrew included in his historical reconstruction of the Wandering Jew traditions—a tale from the Chronicle of Ahima’az—demonstrates the dialogical, Christian-Jewish emergence of the theme, which he however overlooks.38 The earliest tales—or, rather, rumors—on an individually characterized Wandering Jew who is said to have survived since the crucifixion of Jesus appear in Western European monastic chronicles in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, based on an oral source of a traveler from the east. In the most wellknown of these, in the chronicle of Roger of Wendover (d. 1236) of St Albans in England, Flores Historiarum, integrated by Matthew Paris (1200–1259) in his Chronica Majora, his existence is brought up after a visitor from Armenia is confronted by the local monks with a question explicitly mentioning such a figure.39 The question indicates that they must thus have had an even earlier oral (or perhaps even written) piece of information.40 The visitor replies that he has seen in his homeland a man who had witnessed the crucifixion.41 These traditions, recorded in England and even earlier in Italy, seem to have spread to Central and Northern Europe where at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century a mass industry distributed the tale about the

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shoemaker Ahasver. The Ahasver or Ahasverus chapbooks displayed the names of various printing presses between Basel in the Alps and Reval on the Baltic coast. The wide distribution created the mystified impression of a spontaneous wellspring of testimonies, whereas the actual epicenter of the editions may actually have been more narrowly defined to one of the great centers of the Reformation, Switzerland or northern Germany. It is generally accepted that the chapbook—Volksbuch—edition of the legend of Ahasver the Wandering Jew was printed for the first time in 1602 somewhere in Central Europe.42 It bore the unambiguous stamp of its Christian maker and made theological sense in the world of the Central and North European Reformation, which attached special value to eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus and the crucifixion.43 Other details provided in these early foundational traditions that have stuck to its later versions are the Wandering Jew’s strange name Ahasver,44 and his professional identity as a shoemaker. In addition to the abovementioned episode at the Via Dolorosa, the multiple editions of chapbooks also included specific reports—often formulated as first-person accounts of those who had met him—of his visits to various places in Europe. The accounts emphasize the Christian piety of Ahasver, who had been moved to conversion by the sight of the passion of Christ, as well as his vast knowledge of languages and his immortality. The booklets typically open with a contemporary scene in which the Wandering Jew has arrived in a big city, close but not too close to the place of printing. He relates the sad story of the events during the passion of Christ resulting in his bearing a fate that harshly contrasts those myths and fairy tales in which eternal life appears as an ideal existence. In German traditions the man was usually called the Eternal Jew, der Ewige Jude, in what seems an ironic parallel to one of the frequent attributes of God the Father, der Ewige, at least since Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, but on the other hand may lend the figure an almost divine aura.45 The booklets often open with formulas seeking to establish verisimilitude, such as “The news has reached us about the recent appearance of the Wandering Jew in Madrid . . . in Danzig . . .” and so on, establishing the genre of rumor as a constituent element in the forming of the tradition.46 Leonhard Neubaur’s detailed bibliographies on the Wandering Jew texts reveal an amazing picture of the mass production and mass distribution of this par ticular chapbook (surpassed only by the somewhat earlier Faustbuch).47 The speed of the distribution is also noteworthy, and in all Nordic countries the arrival of “news” about the Wandering Jew even predated the settlement of actual Jews in those countries.48 The local editions in different countries supply fresh news about the appearance of the Wandering Jew in the relevant country, but

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also dramatic news from distant countries.49 The cyclical nature of Ahasver’s appearances is often emphasized by stipulating the fulfillment of the redemptive prophecy of the Second Coming on the Wandering Jew’s having visited every single place on earth.

Transformations of the Wandering Jew: Myth, Allegory, Legend, Symbol From the mythical potentials of Cain and Abraham in the Hebrew Bible and Jesus in the New Testament, exegetical impulses transformed the earliest formations of the Wandering Jew into allegories of exile as punishment. The dominant manifestation of the Wandering Jew tradition that we have traced in early modern Europe was thus a legend with strong allegorical substrata connected with its enduring theological applications. Charged with a Christian point of view, the legendary adventures of the Wandering Jew became gradually, from Romanticism onward, an allegorical and symbolic representation of that movement’s most cherished values: rebellion, individuality, and, finally, modernity itself. Unlike Anderson, who suggests that “the century between 1850–1950 has done little but follow in the footsteps of the early romantic writers when it undertakes to write about the Wandering Jew” and that the major contribution of that period was the loosening of the limitations on the imagination (especially with regard to sinister elements), I suggest that the transformation of the European Wandering Jew tradition by the romanticists was momentous and far-reaching.50 In contrast to Anderson, Adolf  L. Leschnitzer has overemphasized what he conceives as a break from past developments in the Wandering Jew tradition in the nineteenth century as a result of secularization.51 In his interpretation, modern European Wandering Jew traditions disengage themselves from Christianity and from its eschatology in particular. But the literary evidence from Jewish as well as Christian literature and art seems to demonstrate that the theological and especially eschatological associations do not entirely disappear; moreover, the continuous interdependence of Jewish and Christian eschatologies is reconfirmed by the new developments of the tradition of the Wandering Jew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the nineteenth century an explicitly symbolic (and allegorical) strand in the artistic and literary representation of the figure of the Wandering Jew became dominant in Europe, especially in Western Europe, continuing and further developing in the twentieth and even the twenty-first centuries. The symbol was not only a central concept in the romantics’ poetics as well as in their theories of art, but it also constituted one of the most complex elements of their

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legacy to subsequent generations of Western thinkers and artists.52 The great interest and love for symbolic expression in art and especially in literature inspired Wandering Jew–themed cultural productions to encompass wider and deeper areas of human experience. Thus, instead of disappearing in the era of secularization, this theological legend of sin and punishment morphed into a much more multivalent narrative with psychological and philosophical formations.53 The range and sheer quantity of visual and textual expressions of the theme of the Wandering Jew, especially in the nineteenth century, makes any attempt to exhaust the phenomenon futile.54 German romantic poets like Christian Friedrich Daniel  Schubart (1784), Gustav Pfizer (1831), and even Schiller and Goethe (neither of whom completed their planned poems) engaged positively with the Wandering Jew Ahasver, connecting the figure with some of their privileged values.55 Indeed wandering— conceptualized as Wanderlust—was among them.56 English romantic poets like Southey (1809), Shelley (1810), and Coleridge (in his closely related Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798) also adopted the Wandering Jew as a deeply tragic hero whose endless suffering indirectly referred back to Jesus, who himself had almost disappeared from the romantic versions of the Wandering Jew tale itself.57 By universalizing the figure of Ahasver the Wandering Jew the romantics attempted to disengage him from the most manifest connections with the earlier dominant theological framework, making him accessible for Jewish authors seeking to connect with universal values. The secularization of the Wandering Jew was further expressed in the nineteenth-century enlisting of this figure to the emerging discourse on national identities, as a dissimilatory pole for one’s own national identity, especially in the German-speaking countries.58 In a fine essay that highlights the role of Ahasver as a personification of history in Berthold Auerbach’s pioneering novel Spinoza (1837), Jonathan Skolnik has suggested that we consider Berthold Auerbach the first secular Jewish novelist.59 Significantly, Auerbach’s Ahasver dies at the end of the novel rejecting his nomadic and isolated existence and preferring Spinoza’s universalistic model. According to Skolnik, Ahasver had become in Enlightenment circles a figure of history, one who had witnessed the progress of history for centuries. But whereas Auerbach’s contemporaries could associate this figure with progress and even liberation, its return in Siegfried Kracauer’s conceptualization of history is haunted by the endlessness of movement without a prospect of final liberation. Kracauer, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benjamin were the three harbingers of cultural criticism and among the most influential formulators of modernity.60 Unlike their contemporaries studying folklore and rural culture, who mostly emphasized continuities, they observed discontinuities and urban cultures. The hermeneutic potential of the Wandering Jew has thus proven versatile enough to

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cross from the theological discourses of early modernity to the historiosophical discourses of high modernity and beyond. As Jewish authors began to participate as active contributors within par ticular national literatures, they began to adopt the Wandering Jew into their own work. For them, the boundary-crossing elements associated with the figure served to express their complex experience of living between two worlds— between Jewish culture and other linguistic and political identities, and between Judaism and Christianity—like the Wandering Jew himself.61 In the early nineteenth century, the debate over the Wandering Jew in Jewish culture was characterized by strong ambivalence and fluctuations. The leading Jewish intellectual and emancipationist Ludwig Philippson (1811–89), for example, considered this figure an unsuitable subject for Jewish literature since it represented a negative picture of the Jew as a sinner and a sufferer.62 In Philippson’s opinion, the onset of emancipatory tendencies should have broken the association between Ahasver and contemporary Jews in the common mind, and especially in the Jews’ own self-image.63 By contrast, literary historian, critic, and author Samuel Lublinski (1868–1911) considered Robert Jaffé’s (1870–1911) Ahasver (1900) a very impor tant book for anyone who wanted to understand the Jewish question.64 The novel details the frustrating and tragic results that accrued to a Jew’s efforts to replace his social democratic ideals with the ideals of Deutschtum.65 The transformation of the tale of the Wandering Jew from legend to symbol is manifested in the novel’s omission of any mention of the traditional legend, as well as the strictly metaphorical use of his name in the title. Similarly, the figure had already appeared as a symbol in the most famous nineteenth-century literary work bearing the name of the Wandering Jew, Eugène Sue’s Le juif errant (1844, following earlier serial publication), without a significant role in the novel’s plot. During the sixty years between Philippson’s and Lublinski’s opinions and between Sue’s and Jaffé’s novels, numerous publications had expressed political and historical anti-Semitism.66 The illusion of a possible eradication of the image of the Jew as Ahasver in the 1840s was replaced by a self-ironic Ahasver image in which the Jews’ own cultural identity is actually given up in favor of Deutschtum.

The Poetics and Politics of Modern Wandering Jews The intensified symbolic adaptation of the Ahasver figure around the fin de siècle reached beyond the German or German Jewish Sprachraum. For example, in 1900 the Russian Jewish poet Nikolai Minsky (pseudonym of Nikolai Maksimovich Vilenkin, 1855–1937) published a poem comparing his own fate, with special reference to his expulsion from Russia, to the fate of the Wander-

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ing Jew.67 In addition to such personal uses of the image, more ideologically colored mentions of the figure by Jewish intellectuals also abounded. Strangely enough, it also became a symbol for national and cultural revival.68 The quintessential Zionist transformation of the Wandering Jew would have seemed to focus on his “return home,” and many Zionist authors and artists indeed employed this image in verbal as well as visual media.69 Representatives of some other ideologies openly wished for the Wandering Jew’s death and burial. This death prophecy reminds us, of course, of the aforementioned death of Ahasver at the end of Auerbach’s novel Spinoza as a gesture of the Jews’ adaptation to the German majority culture. Almost a hundred years later, the socialist Karl Kautsky, for instance, prophesied a peaceful end of the Jewish people less than thirty years before the Shoah: “Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, will at last have found a haven of rest. He will continue to live in the memory of man as man’s greatest sufferer, as he who has been dealt with most severely by mankind, to whom he has given most.”70 Some Jewish narrative interpretations have returned the Wandering Jew to the same “mythical” era in which the Christian legend initially made him appear. In an article by Alexandrov,71 and somewhat later in the Yiddish drama The Eternal Jew (Der eybiker yid, 1906) by David Pinski (1872–1959), the Wandering Jew was rendered as the person searching for the Messiah Menahem, the one who according to the Palestinian Talmud and Midrash Lamentations Rabbah disappeared soon after his birth in a whirlwind.72 Other writers and scholars have connected the Wandering Jew to Jewish sources by associating him with the Jewish ideal of a wandering penitent, Baal-Teshuva, or with kabbalists exiled time and again with the Shekhina, perpetuating exile rather than terminating it.73 These are only a few of the possible ancient and medieval Jewish contributions to the shaping of the European Wandering Jew figure. The circle has thus in a way been completed with a new attribution of a Jewish origin to the Wandering Jew, constructing a narrative of ancient roots intertwined with yearnings for a messianic redemption, in stark contrast to the aforementioned rejections of the figure from within the Jewish tradition. This new association also points to a significant and persistent modern ideological trend—the messianic-redemptive integration of the Wandering Jew figure in Zionist discourse. Thus, the Wandering Jew, once a Christian eschatological motif, lends itself to modern Jewish eschatology. The engagement with the Wandering Jew by authors as different in quality, genre, background, and fate as Guillaume Apollinaire, James Joyce, Lion Feuchtwanger, Joseph Roth, Stefan Heym, Danilo Kiš, Assaf Gavron, and Eshkol Nevo—to name just a few from the last hundred years—and with such a diverse range of relationships and attitudes to Jewishness has buttressed the

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role of the figure in the culture of Europe (and beyond) as that of a scout, surveying the borderlands of Jewishness from all sides, within and without, and emphasizing Jewishness as an open, instable, creative, and ever-developing cultural field. The notion of travel circulates in the long duration of the Wandering Jew tradition, destabilizing the idea of home as a concrete place, projecting it to the level of unattainable dreams and visions. The theme itself wanders incessantly between languages, genres, media, and ideologies, alternately embodying chronotopes of mobility/blessing and uprootedness/curse, and, perhaps most of all, of adaptation, as it ecotypically changes from century to century, from continent to continent.

C h apter 11

Between the Wild and the Civilized: A Yiddish Travel Writer in Peru Jack Kugelmass

Acting out a trope, like perceiving the metaphor lodging always in the literal, is the essential act of poetry. It is also the essential act of both traveling and writing about it. —Paul Fussell, Abroad If the traveler/storyteller is a type of nomad, ceaselessly in search of stories, then [s]he is also a collector, an accumulator of the world’s (tall) tales. —Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters

Travel writing trades on movement through space, the exploration and description of the unfamiliar and typically (though not exclusively) of remote places and peoples. With the picaresque adventures of the hero, its texts as tours du monde are different from the tour d’horizon of a bounded space that Benedict Anderson maintains connects the journey within the novel to modern nationalism.1 In contrast to the plasticity and future-oriented quality of the novel (in regard to how it writes the nation), travel narratives often have an epic-like quality in Bakhtin’s formulation, conveying readers into a static and unrecoverable world of the past, separate from their own.2 The connection between travel narratives and other traditional forms of storytelling is particularly evident in the trajectory of the hero who may experience what to him or her is a descent into alien realms with incommensurable customs, presenting

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the itinerant with considerable discomfort and sometimes outright danger. The latter overcome, often through indispensable allies acquired along the way and sometimes tied to romance moves the narrative forward. Its completion is the return to civilization, the hero enriched if only by tales newly acquired about remarkable experiences. Besides the above deference to the folktale, travel books relate the personal experiences of the itinerant, and so are sometimes seen as a subgenre of memoir for “it was,” as Mary Campbell notes, “in the self-love of the conquering heroes that the travel memoir was born.”3 Although some believe this model too simplistic because it overlooks the hybrid nature of travel writing,4 its ability to shape-shift and interact with a range of periods, disciplines, and perspectives,5 in his classic study of British expat writers between the wars, Paul Fussell offers a succinct definition of the genre, and one rather close to Campbell’s. To Fussell, the travel book is a displaced quest romance that takes place in mundane reality, often taking the picaresque and sometimes an elegiac or pastoral form.6 The travel writers’ quest is for the traces of a disappearing culture and one less complex and more authentic than their own.7 Its discovery offers both authors and readers, according to Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan, solace for an anxious and troubled present.8 More critical perspectives consider the connection between travel writing and empire.9 Travel narratives can readily invoke a clustering of tropes to represent—or, better put, misrepresent—the people encountered along the way as savage, their culture moribund, their group members indolent, while at the same time they inhabit a territory rich in natural resources waiting to be “discovered” and exploited. Still, not every thing about travel writing serves the cause of imperial rapaciousness. Travel books entertain a readership. And they may even have a counterhegemonic dimension, which implicitly undermines imperial ideology. Holland and Huggan argue that travel books can be a “medium of estrangement,” offering critical reassessments of the writers’ own society.10 Style, too, has often been used as a means to characterize travel writing whose quality has something to do with the sense of freedom associated with being away.11 Perhaps that is why for travel writing in particular the putative divide between fiction and nonfiction is anything but clear-cut, and the veracity of accounts is often difficult to substantiate. Even as memoir, travel narratives are not exactly straightforward travelogues. In Bill Buford’s eloquent formulation, “pieces succeed not by virtue of the details they report—exotic as they are—but by the contrivance of their reporting.”12 Still, one would expect that too much artifice would provoke a certain epistemological anxiety among readers. As I will illustrate below, this is not always so. At the same time, for

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nonfiction writers, and especially those with broader literary ambition, the license to interweave reportage and storytelling is undoubtedly one of the attractions of the genre,13 allowing a would-be novelist to test creative talent. In many travel narratives, an array of characters appear whose presence is possible largely through the author’s movement within a heterotopic space, whether on foot or by vehicle. Michel Foucault writes that “in civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”14 He was thinking lyrically about the importance of transportation in early modern economic expansion and its role in linking disparate worlds and peoples. But the same could be said for any extended journey, whether on foot, by bus, on a train, or aboard a boat, heading toward or within a strange and sometimes challenging environment. The usefulness of linking Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and travel is that it highlights the vast array of types, ethnic groups, and social classes the heroes/ authors encounter on the journey. The road for travelers is a contact zone, a place where, according to Mary Louise Pratt, “disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.”15 But subordination may take a different form on the road than off. Travel creates a liminal space, engendering intimate encounters and fostering egalitarian, or seemingly egalitarian, relationships of social segments other wise linked hierarchically. Indeed, the social separation between the segments is reinforced culturally by a sense of disgust on the part of the superordinate “civilized” segment toward an inferior group that it experiences as savage in regard to personal hygiene, dress, sexual mores, and cuisine. Still, on the road, intense bonds of friendship and love may occur, albeit transitory. They dissipate because to integrate the savage and the civilized would transgress cultural boundaries that are integral to the social order of colonial and neocolonial societies. Travel narratives almost immediately clue readers to the fact that they are heading to a place unknown. They do so by foregrounding the infrastructure of travel. This includes the use of means of transportation as narrative settings and the same is true for hotels, restaurants, the trials and tribulations of border crossings, displays of linguistic competence (or lack thereof and the reliance on translators and guides), and the attempts to acquire documents to facilitate freedom of movement. Also, given the exotic nature of many of these journeys, the wonders encountered and the question of credibility of the accounts, writers implicitly address the problem of corroboration by foregrounding the mechanics of documentation—making reference to journal keeping and taking photographs (especially of themselves within the landscape or next to individuals and places mentioned in the account). The absence of both within the text

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that I am about to discuss and the substitution of “selfies” by commercial or generic postcards of the people and places visited suggest something not entirely credible about this fascinating and little known travel narrative. Moreover, inserting commercially produced postcards in place of snapshots does little to enhance the credibility of the narrative, especially if there’s no indication of where or how the cards were acquired or why a key figure in the text would be featured in a postcard—and there is no proof of that identity other than the author’s assertion.

A Powerful Talent Through much of the twentieth century travel writing regularly appeared in major Yiddish newspapers. This largely middle-brow literature was a second career for novelists and journalists. The work of two—Peretz Hirschein (1880– 1948) and Hayyim Shoshkes (1891–1964)—stand out. Both were peripatetic and circled much of the globe—Shoshkes three times largely by airplane, a  mode of transportation that figured in a number of his signature pieces. Hirschbein took much longer journeys than did Shoshkes, often over the course of years and by boat. He produced books on Africa, India, the United States, Israel, and elsewhere. Shoshkes wrote on Africa, India, Latin America, the Arab world, the Soviet Union, and, throughout his career, Poland. Although Hirschbein was a playwright, he never pushed the generic boundaries of travel writing beyond nonfiction. Shoshkes seemed equally constrained by the conventions of journalism. He regularly published selfies with local dignitaries he encountered, perhaps, to dispel any doubt that he had gone where he said he had gone and met with whomever he said he had met. And these were not ordinary people but ranged from African presidents and Middle East potentates to exiled Polish grandees sometimes impoverished by the social transformation of their homeland after World War II. But at least one Yiddish travel writer kept the boundary between fiction and nonfiction in his writings fluid. Marcos, or Mordecai, Paryszewki was born in 1891  in Marseille to émigré Polish Jewish parents who returned to Khotomov (near Warsaw) in 1895 in order to give their children a religious education. Paryszewski began his literary career in 1907 in Warsaw writing in Polish. In 1910, he made his way to Buenos Aires, eventually producing articles, essays, and stories for various Argentinean Yiddish newspapers and journals. He also wrote for Spanish publications and toward the end of his life produced work primarily in that language.16 He published five books, the first three of which relate to travel: Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte in 1944,17 the two-volume Dzshungls un shtet (Jungles and Cities) in 1951,18 and Fun der Vaysl bizn La

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Plata-teykh (From the Vistula to La Plata) in 1970,19 the year of his death. A sixth book, a novel, is mentioned in the end pages of this latter work but may never have appeared. Paryszewski’s Yiddish oeuvre is not nearly as extensive as that of Hirschbein or Shoshkes and his writings were limited to South and Central America. His major work, Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte, though almost unknown today, it did have a flutter of recognition when it first appeared in 1944 and was positively reviewed within the world Yiddish press. But its absence from most major libraries suggests that the book had a limited number of readers.20 And we do have other data to confirm this. Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote an extensive and very favorable review of the book in New York’s Forverts,21 long the world’s leading Yiddish daily. But, when the same author visited South America fourteen years later and wrote about Argentinean Yiddish writers, Singer heaped considerable praise on Paryszewski, singling him out as a “powerful talent” while lamenting the fact that his work was largely unknown. Characteristic of how Singer promoted his own career, he believed that a readership for Paryszewski could only be generated if his work were to be translated.22 Clearly, by 1958, the future Nobel laureate held no illusions about the sustainability of Yiddish book publication. Moreover, in the postwar era, Yiddish writing often served the purpose of memorialization of, and lamentation for, a destroyed yidishland. At first glance, Paryszewski was exploring topographies too remote to be of much interest to a larger Yiddish readership. Still, as will be clear later in this essay, Paryszewski had a good grasp of the sentiments of that readership. Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte has a strong and recurring Jewish interface and a striking subtextual one with the project of lamentation and memorialization already underway among midcentury Yiddish writers when the book appeared. Nevertheless, given the enormity of that project, I suspect that if readers were looking for any diversion, it was not for parallels to their own catastrophe, but rather for the possibility of Jewish recovery, renewal, and discovery. The first would shortly send a plethora of journalists back to the Old Country, the second would keep them interested in the Zionist project while skeptical about the prospects for Jewish revival in Europe, the third would seek out, if not quite unknown, then certainly almost forgotten, Jewish communities in the far corners of the globe. Indeed, there is some of the latter in Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte.

Places and People In some way, the very term “travel narrative” is misleading because these, like most travel accounts are as much about place as they are about journeys. Indeed, Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte’s narrative is heavily weighted toward topography;

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the author’s primary observations concern Peru’s natural and human-made landscapes, its treacherous mountainous roads, imposing volcanoes and towns and cities that carry us through Peru’s inquisitorial,23 colonial,24 and neocolonial histories, and then, present day realities. People, too, figure in this landscape. The other leitmotif that runs through the narrative—and this one speaks to the author’s political consciousness—is the descriptions of the indigenous  peoples, their way of life, and their relations with the dominant class of European-descended settlers and the representatives of international corporations that exploit the country’s natural resources and indigenous labor force. There is a final leitmotif that runs through the book: the presence of Jews in the unlikeliest of locations.25 This uncanny and frequent appearance of individual Jews—even more so than language—is what distinguishes certain travel books as a genre intended for a Jewish readership. For them, even the most remote and exotic locations can be readily made less so through the unexpected presence of familiar Old World Jewish types. So much is this the case, that when there are no Jews living in a location, Jewish authors sometimes resort to panchronism, invoking Jews and Jewish communities long since dead or extinct but once having some significance within the local landscape. Or writers might “see” physiognomic and presumed cultural traces of presumably extinct Jews among the local non-Jewish population. I am thinking here of Sholem Asch’s travel narrative to Spain, Mayn rayze iber Shpanyen, where he is convinced because of appearance and bearing that the man who owns a tobacco shop is a Jew if only by ancestry.26 A short discussion with the man dispels that illusion. Given the somewhat comical and always surprising if not shocking nature of such appearances—especially the “fish out of water” Old World types a Jewish itinerant might encounter, I choose to call this the Jack-in-the-box theory of Jewish travel narratives. Unique to Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte is the fact that the Jews Paryszewski meets, both living and, as in the case of the conversos, dead, are not what one would call a credit to their race.27 Indeed, in this book and elsewhere Paryszewski’s introduction of, along with unsavory Jewish types, prurient, scatological, and transgressive scenes and characters adds a certain scandalous subtext to his narratives—things perhaps acceptable to a midcentury Yiddish readership only by virtue of their remoteness. This is one explanation I can think of as to why no reviewer raised an eyebrow about the persistently sordid nature of the Jews within the text. And, perhaps, there is another reason. The book’s hero is Paryszewski. He portrays himself as, if not quite a paragon of virtue, then certainly admirable for his many attributes (at least by his own description). As I will indicate later, it is his exemplarity both for his bravery and his trustworthiness that earns him the respect of an Inca high priest or prophet, who came to consider him a proxy member of his tribe.

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Though the book reads as if it were the account of a single journey, it is apparently based on several trips Paryszewski made to Bolivia and Peru in the early 1920s, some twenty years before the book was published. The author tells us that having read and heard about the surviving tribes of the old Indian civilizations—the Tiahanaker in Bolivia and the Incas, Nazkam, and Chimus in Peru—he eagerly accepted a proposal by a business establishment to act as its agent to spread a new cotton stitching technique among Peruvians. Paryszewski is fluent in many languages, including Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Polish, and Quechua—all of which make their way into his polyphonous text. His knowledge of Quechua enabled him to journey without need of a guide and was, along with his previously mentioned interest in native peoples, one of the reasons he was selected to represent the import company, and the principal reason the author himself was so eager to travel to out-of-the-way regions of Peru.

Getting There The following section of Paryszewski’s book serves as a foreshadowing of the nature of the journey ahead. This will not be an ordinary travel narrative with descriptions of remarkable landscapes and awe-inspiring cityscapes—a sort of wish-you-were-here account to a readership fantasizing about going where they cannot go or planning the next vacation. Paryszewski is “heading for the hills” and what he experiences before he gets there is not the civilized, as the book’s title suggests, but the savagery of a neocolonial society. Paryszewski travels first to Bolivia where an illness keeps him out of commission for some time. When he is finally well enough to recover his mobility, he tours La Paz, looking (as every Jewish traveler is wont to do on his or her foreign excursions) for Jews. What is peculiar about this narrative is less their seeming ubiquity than how consistently unsavory they seem to be. He finds about nine kventenikes (peddlers) from Bessarabia, three Indianized store owners, and a wealthy German and other Jews who he says are difficult to distinguish from the Indians. At first the Bessarabians, wary of the virulence of Jew hatred at that time in La Paz, would not reveal their Jewish background. Local lore had it that the city was riddled with Jews. Paryszewski remarks that the real foreign presence in trade and among the military top brass are Germans who had fled their country post–World War I, as well as refugees from other areas of Central Europe then in turmoil. Further on he comes across two Germans and a Spaniard beating an Indian. This is a repeated scene within the narrative—the brutalization or exploitation of indigenes by people of Euro-American extraction. Repeated, too, is Paryszewski’s distinguishing himself from other European visitors through compassion

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and sometimes intervention, and from fellow Jews by his lack of corruption either of a pecuniary or lascivious nature. The assailants flee when other Indians suddenly appear. The beaten man was left with a swollen head where he had been hit with a stone. Paryszewski takes the victim inside the man’s house and places a wet cloth with coarse salt on the wound. The next morning the man comes to the author’s hotel with his nephew, a priest. He brings with him a fine vicuña hide as a present, and tells his rescuer, perhaps with reference to the healing properties of salt within the Bible, that “only a true Catholic could be so power ful to use just a bit of salt and water to heal a badly battered head, leaving almost no sign of the wounds.” The Indian priest repeats the comment and then curses all Jews and Protestants as Antichrists who are harming Bolivia’s God-fearing civilization. Paryszewski responds by invoking the name of Bilem—only here, the reverse of the biblical prophet, since the man who had come to bless curses. Paryszewski reveals his Jewish identity and the Indians are incredulous. The author then explains to his readers that anti-Jewish beliefs are not endemic to the native population, but they are guileless and easily influenced. Here as elsewhere in the text Europeans are an affliction—both to indigenes and to Jews. The anecdote suggests the possibility of a native/Jewish conciliation through the obvious misalliance of Jews and Europeans. Still, the alliance cannot happen without an abandonment of the religion forced upon the indigenous population and reclaiming their ancestral culture. In a sense, this is the narrative’s trajectory as Paryszewski travels up into the highlands and establishes contact with more and more indigenous people. But, first let’s get back to the scandalous Jews.

Kol Nidre The chapter entitled, with ironic intent, “A frumer Yid” (A Pious Man) begins with Paryszewski in Kaliao, standing on the Malekon. A large, pure-bred German shepherd springs from a boat after its owner throws a ball for it to fetch. Suddenly a shark emerges and tears the dog to pieces. Horrified, Paryszewski reacts with a Yiddish exclamation of shock. Hearing the outcry, a man approaches with a coarse, chubby, red neck, a fat cigar in his mouth, a thick gold chain that dangles from one vest pocket to the other, and signet rings on pudgy fingers with polished nails. He greets Paryszewski, asking if he knows that Yom Kippur begins this evening, and invites Paryszewski to attend the prayer ser vice at his home. That evening Paryszewski enters a dwelling with eighteen men and six times that number of women—only about ten of whom are much older than

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fifteen or sixteen. The women are finely dressed and wear expensive jewelry, the men have on prayer shawls and some even wear white kitln (shroud-like garments worn by the more observant during the High Holidays). All sway as they pray and some fervently in the manner of Polish Hasidim. The women weep, wail, and bite their hands to the point of drawing blood, or tear off and throw their jewelry toward the front of the room. Whatever the emotional weight of a Yom Kippur ser vice for those who garner the wages of sin, for Paryszewski it was nothing more than a chance for self-display. The congregation lacks a baltekiye (someone who sounds the shofar, or ram’s horn, a spectacular part of the High Holiday ser vice), so Paryszewski steps in and, as he tells us, does it better than a professional, receiving an ovation from the worshippers. The episode grounds the narrative in one of the most iconic elements of Latin American Jewry, the white slave trade. Indeed, Paryszewski concludes the chapter by revealing the name of his host as none other than the notorious Rubin Caro. I assume that the chapter would not have been particularly shocking to a Buenos Aires readership, given the city’s past connection with prostitution. But by the time of the book’s publication pimps and prostitutes were no longer that visible in Jewish cultural spaces, so the narrative serves to highlight the continued presence of unsavory Jewish characters on the periphery, their temporal distance from the center, and, at this point in time, their exoticism. And it is a peculiar mixture of eroticism and disgust. Paryszewski ends the narrative relating that he hears several of the matrons discussing his origins and his physique, commenting on their desire to have him as a son-in-law. Before leaving, a woman with hair dyed red and moles on her face invites him for lunch; she has six daughters to marry off and each hands him a carte de visite.

Indians: A Love Story The next forty pages of Tsvishn vilde un tzivilizirte have Paryszewski continuing on his travels without much evidence of a work routine. He visits various sites and gains firsthand knowledge of the economy, the subservient place of the indigenous population, and its brutal exploitation by foreign corporations and their local Euro-American representatives. Here Paryszewski presents himself as a documenter of social injustice, and the text has a certain tenor of exposé, verging on the political. And it continues to do so, even as the story emerges that radically transforms the travel narrative into an erotic tale. A little more than a third of the way through the volume (p. 101), the narrative abruptly shifts in two different directions, each of which tests our sense of credulity. On one hand, we have the pervasive sense of the marvelous, an underlying

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trope of the travel narrative; on the other, a second major character enters the picture, making the book not just a travel narrative but one of a par ticular subgenre, which Mary Louise Pratt refers to as the sentimental. Sentimental plots typically include rescue of the European by natives and are safely transgressive since the sexual alliances are temporary, often with natives of mixed origin. Moreover, the hero is eventually reintegrated into the home society without his or her native rescuer, who conveniently dies an early death.28 As we shall see, all this will be the case here. Appropriately enough, the chapter that opens this new twist in the narrative is titled, using the name of the object of desire, “Sorohalpa.” Paryszewski was heading to a monastery in Okopa, some six kilometers from the town of Matahuasi, a train station between Khaukha and Huankaya. Unable to get a car, or even a horse or donkey, he sets out on foot. The author is enchanted by the botanical splendor and the physical landscape—eucalyptus, laurel, and fruit trees, high mountains with steep cliffs and strange, geometric peaks. In the distant past, the area was a refuge for persecuted Indians, who built houses and worked the land with a primitive digging stick. Paryszewski suddenly spots a man sitting on a hoe-like tool and calls to him in Quechua “Aligliatshi sumak tataya!” and then Yiddish, “Gut morgn tatele” (Good morning, my dear little man!). The fellow invites him to approach, but Paryszewski does so gingerly. They shake hands (our narrator using his left since the right hand is in his pocket clutching a Browning), and Paryszewski accepts an invitation to the man’s home, following as they walk along a steep and treacherous path that hugs the side of a mountain. The Quechua-speaking Indian is in his thirties and calls himself Huamahohopa. Paryszewski notes the speed with which he can walk along a path where one false step can lead to death. They reach the man’s home and the only member of the household present is Sorohalpa, a young woman of about fifteen with bronzed white skin. Dressed in rags, she appears not to have washed in a long time. Her unkempt, curly, golden hair is tied with dozens of snakeskin bows. Paryszewski converses with her in Quechua and later Huamahohopa relates the family background of his niece. Sorohalpa’s mother was a young German worker who married an Indian labor leader. Sorohalpa witnessed her parents, along with many other protesters, cut down by a crony of the dictator Legia at a mass rally. Paryszewski and Sorohalpa strike up a friendship, as the following chapter begins with her accompanying him partway uphill as he heads toward Okopa. Along the way, he is once more struck by the natural wonders—this time, the numerous waterfalls. He also takes note of the many canals and dams built generations ago by Indians. The observation is hardly without significance.

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Paryszewski is deeply impressed by the patrimony of material culture, the Indians’ knowledge of the land, and their harnessing rather than plundering of the natural resources. Moreover, as Paryszewski will see shortly, for Europeans, including the clergy, indigenous people are like natural resources. The men can be exploited as cheap labor. The young women can be plundered for the satisfaction of sexual needs. Paryszewski does not look kindly on any of this. Indeed, were his intentions different, one could read the text as an attempt at muckraking reportage intended to expose the doings of Euro-American corporations and Catholic monks. Although that was certainly Paryszewski’s stance, the social conscience apparent in the narrative is secondary to the text’s primary intent as a work of entertainment, a travel narrative.

A Life of Corruption At Okopa, Paryszewski gives a lecture on stitching at the government school. Given the decrepit condition of the building, he opts to hold the class outside. During the talk, several barefoot monks arrive to accuse him of preaching Protestantism. When Paryszewski presents them with papers issued by the ministry of education, the monks relent and invite him to speak the following day at the monastery’s craft school. After they have left, Paryszewski finds dinner and lodging with the director of the school. The woman lives with her widowed Irish mother and two other teachers. The primitive dwelling, decorated with holy pictures, reminds him of a peasant’s hut in Wolyn. During the night, the teachers bombard him with stories about the monks and their illicit relations with the more developed Indian girls. Once the mother and the Indian maid are sound asleep, and one of the teachers has checked to make sure that no one is in the courtyard, they move the beds together for more intimate communication. At seven o’clock in the morning, a monk arrives to escort Paryszewski to the monastery. The clergyman’s comment about marks on Paryszewski’s neck makes it clear that the night’s communication was intimate, indeed. Once at the monastery, Paryszewski is told to wait while his escort disappears. The author uses the time to observe the lavish Persian and Chinese carpets, antiques, and paintings (of the popes, apostles, Jesus, Mary, and the dictator Legia) that adorn the great room. Little by little, some seventy-five friars enter the room, each of a different race or national background and wearing a distinctive dress. After an hour and a half, the monks line up in rows of three. Apparently, the prior will arrive shortly. When he appears, Paryszewski senses himself being observed by two beady eyes that remind him of a snake’s gaze when fixed upon

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its prey. Eventually the man addresses the gathered clergymen in French, explaining that the visitor is not Protestant but a Jew just trying to earn some money. He then turns to Paryszewski and speaks to him in Hebrew so that the others will not understand their conversation. Paryszewski later learns that the prior is from Grodno, where he abandoned his wife and children to run away with a group of German Jesuit missionaries. This information was given to him by a bigamous monk who had to flee Sweden and now hides out here in the monastery. The Jewish priest refuses to reveal his name, or to speak to Paryszewski in Yiddish (or even German) for fear of revealing his place of origin. Instead, he would speak in Hebrew, Russian, Polish, French, Latin, Spanish, and English. The prior reveals his deep feelings for Jews, attributing it to the gift of monotheism as well as the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus, but he claims to dislike speaking Yiddish because it reminds him of a past tragedy. Later, in a private room, he opens up to Paryszewski, revealing his Yiddish name and explaining that he became a monk because of some sort of family drama. Paryszewski visits the ateliers of the monastery, noting the paltry lunch the children receive and the primitive clay pots in which it is served. He is then escorted to a veritable feast for the monks presented on fine dishes and on sturdy wooden tables covered in tablecloths. The food itself is strangely familiar— horseradish and chicken soup, a novelty introduced by the prior. As they eat, Paryszewski observes the diverse nationalities of the monks, many of whom are not entirely friendly toward one another. The monks drink; some begin to curse, while others talk about their amorous adventures with the local Indians. Throughout, the prior remains silent and pensive until he laments, in Hebrew, the low caliber of the monks. He then informs Paryszewski that he remains a Jew and will be so until his dying day. After the meal, the prior takes Paryszewski’s hand and pleads with him to stay, if only for a short time. He assures Paryszewski that he will want for nothing. The prior confesses that, although he is the leader of this group, he still longs for his own kind. When pleading does not work, he tries another tact and begins to curse Jews as a stiff-necked people. Finally, at the very door of the monastery he tries one more approach: the monks do very well financially, he says; since Paryszewski is a Jew, and Jews like money, he should stay. And because he is young, with the help of the Holy Virgin he will have a virgin, as well! As noted earlier, Paryszewski’s Jews are hardly paragons of virtue and the above vignette is a case in point. But they are more sympathetic than the Europeans in the account in at least one respect—what they lack in morals they make up for in cleverness. In this vignette, there is nothing at all redeeming

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about the assembly of monks and as we shall see shortly, they are even more roguish outside than inside the monastery.

Danger, Rescue, and Seduction The prior’s offer to take care of all of Paryszewski’s physical and material needs, to lure him into the life of corruption, is something amenable to a villain rather than a hero. And it serves, therefore, as a counterpoint to the impending marriage between Paryszewski and Sorohalpa—a union that by contrast to those the monks engage in is based entirely on mutual desire and consent. Indeed, as libidinous a figure as Paryszewski is in his amorous activities, he is always the one pursued. Paryszewski’s romance with Sorohalpa comes about when the author is rescued by the maiden and the union accords with the customs of her people. She earned him by saving his life. On the return trip to Concepción, just below Huamahohopa’s house on the mountain, there suddenly appears a large man on horseback wearing a skimpy black mask whom Paryszewski recognizes as an Arab monk from the monastery he had just left. Upon spotting Paryszewski, the monk tries to kill him, thinking that the victim-to-be was Protestant. The two men engage in a gun fight. Just as Paryszewski runs out of ammunition, Sorohalpa appears on a hill above the combatants and lets out a frightful cry that brings out the other members of her family. A hail of stones drives the brigand off. Huamahohopo remarks that Paryszewski has proven that he is no coward and declares the author his elder brother, vowing to accompany him wherever he requests and to defend him tooth and nail should his dagger be unavailable. Sorohalpa also declares her intention to accompany him, noting that he is a gringo with blond hair and blue eyes, like her own mother. This comment suggests something of a racial identification on her part, that her preference is less the indigene father than the European mother. But it also underlines the partial Europeanness of Sorohalpa. Interlaced with both of their preference is an implicit binary of disgust and eroticism. The indigene as sexual object provokes a certain degree of disgust for a Euro-American, whereas a European is a less transgressive object of desire. Interestingly, Sorohalpa’s observing of the European in Paryszewski—blond hair and blue eyes—deracializes him as well, making him less of a savage Jew. Sorohalpa then mentions her intention to protect the hero, reminding the author that she “had saved him from certain death.” Paryszewski attributed great significance to this reminder: “Like a bolt the thought raced through my mind that the lass had in mind a custom, wellhonored by the Indians, that when one is saved from death by a young woman, one belongs to her and the two must be married, and I stood helpless as if I had

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suddenly lost all my strength.” Acting almost like a man heading to his own funeral, Paryszewski accompanies them wearily along the dangerous path, resting repeatedly on stones and fallen trees. Huamahopopa sends Sorohalpa ahead to retrieve a mule to carry Paryszewski back to their home. Sorohalpa, walking beside the mule, says, “You know what, Mr. Gringo? Tonight you’ll eat with me from the same pot, from a clay pot that I made myself, and you’ll sleep on the same fur as me, next to me, because I saved you from certain death!” Paryszewski is taken aback by her straightforwardness and asks her to repeat what she has said. Sorahalpa reiterates that she intends to sleep with him tonight, reminding the author of the law according to which he belongs to her. “But I have a wife and children!” Paryszewski insists. Sorohalpa scoffs, “She’s somewhere in Argentina, very far from you and obviously doesn’t love you, because if she did she would not let you be alone in all this danger.” The story now continues on two contradictory tracks. One is a highly charged erotic one. Paryszewski notices beads of dirty sweat on her brow but also her fine, well-developed breasts. He asks her why she keeps herself so dirty, pointing to the now largely uncovered breasts. Sorohalpa replies that it is not dirt he sees but spots and skin coloring, then exposes her breasts and places them in his hands for closer inspection. A brief discussion about her parents’ bathing rituals and the unavailability of soap follows, and Paryszewski pulls out some cleansing material from his valise. Sorohalpa grabs them, strips, and jumps into a nearby stream. Washed, she presents herself to her betrothed and repeats the cleaning in order to attain Paryszewski’s complete satisfaction. Sorohalpa is a “halfie.” And I assume that the description of her mottled skin is intended as an indication of a hybrid racial mixture, and that the inherited Europeanness from her mother has not been entirely subsumed by dark-skinned native genes. The second track, already apparent in Sorohalpa’s presumed dirtiness, is disgust. We will see more of this elsewhere in the text, but it presents itself boldly in the scenes surrounding the betrothal. Maria, the grandmother, now considers Paryszewski family and wants to kiss him. But she attempts to do so just after eating the lice she has been plucking from her body, and Paryszewski understandably recoils. At the wedding feast, the groom is presented with tongue, brains, eyes, and kidneys of the llama. Unwilling to eat the delicacies he gives them to the bride. The section finishes with a brief narrative that intermingles empathy, disgust, and eroticism. Sorohalpa sits trying to warm herself in the cold Andean air by snuggling up to Paryszewski. Sorohalpa’s eyes now flow with tears and she trembles from cold and sleepiness. Her crying awakes Maria, who had fallen into a drunken stupor and who now takes the couple by the arm

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and pushes them into bed. It is too dark to tell who else is in the room, but, from the snoring, Paryszewski guesses about eighteen other people besides him, Sorohalpa, and Maria. The two women undress him and the couple lay covered in warm vicuña hides. Before falling asleep, the grandmother pollutes the room with the odor of an inebriate’s vomit. “At last she fell asleep. And so, too, Sorohalpa, after she had wrapped herself around me and literally ripped pieces from my body, and fell asleep warm and content.” Savage love (Sorohalpa), satisfied by the savage (libidinal) Jew. Nine days after the wedding, Paryszewski continues on his journey, accompanied by Huamahohopa. Over the next few months Paryszewski travels to various other towns. Returning one evening to his primitive hotel, which he shares with three Romanian Jews scamming local women, he finds Sorohalpa. Paryszewski is not at all unhappy to meet up with his young bride who now dresses like a European, is clean, and is sufficiently modest to insist upon rearranging the furniture for the sake of greater privacy in a hotel room whose walls are too low to offer any. I come back to the formulation I presented at the beginning of the essay— the road as a contact zone. The longer Paryszewski is on it, the more he is drawn into a world utterly different from the Euro-American one of Buenos Aires. But, the road also serves to complete Sorohalpa’s transition from savage or “halfie” into a civilized matron. She now wears appropriate garb and exhibits the kind of modesty one would expect from a well-bred Euro-American woman. And it also induces the transformation of Paryszewski into a truly caring husband.

Connubial Bliss In Paryszewski’s next chapter, he and Sorohalpa are in a bus heading through the mountains. The bus halts at a general store and restaurant run by a Chinese man and his Indian wife. The setting becomes another means of staging Sorohalpa’s transformation from primitive to civilized. It also suggests another category in the racial hierarchy of neocolonial Peru, but one that is clearly non-European as evidenced by the matter of hygiene: The inn has no demarcation between human and animal space; dogs, cats, and pigs freely roam about inside. The Indian woman stirs a pot in which she is cooking duck in tomato sauce. Each time she gives someone food she then wipes her fingers with a filthy rag or lets a dog lick them clean. Since she serves with her hands, both Paryszewski and Sorohalpa are repelled, and Sorohalpa insists that the husband serve them. The two order roasted duck, and Sorohalpa proceeds to devour both her own portion and Paryszewski’s, along with a half dozen eggs and hot peppers, which

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she and all the locals at the table have no trouble consuming despite their spiciness. Sorohalpa’s appetite seems to be Paraszewski’s coded way of indicating that she is with child. The group has to wait a good two hours until the bus will be ready to go, so the couple saunters downhill some one hundred meters into a river valley teaming with extraordinary flora and fauna. The contrast with the restaurant is particularly striking: here is pristine nature, Peru in all of its glory, unsullied by human presence. The description is Paryszewski at his best. He presents us with a pastoral narrative, using a rich Yiddish lexicon of plants and animals. The narrative also helps Paryszewski illustrate Sorohalpa’s uncanny mastery of local knowledge and the inefficacy of brute (European) force without it. After guiding the hero away from deadly flora and venomous fauna, she assures Paryszewski that “there are no more vipers here. My grandmother taught me how to detect snakes, scorpions, and condors.” The last of these foreshadows the narrative’s climax with the tragic death of its heroine. In the meantime, Paryszewski relates more of Sorohalpa’s ability to foresee natural occurrences. Back in the vehicle she is preoccupied with a premonition of an imminent landslide but unable to explain to Paryszewski how she knows what is about to happen. The anticipated natural disaster occurs and buries alive some of the vehicle’s occupants. Sorohalpa and Paryszewski are among those spared. Local Indians quickly appear to dig the passengers out, and they provide mule transportation to take the hero and heroine away to safer ground. If the section serves any purpose beyond a pastoral interlude and a bit of foreshadowing, it offers an opportunity to shift from an erotic trope to one of magic realism. Now, the hero is passive witness to another world and without any agency. His wife saves him once again from certain death—though this time from the eruptions of nature rather than a murderous brigand. Once again it is Indians who save him. It is as if a portal has closed and he is entirely in their world now.

The Prophet Revealed In the next chapter the couple is staying at a hotel in the historic city of Ayakutsho. Sorohalpa has taken ill. Paryszewski and Huamahohopa (who had mysteriously appeared just after the landslide and prevented the author from falling into an abyss) tend to Sorohalpa during her gradual recovery. At his niece’s urging, Huamahohopa reveals that he is a descendant of Inca nobility and priesthood, the latter of which he insists is quite distinct from today’s Catholic priests and landowners. Taking the pose of a prophet, the man reveals the secret history of the Incas. The story contrasts the justice and equity of the past with the injustice and robbery inflicted on the Incas by the Spaniards. When Huamaho-

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hopa concludes his soliloquy, Paryszewski decides that he must leave. As much as he loves Sorohalpa, he cannot return to his wife and children in Buenos Aires with her in tow. At the same time, Paryszewski feels “a powerful ambition . . . to visit and research all Indian communities throughout America.” However, Sorohalpa and her uncle keep him under scrutiny, and the opportunity to leave eludes him. “So I accepted my fate and decided to make my Indian wife an assistant in my work and Huamahohopa my partner. I began to teach them my system of embroidery. The instruction had a stunning result” (227). What I find so intriguing about this section is how it illustrates Paryszewski’s complete transformation. No longer the explorer and the penetrator of the exotic, he now feels captive to this world. At the same time, he seems to have undergone a certain self-transformation, evolving from an agent of a EuroAmerican textile corporation, an exploiter in a sense of indigenous labor, into a loyal husband and scientist now interested in knowledge for its own sake.

A Primeval Landscape Later in the same chapter, Paryszewski relaxes with a bottle of pisco on the porch of the hotel in the company of a Chinese professor of Christianity, a German Junker, and an Italian. A nearby volcano suddenly emits gases into the air and the rumble frightens the dogs as well as some of the other guests. The Junker, Von Birnbaum, remains calm and proposes a hike to the volcano’s summit. Germans are often the butt of Paryszewski’s anecdotes. They represent the epitome of the European as adventurer/exploiter, and Von Birnbaum will prove to be no exception. To his credit, however, Paryszewski is no essentialist. Perhaps there is something about the liminal space he has entered, the contact zone, that generates characters with shifting identities. Sorohalpa’s mother was an innocent German working girl married to an Indian labor leader. The Chinese hotel guest is a student of Christianity—an inversion, in a sense, of a Western Orientalist. And Von Birnbaum will shortly reveal his own complex “racial” heritage. A few days later the expedition sets out equipped with food, gear, and weapons. Von Birnbaum relates that the latter are not for the Indians who will simply guide the group and carry the equipment. Around the time the group takes its first rest stop, Sorohalpa reveals to Paryszewski that she senses herself in terrible danger and would like to head back. Given what we already know of her prescience, it should be clear that the comment is anything but inconsequential. The group finds a homestead to spend the night, and not surprisingly, Paryszewski manages to attract as sleeping partners two sisters from the household. The next day, a chance encounter with a buck pursued by a puma and

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Von Birnbaum’s marksmanship gives the travelers an opportunity to feast on roasted venison. The feast puts them all—including Sorohalpa—in good spirits. Felipe il Picolo sings a few Neapolitan melodies and engages in conversation with Von Birnbaum about his beloved Duce. The latter counters with his positive feelings for Hitler and his belief in German superiority despite the fact that his grandfather was an observant Polish Jew and his mother an Arab. Talk about racial fluidity! Having skinned the animals, Sorohalpa heads to a stream to wash the blood from her hands and face. After fifteen minutes, Paryszewski goes to look for her. He sees his Indian wife frolicking in the stream completely naked. Admiring her body and realizing his deep love for her, he is intent upon preventing the hotblooded Picolo from chancing upon her and heads back to the group. When he looks for her again she is dressed save for shoes and socks and with her gun still on the ground. Paryszewski hears sounds like thunder and believes it to be the volcano threatening to erupt. Sorohalpa laughs, explaining it to be the sounds of young stags being hunted by condors just as unarmed Indians are hunted by civilized masters. Paryszewski returns to the group again, but just as he reaches them he hears a cry from above: “Save me! Hurry. Condors have got me.” The three European men grab their weapons and see Sorohalpa about twenty meters in the sky, held by an enormous condor surrounded by eight others. The giant bird tries to make a getaway, but Sorohalpa is too heavy. The men come across Sorohalpa’s rifle and next to it they find a dead snake. Apparently, the bird had swooped down to grab Sorohalpa while her attention was focused on the viper. Despite the traces of blood, her screams indicate that Sorohalpa is alive and that the bird will soon have to let go of her. The hot-blooded Picolo, however, determined to demonstrate his marksmanship, retrieves his gun. The other men warn him that the buckshot will hit Sorohalpa as well as the bird, and she would be injured falling from such a height. Il Picolo tries nonetheless, but Huamahohopa pushes the rifle away and by sheer luck the shot manages to down four of the other birds. By now Sorohalpa is no more than four meters from the ground. Sorohalpa manages to unsheath her dagger, and with her hand high above her head, she attempts to cut the bird’s talons. Meanwhile, Huamahohopa is able to loop a rope over her head and shoulders and is about to pull her toward the ground when Il Picolo fires once again. Sorohalpa falls to the ground and the birds fly away. Sorohalpa’s skull had been shattered by Il Picolo’s second shot. The giant bird, too, had been hit in the stomach and falls to earth dead. The men measure its wingspan as three meters and sixty centimeters. Huamahohopa tends to Sorohalpa’s body, raising it onto his shoulders. Seeing the tears in Paryszewski’s eyes, Huamahohopa comforts him by telling him that he bears him no grudge for the death. To the contrary, she belongs to him

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just as she did in life and he will come with Huamahohopa to a place of burial in which no European has ever set foot. Von Birnbaum joins them, and the men and the corpse travel some five kilometers to a conical cliff of red granite inside of which is a cave chiseled out of rock thousands of years ago by a people who predate the Incas. After the entombment the book concludes with Paryszewski’s descent from the mountains and his witnessing at dusk a funeral in an Indian village. A graphic representation, undoubtedly, of a people on the wane. Paryszewski’s descent from the highlands ends the narrative. Nor is there any hint of a continuing relationship with Huamahohopa. Paryszewski’s departure from the road is an abandonment of the contact zone, an exit as if through a portal that takes the traveler from one world into another. But for the romance between Paryszewski and Sorohalpa, the published text is a kind of entombment, a replacement of the lived reality of a Euro-American with an indigene—a romance infinitely less transgressive on the printed page than it would have been had he brought Sorohalpa back to Buenos Aires.

Conclusion For any discerning reader today, Paryszewski’s book operates on too many tropic planes to be very convincing—and this is certainly so about a third of the way into the text. What I would like to propose is that the problem of credibility manifests itself by the way in which the book’s narrative progresses. And it does so through four principal planes that can be charted in ascending order progressively undermining the text’s authority as an actual journey. At the bottom plane, the sort of substructure of the narrative upon which rests its claim to being a travel account is the ethnographic—the rather flat factual description of Indians, Jews, and other aspects of Peruvian society, topography, flora, and fauna. Although the description includes Paryszewski’s comments including judgments about what he sees, it is largely devoid of story. To the issue of veracity, I would simply qualify all of it as probable (whether based on his own experience or cribbed from other travel accounts). The second level is the sympathetic narrative including Paryszewski’s love affair with Sorohalpa, and the other erotic components of the book such as the encounter with the Jewish brothel, his night of pleasure with the teachers before visiting the monastery, the prior’s seemingly homosexual advances, and the sisters in the jungle homestead (Paryszewski as irresistible also appears in Dzhungls un shtet). All of these could be considered as possible, though one added to the other increasingly less so. At the same time, they constitute a sort of bread and butter of the travel book, providing readers a chance to share vicariously in what Fussell refers to as “the thrill of quasi-felonious escape,”29

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especially since the ethnographic component would probably stimulate little resonance for most Yiddish readers, except, of course, for the periodic entry of mostly Old World Jewish types. The third level is adventure story and includes the discovery of the Litvak prior, the shoot-out with the bandit monk, Paryszewski’s near miraculous rescue by Sorohalpa, the close encounter with death on account of a rock slide, and the encounters with deadly flora and fauna. Here the narrative hovers ambivalently somewhere between the possible and the improbable. The fourth level oscillates between the improbable and the impossible, or, perhaps more generously stated, the wondrous aspect of the narrative, the things, according to Stephen Greenblatt, “that cannot be understood, that can scarcely be believed.” Wonder “calls attention to the problem of credibility and at the same time insists upon the undeniability, the exigency of the experience.”30 In this text it includes the forewarnings of catastrophe by Sorohalpa that save the couple from a rock slide, the sudden and mysterious appearance of Huamahohopa at the very scene of the calamity, Sorohalpa’s capture by a condor, and the mysterious proximity of the hidden ancient tombs where she is laid to rest, not to mention the vault itself, produced by a mysterious people long predating the Incas. At certain points the question of veracity moves the narrative completely beyond the realm of the possible. Condors may have giant wingspans, but averaging less than fifty pounds, they cannot elevate a grown human. And they are not raptors since they feast on carrion rather than live prey, so Sorohalpa would never have been captured by a hungry condor. These upward movements toward greater and greater stretches of imagination should challenge any reader’s sense of credulity, and perhaps because of it, the narrative strives to straddle that boundary, oscillating between the real and the wondrous. Although wonder hints here and there at a magic realism appropriate, perhaps, to an extended journey in remote regions of South America among native peoples, the text remains mostly at the border, ultimately more the adventure story than anything truly transgressive either in terms of structure or politics.31 Perhaps in that sense, the text mediates between two literary regional zones32—the Latin America of magic realism, which this narrative superficially skirts, and the realism of interwar yidishland. Mixed or blurred genre (Buford uses the term “generic androgeny”)33 is a characteristic of travel writing, and in a sense one should be able to forgive Paryszewski for the liberties he takes as a writer. But the problem with this narrative is that Paryszewski’s imagination is stronger than his literary skills. Having grounded the text ambivalently within realism, the author cannot keep the various tropes under control and it becomes unclear whether this is travel account, adventure story, romance, or magic realist tale? The result is what

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ought to be a genre scandal. In this 1944 book, I believe Paryszewski is really a character in search of a novel—or at least some other literary genre outside of nonfiction. This may explain why his last published work is a book of short stories, while his unpublished book is, indeed, a novel. Certainly, to some degree, much the same has been said of a good deal of travel writing, given its heavy reliance, as Casey Blanton argues, on the conventions of fiction, literary language, and personal voice.34 Moreover, the tendency of travel writers toward embellishment and outright dissimulation has been noted as far back as the geographer Strabo.35 Hermes, after all, was the god of sojourners and prevaricators.36 Noting as much, Carl Thompson argues that “the apparent truthfulness and factuality of a travelogue is always to some degree a rhetorical effect,” and like Blanton argues that a “travel text is always a constructed, crafted artefact.”37 Paul Fussell, by contrast, is primarily concerned with the literary nature of travel writing, while arguing in favor of a creative mediation between fact and fiction.38 Indeed, without such fictional embellishments creating suspense and foreshadowing, the travel text would be less an autobiographical narrative than a diary: “Travel romances differ from the more overtly fictional ones not in delivering fewer wonders but in being careful to locate their wonders within an actual, verifiable, and often famous topography.”39 One does feel compelled to ask in Paryszewski’s case whether his account is in any way verifiable? Is this fiction or nonfiction? Did he make all or much of this up? Did he even visit Peru? Is the story of a Jewish prior simply the figment of an overly fertile Jewish imagination, or of fraud, knowing as he would have that a monastery in a remote corner of Peru would never be visited by any of his readers and that the idea of monks dining on traditional Jewish foods would surely amuse many, if not all, of them. As I indicated earlier, the photographs could serve the purpose of verification, but the ones accompanying the text do the very opposite: these are not field snapshots but commercial postcards, and they provide no proof of his having been there. At the same time, given the inaccessibleness of most locations within the account, who could contest its veracity? Few if any of Paryszewski’s readers had ever made a similar journey even to the more accessible urban settlements described in the book. Though many readers may have lived in South America, the worlds he described are almost as remote from them as the interior of Africa would have been for late eighteenth-century Europeans explorers. Nor is it likely that many of the routes he took could be retraced even if someone wanted to. How would one find Sorohalpa’s village? Paryszewski gives us almost no information on its location. Moreover, the text appears some two decades after the travel was supposed to have occurred. Would these locations still be there in the mid-1940s even if they were not a Paryszewski fabrication?

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But what I find so interesting is that in the reviews of Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte at the time the book appeared, of which there are quite a few, even in international Yiddish publications such as Di Tsukunt and the Der Forverts, none dropped more than a hint of the veracity of the account. In fact, the book was highly praised by prominent critics of the Yiddish literary world for its descriptive realism.40 Paryszewski was praised by one critic for not veiling his observations through overly poetic description but rather for revealing it by writing not as an outside observer but as a participant.41 Another reviewer commenting on what he refers to as this remarkable, almost mystical text, still noted how realistically the material is conveyed, perhaps a bit too precise and detailed in regard to the geographic and ethnic data, but quite understandable, according to him, given the author’s intentions.42 N. B. Minkoff, writing in Di Tsukunft, notes both the fantastic and the realistic elements within the book and suggests that the author’s reliance on specific data both geographical and ethnological are in order to fend off possible accusations of exaggeration or storytelling. He also notes the author’s literary talent, and this apparently trumps the problem of veracity. Seen as a literary work, it becomes less important whether the book relates things that are not real, or describes nature and lifeways in a realistic manner, “or seeks to create for us through artistic means, a fantasy, a fiction of reality.”43 What is important, according to this reviewer, “is that an unknown travel writer appears before us as someone with artistic promise. Thanks to his literary sensibility, he has created a good and interesting book about life that is both real and alien.”44 Minkoff’s point? Don’t worry too much about facts, focus instead on how an alien world is convincingly conveyed through narrative. Bashevis Singer’s assessment is particularly glowing. Writing under the pseudonym Yitshak Varshavski, he begins by lamenting the fact that “rarely does there appear a good book among us.” Novels or short stories are frequently boring and reading them one feels that the authors slaved away just to cover the page with ink. Although such things occur among all literatures, the situation in Yiddish is particularly tragic because there are no new readers, no publishing houses are being created, and Yiddish writers are not encouraged to produce. A retinue of people who are not writers are publishing at their own expense and readers end up buying books that are boring or simply the work of ignoramuses. Singer relates all this, by way of contrast to the work he’s about to review—Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte. After summarizing key scenes in the book, Singer praises the author’s rich, though at times unpolished Yiddish and compares the book to Flaubert’s Salambo and sees the two as “rich in unusual events, in exotic images yet at the same time thoroughly realistic. You feel that the writer has really experienced all of this.” Singer adds, “In our poor litera-

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ture, where an interesting book seldom appears, such a work should be given special consideration.” Of course, a simple explanation for the absence of skeptical scrutiny of this text is the fact that Paryszewski couched the account in a rhetoric that is ethnographic, scientific, and journalistic. At the same time, nowhere does the author even hint that certain liberties were taken in fashioning the text, despite the fact that the account is a composite of several journeys taken in the 1920s. That admission is made in the preface and is easy enough to forget in the course of reading. Indeed, there is no further admission of a merged narrative, no dates of individual journeys, and no evidence that the author went back and forth repeatedly between Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. But I also wonder whether readers in 1944 read differently than do we, that they were, or, better put, Paryszewski was subject to a different kind of epistemological decorum, as were the critics of that time.45 Perhaps the reviews tell us a great deal about not just the purview of the Yiddish world midcentury but its unique anxiety (I will have more to say about this shortly). I see almost no evidence that locating the divide between fantasy and reportage was of great concern to critics. I suspect that of much greater interest to them, and this readership more generally, was the presence or absence of Jews within an unfamiliar landscape. And their presence, even as disreputable and, perhaps, even unlikely characters (though always counterbalanced by the presence of the text’s Jewish hero), makes this a book of particular interest to a Jewish/Yiddish readership. In some ways, Yiddish travel books tell us about a rather charming provincialism vis-à-vis the ubiquity of fellow Jews, especially East European Jews in very remote locations. In the case of South America, sometimes they are descendants of conversos (they are present in one chapter in Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte) tying the New World to a long history of European Jewish existence within it, thereby, perhaps asserting a Jewish indigeneity. And whether true or not, and no matter how disreputable these Jews might be in these accounts, I have to believe that from the standpoint of Paryszewski’s readers there could not be anything more comforting than this, not unlike the American Jewish penchant for locating members of their own tribe within the mythic landscape of the American West.46 So, although I cannot say for certain whether Paryszewski ever visited Peru, I can say that the narrative serves a multiplicity of purposes as evidenced by the shifts within the text from realist description of another place and time to romance and adventure story to descriptions of the wondrousness of a primeval landscape and the living remnants of a destroyed civilization and the intrepidness of its hero/author—descriptions not the least of whose purpose is, like most travel books, the entertainment of a readership.47

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From another standpoint, however, Paryszewski’s narrative may tell us much more about another culture facing extinction—the mid-twentieth-century Yiddish one—than it does about the supposedly waning Peruvian Indian culture of the 1920s that it claims to represent. And the fact that it was published in 1944 might very well suggest the deep sympathy critics had for an account about an oppressed people brutalized to the brink of extinction by a caste system with Europeans as the master race. (It is rather striking that the book climaxes with the Italian and German antagonists accompanying Paryszewski and Sorohalpa—each of the Europeans explicitly villainous at some point in the narrative and implicitly so as proponents of their respective nations’ fascist dictators.) Perhaps, this is why Jewish reviewers were so ready to overlook the book’s blatant transgressions; they implicitly understood the story’s allegorical dimension, of a twinning of two peoples and two holocausts with one still living amid the ruins of its patrimony hundreds of years later, while the other, the full extent of its catastrophe only beginning to be known, its ruins still to be explored.48 Nor is this allegory entirely hidden. In the third of the last chapter after Picolo has fled lest Huamahohopa kill him and the three remaining men bring Sorohalpa to burial, they enter what Paryszewski refers to as the Incan Mares HaMakhpela (Cave of the Patriarchs) and Paryszewski and Von Birnbaum find themselves trapped in a lightless room whose heavy stone door cannot be moved. Von Birnbaum is convinced that Huamahohopa has betrayed them as revenge for the death of his niece and begins to rant about betrayals from ancient times, especially among the Romans and their contemporary descendants. Paryszewski the Jew concurs about Roman bloodthirstiness then adds something intended to provoke his traveling companion—that the same can be said about fascists and about Germans who “are very good people as long as they are disarmed. As soon as they have a weapon they are capable of doing the worst” (268). The two men then consider their probable fate entombed for eternity by a 1,000-kilogram stone trap door that will not budge, and Von Birnbaum suggests they shoot one another. Paryszewski has other ideas. He shouts for Huamahohopa and fires his gun hoping the man will hear it. The strategy works and with superhuman strength the Indian prophet manages to open the door the two Europeans could not. Paryszewski sees that Huamahohopa has a murderous look on his face. When he heard the shot he assumed that Von Birnbaum had killed Paryszewski and that the German intended to rob the tomb and keep every thing for himself. Huamahohopa then curses Von Birnbaum, blaming him for Sorohalpa’s death since it was he who had initiated the expedition. Turning to Paryszewski, Huamahohopa says, “If not for you, gringo, whom I consider like a member of my own tribe . . . this cursed German with a

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monocle in his left eye and the devil in his heart, I would let die like a mad dog of hunger and thirst! But because you are the first white man who treated me like a human being, I will not do a bit of harm to your devilish German” (271). So here we have the twinning of Jew and Indian with the German/European as mutual archenemy. But beyond this explicit analogue lies, I believe, a wonderfully comforting allegory for Yiddish readers everywhere—an imaginary almost mythic realm in the mountains of an unexplored New World where an unbridled Jewish libidinality prevailed (even though most of those portrayed, except, of course, for the author himself, were of a rather unsavory sort) at a time when Thanatos ruled elsewhere in the world and defenseless Jews were its primary victims. Not so across the mountains and through the forests of Peru.

Introduction Joshua Levinson

Travel narratives are only one of the cultural by-products of travel. As mentioned in the Part I “Introduction,” there is a medley of genres, discourses, technologies, and material artifacts that inform the world of travel and travel writing. While we often give precedence to travel narratives as the retrospective tale of past journeys, writing itself appears in various forms before, during, and after the journey itself. We consult maps, guides, and itineraries to prepare for journeys, and we inscribe ourselves in various forms during our travels in visitor books, graffiti, postcards, and photos, before we come to represent the tale of the journey at its completion. The essays in Part V examine the connections between travel and its representations in various media and semiotic systems in the early modern and modern periods; in maps, film, tourism, and paintings. The authors here ask how the various material artifacts and representations of travel relate to the discourses and practices of travel. Among the most impor tant artifacts of travel, as any traveler knows, are maps. However, maps are much more than a utilitarian accessory. Two of the most famous maps from late antiquity are the Severan marble plan of the city of Rome (Forma Urbis Romae) and the so-called Peutinger Table (Tabula Peitungeriana). The former was an enormous map from the beginning of the third century that covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in Rome, depicting the ground plan of every architectural feature in the ancient city from large public monuments to small shops.1 The Peutinger Table, composed sometime in the fourth or fifth century was more ambitions, and the original parchment was close to seven meters long and depicted the entire habitable world (oecumene) and the major travel routes of Graeco-Roman geography from the Atlantic to India. While much about the purpose and design of these graphic monuments is unclear, it is hard to imagine that they primarily served a utilitarian purpose. It is more likely that they were designed not for practical use but rather served an ideological function “aimed above all to convey how civilized,

Introduction Joshua Levinson

Travel narratives are only one of the cultural by-products of travel. As mentioned in the Part I “Introduction,” there is a medley of genres, discourses, technologies, and material artifacts that inform the world of travel and travel writing. While we often give precedence to travel narratives as the retrospective tale of past journeys, writing itself appears in various forms before, during, and after the journey itself. We consult maps, guides, and itineraries to prepare for journeys, and we inscribe ourselves in various forms during our travels in visitor books, graffiti, postcards, and photos, before we come to represent the tale of the journey at its completion. The essays in Part V examine the connections between travel and its representations in various media and semiotic systems in the early modern and modern periods; in maps, film, tourism, and paintings. The authors here ask how the various material artifacts and representations of travel relate to the discourses and practices of travel. Among the most impor tant artifacts of travel, as any traveler knows, are maps. However, maps are much more than a utilitarian accessory. Two of the most famous maps from late antiquity are the Severan marble plan of the city of Rome (Forma Urbis Romae) and the so-called Peutinger Table (Tabula Peitungeriana). The former was an enormous map from the beginning of the third century that covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in Rome, depicting the ground plan of every architectural feature in the ancient city from large public monuments to small shops.1 The Peutinger Table, composed sometime in the fourth or fifth century was more ambitions, and the original parchment was close to seven meters long and depicted the entire habitable world (oecumene) and the major travel routes of Graeco-Roman geography from the Atlantic to India. While much about the purpose and design of these graphic monuments is unclear, it is hard to imagine that they primarily served a utilitarian purpose. It is more likely that they were designed not for practical use but rather served an ideological function “aimed above all to convey how civilized,

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peaceful, and united an appearance the entire orbis terrarium presented under Roman sway, with the city of Rome at its center and focal point.”2 As ciphers of geographical understanding, maps articulate symbolic meanings; they shape the viewers’ ways of seeing and knowing and serve as a way of ordering knowledge of the world. For this reason Christian Jacob has compared maps to libraries: both of them are part of the same ideological project, “organizing and codifying knowledge. Both of them rely on accumulation, on tradition, on authority.”3 However, as John Brian Harley has reminded us, maps are not “mirrors of nature” but cultural texts that embody a par ticu lar way of viewing the world, and as such are a form of knowledge and power. A map creates a “spatial panopticon” that manufactures power and knowledge;4 it is a metaphor not only for the territory it represents but also for the culture that creates it.5 As such, it is no surprise that maps became graphic tools of colonization as well as mimetic representations of imperial power. Israel Bartal examines this nexus of power and knowledge by contrasting the traditional sacred map of Palestine with the nationalist map of the First Aliyah. The former is exemplified in the religious map of the Holy Land attributed to the Vilna Gaon, first published in 1802. This is a map of sacred geography that reflects the scholarly project of the Lithuanian scholars who settled in Safed and Jerusalem at the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to immerse themselves there in the intensive study of the holy texts. The influx of immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries altered the demography and geography of the Holy Land, and “led to a radical shifting of the coordinates of the imagined map of the country that was in the Jewish consciousness.” This new geographical conceptualization of Palestine represented the emergence of a new nationalist identity that reflected changing conceptions of place and time in the Holy Land. The residual sacred map, which Bartal calls a “geographical midrash,” was replaced by an emergent nationalist map. This new map did not merely add new information, but also co-opted and reinterpreted the traditional sites into new “national sites of memory.” “National sites of memory” is also the topic of Chaim Noy’s chapter on heritage tourism. One of the most fascinating manifestations of modern travel is tourism. While religious tourism and sightseeing as a cultural activity originated in antiquity, there are specific attributes of mass leisure tourism that mark it as a distinctly modern phenomenon.6 Within the various types of tourism and sightseeing, heritage tourism has its own unique character and practices.7 As mentioned above, among the underexamined types of travel texts are those produced not at the end of a journey but rather “on the road” as part of the travel experience itself. Noy examines here some of these types of “writing while traveling,” those texts produced by visitors to heritage sites as inscribed

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in visitor books that became themselves part of the ritual of travel and through which travelers themselves become participants in the ideological politics of identity inherent in heritage tourism. Unlike the usual travel narratives, which are produced retrospectively, these tourist texts are public and remain on site after the traveler has returned home. In a certain sense they are a kind of “reversed memento.” If ancient or modern tourist-travelers often took home some souvenir from the places they visited,8 in this case they leave behind a reminder of themselves. As such, these texts are situated at the contact interface between the guest’s and the hosts’ cultures, and between the individual and the institutional. Noy examines the inscriptions in “visitor books” from three different sites of Jewish heritage travel: Rachel’s Tomb (Bethlehem), the Ammunition Hill National Memorial site (Jerusalem), and the National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia). His choice of these sites of heritage tourism enables him to address the transformations of this genre at a site that exemplifies the shift from traditional pilgrimage to modern tourism, at a secular nationalist Israeli military commemoration, and at a contemporary Jewish heritage site in North America, as each site enables different per formances of Jewish identity. Maps and heritage books are two accessories of travel, two genres of semiotic representation that form and inform travel practices. However, the principal means of representation that accompanied the traveler and travel writing in the modern era—before, during, and after the journey—was the visual image. From the illustrated travel guide to the picture postcard, from National Geographic to the “selfie,” the visual image has come to accompany and sometimes even replace the written travelogue as the dominant medium for representing travel. This combination of narrative and nonnarrative modes enables the viewer/voyeur/reader to transport himself or herself across the borders of imagination to those other regions and other peoples. Many scholars of travel have emphasized the critical importance of vision and sightseeing for understanding various forms of travel writing and practices. As seen in the contributions here of Limor and Levinson, this has proven to be a very rich concept for the study of travel writing because, as already mentioned, without seeing there is little to tell. However, less attention has been given to the place of visual representations of travel. One of the most popu lar and influential venues for visual representations of travel was the exhibit, especially the Great Exhibitions of the English and French empires held in the mid-nineteenth century (1851, 1855) soon followed by the other imperial capitals of Europe. In fact, Thomas Cook began his career by arranging excursions to the world exhibition of the Crystal Palace, and

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years later he transported people to the Orient itself—to the real thing, the referent.9 As Timothy Mitchell argues, the later nineteenth century conceived and arranged the world as an exhibition. “The effect of such spectacles was to set the world up as a picture. They arranged it before an audience as an object on display—to be viewed, investigated, and experienced.”10 Considerable portions of these exhibits were dedicated to paintings, and in particular the realistic painting that could augment the travel narrative and bring the exotic other into the salon or museum. “Painters have always been keen travellers and long before photography’s invention they lifted par ticular places out of their ‘dwelling’ and transported them into new spatial and temporal contexts as objects.”11 It is not surprising, therefore, that it was precisely during this period of realist paintings that the most famous of Dutch realists was rediscovered and the “cult of Rembrandt” arose on the European continent.12 The Dutch Master became in late nineteenth century Europe a critical touchstone in debates about art, identity, and modernity. Nils Roemer examines and contrasts the reception of Rembrandt in the art and writings of two Jewish travelers and artists, Max Liebermann (1847–1935) and Hermann Struck (1876–1944), who were both infatuated with the artist and his city. Roemer explores their works as a way of thinking about Jewish creativity in art and literature in the context where ideas about emancipation, integration, and renewal as well as Jewish politics found their expression in travel narratives. For both of these impor tant figures, visiting and imagining foreign places was a crucial facet of their creativity. Their frequent travels to Amsterdam facilitated the search for alternative models of modernity and Jewish culture in a period when both the presence of Jews in the cities and their depictions in art were channeling other and darker social forces. Roemer demonstrates how the outside, non-Jewish world played a role in the construction of the space of Amsterdam. German Jewish artists shaped their view of Amsterdam though their understanding of Rembrandt, of German nationalism, and of German-Dutch connections. As explored here by Roemer, these two artists looked to Rembrandt’s paintings to legitimize Jews as objects of modern art and to aid in their effort to create a new modern Jewish aesthetic and visual culture. Roemer also illustrates that the same space can generate very different representational and affective responses among Jews of the same generational and professional group. Thus, Eastern European Jews in Amsterdam can be seen as oppressed, enduring, brave, romantic, ageless, and contemporaneous, all at the same time. Emotions and representations, then, were linked to modes of visualizing Jewish spaces in European topography and concurrently at engaging in transnational Jewish geography of belonging.

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If sketchings and paintings added a new visual dimension to the panoptic eye of the traveler, it was the invention of the technology of photography in the nineteenth century that radically transformed the world of travel. In fact, Fox Talbot, one of the pioneers of photography and inventor of the paper photograph, wrote in 1839 that “to the traveller in distant lands, who is ignorant, as too many unfortunately are, of the art of drawing, this little invention may prove real ser vice”13 It is certainly not fortuitous that the invention of photography coincided with the birth of modern tourism. As John Urry has argued, “tourism and photography came to be welded together and the development of each cannot be separated from the other.”14 Photography’s “natural magic” transformed sites into sights and enabled “armchair” tourism by transporting people to faraway places. It is the photograph’s “ontological realism,” as Roland Barthes put it, that invokes a sense of “being there,” of literally being transported “back” to the pictured scene.15 Thus, an imaginative journey is in fact always activated when one looks at a photograph.16 A result of this development, as bemoaned by Susan Sontag, is that travel has become “a strategy for accumulating photographs.”17 Anat Zanger explores here the cinematic travels of women who wander in and to Jerusalem in four Israeli films. The gender bias of much travel writing has often been remarked upon. It is usually the male protagonist who ventures forth to the unknown, while female characters represented the home he returns to (Penelope) or the Calypso-like seductress who thwarts his journey. As Karen Lawrence remarks: Indeed, the plot of the male journey depends upon keeping woman in her place. Not only is her place at home, but she in effect is home itself, for the female body is traditionally associated with earth, shelter, enclosure. . . . She traditionally provides the point of departure and sometimes the goal for the male journey. This mapping of the female body underwrites not only travel literature per se, but the more general trope of the journey as well. . . . [It is the male traveler] who crosses boundaries and penetrates spaces; the female is mapped as a place on the itinerary of the male journey.18 Jerusalem itself is traditionally represented both as a woman and as the subject of desire and culmination of the Jewish (male) journey. Zanger discusses four post-1967 Israeli films that not only take place in Jerusalem but also have female protagonists who wander to and within the city. Her critical intervention

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discusses the gender politics of the female cinematic gaze and how it challenges the dominant Zionist ideology. She concentrates on the cinematic representation of women traveling in the urban spaces of nationalist conflict and explores how the idea of the return to Zion—and Jerusalem as its metonym—is projected through the female characters.

C h apter 12

The New Zionist Road Map: From Old Gravesites to New Settlements Israel Bartal

Within a few years after the beginnings in the 1880s, the project of Jewish settlement in Palestine, known today as the First Aliyah, altered the demography and geography of the population in the Holy Land. It led also to a radical shifting of the coordinates of the imagined map of the country that was in the Jewish consciousness. The religious geography of the Promised Land, whether visualized through manuscript or printed maps, or conceptualized through literary and oral texts by Jews all over the world, had lost its long years’ authority. The old geography on which generations of believers had based their ties to the geographic space no longer matched the new demographic reality that emerged following the influx of immigrants in the years 1881–1903. The religious Jewish map of the land of Israel was, until the onset of that new period of settlement, entirely ahistorical by the standards of nineteenth-century Western Europeans. Its relation to the landscape, to the pre-nationalist Jewish communities and roads of the real Palestine, was tenuous at best. Any correlation between holy places and sites that are mentioned in the Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud, on the one hand, and the towns and villages of nineteenth-century Palestine, on the other, was either made through a Talmudic-halakhic reading of the Bible or related to a ziyarah (pilgrimage to holy sites) mystical elation. Jewish pilgrims experienced the latter on their visits to the graves of holy persons in Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee. Moreover, the traditional map of Palestine imagined by Jews lacked all connection to contemporary modernist aspirations for the social, economic, or political regeneration of Jewish society. Bearing no relation to the radical, political worldviews and social programs shared by some of the Jewish settlers, it mapped routes to the gravesites of the

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righteous (tsaddikim) and other pilgrimage sites. This was the case before the appearance of modern Jewish nationalism and the trickling down of that ideology into the world of religious beliefs and views and rites. It is true that the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) movement had an enormous impact on the abovementioned change in the coordinates of the imagined map of the Holy Land.1 Beginning in the second half the eighteenth century, a new Jewish geographical discourse had emerged, influenced by the flourishing Western scientific research. Simultaneously, European Jews grew more familiar with the political and social realities of the Middle East, due to the emergence of the Jewish press. Yet, no nationalist-minded or political program had been explicitly connected to the image of Palestine’s map before the emergence of modern Jewish nationalism in late nineteenth century. No Jewish pilgrim, rabbinic scholar, or kabbalist of earlier centuries had ever contended that the graves of Jewish saints (Hebrew: kivrey kdoshim), let alone other sacred loci (Hebrew: mekomot kdoshin), in any part of the Holy Land, should have been considered “national” sites. Nobody would have suggested that such sites might determine the contours of a political entity of any sort. The term “road map” is usually used for either a route map—a visual medium that primarily displays roads and stops, or, metaphorically, for a plan used to achieve a social, political, or cultural goal. In what follows, I will demonstrate some features of the exchange of the traditional “sacred road map” with the new “nationalist road map.” This I will do through an examination of selected paragraphs from Jewish travelers’ literature. My claim is that these texts, relating to religious discourses and pilgrimages, or created by modern-minded writers, represent unequivocally a revolutionary change that occurred in Jewish perceptions of space and time following the beginning of the modern Jewish settlement of Palestine. Since I see maps as representations of realities that are shaped by ideas, beliefs, and politics,2 the new Jewish map of Palestine that emerged in the late nineteenth century seems to me a new mode of interpretation. That cartographic change—either textual or visual—may be regarded, as well, as yet another case of the cultural shift from a “non-European” Jewish mind to a “Westernized” new collective Jewish identity. In short, the new geographical conceptualization of Palestine represented the emergence of a post-corporative Jewish identity. The emergence of the new type of Jewish map was preceded by the renewed Western fascination with the Holy Land. Hundreds of British, French, German, American, and Russian travelers toured the land in the nineteenth century, to return home with notes, paintings, and maps.3 The maps produced by European scholars were in most cases state of the art of the cartographic science. On the other hand, many of the Western travelers’ texts were permeated with

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(Christian) biblical allusions, with no clue of any postbiblical Jewish sources. Their tracks followed major Christian sites, yet they paid attention also to the mosaic of religious communities and ethnic groups so typical of Palestine. In short, Western science and evangelical belief4 made the Jewish presence in the Holy Land marginal, if not invisible.5 Similarly, the growing Russian presence in the Holy Land6 gave birth to a renewed proliferation of the palomnie’iskaya literatura (literature of pilgrimage) in the Russian language. Dozens of nineteenth century Russian travelogues depict a sort of “Russian Palestine,” imagined and, at the same time, based on true to life imperial Russian institutions that abounded in Palestine. “Pilgrimages constituted only one aspect of Russian presence in the Holy Land in the 19th  century. A network of ecclesiastical, political and diplomatic relationships connected Russia and the Holy Land starting from the 1840s giving birth to the idea, developed by literature and press, of a ‘Russian Palestine.’”7 In this imagined land, Greek Orthodox churches, Judea desert monasteries, and sacred places of all sorts were central to the Russian texts, as if no other sites and people were to be seen around. The same goes for the Jews, pre-Zionists and Zionists alike. Christian sites were almost absent from their imagined maps. Yet, Palestine of the post-Napoleonic era could not be seen any more only in light of biblical verses and Talmudic citations. The Jewish immigrants and tourists brought with them a whole baggage of nontraditional views and opinions. They shared something with the new type of Western tourist-scientist (an ethnographic approach, among other things) and embraced the pathetic sentimental narrative of European romanticist nationalism. When they came to the Holy Land, some of them would read what they saw, heard, tasted, and smelled in the towns and villages of the country in a way no Jew could think of before the modern times. One should not neglect the encounter of the eighteenth-century Jewish traveler with another type of road map: that of the Turkish imperial authorities. The Ottoman Empire had a centuries-long tradition of mapping its provinces for fiscal, administrative, and military purposes. Late nineteenth-century Jewish settlers in the agricultural colonies came to an intimate acquaintance with the Ottoman cartography. In many ways it resembled the Western mapping discussed above. As a recent study describes it: “Ottoman cartography increasingly came under Western influence until by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it had lost most of its premodern cartographic characteristics and replaced them with European ones. Traditional Ottoman and contemporary European practices existed side by side. Even in the modern period, however, it was not always the aim of Ottoman mapmakers to produce accurate, precise ‘scientific’ maps.”8 In my opinion, the Ottoman cartographic depiction of Palestine and Syria as parts of a greater imperial (political) entity could lead the

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Jewish settler to embrace an Ottoman identity of the kind shared by several Jewish intellectuals around 1910.9 Due to the imperial ideological needs and policies that had permeated the maps, that depiction connected easily to the  politicization of the Holy Land offered by other maps and travelogues produced by Western travelers. In short, for a traditional Jewish traveler, the nineteenth-century Ottoman road map probably represented a “Eu ropeanized” option of non-Jewish confiscation of the Holy Land. For the new nationalist settler of Palestine it was one available modernist road map out of many. Let us start with the map of the Land of Israel’s borders (Hebrew: Halukat Eretz Yisrael l-gvulote’ha; Figure 12.1).10 This map is attributed to the R. Elijah, son of Solomon (Hebrew: Eliahu ben Shlomo, 1720–97), known as the Vilna Gaon. It was first published around 1802 and has been reprinted several times over the last two centuries. The map illustrates the attributes of biblical “sacred geography as perceived by Ashkenazi pilgrims who visited the Holy Land before

Figure 12.1. Halukat Eretz Yisrael l-gvulote’ha, circa 1802. Courtesy of the National Library of Israel.

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the emergence of Jewish nationalism. It represents the way in which members of the small Eastern European Jewish communities in Palestine, Hasidim and/ or Lithuanian Talmudic scholars, known as Prushim, perceived the spatial and temporal context of the land. The Gaon’s map had little to do either with Christian Hebraist biblical cartography of the early modern period or with the scientific achievements of the time in which it was designed. There is little or no overlap between Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville’s maps of Palestine, Israel, or the Holy Land and the Jewish one. D’Anville (1697– 1782) was perhaps the most impor tant and prolific cartographer of the eighteenth century, serving as geographer to the king of France. D’Anville based his maps on actual surveys and research that he conducted himself. His maps were probably the most accurate and comprehensive of his period. His cartographic project has been considered a major scientific achievement. The work of d’Anville marked a critical point in the history of cartography that opened the way to the maps of British cartographers in the early nineteenth century. The map shown here (Figure 12.2) was drawn by d’Anville in 1762 and published in 1794 in London.11 It combines state-of-the-art scientific cartography with biblical and postbiblical (including crusader) historical geography.

Figure 12.2. Palaestina, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, 1794. Wikipedia.

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The Vilna Gaon’s map, published at about the same time, is, in stark contrast, schematic and bears almost no resemblance to the geographical reality. In it, rivers and streams flow in directions other than their real-life paths: the Jordan, for example, is shown flowing simultaneously northeast and northwest to the sea of Galilee, a geographical impossibility, while the Red Sea is found to the east of the Dead Sea. The Euphrates River flows from east to west and empties into the Mediterranean Sea. The Vilna Gaon’s map is similar to several other Jewish maps from the early modern period in the close relationship it maintains with sacred texts. As such, it reflects the image of Palestine shared by the Lithuanian scholars who settled in Safed at the turn of the nineteenth century in order to immerse themselves there in the intensive study of Torah and kabbalah. They considered Rabbi Eliahu ben Shlomo an exemplary figure and sought to follow in his path and to emulate his ways. Though living in the Galilee, these Eastern European scholars perceived the geography (and the history) of the region, as well as the Holy Land, through the double lenses of Talmud and Jewish mysticism. The 1802 map attributed to their revered master is a stark illustration of the gulf that existed between what they read into the sacred text and the actual landscape of the Holy Land. In many ways, the imagined geography of Palestine as reflected in that map does not fit the Gaon’s nuanced attitude toward contemporary European science.12 Its total lack of connection to the shape of the historical Holy Land seems to be yet another anachronism attributed to the great scholar by some of his followers. The case of the Gaon’s map represents a much wider cultural phenomenon, shared by early modern European Jews for several centuries. Jewish pilgrims, as well as those who immigrated to Palestine, saw the landscape mainly through Jewish postbiblical texts, as well as through the corpus of mystical writings that had developed out of the kabbalistic literature that emerged in sixteenthcentury Safed. One may describe this textual interpretation of sites and places, mountains and rivers as a “geographical midrash.” A few Jewish maps of the Holy Land that follow Christian cartographers had been drawn in the Vilna Gaon’s lifetime. All, except for one that was published in Warsaw in 1784, were from places west to the borders of the PolishLithuanian commonwealth. It should be mentioned here, that we know today of another Eastern European exception—a little-known eighteenth-century map drawn by the rabbinic scholar R. Shlomo of Chełm—that betrays exposure to contemporary scientific cartography. R. Shlomo, whose Talmudic scholarship earned him great renown in Eastern Europe, was born in Zamość in 1717, and died at Salonica in 1781. He was successively rabbi of Chełm, Zamość, and Lemberg. R. Shlomo left Lemberg in 1777 with the intention of going to the Holy Land. He spent a short time in Palestine before departing for Salonica,

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where he planned to publish a second edition of his well-known book Merkevet ha-Mishneh; he died, however, shortly after his arrival there. Besides being an authority in rabbinics, on which subject he published several works, he was distinguished as a grammarian and mathematician. Some modern scholars have tended to classify him as one of the “forerunners” of the Jewish Enlightenment.13 His unpublished manuscript of Hug ha’arets on the geography of the Holy Land was discovered and published in Jerusalem some thirty years ago.14 It contains a map of biblical Palestine that betrays R. Shlomo’s thorough knowledge of contemporary Christian Hebraist cartography.15 We know for sure that R. Elijah of Vilna studied algebra, geometry, philosophy, and Hebrew grammar. He even promoted the publishing of Hebrew translations of non-Jewish scientific works. Yet, neither R. Shlomo’s map of Palestine nor his geographical work were known in Eastern Europe, let alone used by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon who emigrated to Palestine and settled in Safed in the period under discussion. Going back to the early modern map of the Holy Land, either drawn or just sketched in writing, it does not seem to display information suited to practical use on a pilgrimage to visit holy sites. Jewish travel literature, however, contains some evidence that guidebooks that offered itineraries were indeed used by travelers and pilgrims from abroad, as well as by immigrants from European and Mediterranean Jewish communities who came to settle in the towns of Palestine. Rabbi Moyshe Yerushalmi, for example, who set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the second half of the eighteenth century—more than a century before the first Zionist colonies were established in the country— described the guidebook he used for his journey in the following words: In Safed, may it be built and established in our days, there is a beadle who has the book of the holy Kabbalist Our Rabbi Isaac Luria . . . who went out and discovered all the gravesites of the Jewish saints and the gravesite of the tana’im [early rabbinic sages] and amora’im [later rabbinic sages] and all the villages and the towns—since, before him, they had all been forgotten—and he marked them. And he added, for every tana and amora, his contribution of what to study while at his grave, every tana and amora, according to the sayings of each, and [he wrote] all the prayers that are said when you come to a grave and when you leave it. . . . So that whoever wants to tour around the Land of Israel and to go to all the graves of the Jewish saints, should first go up to Safed, to the beadle, and he should take that beadle with him and the book. And he should prepare a donkey for [the guide] to ride on and food and drink, and pay for him the fee, since they charge a fee for each and every gravesite.16

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This kind of guidebook from the mid-eighteenth century, described by R. Moyshe Yerushalmi, is probably one of a series of Hebrew and Yiddish books that were circulated among the communities in Europe and the Mediterranean in the early modern period. The “road map” it presents combined geography and liturgy, following oral and literary medieval traditions. Of R. Moyshe, who published the description of his tour in a Yiddish book in 1769, we know almost nothing. The author made use of previous travel books and incorporated some information he gathered on a visit to the Galilee. The main part of the book is a description of two pilgrimage routes—one short, one long—for visiting holy sites in the Holy Land. The author identifies geographic destinations using both the ancient Talmudic text as well as much later kabbalistic traditions. Moyshe Yerushalmi updated the descriptions, however, according to what he had himself seen in Safed, Tiberias, and their surrounding areas in the Galilee. The writer describes his essay as “a description of the villages and towns and the holy graves of the righteous [tzaddikim] and pious ones [hasidim] in the Land of Israel.”17 R. Moyshe’s travel book contains a list of sites in and around the “Four Holy Cities” (that is, Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Hebron) that are partially similar to previous lists that had appeared in Jewish travel books of previous centuries. Yerushalmi’s depictions of places, people, and rites are similar, in many ways, to other eighteenth-century textual representations of travels of the Holy Land.18 It is sufficient to compare the route taken on R. Moyshe Yerushalmi’s journeys in eighteenth-century Palestine and the ritual makeup of his itineraries to those of a visit made some 120 years later by another Jewish traveler from Eastern Europe, Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen (1856–1936), in order to witness the profound transformation. That transformation was introduced in the geographic conception of the Land of Israel by the founding of the first Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) in Palestine in the 1880s. The writer of this travel record was one of the founders of the Hibbat Zion movement (Lovers of Zion), one of the forerunners of modern Jewish nationalism in the Russian empire, who twice made visits to the Holy Land, in 1889 and 1891. In contrast to R. Moyshe Yerushalmi, Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen, a traveler in the period of the First Aliyah, was steeped in the ideology of modern nationalism mixed with European enlightenment and 1870s Russian populism. Furthermore, he had social and political aspirations, the likes of which had been rare in more traditional Jewish circles. He was, moreover, a businessperson, an entrepreneur who observed the country from an economic perspective. This early Zionist pilgrim was one of the first among dozens of travelers who replaced the traditional sacred itinerary with a new, nationalist one. HaCohen, who landed on the shores of Jaffa in 1889, relates the route he chose for his journey with the following words:

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For I plotted for myself the route for going from Jaffa to Rishon LeZion, from there to Gedera, Nahalat Reuben or Wadi Hanin, and Be’er Tuvia or Kastina, and afterward to return to Gedera and from there to Ekron, and from Ekron via Rishon LeZion to Petah Tikva and Yehud, and afterwards to go to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Nablus, Tiberias, Safed, Rosh Pina, Yesod Hama’aleh, and from there to return to Rosh Pina and to go to Haifa by way of Peki’in, the colony of Jews who have been inhabitants of the land from ancient times [and] who speak only Arabic;19 from Haifa to Zikhron Ya’akov—and from there to return to Jaffa.20 What is still common in both the old and the new routes of the Jewish travelers is that, in both cases, the starting points were the cities that were home to the pre-Zionist Jewish communities. In the first case, however, Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Haifa were incidental to the clusters of gravesites scattered about in their vicinities. In the nationalist-minded trip, taken during the First Aliyah, on the other hand, the new agricultural colonies (founded only a few years previously) had replaced the traditional pilgrimage sites. Furthermore, the new settlements, which were situated near the cities, were now thought by the travelers to radiate something of the spirit of a new era back onto the old communities. The “new Jews” of the colonies functioned here as both objects and subjects of Zionist travel. In HaCohen’s mind, they gave new meanings, so to speak, to the role of cities of the Old Yishuv in the nation’s history and the country’s geography. In so doing, they drew anew, in words, the map of the sacred land. As Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen wrote in his travelogue about his Jerusalem experience: The ornament and eternity of Jerusalem will ennoble with their spirit the new colonies and their inhabitants. Their holy city is close to them, and our brothers who reside in the Land of Judea sense that Jerusalem is the heart of Israel, the heart of the entire people, and so the new peasants will now feel the movement when the city of Zion sways, and they will lend an attentive ear to all that is happening in Jerusalem. On festival days peasants will ascend to Jerusalem, they will fraternize with and come to know these “modern people” . . . this is the power of Jerusalem over the colonies; despite this, the reverse [is true]. The colonies will also influence greatly the Judean hills, foremost on Zion. The colonies of our brothers, tillers of the land, are a living example to the dear inhabitants of Zion that the land of Israel was not created in vain, to walk idly upon all the day, to eat the bread of idleness without the labor of one’s hands. For the mission of Israel in its Land is to till it and tend it,

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for a desirable, good, and spacious land was given us, not a house of worship and assembly place for the old.21 Dozens of Jewish travelers and settlers had taken the new route that replaced the pre-Zionist itinerary. Most of those travelers depicted the new nationalist pilgrimage in numerous publications in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, English, and German.22 The new geography that emerges from the new route chosen by the nationalist-minded traveler, a member of the hibbat tsiyon movement, did not change the focal points only from the perspective of place. It also linked itself to a new time: a time of nationalism, Western time, a new era for social repair (tikkun—an old mystical concept in a new secular meaning). In his travel account, Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen wrote sharply against the so-called “Old Settlement” (ha-yishuv ha-yashan)—a term used already in the years of the First Aliyah to refer to the pre-Zionist Jewish communities that existed in the cities of Palestine. His criticism is no less biting of the ahistorical nature of the pre-Zionist Jews’ relations with the land of their ancestors, a bond that was expressed through the cult of holy places. While visiting Hebron, Jews from the local community brought Mordechai ben Hillel to the graves of the biblical Avner ben Ner and Otniel ben Kenaz. His guides also showed him the place where Abraham the Patriarch received his three guests. The historically minded traveler derided the legendary character of his guides’ attachment to the place and complained, too, of their ignorance of the city’s history: “Such are also the rest of the things that will be shown to visitors in the city Hebron: superstitious legends that even those who deny them do not realize how the city [Hebron] has experienced numerous events and has emerged through varying circumstances.”23 Indeed, until the late nineteenth century, “Jewish geography” of the reallife Land of Israel focused on four regions of urban settlement: two in the Galilee (Safed and Tiberias) and two in the Judean hills (Hebron and Jerusalem). Other places of Jewish settlement that were in existence already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as in Gaza and Nablus, had actually dwindled in size by the time of the First Aliyah and had lost their importance. The small Jewish community, which by 1880, prior to the establishment of the new agricultural colonies (moshavot), numbered fewer than thirty thousand people, was situated almost entirely deep in the mountain areas of Palestine. The limited economic activity that reawakened in the coastal cities beginning in the 1830s (mostly in Jaffa and Haifa) had not attracted more than a few hundred Jewish residents by the 1870s. The establishment of the new moshavot on the coastal plain and in the area around Haifa shifted the locus of the pre-Zionist Jewish

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community from the inner hill country to the Mediterranean coast. It attracted many of the new settlers, as well as members of the veteran communities. The center of Jewish Palestine moved in the direction prescribed by economic developments: the creation of commercial and business centers around Palestine’s western gateways. It was a reversal of profound importance that reflected the strengthening economic ties between Palestine and Europe. The new nationalist travelers observed the direct relation of the new settlement enterprise to the economic changes. Jewish nationalism combined in their mind with European technology, modern industry, and commercial prosperity. David Yudelovitch (1863–1943), another member of the young nationalist movement, a resident of Rishon LeZion in the early years of the new Jewish settlements who authored one of the first books written in Hebrew on economic activities in the Land of Israel, identified the colonial project with economic entrepreneurship. The geographical shift from the backward mountain area to the outskirts of the two developing port towns of western Palestine meant for him the opening of the modern Jewish community to European influences. This observation perfectly fits the colonies’ geographic proximity to either Jaffa (which he termed “a source of Israel’s commerce and profit”)24 or Haifa. Yudelovitch understood well that, commercially speaking, the national project would benefit from a successful joining of the new colonies to international commercial centers. Hence, his depiction of the newly established sites on the national travel itinerary reads today as highly “Orientalist.” His opinion was remarkably Western: Palestine’s development was lagging due to the nature of its Oriental inhabitants, Jews from Eastern Europe included. The new residents of the colonies, unlike their coreligionists in the old cities of Palestine, adopted the ways of the West. These new immigrants from Eastern Europe continued in the Land of Israel the dream of the Haskalah movement that sought to “westernize” the Jews. The description of the moshavot in Yudelovitch’s book offers a textual Zionist road map that leads the reader to the new settlements. It adds to his economic vision, which revolved entirely around entrepreneurships, the circulation of capital, trade and industry, a cultural and spiritual receptiveness to the West: There is no profession in the Land of Israel that you will not consider to be ready to enjoy the benefits of the modern community, and there is no corner in any part that you will turn to that will not feel the need for a broadening of industry. The task demands, however, industrious and knowledgeable people and diligent and busy hands to raise it up from its degradation, to fortify its position, to improve and beautify it. . . . Six years have not yet passed from the time when, in the wilderness, Eyn Hakor’e [Ayun Kara], gazelles lay down with none disturbing, and jackals

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prowled over it; today it has become a colony “Rishon LeZion,” and wilderness has turned into Eden, her desert into vineyard. . . . Five years ago, the earth was Shimron Meron [Zamarin], cracks in the rock and the earth was like copper; today it has become “Zikhron Ya’akov” and has become a Valley of Blessing and the people of Israel will live there from the crops of the land and industry and labor. . . . And these several places serve us as an example of what patience and industry and diligent hands accomplish.25 In sum, within less than a decade (1882–89), a change had occurred in the map of Jewish settlement in Palestine. A group of Jewish colonies that had been established in the coastal plain, the hills southeast of Haifa, and eastern Upper Galilee near Safed added an unprecedented human segment to the old clusters of Jewish population in Palestine and altered the spatial spread of the communities. This was not only a demographic shift: the First Aliyah changed basic Jewish conceptions of place and time in the Holy Land. Changes occurred in terms of both economic innovation and the cultural renaissance initiated by the elites of the new settlers. The very implementation of the settlement project, which aimed at “regenerating” the exilic Jew, was a yet another Western challenge to the culture and the social and economic character of the already established pre-Zionist communities. Moving the Eastern European immigrants into so-called productive occupations and changing their professions from petty commerce to agriculture, crafts, and industry, through the establishment of the colonies, heralded a radical, if not revolutionary, change of the imagined map of the Holy Land. The newly founded villages seemed to the nationalist-minded visitors to be part of a different place—the West—and of a new time—that of the national project. The modern “nationalist” map had replaced the traditional “sacred map.” As we could see in Yudelovitch’s text, neighboring Arab villages were not erased from the Jewish road map. In the new plan designed by the progressist Zionist they were rather assigned the role of backwardness, degeneration, and decline. These changes of the traditional, premodern imagined map fit some of the observations made by Eyal Chovers in his book The Political Philosophy of Zionism: The third temporal imagination of modernity identifies this epoch as essentially present-centered, and it was significant for the rise of Zionism: It involved a view of human life as less bound by tradition and authority and saw the concerns of the concrete, living Jew as the paramount consideration for how individual and collective action should be shaped.

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As did other Europeans, Jews began to see time as a limited resource that could be crafted by human endeavor and be used in beneficial ways; moreover, the present was in a sense the realm of freedom—unfettered by the past, not chained to a meta-narrative and a binding future [messianism?—I. B.]. In daily life, Jews (especially in Western and Central Europe), were increasingly inclined to limit the time devoted to prayers and the study of ancient texts to communal events, ceremonies, and practices (such as the mikve); instead, modern Jews tended to utilize time carefully, devoting more of it to the economic sphere and the cultural one (e.g., in the spirit of Bildung). This activist and matter-of-fact attitude toward time was conducive to the determination of Zionists to take history into their own hands; for the Zionist individual, time became a religiously neutral resource open to an ethos of initiative and shaped by the modern’s cultivated imagination.26 It should be said, however, that despite its new and unprecedented relation to the changing geographical reality of Palestine, the imagined “nationalist map” that emerged in the late nineteenth century contained not only modern elements. It simultaneously manifested clear expressions of a recoiling from the dangers of modernity. An ambivalent attitude toward both the old and the new sites connected the First Aliyah itineraries to traditional Jewish ones. This kind of ambiguity toward modernity has been shared by most European and Middle Eastern nationalistic movements since late eighteenth century, Zionism included. The Western-minded nationalist traveler included some of the old places so revered by Jews in his newly planned route. He visited them, but instead of taking part in traditional religious rituals, like his ancestors would do for centuries, he made them into new “national” sites of memory. In HaCohen’s travelogue, Jewish mysticism gave way to history; and rabbinic scholarship was read in a European scientific mode. In that manner, the new “Zionist” road map sketched by HaCohen in his modern times tour of Judea and the Galilee managed to co-opt selected segments of the pre-Zionist pilgrimage to the Land of Israel.

C h apter 13

Heritage Utterances in Jewish Destinations: Travelers, Texts, and Museum Visitor Books Chaim Noy

And all the Jews that pass by carve their names upon the stones of the pillar. —Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (at Rachel’s Tomb)

Juxtaposing the notions of “travel” and “writing” usually leads to discussions of the grand genre of travel writing, that is, to the familiar Western and often imperial literary trope that supplies narrative descriptions of traveled places, peoples, events, and experiences. This chapter digresses from this tradition to inquire into a different juxtaposition of the terms “travel” and “writing” presently pursued in the context of modern travelers to Jewish sites of heritage. This juxtaposition builds on praxis-centered sensitivities and sensibilities, which are attuned to the richness of human practices involving writing, on the one hand, and travel, on the other hand, and the synergy arising when these are performed together. I explore travel writing in the sense of writing practices that are pursued ritually and routinely during travel, and specifically as part of visits to heritage destinations. At stake are situated, or, better, “sited,” inscriptions and evocations of presence and identity, roles and relationships, spaces and mobilities, in the shape of autographs and short comments inscribed in guestbooks, comment/visitor books, and similar writing platforms and installations in diverse Jewish destinations. These writing practices are part and parcel of the activities travelers pursue while on tour, and I see the texts they produce as markers that represent what their authors wished to

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express and which function as public traces of traveling activities and encounters. In a recent study of visitor books in Wales, Rita Singer argues that such texts are “microforms” of travel writing.1 Singer’s study supports earlier discussions that view such “supposedly spontaneous messages” as in fact “a highly complex form of travel writing, despite or because of their extreme brevity”; these texts are best viewed as a “retained contact zone between the travellers and their foreign destination.”2 The question of whether writing while traveling is a subgenre that can be subsumed under the large array of genres relating to travel writing, or whether travel writing and writing while traveling are separate literary categories that index diverse sets of practices—the former representing travel, the latter an ingredient thereof—bears consequences. If travelers’ inscribed utterances compose a unique literal subgenre of travel writing, then their study may contribute to our understanding of James Clifford’s conceptualization of identity, travel, and translation. According to Clifford, “travels and contacts are crucial sites for an unfinished modernity,”3 and the texts travelers and visitors inscribe lie precisely at the contact interfaces between guests’ and hosts’ cultures, between mobility and immobility, and between individuals and institutions. Similarly, in her focus on “contact zones,” Mary Louise Pratt famously argues that such writing and writing facilities (comment books, guestbooks, and nowadays also online platforms) embody “the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect.”4 What is sure is that scholars studying the conjunctions of travel and of writing practices agree that under the shadow of the grand genre of travel writing, there is much that has received only little attention. As such, the study of various genres of travel writing may shed light on issues hitherto un(der)explored. Specifically, studying this subgenre of travel writing may illuminate the constitution of Jewish modernity (or modernities) in contemporary Jewish sites and destinations, addressing mobilities and itineraries, but also visitors’ contextualized written performances and those they wish their texts to address. Travelers’ on-site writing practices are approached in a contextualized manner, which accords with the way they were created. While as texts they present a sign system (language), their production is a/the matter of an embodied social action. In line with this framework, I argue that the texts that I study, and the activities associated with writing (and reading) them, are socially and culturally informed performances that are constitutive of travel. The texts are part of a rich array of stylized travel activities, that shape those who engage in them into travelers of a par ticu lar type and trope. It is, as Emily Moskva

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observes, a matter of a “quest for self-realization” on tour.5 Presently, the identities under consideration are (traveling) Jewish identities, as performed in Jewish sites and spaces. This inquiry is also informed by the study of modern travel and tourism, which occupies a nexus of disciplines including tourism studies and related fields: sociology and anthropology of travel, and heritage and museums studies. One of the cornerstones of the field of tourism studies was laid in the mid-1970s by anthropologist Dean MacCannell, in a seminal study titled The Tourist.6 MacCannell’s main argument was that contemporary tourists are not merely recreating, but are invested in a complex set of organized public activities that bare consequences for modern societies and large-scale (global) social structures. More than mere leisure, tourists are literally re-creating the emergent social structure of global modern middle-class and consumer culture. In this way, MacCannell’s and Clifford’s works correspond. Yet The Tourist’s main contribution concerned the structure of tourist sites and the meanings that they offer to those visiting them. The analysis, which employed Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical concepts (resting on a fundamentally public and theatrical appreciation of social encounters and social life),7 addressed and revealed these sites’ highly institutional function, meaning, and modes of operation. MacCannell’s work successfully channeled the study of contemporary tourism in the direction of the simultaneous exploration of institutions and tourists, including the role of the former in affording stages for the latter to participate in and on. The point is that when visitors write in visitor books, they are interacting with an institutional platform, negotiating the meaning of their travel and visit, and participating in a collective endeavor.

Reading Travelers’ Utterances I turn to address “tourists’ texts,”8 which are the inscriptions that tourists and visitors voluntarily and publicly inscribe at the sites they visit. These texts are indexical traces left by travelers, that serve as reminders of the visits’ fleeting nature and of their authors’ identity and agency. One pertinent question concerns addressivity, or who are these travels talking with/writting to? Who do the authors imagine their audience(s) to be? The question emerges because in these mediated texts, no one specifically awaits the message at the receiving end. It seems that travelers address other visitors (current and yet-to-come/ future visitors), sites’ management and personnel, spiritual entities (prayers, for instance), and also the authors themselves, who would remember the texts they authored and the embodied (and often social) acts of inscribing them.9 “To write,” Jacques Derrida reminds us, “is to produce a mark that will constitute a

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sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten.”10 Tourists’ texts offer a special case of the Derridean machine, as they juxtapose the trope of mobility, embodied in a heightened state of modern travel/tourism, with the trope of immobility, embodied in the stationary institutions and attractions that travelers visit and in the lingering quality of their written traces, in a dramatic fashion. Travelers’ texts are not simply “machines,” as are all texts, but machines that are publicly placed “elsewhere,” in cultural contact zones and sites of heritage. The texts presented below include brief and condensed written utterances inscribed in visitor books. I use this term as an umbrella term to reference a variety of on-site media that serve to elicit written communication in different sites and under different circumstances. Terms such as “comment books/logbooks,” “records,” “cata logs,” “visitor/guest registers,” “autograph albums,” “ little books/booklets,” “journals,” and “signing books” are variously employed in academic literature, curatorial terminology, and popular vernacular to refer to these writing platforms. Finally, since this chapter’s focus is on sites that resonate of Jewish themes and heritage, I note that heritage tourism is the fastest growing subindustry in global tourism (at least in the pre-COVID-19 era). The heritage industry revolves around the dialectics between past and present and can be defined as “a mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past.”11 “Heritage” concerns how the past is “carried’ into the present (and the future too), and how such mediation, which is accomplished by various media and institutions, including tourism, museums, archaeological and historical sites and discourses, ties individual experience with a collective and imagined sense of sharedness. Contemporary tourists, Pierre Nora famously claims, can observe myriad sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) rather than actual or ecological environments of memory (milieux de mémoire).12 The formidable agenda of (re)constituting the past hints at why heritage sites and practices offer rich data for performance-inspired studies. By definition, the materiality of heritage exhibitions concerns the embodiment of intangible myths and narratives: since under Western epistemology past and future cannot be immediately accessible or directly sensed, there is need for mediatory work to be done in order to experience them; in order to bring that “foreign country of the past”13 to the present, or alternatively to carry heritage tourists to that foreign country. Consequently, heritage projects stand or fall on how proficiently and persuasively they “produce the past,”14 and, I would add, how that past produces a future. Heritage sites are particularly subject to institutional staging and mobilized mediational constructions, whereby the intangibility of

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bygones and the elusive sense of the future are recalibrated into power ful narratives of collective identities that are presented to, and accessed and materially consumed by, tourists.15 All this is true for sites that address and reconstitute Jewish themes and heritage. When I discuss such scenes, centrally at stake are the different geocultural locations and political positionalities of Jews on the global grid, including of course—with the rise of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel—issues revolving around attending Jewish displays and displays of Jews inside and outside Israel. As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett shows in her discussion of displays of Jewish culture(s) in the early decades of the twentieth century, Zionism has powerfully (re)shaped and homogenized the representation of Jews in Israel, and arguably elsewhere.16 In the following I offer observations and readings of tourists’ texts in three sites that are located on the grid of modern Jewish destinations and routes of travel: (1) Rachel’s Tomb, (2) the Ammunition Hill National Memorial site (East Jerusalem), and (3) the National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia). Schematically, the first site’s themes concern modernity and the shift from pilgrimage to modern tourism in the context of pre-state Zionism; the second site’s themes concern Israeli (Sabra) military-national commemoration and martyrdom; and the third site’s themes concern contemporary Jewish identity and heritage in the United States. While these sites differ along multiple lines—the first site is associated with more religious communities and practices, the second with a secular Israeli community (at least initially), and the third with Jewish American communities—these are sites of Jewish identity, memory, heritage, where ritual and public acts of writing transpire routinely. Since my focus is set on situated acts of writing, my descriptions will linger on material institutional arrangements through which visitors’ texts are elicited, produced, and displayed.

“And All the Jews That Pass by Carve Their Names upon the Stones of the Pillar”: Texts at Rachel’s Tomb The first site is Rachel’s Tomb, and specifically the voluminous visitor books that were offered there during at least the first half of the twentieth century. Writing at Rachel’s Tomb, however, began not with the presentation of heavy paper but centuries earlier. Although the site where biblical Rachel was buried is uncertain, Rachel’s Tomb—located to the south of Jerusalem at the northern outskirts of Bethlehem— has been a site of worship and pilgrimage destination for centuries for Jews, Muslims, and Christians.17 The site is unique in that it is located somewhat

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peripherally, which is to say that unlike other holy sites (the Western Wall and the Cave of the Patriarchs, for instance), it is not located in an urban center, and (perhaps not unrelated) it appeals centrally to female visitors. One of the early descriptions of the site as a place eliciting inscriptions and engravings is supplied by Benjamin of Tudela, during his travel to Palestine in 1173. Benjamin of Tudela depicted the tomb as a small and open structure, which contained four pillars and a round top. Although the description is brief, this traveler nonetheless referenced on-site activities in the shape of writing practices: “and all the Jews that pass by carve their names upon the stones of the pillar.”18 Benjamin of Tudela’s account does not inform us whether he himself partook in the ritual he documents, nor whether these were only Jews that he saw writing.19 Since Rachel’s Tomb was holy for the Christians and Muslims too, it makes sense that not only Jews were authoring inscriptions. In any case, there is nothing extraordinary or surprising in the activities the traveler from Tudela described, as engraving and inscribing texts and pictorial marks in sites of worship were common practices since antiquity.20 In a recent study focusing on Jewish graffiti in antiquity, Karen Stern demonstrates its ubiquity in spaces and structures that are not only holy and not only Jewish.21 Stern shows how Jewish inscriptions are highly visible in holy sites and pilgrimage destinations, often side by side with non-Jewish inscriptions. These texts, Stern argues, were both performed and interpreted as acts of devotion. “Acts of carving, scratching, writing, and painting,” Stern writes, “served as gestures . . . which extend and expand upon common notions of [Jewish] prayer as an ‘expressive system.’ ”22 In regard to the description Benjamin of Tudela offers, it might be that his “ethnographic eye” was more susceptible to Jewish texts and practices than others, or (not contradictorily) that he sought to stress the site’s Jewish livelihood as performed by devotional Jewish activity. Since the accumulation of autographs and occasional notes was easily accessible to the visitors (both those who wished to sign and those who wanted to look at others’ autographs), it supported a sense of continuity and consequently a sense of community. A chain of recent and old pilgrims’ traces was collectively created and became part and parcel of the materiality of the sites to which they made pilgrimage. These traces were not only collectively created but also appreciated, and Stern discusses, within the devotional framework, not only acts of inscribing, but also acts of reading. Devotional graffiti at sacred sites, she argues, “solicited an audience of passersby . . . who served as witnesses to the writers’ supplications.”23 In light of this, the documentation Benjamin of Tudela supplies may itself be considered Jewish devotional activity.

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The next traveler I discuss is Judith Montefiore, who visited the tomb during her 1827–28 travel to Palestine. She too indicated noticing the graffiti pilgrims wrote on-site and reveals her own decision to sign her name with that of her husband (Moses, who did not join her on that trip). Judith Montefiore’s visit to Rachel’s Tomb is of historical consequence because soon after (in 1831), Sir Moses Montefiore successfully obtained a legal Ottoman document (firman), which opened the formal way to renovate the site’s physical structure. Montefiore’s renovations were significant, and included the construction of heavy steel doors, which, for the first time, limited access to the site’s interior. It is likely that the visitor books were introduced as part of Montefiore’s modernization of the tomb or shortly later: these artifacts were commonly presented in various institutions in Europe since early modernity, and with the added ability to lock the tomb’s inner space, they could be safely maintained.24 Little is known of the history of the books at Rachel’s Tomb, but it seems that two dozen voluminous visitor books were presented, completed and stored on site, each of which contained thousands of autographs and short notes inscribed during a period of several years.25 Most of the books were lost or destroyed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and only two volumes reappeared after 1967, covering the years 1936–42 and 1942–47. The two surviving volumes are interesting for two reasons, which have to do with the identity of the authors who inscribed therein. The first author is surprising: it is an institutional agent and concerns the figure of Shlomo Freimann, who was the tomb’s beadle between 1919 and 1947. In his capacity as the shamash, Freimann was responsible for the maintenance of the site’s visitor books, a position that he was deeply committed to. Freimann positioned the books on a stand to the right of the tomb, with a dip pen by their side, where it was visible and accessible to visitors. This location also allowed Freimann to introduce the books to visitors and personally invite them to sign as he saw fit. Freimann was not only responsible for the location of the books on the site’s premises (which would have had implications), but he also managed the books’ interior spaces. First, quite technically, he divided the large pages, which were initially black (unruled), into columns and rows, structuring the inner layout and readying it for visitors’ orderly signatures (see Figure  13.1). Freimann also numbered the pages and added dates (marking the beginning of each day that the site was open for visitors). He furthermore numbered visitors’ signatures, transforming random entries into well-organized records. Second, Freimann himself signed the book regularly, on each of its pages, where his round autograph decorates the top of each page, sometimes appearing a few times on the same page. Third, at times Freimann added information about visitors’ signatures, such as the date of the visit (when it was omitted), or clari-

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fying comments (when he thought these were needed). For instance, near four short signatures written in Farsi (May 1932), he wrote four separate times “From Persia,” thus indicating these visitors’ place of residence. If the visitor book can be viewed as a collection of sorts (of autographs and comments), then we can say that Freimann played a historically minded curatorial role. Fourth and last, Freimann used the wide space that the books’ pages offer also for writing notes, including documenting happenings at and near the tomb and bureaucratic matters and checklists that he needed to attend to. He wrote in the book of his perspectives and positions with regard to national events that took place in Palestine and abroad, which he thought had an effect on Jewish life. This touches on the fact that Freimann pursued an ideological agenda in the capacity of serving as the site’s shamash—and the curator of its visitors books—and the public sacred spaces of the visitor books offered him a place where his positions and concerns could be voiced and read publicly. On February 18, 1943 (the Purim Katan evening of HaTashag), Freimann indicated that the site was open all night for the benefit of visitors and prayers, to which he added a wish that the visitors’ prayers “shall be well-received and accepted soon.” On October 22, 1942, with arrival of news of the horrors of the Holocaust, Freimann wrote a wordy entry where he appreciatively described in detail the hundreds of Jewish prayers who had come to the site to pray the prior evening (specifying their ethnic and communal affiliations). He was moved by the large number of visitors and their devotion and reflected in the book that “it has been many years since such a large crowd had been observed.” In a comment from April 12, 1945, Freimann addressed political changes in the United States, noting in bold letters: “The President Roosevelt died, and the new president is Truman.” And then, on May 9, 1945, he wrote, “Today it was formally announced that Germany has surrendered unconditionally,” marking a “V” near the text. I mentioned that Freimann used the books also to keep records and lists of various items, including small financial dealings and the price of religious services that he supplied (usually lighting candles in the memory of deceased people and praying for them). Finally, he saw himself as the Jewish/Zionist guardian of the tomb, and as such he monitored, reported, and interfered with various Palestinian activities, which, he suspected, were aimed at undermining the site’s Jewish character. In the visitor books, he reports repeatedly and negatively on the Arab activities at or near the site. For example, on August  28, 1946, Freimann writes that he had successfully opposed attempts to have an Arab policeman permanently stationed at the tomb: “I absolutely insisted and did not allow their foot to touch the ground. I [then] immediately called the Beit-Lehem Police, who threw them out.”

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At the same time, the books at Rachel’s Tomb also served the public function that visitor books typically fulfill, that is, recording visitors’ and pilgrims’ signatures and comments. Most of the texts in these books are in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish (though other languages, too, are presented), mostly written by women visitors who frequented the site more than men.26 The texts mainly address women’s health and fertility, which were associated with the site’s distinct feminine and maternal themes: Rachel’s biblical and postbiblical images portrayed a caring maternal figure, who prayed for her descendants’ sufferings and exiles following the destruction of the First Temple (recall Jeremiah, who spoke of “Rachel weeping for her children” [Jer. 31:14]). For instance, on June 5, 1936, a female visitor signed her name and cited a fertility prayer asking God to be fertile and pregnant with male children (“vehakadosh barukh hu, yiphkeda bevanim zekharim, zera shel kaima, Amen”). A week later, on June 12, 1936, another visitor wrote: “For the health of the body, for complete recovery” (livri’ut haguf, lirfu’a shlema)—an expression that is repeated often in the texts. Visitors occasionally also wrote short prayers in the memory of deceased relatives and of men who died in battle. Figure 13.1 presents an opening from Rachel’s Tomb visitor book. The opening captures both the dense aggregation of visitors’ signatures on the book’s wide pages, and the shamash’s grids and texts: Freimann’s signatures appear on the top of each column (six signatures), together with the dates and indications of special events (New Year). A few of his texts are inscribed inside the columns as well, in between visitors’ entries (such as at the lower right corner, where he reports what he did with the tomb’s key). In her comparative studies of Rachel’s Tomb, anthropologist Susan Sered addressed the site’s feminine qualities, and how they shaped the ritual of female visitors and worshippers.27 Sered was the first to systematically study these visitor books, observing how they reflected changing national moods. Sered notes that the site became very popu lar during the 1940s, when it came to possess new meanings of national and patriotic character, which was a result of the “societal liminality” in which the Yishuv society as a whole was embedded. In a period that shortly followed the horrors of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and before the declaration of the State of Israel, on the other hand, the Jewish population yearned for collective symbols that would unify Jews within the Yishuv and worldwide, and offer hope and consolation. Rachel’s image and the site that materialized it were ideally suited for this purpose, and the meanings turned from personal health and fertility to national concerns and collective hopes. Sered sees visitors’ and pilgrims’ texts as reflecting a shift in “social mood,” to which I add that by inscribing what visitors wrote at the tomb was as

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Figure 13.1. The visitor book at Rachel’s Tomb: pilgrims’ and the shamash’s texts. Photo by the author.

much a public reflection of their sentiments as it was a reinscribing of the tomb’s (changing) collective meaning(s). On July 7, 1942, a male visitor wrote a lengthy text, which is typical of later entries in bringing together personal events with larger national events and political themes: After all the efforts that I have made to lead a happy life, I wasn’t able to succeed. I forced myself to join the army, for which I wasn’t prepared and [the idea of] which never crossed my mind before. But eventually I was drafted. I ask [you] not to blame anyone in the world [for this], for I have done this out of my own free will, when [I felt that] the situation had come to it. My Brothers, Sisters, and Acquaintances: mention me often, cherish me in your hearts, and mention and know that I was a friend or an acquaintance to you, by the name of Asher of the age of 27. May, with God’s help, we shall live together happily. . . . Soon the victory [will come] and Am Israel’s redemption, due to the merit of our Mother Rachel. In sincere friendship, yours loyally, Asher. This elaborate entry brings together the visitor’s personal narrative with national issues and events and explicitly addresses the fact that it was written at

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a particular location. That is, on top of its indexical quality, the text makes an explicit reference to the site, suggesting both routinely and ritually that the aforementioned wishes will be granted “in the merit of our Mother Rachel.” In terms of addressivity, this relatively elaborate text makes use of the book’s space of inscription for pursuing a public address and for testifying dramatically to a crucial junction in the life of this young visitor. The visitor-inscriber Asher uses the book as medium to publicly communicate and share his feelings. His text is characterized by an open addressivity structure, that is, by addressing whoever will read the entry, where the book is located—and to call for a general act of witnessing of his hopes, fears, and possible sacrifices.28 More than the rich assortment of writing genres pursued by the shamash and by the visitors on the pages of the tomb’s visitor books, what stands out is that the books’ writing surfaces are in effect hybrid documents that present multiple types of Jewish authorships produced on the same symbolic-cummaterial space. With the intervention of the site’s shamash, who in effect curates not only the site but also the book, these books acquired the status of bona fide institutional documents that functioned as part of the institution of Rachel’s Tomb (at a time when its collective meaning was undergoing significant changes). “Documents are composed in and of par ticu lar places,” Eric Laurier and Angus Whyte remind us,29 and the writing practices pursued by both the shamash and the visitors, contributed to (rather than merely reflected) the signification of the site as a Jewish space and destination that is at the same time material and symbolic.30 The books’ pages amount to surfaces that were at once front stages (public) and back stages (personal and organizational use): they included genres that are typically public, and genres— such as bookkeeping itself—that are typically institutional and hidden from public eyes. As for the shamash, one wonders why Freimann wrote what he did where he did, and not, say, in a booklet kept away from the public eye. It might be that the impressive visitor books were for Freimann the most readily available mnemonic devices; as their custodian, he was sure not to lose them or lose sight of what he wrote there. Alternatively, it could be that in historical view of occurrences in and around the tomb, he wished that his notes, especially those reporting on events nearby and how he addressed them, would be preserved. And the visitor books—he was only partly right in assuming—could grant this. The third explanation lies in symbolism: recall that Freimann signed on top of every column, and in every page in the book, suggesting a correspondence between his function as the gatekeeper of the site’s space and use (physical), and of the visitor book’s space and use (discursive). Finally, it could be that his inscriptions established a dialogue with visitors’ inscriptions, and were made to

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be seen and read by the latter. In other words, perhaps they were made purposefully public, with visitors’ as their intended audiences. Along these lines it might be that Freimann, who was born in Jerusalem and was a “local,” sought to bring a different perspective or “voice” to the book’s pages, that of a local or a resident, which would inform and interact with visitors’ voices: tourists and pilgrims from near or afar. Of my experience in studying visitor books, it is not unheard of that staff members too write in the book, and texts I have seen range from brief technical lists to substantial comments. Research, too, depicts occasions of more intense involvement, for instance, in Kevin James’s study of visitor books in Victorian Britain, where it was common for the management to address visitors’ texts, giving a dialogic bend to the book.31 I elaborated on the beadle’s extensive interventions in Rachel’s Tomb’s visitor books for three reasons. First, we often read visitor books for what visitors write in them, neglecting to notice contributions—and other types of interventions—performed by nonvisitor authors. Addressing these books inclusively requires seeing them as institutional media that are mobilized, in degrees—and the way this is pursued and the aims for which it is pursued. This brings us to the second reason for which the beadle’s interventions are significant, which is political. Rachel’s Tomb was for centuries a site of pilgrimage and visitation that appealed to pilgrims and travelers of different religions. Since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it has been disputed politically, with the tomb occupying a highly contested location. Indeed, recently it was exceptionally included in the Israeli side of the dividing wall, surrounded by towering walls, fortified watchtowers, and fences.32 Moreover, as Susan Sered shows, the shift toward nationalism was also a break away from the site’s traditional feminine symbolism.33 In light of this, Freimann’s interventions are significant as they embodied and contributed to the changing Jewish—and masculine—character of the site of Rachel’s Tomb. Third and last, Freimann’s particular management of the visitor books draws our attention to locations and occasions where spontaneous, graffiti engravings on nonregulated surfaces were replaced by writing practices associated with the media of the visitor books and the conventions that surround their use. Historically, this is a modernization process that has most likely commenced around the time Moses Montefiore restructured the tomb’s building (1831). As shifts in media go, at stake are never only techno-material aspects, but also political and institutional ones. Graffiti writing in antiquity, Stern stresses, often amounted to Jewish prayers, which “entailed writers’ deliberate, occasionally violent, and indelible modifications of their environments.”34 Visitor books, contrariwise, are institutional media, which are not lasting, and which may be, and often are, closely managed by the institution. Indeed, the

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very presentation of such media—including where they are offered, when, to whom, and how reading and writing practices are managed—are at the institution’s hands.

Ammunition Hill Texts: National Commemoration Performances and (a Few) Zionist Disputes The second site is the Ammunition Hill National Memorial Museum (AHNMM). The museum, which is located in northeast Jerusalem at Ammunition Hill, which marks the place of a known battle between the Israeli army and the Jordanian Legion during the Six-Day War (June 6, 1967). Unlike Rachel’s Tomb, this is a modern national commemoration complex, which possesses a clear conservative ideological mission at its foundation: through memorializing the thirty-seven Israeli soldiers who died in the battle, and the soldiers who died at the Jerusalem front more broadly (182 soldiers), the site is an instantiation of the Zionist-military ethos, promoting the idiom of the “liberation and unification of Jerusalem” with an emphasis on military might. Unlike Rachel’s Tomb, this site’s gender hue clearly revolves around men, hegemonic masculinity, and national chauvinism. The site physically encompasses a spacious hilly area, and a museum that was inaugurated in 1974 and legally declared a National Memorial Site by the Knesset in 1990. It holds a special aura in Israel’s commemoration landscape and it is a “must” site for Jewish visitors to Jerusalem—both Israelis and international tourists. Jerusalem Day ceremonies (attended by the president, prime minister, cabinet ministers, and military generals) are hosted there, and many schools and military units visit the site. The visitors, approximately 200,000 annually, walk through the original trenches and bunkers where the 1967 battle took place, which now supply stages for the telling of heroic stories of combat, patriotic sacrifice, and national triumph. The site thus demonstratively embodies Zionism’s “national cult of memorializing the dead,”35 and it stands out in terms of its salience and popularity even within the context of East Jerusalem, which is dotted with numerous Israeli military commemoratives. In meetings and interviews I held with the site’s directors, they all reiterated the linkage between the site and two major heritage sites in Jerusalem: the Western Wall and Yad Vashem. This was part of the discourse of Zionist national revival, weaving together traditional Jewish themes (Western Wall), Holocaust remembrance (Yad Vashem), and male heroism associated with recent Israeli militaristic nationalism—“the holy trinity” (ha-shilush ha-kadosh), as one of the site’s directors called it. Reiterating the national myth of revival and

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tying the Ammunition Hill museum to the significant and far more attractive sites of the Western Wall and Yad Vashem is strategic and serves to elevate the site symbolically and promote it as a major heritage attraction. Cultural geographer Maoz Azaryahu observes that Jerusalem is a place where the “encounter between the living and the dead is socially organized and culturally regulated within the framework of national tradition,”36 and the Western Wall, Yad Vashem, and Ammunition Hill are nodal points in this interconnected topography. Consider, in comparison, that Rachel’s Tomb is a prayer site for health, healing, and motherhood. The AHNMM presents information about the overall military campaign over Jerusalem, as well as many commemorative exhibits and devices, which include engraved texts: the Golden Wall of Commemoration with the names of the soldiers who died in the Jerusalem front, a book-like device whose large steel page records information about the soldiers, soldiers’ handwritten letters and personal journals, and more. Many of the artifacts are discursive, and include texts and representations thereof, which enhance the display’s authenticity, personalize and humanize the image of the soldiers, and glorify the image of the generals. Within this venerated, somber, and textual atmosphere, an effective national narrative of remembrance and identification is unspooled. It is within this ideological as well as material context that the site’s impressive commemorative visitor book is revealed. During my ethnographic visits to the museum (between 2006 and 2012), I observed and spoke with visitors and with the site’s management. All of the visitors whom I observed were Jewish, consisting of three main publics: local Israelis doing sightseeing in Jerusalem (mostly traveling from peripheral towns), international Jewish heritage tourists who traveled to Israel as part of a Zionist organization (such as the Taglit or the Birthright project), and ultra-Orthodox families who live in the surrounding Jewish neighborhoods and enjoy the site’s spacious outdoor area (entrance was then free). The first thing to note about the AHNMM commemorative visitor book is not what it contains but rather where it is contained. While visitor books are typically positioned near the exit, where they are ideally suited to elicit “an audience-contributed gesture of closure,” as Tamar Katriel observes,37 the location of the Ammunition Hill book is quite different. It is not positioned near the museum’s exit but in a place that is the symbolic reverse location: in one of the museum’s innermost halls, near the Golden Wall of Commemoration and the flickering memorial flame (Figure 13.2). There, the book is located in a deeply somber space that is densely decorated with national symbols, including three large flags that hang from the hall’s ceiling (the flag of the State of Israel, the flag of the Israeli army, and the flag of the Jerusalem Municipality).

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Figure 13.2. Symbolic positioning of visitor book in the Ammunition Hill Museum. Photo by the author.

Positioned uniquely inside the museum’s “sacred” interior, the book is not set to elicit reflexive comments or closing gestures. Rather, it enhances the sense of visiting an ideologically charged site and supplies an interactional interface right at the visit’s ideological crescendo. The book’s positioning in a heightened commemorative setting is further stressed by the fact that it is the main exhibit in the hall and by its material presentation: it is offered inside a monument-like installation made of heavy, black steel. The installation’s steel floor is elevated from the floor, and visitors who wish to read (or write) “must rise for the occasion,” where they will see the book on a polished wooden platform. Befitting the commemorative setting, and in line with the medium’s performative role, the book itself is heavy and bears a formidable appearance: it has a hard leather cover, bearing a military logo in dark red ink, and one hun-

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dred large pages (measuring 26 × 34 cm). And in its material, too, it is distinct: it is made of thick parchment-like material, and not of paper. A few of these features specifically resonate with Jewish audiences and evoke traditional Jewish practices. The pedestal on which the book rests, which requires the visitors to stand while reading and writing, and the material of the book’s pages (parchment) echo the materiality associated with the Torah (albeit that latter is scroll and not a book). The fact that the installation is slightly elevated from the ground further evokes the Jewish ritual of reading from the Torah at the synagogue in par ticular ritualistic occasions (the aliyah laTorah).38 In addition, a silver plate attached to the pedestal explicitly instructs visitors how to write in the book: “Students, Soldiers, and Visitors. Please indicate your impressions in a concise and respected manner. Kindly, regard the visitor book in a manner appropriate to the Ammunition Hill Site.” Ken Arnold argues that museum labels “stand in for the absent curator, prompting a form of conversation of sorts,” and this label is revealing in terms of who the museum addresses as its imagined audiences and how it instructs the composition of commemoration inscriptions (“respected manner”).39 The label further helps establishing a semiotic association between the artifact (the book) and the museum/site. Looking inside the book’s thick pages reveals added national and military symbolism, which repeats, corresponds with, and augments the plethora of symbols crowding the site’s spaces. Running down the center of each page is a column of four symbols printed in military shades: the symbol of the State of Israel, of the city of Jerusalem, of the Israeli Defense Forces, and of the Ammunition Hill site. Again, while the physical placement of the book inside the museum premises designates it as an institutional artifact (or a Derridean “machine,” see above), the printed symbols discursively reassert this connection from within each and every page. These pages compose what Jan Blommaert termed “‘special’ paper, inviting ‘special’ writing.”40 Visitors’ texts are visually enmeshed into the book’s symbolic layout (see Figure 13.3), creating a hybrid genre of visual-cumtextual signs: it offers traces of interactions between travelers and the site, or between impromptu utterances and institutional emblems. Most of the texts present utterances that comply with and (re)affirm Zionism’s militaristic narrative, as recounted by the museum.41 Travelers’ basic written formula here concerns the expression of an acknowledgment of the Zionist-militaristic sacrificial narrative, which consists of showing deep appreciation and paying homage to those who fell in action. Yet the addressees of these emotional expressions vary. The following entries, which appear in Figure 13.3, offer illustrations of different addressees and commemoration themes, as well as of the book’s bilingual (Hebrew and English) character. The first three entries

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Figure 13.3. Commemorative texts inscribed inside the Ammunition Hill visitor book. Photo by the author.

are written in Hebrew and appear on the left page, and the fourth entry is in English and is located on the bottom half of the page on the right. 17/8/03 To the museum! I enjoyed very much getting to know, learning and seeing what happened in the wars. The museum is very well kept and educational. Keep up the good work. Aviah [surname] From Battalion 299, “Horev,” we thank you for [your] investment . . . Gratefulness to God who sent his messengers—the I.D.F. to save his People. With God’s help, he shall further help us in the future. Shifra [surname] Through the help of GD and His constant surveillance, Israel + Jerusalem are ours and we will NEVER LET GO! The first two entries present one of the most common genres of inscriptions that travelers write on this commemorative stage, as they refer to and often also

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address the site itself and those who “invest” in national commemoration. In the first text, the formulaic opening exposes the utterance’s addressivity structure. The opening is followed by a description of the visit in highly positive terms (evaluations), attesting to its informative and educational value. Also, the inscriber supplies an evaluation of the material condition of the facility (“very well kept”), complimenting, in this way, those seen as responsible for its maintenance. The inscriber then commends the site’s personnel and finally signs. In the second entry the structure is reversed, as the signer begins by naming the addresser, which in this case is not an individual but a military group of visitors (a battalion). But the focus of the text is similar, and rests on recognizing the labor that commemorating agents had put into maintaining the site. By thus structuring the texts, the visitors comply with the local norm of signing the commemorative book, producing coherent and relevant utterances, which adequately correspond with the museum’s ideological charter: supplying information about the battles and doing this as an “educational” mission (which the visitor reaffirms). These entries also offer normative identities that can be, and are indeed, performed on national surfaces such as these. We have here the Israelis, who are Jews, but whose Jewish identity is subsumed within their Israelimilitaristic identification. This is a modern, national identity, where, by and large, the Jewish group is “unmarked” (no need to write or sign “I am Jewish”). It is perceived as synonymous with the category of citizen in the first text and military in the second text. However, most of the book’s commemorative texts are not directed to those institutional agents who serve in maintaining commemoration, but rather express gratitude directly to the dead soldiers who fought and fell in the war. In these cases, expressions of indebtedness are directed not to the commemorators but to the “commemoratees.” Though very different in terms of addressivity, both types of inscriptions present relevant and normative identity categories, including Israeli and Zionist visitors, who supply proof for having visited the site, having understood its national (Jewish-Zionist) narrative, and expressing sympathy with it. The latter two entries above are rather different. Both present an open addressivity structure, that is, they are not addressed to anyone in particular. Rather, they build on the communication settings that suggest that they will be read precisely where they were written. They are relevant entries in that they express themes concerning gratitude (the first) and salvation or triumph (the second), which are recurrent themes in the museums’ commemorative narrative. Yet these texts differ significantly from the earlier ones because they locate the historical agency behind the 1967 Israeli-Arab War not with the militarynational system, but with the Almighty. The first of the two is clear about the differences between the Creator and those who are his messengers, and it is

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explicit about the identities of both. Historical agency, the text succinctly argues, lies with divine intervention and not with Israel’s warfare machine and war generals and soldiers. In these and similar entries God emerges explicitly and acts as a superagent who is responsible for the acclaimed historical victory, and who is therefore the adequate addressee for sentiments of gratitude. Similar themes recur in the second entry, which states the site’s national agenda, echoing the AHNMM’s mantra (“Forever liberated and united Jerusalem”). The inscriber underlined the term “ours” (first-person plural form, together with “we will”), stressing thus the joint character of Jewish/Israeli experience and fate and performing a sense of community and shared commitments, all under the “surveillance” of God. These texts suggest an oppositional reading of the site or of the modern-national narrative it conveys—and my observations indicate that these texts are usually inscribed by ultra-Orthodox Jewish visitors, who live in nearby neighborhoods and who visit the site for leisure and recreation. At Ammunition Hill, more than at Rachel’s Tomb, the books serve as modern institutional media that is mobilized in the hands of a militaristic-Zionist institution. In its capacity as a commemorative and aggregative surface—a platform that literally brings visitors together—the book creates a semblance of community, an inscribed “imagined (Jewish) community.”42 Hence, regardless of whether individual entries use the first body plural form (we/ours), the book itself accomplished the sociality of “we” and “ours” by its very communicative structure and by the fact that it allows different visitors’ traces to linger in a juxtaposed manner. Visitors’ handwritten utterances gain their meaning from the site where they are written and presented (indexically) and vice versa: they in turn endow the static nature of the past with dynamicity, spontaneity, and authenticity.

“I’m Not a Jew, but I’m Loving the History”: Jewish Heritage in North America The third and last site is the renewed National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH). The NMAJH was founded in 1976 and was relocated and comprehensively restructured in 2010. It is located right on Independence Mall (overlooking the Independence National Historic Park), a location that symbolically embodies the museum’s view of the successful integration of Jewish communities in the United States along legal, cultural, and economic lines, and that instrumentally helps draw large audiences who visit the attractions on Independence Mall.43 It is an ambitious museum, clearly visible in terms of its impressive size and state-of-the-art appearance, and in terms of the national scope and agenda it encompasses (suggesting an authority that is national, rather than local, state, or regional).

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The NMAJH narrates the history of Jewish immigration to and livelihood in the United States, embracing a distinct liberal and progressive view of American Jewish history, identity, and heritage, and the incorporation and success that Jewish communities in the United States have reached. Notably, this is not a Holocaust museum, and the Holocaust—as also the establishment of the State of Israel—play a small role in the permanent exhibition space. The museum hosts nearly 80,000 visitors annually. Compared to AHNMM, what stands out is the different ideological perspectives that guide curation in both museums, and relatedly the mood-scape, which is celebratory and nearly festive at the NMAJH, and bleak and morbid at AHNMM. Also, the historical canvas in Philadelphia is broader, which corresponds with the physical space and size of the museum (the NMAJH being much bigger than the AHNMM). In terms of visitors, in Philadelphia most visitors are not Jewish, which is typical of Jewish museums in the United States, while at Ammunition Hill the overwhelming majority is.44 What similarity these museums hold concerns the fact that at the NMAJH, too, the core exhibitions consist mainly of handwritten textual artifacts, including originals, reproductions, and representations. From the inventory of the butcher Asser Levy, who immigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia in 1682, through the many early immigration certificates and documents (handwritten and/or hand-signed), which testify to Jewish travel and livelihood in the United States, to postcards and letters written by members of the young Jewish communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the museum’s high-techish and contemporary-looking exhibitions offer indexical traces of writing activities performed by North American Jews.45 The exhibition spaces are laid out chronologically, and unlike Rachel’s Tomb and the AHNMM, they offer a number of surfaces on which visitors can write. These surfaces include two installations where Post-it-like sticky notes are offered, where visitors can write replies to questions that the museum puts forth, and two relatively small notebook diaries that are located within specific exhibition rooms. I presently limit my comments to the latter notebook diaries. My focus is on one of the diaries, in which visitors wrote comments (the other diary served only signing names), which is positioned in a room that tells of Jewish travel and immigration to the West Coast in the nineteenth century. The booklet is located near several exemplary items that travelers typically took with them on their trips, including a hand mirror, a Hebrew siddur, and a few writing utensils (Figure  13.4). A museum label near the diary addresses visitors: “Think about the things you might want with you during your long journey to the West. Some supplies are already in your wagon. WHAT ELSE WILL YOU PACK?” The label’s text engages audiences playfully, scripting

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Figure 13.4. “WHAT ELSE WILL YOU PACK?”: “Supplies” for historical Jewish travel at the National Museum of American Jewish History. Photo by the author.

them into action in the midst of preparing for travel. There are a couple of points to note here, which is that visitors are themselves travelers (they traveled to the museum), which raises a question regarding what they have brought with them to the museum, or reversely, what they have taken away from it. Also, the museum label requests visitors to complete a collection (indicating that some supplies have already been collected), and hence symbolically visitors are invited to supplement the exhibition by adding their own objects, that is, their texts, to the contemporary textual (Jewish) “wagon.”46 Most of the texts in this booklet are written in English and only a few, though clearly visible, are in Hebrew. The booklet’s blank and undivided pages do not limit visitors’ texts to autographs, and more than half of them are discursive (include text over and above autograph, date, and place of origin). A few young visitors respond to the museum’s question “appropriately,” that is, in a way that accords with the invitation. One visitor wrote, “I would pack some water and beans,” and another indicated: “I would pack weapons just in case something happens. I would bring food too” (a survival priority!). A third visitor wrote quite a lengthy fictional narrative describing events that were supposedly encountered

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by the westward-heading Jewish travelers. Yet most visitors do not respond to the label, but use the booklet as they see fit, choosing to leave inscribed traces of their visit as they wish. The texts express visitors’ ways of being heritage audiences, or as sociologist Harold Garfinkel would have put it, “doing being” a Jewish audience.47 A few visitors signed their names and wrote nearby the phrase “so and so was here”—an “epigraphic cliché,” as Stern calls it.48 These inscribers did not respond to the museum’s invite, but made use of the available platform to publicly present themselves in situ. Some of the names (Rosen, Cohen, Lustig) clearly suggest Jewish identities, and at other times the code (language) accomplishes this indexically, such as entries written in, or including, Hebrew. Other entries in this booklet generally address the museum and the exhibits, such as in a text written by a female visitor from New York: “What a beautiful and educational museum.” Entries of this type relate to the site’s exhibits and, as we have seen above, are common in visitor books, which are appropriately used by visitors as channels for communication with the museum’s other wise unseen and inaccessible curators. The third and last cluster of entries in this booklet comprises texts that explicitly address the site’s Jewish character and performatively shape it into a Jewish space. One opinionated, Hebrew-written entry is directed at the management: “I would have been happy if there were also explanations in Hebrew. Particularly because this is a Jewish museum” (emphasis in the original). The entry’s language indexically supports its expressive content, making a negative evaluation—a complaint that entails a substantial critique, in fact—of the exhibition, raising a question as to its appropriateness to a Jewish heritage site. Leaving aside the question of whether the museum should or should not be bilingual (English/Hebrew), or more generally a multilingual establishment, the entry has little to do with the westward travel of Jews, and much to do with performatively marking the museum’s exhibition spaces as Jewish spaces. It reminds me of visitors’ negative evaluations in other museums, which address either material issues concerning maintenance (at AHNMM visitors wrote “why isn’t there a watercooler nearby” and “the outdoor space is dirty”) or matters of ideological standing (such as the texts above from AHNMM that critique the site’s ideological narration). This critique seems to be falling mostly under the first category, suggesting that language (Hebrew) is materially essential to the exhibition, yet hinting at a different, larger critique. A few other texts perform the “Jewishness” of the museum spaces by the metonymic association of the booklet with the larger exhibition. An inscription written over an entire page reads: “JEWS ARE AWESOME ”; and another large text succinctly states: “I ♥ '‫ה‬.” The latter text combines three discursive codes: English (the individualistic I), visual (referencing love aesthetically, which also

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suggests a spillover from new media genres of writing scripts), and Hebrew (holy language used for the holy name).49 The text contributes to the site’s Jewish character by suggesting that this renewed museum with its high-tech exhibitions is a suitable place for the expression of “chic” Jewish devotion. Two more texts, which were written in August 2012, and which refer to the travel westward, reference Jewish identity more modestly. Under their signatures the visitors added in parenthesis: “(also a Jew).” These interesting parenthesized additions serve as qualifiers that legitimize these visitors’ participation in the booklet’s writing practices: they, too, are Jews, and hence they, too, can legitimately participate in imagining (other) Jews’ travel westward. The word “also” resonates with the notion of the collection (which I mentioned earlier), whereby the undersigned recognize and publicly identify themselves as Jewish, hence as fitting into the collection of signatures that index “Jewish” identity in this site. These and similar texts perform Jewish identity in situ and help produce the inscriptive spaces of the booklet as a Jewish-scape. For many visitors who inscribe in this diary, Jewish identity emerges as a relevant social category, which is then expressed and stated publicly. Consider a different entry, apparently not written by a Jewish visitor: “This exhibition feels real. I’m not a Jew, but I’m loving the history.” Through a somewhat apologetic tone, the entry reveals, yet again, that visitors to the NMAJH perceive the imagined publics that the museum addresses as Jewish and that, therefore, possessing and exhibiting a Jewish identity is appropriate, even advantageous. This visitor reveals her identity as non-Jewish, or as a nonmember of the relevant public.50 If this is the case, it is reminding of a similar type of apologetic texts at the AHNMM, where, for instance, members of an infinitary unit that did not participate in the historic battle write: “we didn’t conqueror Jerusalem but she’s always in our hearts. A soldier and an officer, Golani, March 06.” A different reading may suggest that referencing the visitor’s non-Jewish identity does not serve in an apologetic capacity but rather to enhance the validity of the observation she is making—and the praise she is paying—by indicating that despite not being Jewish, she finds the portrayal of Jewish history in America as “real” and expresses genuine affection to the narrative the museum unfolds. Either way, she recognizes a connection between specifically Jewish audiences and the museum and that this heritage category is relevant as a communicative (writing) entitlement.51

Disembarking: Tracing Jewish Inscriptive Agencies I explored travel writing by looking at the subgenre of inscribed and situated texts that tourists and visitors produce in three Jewish heritage sites. Together with recent research exploring the richness of travel-related writing practices,

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this comparative and multisited study suggests that this subgenre of writing while traveling should be included in the encompassing grand genre of travel narrative. Here is a shift in the scholarly view of the conjunctions of travel and writing practices, seeking to shed light on what has received only little attention thus far. Specifically, studying this subgenre of travel writing may illuminate the constitution of Jewish displays of participation and heritage in contemporary Jewish destinations, across a range of locations and itineraries. Shifting from the canonic grand genre of travel narrative to brief on-site inscriptions recalibrates the emphasis from the single romantic author-narrator, to highly collective, public, and situated performances.52 Produced and displayed in situ, these performances mirror and reconstitute the Jewish character of the destination—as expressed in the hands (literally) and through the voices (figuratively) of their inscribers. Before I address these Jewishing texts, the Jewishness of the sites themselves demands some attention. These sites’ stories narrate different periods, and their geocultural/geopolitical locations offer diverse places at which visitors may subscribe publicly to the twin categories of “visitor” and “Jew.” The similarities and the variations between the three sites can be cast on a continuum between inclusivity and exclusivity. Consider that while Rachel’s Tomb has been a site of pilgrimage for Jews, Muslims, and Christians for many centuries, with the rise of Zionism, access has become growingly restricted. Through physically restructuring the tomb (Montefiore), then through the meticulous and active management of the site and, analogously, of its visitor books (Freimann), and finally and more recently, through the isolation of the site within the separation wall, accessing the tomb has become more exclusive and more political. The visitor books do not reflect non-Jewish texts or inscriptions. The texts written therein reflect, as Susan Sered shows, a shift from century-old concerns of health and fertility as evoked by mostly observing (Jewish) women, to preoccupation with the horrors of the Holocaust, and Zionist national discourse.53 The Ammunition Hill National Memorial Museum, while open, free to visit, and physically accessible, is nonetheless exclusive, and non-Jewish visitors on the premises are a rare view. The textual variations the pages of the visitor books display emerge rather because Jewish visitors are not a homogeneous ethnic group, and sharp political and theological disputes are expressed (together with other types of discords). Celebrating Jewish ethnonationalism, the museum is open and accepting of displays of support, homage, and admiration of what Meira Weiss called Zionist’s “cult of the dead.”54 Lastly, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia is the most inclusive of the sites, and indeed, inclusivity is part of its liberal public imagination. The large majority of visitors to the site are not Jewish (which is typically the case in

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other Jewish and Holocaust museums in the United States). As we have seen, one disputing text offers a critique—in Hebrew—of the lack of Hebrew as an institutional language of display (“Particularly because this is a Jewish museum”). Here is a question of language ideologies, suggesting a correlation between ethnicity and language. Moreover, the text embodies an entitlement—tied to the identity of being an Israeli—for expressing this type of criticism. The three sites offer their audiences diverse types of writing platforms, with different heritage affordances, that is, different interactional possibilities to (re) establish Jewish heritage. At Rachel’s Tomb we can assume the institutionalization (and domestication) of on-site writing practices, as these have shifted historically from carving graffiti on the structure of the tomb to inscribing in visitor books. These visitor books are artifacts that have been extensively adapted for their purpose by the tomb’s beadle, and there is reason to suppose that Freimann was as careful in the ways he mediated these books’ usage to visitors (who can inscribe therein, what can be written, and so on). At Ammunition Hill, the visitor book is positioned in a densely symbolic location, and the pages of the artifact itself contain multiple national and militaristic symbols. Anything written on the books’ pages establishes semiotic relations with the symbolic spaces inside the book and outside it—the politically charged spaces of the museum and of East Jerusalem. In Philadelphia, a small and simple (unruled and undecorated) booklet is playfully offered as part of a specific historical display addressing Jewish travel to the West. The siddur nearby might frame the booklet as a Jewish writing surface and text. Museumgoers are asked to name several objects that they suggest taking with them on their imagined travel westward, and symbolically the booklet serves as an inclusive vehicle that itself collects visitors’ various texts. Visitors’ texts on these platforms display Jewishness publicly as part of the material fabric of the site. This is accomplished by writing Hebrew words and letters, by code-switching to Hebrew (combining Hebrew words in texts that are other wise not in Hebrew), or by explicitly mentioning Jews and/or Jewish symbolism.55 Consider the multiple occasions where, at the Ammunition Hill museum, images of Jewish symbols (Star of David, menorah) accompany images of military weapons and armory (tanks, guns). These multimodal inscriptions read “a Jewish/Israeli tank” or “a Jewish/Israeli mortar,” thus also reflecting, authenticating, and amplifying the site’s national-militaristic ideological agenda. Distinctly Jewish names, too, serve to index Jewish heritage and presence, as sometimes do also travelers’ places of origin (which they indicate in line with the conventions of signing visitor books). In fact, a spatial national and sometimes global grid of Jewish communities, towns, cities, and mobilities is

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plotted.56 Moreover, not only places serve to indicate Jewish origin and affiliation but also times, such as when a Jewish holiday is mentioned in the text (serving a time frame). All this comes to suggest a Bakhtinian Jewish chronotope, where identities, performances, times, and places amount together to a collective narration.57 Visitors’ inscribed texts at these sites are performances of participation in the production of a collective narrative (even if and when one is critiquing it), which corresponds with the site’s narration and with the figures who occupy it: Mother Rachel and the site’s shamash, Israeli fallen soldiers of the 1967 war and the museum’s militaristic management, and American Jews of past centuries and the curators of the updated/restructured museum. Heritage sites are theatrical, and travelers at these sites partake, via the measures of writing, in scripting their narrative, as well as in a plethora of other performances: (re)citing their narrative, reinterpreting and critiquing it, sometimes merely adding small textual building blocks: “I was here (also a Jew).”

C h apter 14

Traveling, Seeing, and Painting: Amsterdam and the Creation of Jewish Art in the Work of Max Liebermann and Hermann Struck Nils Roemer

Modern means of communication and travel significantly contributed to the collapsing of time and space. Globalizing forces leveled not only cultural and religious differences, but aided the reassertion of Jewish particularism. Longing for other spaces emerged as a core experience, despite Jews’ integration into various national states and cultures. Indeed, modern Jewish history never solely existed within the confines of nation-states. Aside from the importance of modern mass communication like newspapers, literature, historiography, and politics, Jews mediated their sense of belonging to the emerging national cultures through travel and travel writing. These diasporic traveling cultures more often than not did not represent a break with the process of integration but assured Jews in their desire to imagine Europe and modernity in different ways and to see themselves as members of the nation-state, if, however, with a difference. The creation of modern Jewish art and literature has been linked to the process of emancipation, integration, and renewal of Jewish cultures and politics. Indeed, the Zionist movement represented a powerful push toward the creation of new Jewish aesthetics.1 Less noticed in this regard has been the importance of encounter, travel, and exploration. Imagining and exploring foreign places often functioned as an impor tant facet of Jewish creativity. Nineteenthcentury German Jews praised and recalled the early modern Dutch Republic and idealized Sephardic Jewry.2 To many Jews, Amsterdam—and Spinoza in particular—represented the meeting of Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions,

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the age of tolerance, and the beginning of modern Jewish philosophy. Likewise, modern Jewish artists looked to Rembrandt’s paintings to legitimize Jews as objects of modern art and to aid their effort to create a new modern Jewish aesthetic. Jewish travelers and artists like Max Liebermann (1847–1935) and Hermann Struck (1876–1944) became infatuated with Amsterdam and Rembrandt, which spurred their effort to fashion a new modern and Jewish visual culture. Rembrandt functioned as an important touchstone in debates about art, identity, and modernity. Next to the conservative rediscovery of Rembrandt that served nationalistic, anti-modern and anti-Semitic sentiments, there existed an equally important liberal reception of Rembrandt. To liberal admirers of the Dutch painter, his work offered an alternative path to authenticity and individualism at a moment when modernity’s forces threatened to unleash a new harmony of universalism and homogeneity. Amsterdam and Rembrandt became the path for a particular form of modernity that sought to remain in tune with the past, keeping with historical traditions and individuals’ particularities.3 Increasingly dismayed with the legacy of the Enlightenment, many German Jews idealized the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Republic.4 Working in the throes of these divergent Rembrandt receptions, Liebermann and Struck came to represent opposite positions in the highly politically charged discussions between liberal ideals and völkisch ideologies. Whereas the liberal reception of Rembrandt shaped Liebermann’s encounter, Struck was more informed by the nationalistic adaptation of the Dutch painter. Liebermann’s Amsterdam paintings bear a resemblance to Georg Simmel’s view of Rembrandt, whereas Struck’s idea of Jewish authenticity was more akin to that of Simmel’s student, Martin Buber.

Max Liebermann: Longing for Rembrandt and Amsterdam Born in 1847 in Berlin and the son of a well-to-do Jewish textile manufacturer, Liebermann exemplified his social class and its embrace of German and European culture. His travels and sojourns followed the path of the shifting centers of nineteenth-century Rembrandt reception. Liebermann spent the years 1873 to 1878 in Paris, which had already become the site of an intense interest in Rembrandt among the Junge Deutschland community of intellectuals who had fled the 1830 German Revolution, led by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) and Ludwig Börne (1786–1837). One such figure was Eduard Kolloff, curator of the print room of the Bibliothèque Nationale, who had left Germany for Paris in 1834. In 1854, Raumer’s Taschenbuch published Kolloff’s article championing Rembrandt, an artist still viewed romantically as a provincial master. Unlike

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many of his predecessors, who heavily relied on anecdotes, Kolloff utilized available archival documents to place Rembrandt’s art in its biographical and historical context. In so doing, he became the first to argue that Rembrandt exhibited a “strong touch of the Judaic.” To Kolloff, Rembrandt intensely studied Jewish life in Amsterdam for the purpose of his paintings. With his attention to the Jews of Amsterdam, Rembrandt defied classical conventions of traditional historical paintings, testifying to his search for authenticity and his moral commitment to the ideals of the Dutch Republic.5 For Kolloff, Rembrandt represented progressive social attitudes that entailed the promotion of Jews’ acceptance. Toleration of the Jews, Kolloff believed, was intrinsic to Rembrandt’s art. Kolloff, then, went beyond Hegel, who portrayed Rembrandt in his lectures on fine arts as the embodiment and promoter of secular art, but not as the advocate of liberal politics and religious toleration.6 After his extended stay in Paris, visits to Venice, and several trips to Amsterdam, Liebermann relocated to Munich. Here the Munich artists Julius Diez and Franz von Lenbach had discovered the Dutch painter as a classical artist before Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, and Max Slevogt became enthralled with Rembrandt. When Liebermann moved in the 1880s to Berlin, his relocation coincided with the new allure of Rembrandt in the German capital, as the curator for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Wilhelm von Bode, began to amass a large Rembrandt collection. By 1900 Berlin had become the center of Rembrandt research.7 Rembrandt and his representations of Jewish subjects were not a mere passing fad during the last decades of the nineteenth century; to be drawn to them was to engage with an ongoing debate about Rembrandt, modernity, and art. In nineteenth-century France, Rembrandt was widely celebrated as an accomplished artist and critics saw his relative openness toward Jews as indicative of a liberal-minded outlook.8 In the 1880s, however, Rembrandt’s relationship with Jews had become a contested issue. Edouard Drumont’s La France Juive, first published in 1886 and regularly reprinted and issued in popu lar editions during the last two decades of the century, equated Jews with the cult of money. Much to the anti-Semitic Drumont’s dismay, Jews had been accepted into seventeenth-century Dutch society, a fact that his study of Rembrandt’s paintings seemed to substantiate. In Rembrandt’s etching, he imagined Jews talking about business at the door of the synagogue. To him, these Jews “who walk with their stick in their hand with the air of wandering” appeared as the incarnation of the wandering and commerce-oriented Jew.9 In Germany, Julius Langbehn’s Rembrandt the Educator (1890) voiced similar sentiments. His immensely popular anti-Semitic study reached twenty-nine editions in its first year. By 1909 no fewer than forty-nine editions had appeared.

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Langbehn celebrated Rembrandt as a völkisch model to inspire Germans to forge a bridge between the fragmented men of modernity and the men of tomorrow. Less concerned with the historical reality of Rembrandt or his paintings than with the artist’s mythic reputation, Langbehn seized upon the Dutch artist as a model of anti-modernism.10 As Fritz Stern put it, “fact and fantasy mingled of course, and fantasy predominated.”11 Intense masculinity, radical nationalism, and anti-Semitism converged in Langbehn’s poorly considered attempt to give voice to his anxieties.12 Liebermann’s infatuation with Rembrandt was of a decisively different nature. In his 1907 discussion of Rembrandt scholarship, Liebermann omitted Langbehn altogether. Next to Bode’s scholarship, he still greatly admired Kolloff’s expertise on Rembrandt and his view of the Dutch painter’s relation to Jews and Judaism. For Liebermann it was evident not only that Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, but that his sitters came from there as well.13 It is within these differing debates over Rembrandt and within the highly politically charged atmosphere in the aftermath of the foundation of the German Reich in 1871 that Liebermann emerged as a dedicated Rembrandt admirer. Liebermann visited Holland for the first time in 1871, spending only a few days in Amsterdam. In 1876, however, he began to visit the Dutch metropolis every summer, a routine that would last until the outbreak of the First World War.14 Already prior to his encounter with French art, the model of Dutch art had opened his canvases to new subject matter. He portrayed artisans, peasants, workers, and, above all, women in factories and fields, as in his Women Plucking Geese of 1872. He depicted not just a social milieu or members of a social class, but their commonality as well as their individuality. When the painting Women Plucking Geese was on display in the Lepke Gallery in Berlin, Liebermann acquired the title of the “prophet of the ugly.”15 Considered equally unbecoming and unfashionable was Liebermann’s highly controversial painting of The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple (1879), one of his very few overtly Jewish paintings. Its unveiling at Munich’s First International Art Exhibition in 1879 provoked wide-ranging condemnation. To many critics, Liebermann had deviated dramatically from traditional portrayals of the young Christ as divine figure. The art critic for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, Friedrich Pecht, charged that Liebermann’s Jesus was the “ugliest, know-it-all Jewish boy imaginable,” while the Jewish elders appeared as “a rabble of the filthiest haggling Jews.”16 Church officials lambasted Liebermann and attempted to initiate indictment proceedings against him, invoking paragraph 166 of the 1871 Reich Criminal Code that aimed to protect the church from blasphemous attacks. The painting was also the subject of a parliamentary

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debate in Bavaria.17 That Liebermann was not only a Jew but also a Prussian liberal did not help his case. The antagonism persisted even after the selection committee moved the painting to a less prominent location near the ceiling of the exhibition hall. Liebermann would later recount: “My picture caused a real scandal. The court preacher, Stoecker, spoke against the Jews because of it. . . . As I painted this innocent picture, I could not have dreamed that this would occur.”18 Yet there was praise amid the condemnation. Munich artists and scholars, and even Prince Luitpold, were highly supportive of Liebermann.19 In the end, the antagonism did not stifle his career. By the 1880s Liebermann had become a respected artist, first in France and then in Germany. One of his most important Dutch works, his depiction of the garden of the Catholic old-age home for men in Amsterdam, Altmännerhaus in Amsterdam (1881), had earned a medal at the annual Petit Salon exhibit in Paris. He was the first German artist to gain such recognition in France. Notwithstanding these accomplishments, the scandal surrounding The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple made him realize that, far from the “innocent picture” he had recalled, it would be received instead as an object of extreme scorn and hostility in a peak moment of the new anti-Semitism. In a concession to the strength of contemporary anti-Semitism, he repainted the figure before it was included in a Paris exhibition in 1884. A sketch of the unretouched 1879 version has been preserved. In the original, Liebermann depicted a barefoot boy with short, unkempt dark hair and a stereotypically Jewish profile. The boy gestures assertively and assumes a provocative stance as he argues with the Jewish elders. In the reworked version, Liebermann changed the young Jesus’s appearance. Jesus appeared as respectful, serious, and intelligent. His hair is combed, his clothes are straightened, and he wears sandals. These dramatic changes won over virtually none of Liebermann’s earlier critics. The painting was not on public display until the Berlin Secession exhibition of 1907. It remained in the possession of the German artist Fritz von Uhde until 1911, when, with the help of Alfred Lichtwark, the painting was acquired for the Hamburg art museum. More pertinent to the discussion of art and travel, the painting was based on Liebermann’s studies in the Amsterdam Judenviertel and the Portuguese synagogue. As he explained many years later, he had begun the painting in Munich, utilizing sketches he had made of Amsterdam’s Sephardic synagogue’s staircase in 1876 as his model.20 His painting of Jesus seems to have been informed by the composition of clustered figures around a center from Rembrandt’s etching Die kleine Beschneidnung (1630). Moreover, like Rembrandt in Die kleine Darstellung im Tempel (1639), Liebermann depicted Christ surrounded by Jewish scribes, thereby casting Jesus as Jewish.

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Notwithstanding the importance of Rembrandt and the Sephardic synagogue to Liebermann, the painting represents a convergence of precise historical studies with an overtly unhistorical impetus. Unlike other paintings of the scene by either Rembrandt or Liebermann’s contemporary Adolph Menzel, Liebermann depicts a historical scene in an unhistorical manner: it is more reminiscent of an eighteenth-century synagogue than a first-century temple. Yet Liebermann’s anachronistic pastiche of the ancient and the early modern constitutes a historical narrative of its own. Instead of capturing one historical moment, the painting fuses different historical times. In this manner, Liebermann’s painting reclaims Jesus and positions Europe’s Jewish communities as heirs to ancient religious traditions. The debate surrounding the painting illustrates the constrained, politically charged atmosphere in Germany that made it virtually impossible to create Jewish art, even in Berlin. Liebermann returned to the German capital in 1884, and his oil sketch Judengasse in Amsterdam, painted soon after his arrival in Berlin, is indicative of this period. With its dark browns and grays, it shows a barely populated narrow street, closed at one end. Wistful sentiments seemed to have been silenced in this environment.21 He longed for Munich’s vibrant artist culture at a time when art in Berlin continued to exist largely under the tutelage (and for the benefit) of the aristocracy and nobility, including the king. Even Berlin’s museum still had little to offer in comparison to its counterparts in Munich, Dresden, and Düsseldorf. Yet during the 1880s cultural life slowly changed; a new generation of museum assistants began their apprenticeship in the recently reorganized Berlin museum, including the Swiss-born and Viennatrained Hugo Tschudi, who came to work with Wilhelm von Bode (later the director of the state collection), and Alfred Lichtwark, an assistant of Anton von Werner who was invited to head the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 1886. There, too, was Bode’s assistant, the art historian Max Friedlaender, who joined Bode at the Gemäldegalerie (Paintings Department) of the Berlin State Museums in 1896. Tschudi, Lichtwark, and Friedlaender combined their liberal infatuation with Rembrandt with their support for Liebermann. Unlike Bode, who inaugurated a new era for museums in Berlin and art history with the sponsorship of the Prussian royal family, they combined their enthusiasm for Rembrandt with their appreciation for modern art. Lichtwark, who created a significant modern art collection in Hamburg, called upon his contemporaries to follow Rembrandt, whom he saw as an advocate of modern and secular art, as early as 1886.22 The Berlin museums amassed Impressionist art with the help of Liebermann and became major hubs for the collection of Rembrandt. Yet the Berlin Nationalgallerie’s efforts to acquire two of Liebermann’s paintings were thwarted by severe opposition, despite the support of Bode and Tschudi.23

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Contextualized in this fashion, Liebermann appears at the crossroads of art, national sentiments, and anti-Semitism. To many historians, the debates surrounding The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple led Liebermann to abandon religious themes for the remainder of his career.24 In the aftermath of the public debate, Liebermann indeed vowed in a letter to Lichtwark that he would never again paint “biblical topics.”25 This confession coincided with his departure from the Dutch tradition in favor of a new focus, influenced by Parisian Impressionism, on landscapes and bourgeois leisure. With this reorientation came the influence of lighter colors and a proclivity for sketchier depictions in lieu of finely executed details. Yet despite the reorientation in his work, Liebermann continued to focus in other ways on Amsterdam. Was Liebermann thinking about Jewish art? Liebermann himself insisted that art could not be ethnically labeled. “Indeed, there is simply art; it knows neither religious nor political boundaries.”26 To be a modern artist and to paint Jewish topics was not a contradiction for Liebermann. His oeuvre contains several sketches of the Jewish lanes in Amsterdam, which he continued to visit. In a series of roughly eighteen oil painting and etchings Liebermann investigated the Jewish lane anew in 1905, 1908, and 1909.27 In broad strokes, he depicted the daily life and the bustle of the streets. Whereas his painting of Jesus was a study in intricate detail, Liebermann’s later Amsterdam paintings and etchings blur lines and shapes and apply color generously. They represent a critical engagement with the question of Jewish identity, masses, and individuals. Once again Liebermann faced the question of how to portray individuals. In his earlier paintings in the Netherlands, he had detailed social milieus— commonalities between workers and their individuality. The Twelve-Year- Old Jesus in the Temple showcased individuals participating and responding to the ongoing conversation between Jesus and the rabbis. In his depictions of the Amsterdam ghetto he confronted the challenge of capturing the essence of his topic without resorting to the stereotypical.28 He therefore focused on space and its architecture, the crowd instead of close-up portraits of individuals. The influence of French Impressionism and the aesthetics of the sketch help to capture the mood of the tightly compressed space and its swarming throng, but they also obscure the people. He intentionally avoided presenting Jews as distinct; the Jewish lane and its inhabitants are indistinguishable from non-Jews. Liebermann’s Amsterdam paintings correspond to his art theory, which he developed in an essay Die Phantasie in der Malerei (Imagination in Painting) published partly in journal articles in 1904 and eventually as a book in 1916.29 Notwithstanding his initial attraction to the realism of early modern Dutch

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painting, Liebermann effectively blurs the lines between modernism and naturalism. Artistic creation is for Liebermann a conceptual and perceptual activity paired with creative and formative imagination. Indebted to Kant’s aesthetic theories, Liebermann argues that art reproduces neither a sensual perception nor an idea, but rather is “the invention of the visible form for an idea.”30 Liebermann painted the Jewish lane not in a realistic manner, but he engaged ideas of the ghetto by forging an artistic version of the Jewish quarter. For Liebermann, real ity and representation are relational rather than oppositional—much like individuals and types in Georg Simmel’s sociology.31 Simmel considered social types as objects of research without reducing individuals to types. Along these lines, he challenged racial concepts of Jews in The Philosophy of Money and “The Stranger.” To Simmel, social types are constructed within specific social, cultural, and historical formations, but do not exist beyond time and space. To be sure, social forms and types can have an objectifying influence upon the individual, which Simmel perceives as a great threat to individuality, but his sociology continues to view the individual as the tension point between subjective and objective forms. Jews are therefore not an objectified social form but exist in variant forms as individuals and not as a timeless race.32 Simmel entertained a salon regularly attended by many of Berlin’s artists and intellectuals, including Liebermann.33 Simmel also was party to the liberal reception of Rembrandt. Less intensely studied, Simmel’s aesthetic essays form part and parcel of his ongoing questioning of the individual in relationship to society and culture. As a student, Simmel initially contemplated an academic career as a scholar of the Renaissance. Even as an established sociologist, he continued to write on Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Auguste Rodin. In 1890, he critically reviewed Langbehn’s study of Rembrandt, and he published two important essays on the Dutch master in 1914.34 To Simmel, the issue of individualism was paramount. In his “Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), Simmel argued that the modern city created an environment that threatened its inhabitants’ individuality by reducing them to their respective economic and functional roles. Tracing the origins of modern, subjective individuality back to the Enlightenment, he was fearful of its loss.35 Much like Liebermann in his essay on imagination in art, Simmel views art as creative imagination based on the study of reality, but not as the application of a preexisting idea. The painting is not the signifier of an other wise existing reality, but a self-contained reality.36 Renaissance portraits subscribed to Greek ideals of beauty and perfection. According to Simmel, they captured individuals in their timeless essence. The background was fixed and the artist typified the individual by more general

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categories. Rembrandt’s paintings are different. Whereas Renaissance artists’ portraits aimed for the typical, “Rembrandt’s give the impression of individual uniqueness.”37 Rembrandt, Simmel argued, drew individuals as “always becoming.”38 When it comes to Rembrandt, the viewer “is captured by the appearance as it stands” without being referred back to reality. The painting is self-sufficient and to comprehend it “we do not need to go beyond the work of art.”39 These reflections addressed the tension between the timeless and the individual as seriously as Liebermann did in his Amsterdam paintings. Much like Simmel, then, Liebermann shows the Jewish lane not as it is, but in its constant state of becoming. Liebermann’s general reflections become more pertinent considering his sensibility with regard to portraying Jews. In a letter to the Hamburg museum director Alfred Lichtwark, who had acquired the controversial Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple, Liebermann explained that he based his depiction of the Jews surrounding Jesus on models from Munich’s Christian hospitals. Jews, Liebermann believed, were too “characteristic. . . . They lead to caricatures.” Liebermann’s perspective was clearly informed by Rembrandt; like Simmel, he believed that Rembrandt painted “the spirit of the Jews, while Menzel represented their exterior.”40 Liebermann and Simmel clearly illustrate the centrality of the individual and individualism within the liberal interpretations of Rembrandt. Compared to other visual representations of the old Jewish quarter, however, Liebermann’s etchings and oil paintings lack a sense of identification or sentimental quality. Unlike local Dutch artists, who saw the vanishing of old Amsterdam and the ghetto with conflicting sentiments of approval and sadness, Lieberman did not apply a nostalgic filter to his views of the lane.41 His sketches and paintings of the ghetto and women, men, children, and street vendors depict a powerful historical landscape that contrasts with the nostalgic power of the vanishing ghetto that suffuses his letters.42 Yet nostalgia requires identification and certainty, not instability and uncertainty. As Larry Silver has observed, “In essence, these pictures are not charged with any religious overtones; rather, they offer the same combination of daily life scenes, chiefly markets, which ultimately derive from both Dutch traditions and nineteenth-century urban naturalism.”43 More recently, Walter Cahn has noted the virtual absence of markers of “ ‘Jewish’ ethnicity.” Along with many other scholars, he detects the relative absence of “insight or sympathy” in Liebermann’s etchings and paintings, which are not, he rightly argues, an “ethnographic record.”44 Overall, Cahn suggests that Liebermann’s view of the ghetto displays the common nineteenthcentury ambivalence of attraction and revulsion; in Liebermann’s case, however, this results in a failure to “be wholly persuasive.”45 Instead of seeing

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Liebermann’s paintings of the Jewish quarter as ambivalent, one should understand Liebermann’s desire to portray the quarter in the act of becoming rather than being.

Hermann Struck: Longing for New Authenticity in Amsterdam Created at the beginning of twentieth century, Liebermann’s art remained tied to ideals of liberalism, the individual, and modernity. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, this tradition was already significantly weakened in Germany; what followed, to use Fritz Stern’s term, was a “politics of cultural despair,” which replaced individuals with the nation and uncertainty with certainty.46 Enveloped in his changes, Martin Buber, who had studied with Simmel from 1899 to 1902 at the University of Berlin, challenged his teacher.47 Unlike Simmel, Buber argued for a biological definition of Jews, which Simmel had denied.48 Among Buber’s fellow travelers was Struck. Born in 1876 to a middle-class Orthodox Jewish family in Berlin, Struck studied at the Berlin Academy, graduating in 1899. He quickly gained recognition as one of the most accomplished and widely celebrated etchers. His travels took him to France, Palestine, Belgium, and England, as well as Amsterdam and Palestine. In the course of these travels he acquainted himself with Liebermann, met Jozef Israëls in Amsterdam, and joined the ranks of the Zionists. In 1902, in Vilna, he became one of the founding members of Mizrahi, which sought to merge Orthodoxy with Zionism. The transition from Simmel to Buber resembles the shift from Liebermann to Struck. Best remembered for his portrait of Theodor Herzl, Struck became arguably the most influential Jewish artist and teacher of the time.49 As with Liebermann, his visits to Amsterdam and his study of Rembrandt proved influential. Struck traveled to the Netherlands in 1898–1900, 1901, 1905, and 1906.50 He, too, became enthralled with Rembrandt and declared the Dutch painter to be of “Jewish descent.”51 He singled out Rembrandt for praise in his influential The Art of Etching, identifying him as the founder of the art. It is no coincidence that Struck dwelled particularly on Rembrandt’s etching of a synagogue. Indicative of this transitional stage in Struck’s career, he recognized Liebermann as the leader of contemporary etching and reprinted his etching of the Amsterdam ghetto.52 Notwithstanding Struck’s praise for Liebermann, it was the Dutch painter Jozef Izraëls who provided (next to Rembrandt) the model for Struck’s character sketches of Jews.53 Inspired by Rembrandt, in 1899 Struck studied the bustling market scene and transition from the week to Shabbat, where the “patriarchal life of the Jewish

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lane” unfolds.54 Struck’s portrait of a Jew from Amsterdam (1906) captures a simple man with a pipe.55 The etching shows a distant individual, who is reduced to a simple form, lacking any individuality. It contrasts not only with Liebermann, but also with Struck’s own portraits of famous individuals, like that of Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Halevi Dunner of Amsterdam, which captures the Dutch rabbi’s individuality. The difference is significant and continued to inform Struck’s work. Whereas his etchings of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kerr, and Albert Einstein render these widely celebrated individuals in detail, his portraits of Eastern European Jews represent a fixed typology.56 In contrast to his portraits of famous individuals, his Polnischer Rabbiner (1900)—apparently sketched of a rabbi who was visiting Berlin— exhibits key characteristics of Struck’s other etchings of Eastern Eu ropean Jews.57 Portraits from the same period, like Polnischer Jude (1906), Talmudstudium (1908), and Galizischer Jude (1902), employ the same key features.58 There are no frontal perspectives, but they are shown with their head slightly tilted and from the sides, representing a social type, the Jew, and not an individual.59 The fact that contemporaries looked at Struck’s work through the lens of the liberal Rembrandt reception made it difficult, initially, to describe the novelty. They were quick to point out that Rembrandt had solicited his models from Amsterdam’s Jewish quarters, while Struck employed Eastern European Jews of the ghettos.60 Like other liberal admirers of Rembrandt, the Berlinbased art critic and philosopher G. Kutna, writing in 1902, believed that he portrayed “spiritual individuality” without succumbing to types.61 Yet at the same time, he notes that Struck’s portraits capture Jews with “love.”62 To Kutna, Struck’s “Polish Jew” shows a “Jewish type.” The etching shows a “sad old man” whose youth, home, and happiness have been taken from him. He is captured by a pain that is older than himself: “He suffers from something distant, that he cannot fight; there is no victory, since he cannot see it or touch it. That is why his mourning is questioning and eternal.”63 Likewise, Kutna noticed that Struck’s A Jewish Girl does not draw attention to her beauty; rather, it is her melancholic gaze into the distance that defines her.64 In his assessment of Struck, Buber reproduced Kutna’s confusion. Buber believed that Struck’s etchings, “simultaneously artistic and full of character, stylistically generous and modest, without sharp ethnic features, not accentuated, yet, or perhaps because of it, incredibly Jewish in their effort, reveal quiet Jewish life in the innermost soul and direct it to the people’s soul.”65 In the small number of Amsterdam paintings Struck developed a new typology of Jewish visual representation that he significantly expanded upon in his illustrations to travelogues of Palestine, America, and Eastern Europe. In 1904 Struck illustrated a travelogue to Palestine by Adolf Friedemann. His

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portrait of the Old Jew of Jaffa (1905), for example, displays the same indebtedness to Rembrandt and reproduces the same typology of melancholic perseverance and beauty.66 With his illustration to Palestina Reisebilder (Palestine: Pictures of Travel), he contributed in the eyes of Buber toward “a discovery of Palestine for the eyes of our souls, and for the Jewish sensibility.” For Buber, the sketches of Palestine formed the counterpart to the drawings of Eastern European Jews: “As your Jewish heads reveal the innermost nature of our people, so in your Palestine landscapes the Jewish earth appears.”67 Widely celebrated now as the foremost Jewish artist of his generation, Struck continued to reproduce the same typology. In 1912, he illustrated the travelogue of the widely acclaimed travel writer Arthur Holitscher, whom he had previously accompanied across the Atlantic. Struck captured in New York not only famous Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, and New York’s skyline, but also various New Yorkers—newspaper boys, shoe cleaners, smokers of opium, factory workers, African Americans, and several notables of the established German Jewish community.68 Yet among his admiring images of New York as the emblem of modernity, Struck revisited his propensity for old men in his portrait of a shoe shiner (1912/13).69 Struck’s images of the downtrodden existence of Eastern European Jews became transformed into icons of endurance and strength in a new publication project, undertaken when he worked in the Office for Jewish Affairs in Poland in 1917. In the same year, the German Jewish writer Arnold Zweig joined the press department of the German Army Supreme Command for the East; the two eventually collaborated on The Face of Eastern European Jewry, which appeared in 1919. Zweig contrasted Eastern European Jews’ endurance, authenticity, and spiritual vitality with the “feeble” Jews of the West. With Zweig’s collaboration, Struck canonized the view of Eastern European men as icons of endurance and models of Jewish authenticity. Notwithstanding discrepancies between Zweig’s text and Struck’s images, at its core the book aimed to portray Eastern European Jews as the essentialized and ahistorical other.70 Liebermann and Struck ultimately exhibited opposite impulses. Yet their careers not only overlapped but are also intimately intertwined in their infatuation with Amsterdam. In many ways, Liebermann mediated Struck’s exploration of Amsterdam and Rembrandt. It was Liebermann who introduced Struck to Jozef Israëls and made corrections on Struck’s sketches.71 Indeed, the difference between them is less pronounced when we compare Struck to the Liebermann of The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple. The change from Simmel to Buber and Liebermann to Struck therefore marks not just the emergence of Jewish nationalism, but also the nationalization of German liberalism, as evidenced by the debate surrounding Liebermann’s oil painting of the young Jesus.

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Moreover, it was not only in the art of Liebermann that Jews become invisible. Struck’s idealized portraits of old men as the patriarchal representatives of Jewish tradition appear as timeless, detached from any concrete historical context. Removed from space and time, Struck’s portraits show old men with a past, in the present, and devoid of a future.

Conclusion Tracing Jews’ travels to Amsterdam offers a prism with which to bring into focus the emergence of shifting nostalgic, modern, and political perspectives upon a Jewish space and the various practices that it engendered and often comingled on the canvases and pages of travelers. They form part of a much larger and more pervasive Jewish traveling culture that seized on the urban spaces in particular and increasingly on foreign countries and cultures as well. Traveling to Amsterdam facilitated the search for alternative models of Jewish culture. For Liebermann, painting Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter became a means to visualize Jewish spaces within their European context. Fashioning himself a Berliner, German, and European, Liebermann’s attachment to Amsterdam allowed him to experience and articulate his Jewish identity. For the Orthodox Struck, the discovery of Rembrandt, Amsterdam, and Eastern European Jews complimented his Zionist orientation with a remembrance and celebration of Jewish religious tradition. To be sure, Liebermann invariably made Jews indistinguishable. Yet, he nevertheless became part of the Jewish artistic renaissance. In Buber’s edited volume on Jewish art, Liebermann appears among the fin de siècle artists responsible for forging a modern Jewish art.72 In contrast, Struck followed an opposite trajectory, but it, too, emerged from his visit to Amsterdam and his study of Rembrandt. He developed a typology of Jewish men that embodied the Jewish tradition for contemporaries. Visiting and imagining foreign places was an impor tant facet of their creativity. Critical of the legacy of the Enlightenment, the Dutch Republic became a vital touchstone for Liebermann and Struck. Travel and encounter allowed them to explore and critically engage differing models of modernity, art, Jewish cultures, and geographies of belonging.

C h apter 15

Jerusalem Journeys: Wandering Women in Contemporary Israeli Cinema Anat Zanger

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning; May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” reads the verse from Psalms (137:5–6). This psalm echoes three significant elements in the way in which travelers who enter the gates of Jerusalem relate to the city: as an object of desire through thousands of years of exile, as the subject of memory and forgetting, and as a mediator of the wanderer’s corporality. Furthermore, in this verse, as is widely accepted in Jewish culture, Jerusalem is described as a beloved female figure.1 However, with the culmination of the Jewish journey and the homecoming of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the imagery of Jerusalem has transformed. In an ongoing process that began in 1967, we now find that Jerusalem, in Israeli film, is not only imagined as a woman but is also the genius loci for feminine characters that dwell in the city and roam its streets.2 The women characters in films from My Michael (dir. Dan Wolman, 1975, an adaptation of Amos Oz’s novel of 1968) to Self Made (Hebrew: Boreg) (dir. Shira Geffen, 2014) fall ill, faint, lose their memory, are injured, or die in the city. Furthermore, they become disconnected from their private and national homes as they wander the streets of Jerusalem. By manipulating time (heterochrony) and through the use of a multiplicity of spaces (heterotopia), congruence is formed between female figuration and cinematic searching and wandering. This chapter addresses two phases in the cinematic imagery of Jerusalem that are differentiated by both spatiality and narrative framing. The first phase introduces and compares two films—My Michael and Seven Minutes in Heaven (dir. Omri Givon, 2008)—in which the female characters oscillate between a

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voyeuristic-erotic gaze and a clinical one while wandering through multitemporal layers of the city. The second phase discusses Cemetery Club (dir. Tali Shemesh, 2008) and The Human Resources Manager (dir. Eran Riklis, following A. B. Yehoshua, 2010),3 which are characterized by the dominance of a necrophilic gaze and the spatial movement to and from Jerusalem as defining of the cinematic space.4 As I will show, roaming women in all of these films undermine the hegemonic Zionist narrative of return. Wandering through Jerusalem, they embody—but also challenge—the final stage of the journey when a transformed idea or people occupy “a new position in a new time and place,” as observed by Edward Said, in his discussion of “traveling theory” (1983).5 This stage, which is immanent in most travel trajectories, raises the question regarding whether and how the idea of the return to Zion—and Jerusalem as its metonym—is projected through the female characters, as well as the new position that this idea assumes. I suggest to identify these walking practices in contemporary Israeli films as echoing the steps of the Wandering Jew6 and as an “acting out” and working through what Dominick LaCapra calls “the belatedness of a trauma”; these cinematic walking practices are manifestations of the earlier trauma of exile, a structured trauma that is “typical of myths of origin and may perhaps be located in the more or less mythologized history of every people.”7

Jerusalem as Eternal Destination Travel and movement are central to film, and the journey is one of its most common tropes. Indeed, travel and cinema have a history dating back to the very inception of the cinematic medium in the late nineteenth century.8 In this sense, we may identify every film as a journey—for its spectators as well as its characters. And thus, a film can serve its spectators as a virtual surrogate for an actual journey. As a form of travel genre, the cinematic medium—composed of images that are based on an ever-passing and then disappearing reality— enfolds a duality of the imaginary and the real. Jerusalem, as both a metaphor and metonym of the Land of Israel, comprises simultaneously a real, physical place and a cultural sign loaded with narratives and images that produce its historical and cultural memory. As a city central to the three monotheistic faiths, Jerusalem is populated by a multiplicity of ethnic and religious groups (Jewish and Arab, secular and ultra-Orthodox) that exist side-by-side in constant tension. This perplexing, conflicted place, trapped in the dialectics of “Heavenly/Earthly City,” provides the physical setting to the site of spiritual yearning.

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Cultural images of Jerusalem confer a strong impetus upon the significant dichotomy that typifies the Israeli space as lingering between the imagined and the real. The distinction between “Jerusalem above” and “Jerusalem below”— that is, heavenly and earthly Jerusalem—entails an inherent awareness of the divide between the symbolic and the actual. Throughout the years of Jewish exile, geographical distance from the city, like that from the Land of Israel itself, created a myriad of signifiers for the actual place; thus, the process of reconstructing Jerusalem “time and again, always from a different perspective.”9 Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi defines Jerusalem as the “Ground Zero of Jewish holiness and the Hebrew imagination.”10 This notion is expressed by an intensified relationship between the Jewish people and the historical real ity of Jerusalem, particularly with the ancient part of the city. Yosef Gorny defines four pivotal stages in the relationship between the Jewish people—and later, the State of Israel—and Jerusalem: the first stage began with the destruction of the Temple and the longing for Jerusalem that crystallized over the long exile (Hibbat Zion); the second stage took place with Israel’s founding, when a debate was conducted over Jerusalem’s status, and ultimately prime minister David Ben-Gurion declared Jerusalem as the country’s capital. The third stage began shortly thereafter, at the end of the War of Independence, with the city’s division: the eastern half remained in Jordanian hands and became an object of longing until the Six-Day War in 1967; and the fourth stage began in 1967, with the conquest of East Jerusalem and the unification of the city.11 Jerusalem’s unique status, in which some parts of the city were always inaccessible, seems to have become irrelevant with the end of the Six-Day War. After many years of longing for Jerusalem, there seemed no need to continue yearning. However, the decision was made to leave the Temple Mount under the control of the Muslim Waqf, and again the “sacred heart was diverted outwards,”12 thus reinstating the traditional separation between physical presence in the sacred place and exile and longing for it. In recent times, as the city remains officially united but replete with intensifying armed conflict (spanning from the second intifada of 2000 onward), even the Old City has not remained unaltered. Physical markers of separation were erected: walls that were constructed to separate Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods from Palestinian ones also cut through Palestinian neighborhoods and separated them from each other.13 The distance between the material and the imagined city is reshaped through each encounter with Jerusalem, whose magnetizing power dissipates upon the encounter itself.14 Thus, although it is conceived as a sacred space, once entered, Jerusalem’s sacredness recedes. It was Mark Twain who had noted in his diary that the Land of Israel and Jerusalem within it were not part of the

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mundane world, but part of tradition and poetry, “a land of dreams.”15 The encounter with the “ordinary city”—that city of everyday life—is particularly present in film due to the medium’s concreteness. The cinematic city also challenges the abstract quality of the “sacred” in Judaism, in its passion to produce material images of the eternal city. Despite the countless upheavals and transformations that Jerusalem has undergone over its three thousand years of existence, the city remains immersed in various images, including cinematic ones. These images testify to the historical and cultural memory as well as to the unique visions created by the filmmakers, manifested through the gazes of their characters. The gazes of those observing Jerusalem’s urban landscape through the camera lens are lent significance not only because of various specific locations in the city being filmed, but also because of the affinity produced by these gazes to the events and the plot.16 The relations between the film director and his characters has been described by Italian poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini as a device to introduce his own cinematic vision through a subjective point of view.17 Worth mentioning here as an example is the animated vision of Jerusalem as seen by the main character in James’ Journey to Jerusalem (dir. Ra’anan Alexandrowitz, 2003) or the two visions of city as seen by the Israeli and Palestinian female characters in Self Made (dir. Shira Geffen, 2014), which toward the end of the film have been swapped.

Women Traveling to Jerusalem But what about the woman’s practices? Traveling, pilgrimage, and journeying are spatial practices long associated with male experience and virtue.18 Furthermore, the notion of travel is conceived as the opposite of home, domus, domesticity.19 Both geographically and socially, mobility has always been limited for women.20 Moreover, women who attempted to roam the metropolis frequently struggled with deep male prejudgment regarding sexuality and space.21 With the advance of mass transportation and the Great Wars of the twentieth century, the movement and migration of both men and women increased. Prestate Palestine and later the State of Israel served as a destination for Jews wishing to rebuild their home—men and women alike—hailing from worldwide. Thus, it is all the more surprising that from 1967 onward, female protagonists in Israeli films often abandon their homes in Jerusalem and wander the urban spaces and paths of the city, opposing the traditional hegemony of masculine travel. As Joan-Pau Rubiés has observed, female travelers’ voices are often a variation on— and in dialogue with—those of their dominant male counterparts.22

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The travel genre plays out between the road and home. Interestingly, the Jewish wandering journey lasted over two thousand years before concluding in what turned out to be a disappointing homecoming that disrupted the relationship between the road and the (national) home. As a place, Jerusalem is on various levels an important factor for all the female characters in the films analyzed here; the question of home—be it absent or present—is explored during their journeys. Aiming to unravel the unique social and cultural signification of contemporary Jewish Israeli female cinematic journeys, I will explore four films that portray the contemporary cinematic travels of women who wander in and away from Jerusalem. Their subjective paths and compulsive movements reflect both geographical travels and mental journeys. As I will show in the following section, heterochronic journeys in Jerusalem enable a vision of the city through layers of time haunted by the past.

A Vertical Journey Through Time In its traditional imagery, Jerusalem is symbolized through its personification as a woman. However, Israeli cinema has turned the spotlight toward portraying a woman in the city.23 This process is identifiable as early as 1968, in Amos Oz’s novel My Michael and its cinematic adaptation (dir. Dan Wolman, 1975).24 In the first conversation that takes place between Michael and Hannah, the novel’s protagonists, Michael introduces his profession as a geomorphologist. He explains to Hannah that although most people believe that the earth was created many years ago, “in fact, the earth’s surface is constantly coming into being.”25 Michael’s words also offer a geomorphological perspective for the novel’s structure, describing Jerusalem as a multilevel entity. Although written in the 1960s, the novel’s diegetic world is located in divided Jerusalem of the 1950s after the War of Independence of 1948. Through flashbacks, delusions, and dreams, Mandatory Jerusalem surfaced before it was divided. Hannah’s real and imagined memories include also fictional figures, including travelers and rebels such as Strogoff and Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s novels, her alter ego Ivonne Azulai, and the remote European city Danzig. The Jerusalem of the 1950s, as portrayed in My Michael, was physically divided between two nations by barbed-wire barriers. Hannah reconstructs the lost sections of the city now inaccessible to her. She recalls her childhood friends, the Arab twins Khalil and Aziz with whom she used to play before the city’s division. She imagines herself as a princess reigning over the twins, who erotically act upon her command.26 In her final fantasy, however, they join forces to blow up the city, which is now in her mind a fusion of Jerusalem and Danzig.

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The cinematic adaptation of the novel already suggests the multilayered structure in its opening shot, which portrays the primeval Jerusalem Hills, followed by the Old City, and finally the modern neighborhoods of the 1950s. This structure elicits the question, what multilayered processes take place in Jerusalem before and after the Israeli War of Independence? In her discussion of My Michael, Nurith Gertz notes that the city of Jerusalem is “a symbolic projection of the protagonist’s misery, her walls, her railings.”27 Hannah (portrayed by Efrat Lavi; Figure  15.1) experiences hallucinations of choking, violent assault, and rape by unspecified dark forces. Gershon Shaked claims further that the “protagonist is a metaphor for Jerusalem, Jerusalem is her metaphor.”28 Amos Oz describes Jerusalem in one of the novel’s significant portrayals of the city as lying on the road like a wounded woman “with mountains round about her”: “Villages and suburbs surround Jerusalem in a close circle, like curious passersby standing round a wounded woman lying in the road: Nebi Samwil, Shuafat, Sheikh Jarrakh, Issawiya, Augusta Victoria, Wadi Joz, Silwan, Sur Baher, Beit Safafa. If they clenched their fist, the city would be crushed.”29 While in Amos Oz’s Jerusalem the city lies prone like a wounded woman, in the film Seven Minutes in Heaven (dir. Omri Givon, 2008), produced thirty years later during the second intifada, the female protagonist Galia replaces the city in the image, and it is she who lies wounded on a Jerusalem street.30 Like Hannah, Galia, too, is in a relationship that seems to suffocate her; she, too, roams Jerusalem seeking answers. Will she dare to make changes in her life? Deep in thought, she attempts to reconstruct the traumatic incident of the terror bombing she had experienced. She imagines the other passengers on the bus as it exploded and incessantly returns to the scene of her argument with her boyfriend Oren before they boarded the bus.31 In a macabre way, the terror attack reinstates the traditional imagery of Jerusalem within an individual female body. Galia in the film Seven Minutes in Heaven, whom Boaz tries to revive with the kiss of life, lies in his arms like Sleeping Beauty. In contrast, the eponymous Michael Gonen’s wife, Hannah, is Snow White, a frozen princess who plays the eternal object of desire.32 The two women, one in the 1970s and the other in the 2000s, reflect the city through their cinematic images. The differences between them become clear, however, in a parallel scene that takes place in both films, in the same location: Jerusalem’s main market. Hannah is enfolded in memories and fantasies that pursue her in the present. In her imagination, she is making love with the Arab twins with whom she spent time as a child. However, she doesn’t know where they are now, or how they look in the present. Wearing her finest clothes, she goes to the mar-

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Figure 15.1. Hannah (Efrat Lavi) observes an Arab stoneworker as she walks in Jerusalem. In My Michael, directed by Dan Wolman (1975), cinematography by Adam Greenberg, courtesy of the director.

ket, pushing her baby stroller. In the Mahaneh Yehuda market, among the fruit and vegetable stalls, she flirts with young men with an “Oriental” appearance. Her eyes seemingly search for traces of the twins in the vendors’ faces. She presents herself as an object for the male gaze—“to be looked-at-ness,” as defined by Laura Mulvey—a gaze which she also returns.33 Slowly, Hannah sinks into depressive episodes; in her attempt to bridge between Jerusalem’s past and present and her own, she experiences a mental breakdown. If Hannah is a metaphor for Jerusalem, and vice versa, the gaze through which the city is represented to the spectator is also a gaze transformed from an erotic to a clinical one (Mary Ann Doane’s term). As Doane suggests, the clinical discourse enables the woman subject’s illness to be represented outside the erotic scope (either temporarily or permanently).34 Galia, the protagonist in Seven Minutes in Heaven, also goes to the same market in Jerusalem, some three decades later. She is wrapped in bandages that protect her skin, burned in a terror attack. The sight of the meat and the smells of the Mahaneh Yehuda market trigger memories and the physical urge to vomit. The smell of burnt meat assails her senses and awakens a memory of the

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charred flesh during the violent incident on the bus, of which she remembers very little. A young man, Boaz, notices her in the market and helps her while she is vomiting in a street corner. When Boaz encounters her once again and gives her a lift, he looks at her and tries to revive the erotic gaze. Laughing, she reminds him of her clinical situation: “Are you hitting on me? Do you know what all of these bandages are?” As their relationship evolves (either in hallucination or in reality), these two gazes are merged. The film is structured around a terror attack in Jerusalem, making an attempt to reconstruct the events that occurred before and after.35 The film suggests at least two competing interpretations: Galia (Reymond Amsalem) and her boyfriend Oren (Nadav Netz) are wounded in a bus bombing in Jerusalem. She is severely burned and suffers from post-traumatic amnesia; he falls into a coma. The film opens with Oren’s death, which comes following a year of hospitalization. Galia has partially lost her memory, suffers from delusions and flashbacks connected to the events around the terror attack, and is attempting to reconstruct her life. A necklace sent to her anonymously impels her to seek out the missing scraps of the event. On her journey in search of answers, Galia meets the paramedic who saved her life, Boaz (Eldad Fribas), and they fall in love. Yet the film offers a different option for construing the course of the events: Boaz and Galia met the year before, at a costume party where Galia dressed up as a princess and Boaz as a vampire.36 The day after the party, Galia and her boyfriend at that time, Oren, were injured in the attack. With the upper part of her body bandaged to protect her skin, Galia wanders the city streets seeking clues as to what had happened. When she falls ill in the market, a young man— Boaz, whom she fails to recognize—comes to her rescue. It turns out that he was the paramedic who saved her life. Galia was unconscious for seven minutes, suspended between heaven and earth. As one of the characters she met mentions, Jewish mysticism maintains that during those minutes a person has the opportunity to see what his or her life will become if he or she returns to life; but upon return, the vision of future life is forgotten. Does the entire film consist of those seven minutes? Or is it just a flashback? The status of the flashback is uncertain: When did it happen? In which world? Through the flashback device, the film’s events and characters shift constantly on the threshold between the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem, between oblivion and memory. As Michel de Certeau observes, the past is found in objects and words, just as it is in the gestures of walking, eating, and sleeping.37 Though Galia remembers nothing about the bombing, she goes to different places in the city, trying to elicit her repressed memories. She returns to the

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hospital where she was taken after the attack and where the same nurse confronts her with the collective memory of this event, but Galia is looking for someone who can tell her something about what happened to her. In her journey for these answers, she wanders Jerusalem’s streets through a yeshiva, street junctions, and finally the parking lot where the bombed bus is stored. Like passersby who protect themselves from “shock experiences”—large-scale, noisy, and traumatic events38—by detaching themselves from the city and memories of it, Galia creates her own memories. For Galia, walking through Jerusalem also entails an encounter with images from the present and past capable of triggering her memories. The film casts doubt on our ability as spectators to achieve full understanding of the past and the present: not only of Galia’s own reality, but also of the city’s. Revolving around the structure of the flashback, both films treat the reconstruction of events that occurred either in reality or imagination. The narrative of My Michael is structured as a flashback that includes digressions to earlier events. Seven Minutes presents a greater degree of uncertainty, as the plot utilizes transmission and informative gaps to create an elliptical structure with a flashback at its core.39 Attempts to elicit a narrative through the events—to create a history that connects the collective memory to a subjective one—seem to fail. In both films, however, the temporal gaps, the dislocations made by the wandering women, the tension between memory and forgetting all signify the women’s desire to create a personal path of their own in parallel to the existing one. Following de Certeau, we may observe that the pedestrian offers a gaze from beneath. The unmediated contact that a city’s residents or visitors have with it creates broadening practices that do not necessarily accord with the planned space, or—in the case of Jerusalem—with the traditional utopian space associated with it as the eternal city. In the aforementioned films, events are portrayed between reality and delusion and female protagonists wander between the temporal layers of Jerusalem. Despite the fact that both films describe the trajectory of the journey’s end, the urge to continue wandering still activates them. These films create in the minds of their spectators an image of an unattainable city, alongside a desire for a city whose existence is scrutinized.

A Horizontal Journey Through Spaces In this section, I discuss two films whose women travel through multiple spaces and wander between Jerusalem and sites outside of it. Symbolizing the journey from life to death, they travel between Mount Herzl, the cemetery adjacent to it, and Europe. As I will show all three films discussed here were made during

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the same decade and transformed the erotic and clinical gaze into a necrophilic one. Michel Foucault defined the cemetery as a site that contains contradicting spaces, a heterotopic space that in contrast to utopia is the materialization of existing social relations.40 “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”41 Tali Shemesh’s nonfictional film Cemetery Club takes place in Jerusalem in 2006 (see Figure 15.2); throughout the film, the spatial presence of the cemetery and the recurring practice of walking between the graves create glimpses of the past beyond the present. Much of the film is set on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, the site of Israel’s national and military cemetery and the resting place of Theodor Herzl and other notable figures in the nation’s history.42 In Shemesh’s film, however, the cemetery functions as a venue for a group of senior citizens, all originally from Eastern Europe, to meet and conduct social and cultural activities. Clutching folding chairs, the members of the Herzl Academy (also known as the “Cemetery Club”) arrive for their Saturday morning get-together on Mount Herzl. They walk past Herzl’s grave without stopping to glance at it, strolling between the rows of tombstones in the military cemetery until they reach their usual meeting place on a lawn beside a tree. They arrange their chairs in a circle on the lawn, sit down, and open the session, which focuses on a different theme each time and always ends with a picnic. This practice challenges the designated function of Mount Herzl, the national cemetery, as a “conceived space.” 43 Simultaneously, it enables alternative “speech acts” through interactions created between subject and space.44 In Cemetery Club, these individual alternatives embody occurrences in the present involving memory and forgetting that are linked to exile, illness, and death; however, these are personal memories that well up into present-day occurrences, intertwining with and sometimes challenging the collective memory that is commemorated on Mount Herzl as one of Jerusalem’s main national lieux de mémoire (as per Pierre Nora).45 The main characters in Cemetery Club roam through a palimpsest space in which the past is always rewritten beneath the present. The film offers different versions of events in the past, presented by the characters themselves in a mixture of Hebrew and Polish. The two main female protagonists, Minya (the director’s grand mother) and Lena (Minya’s sister-in-law), attend the club’s activities on Mount Herzl. The meetings include constant infiltrations of the past that belong “there,” in Europe, in the form of the lecture topics (including Kant, the massacres in Babi Yar in 1941, and German poetry, among others). But the battle for memory unfolds in the constant dialogue between the sistersin-law, through the gap in times and perspectives created between the images and the soundtrack.

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Figure 15.2. Minya and Lena at the military graveyard in The Cemetery Club (Mo’adon Beit HaKvarot). Directed by Tali Shemesh, cinematography by Sharon [Shark] De-Mayo (Israel: Assaf Amir and Guy Lavie, Norma Productions, 2006). Courtesy of Norma Productions.

Thus, for example, in the sequence near their brother’s grave, both Lena and Minya want to relate their experiences of his final moments. While Minya recalls the gefilte fish that she prepared and brought, unaware that her brother had died, Lena tells about his final enema. In this way, their recollections also constitute a battle for the right to tell the story and have the final word. In another sequence, Lena and Minya watch a home video showing Minya during her journey to Poland on the street where her childhood home once was. Minya is filmed from the rear, walking along the street. As she sees the house, she exclaims: “That was my house!” And there, choking with tears, she argues with Lena, who sits watching her, in the present of the film: “Why did Lena say there was no house? I don’t understand.” This time, Lena says nothing. In Cemetery Club, the affinity between the subject and the city, between here and there, is based on Lena and Minya’s personal, sometimes contradictory memories. Through the video shown within the film it examines the act of seeing as knowledge. Is this action more valid than the spoken memories raised in the film? Is the childhood home’s distant location in a faraway exile linked to the way that Jerusalem’s space serves as the site for the characters’ walking in a stubborn attempt to continue the wandering in exile that has characterized the Jewish people for centuries?

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Cemetery Club continuously juxtaposes the “there” and “ here,” “now” and “then.” Repeated images of the act of walking afford this act symbolic meaning. Walking through a city offers the subject unmediated contact with it, while the cinematic medium allows spectators to experience it only in filmed fragments.46 The characters of Cemetery Club, like the film’s spectators, remain aloof. They are seen walking, holding their folding chairs, in the national cemetery alongside Herzl’s grave without acknowledging it. Perhaps Israel has never become a true home for these refugees from Europe. The Human Resources Manager (dir. Eran Riklis, 2010, adapted from A. B. Yehoshua’s novel), is more radical in its framing of women and the city in a necrophilic gaze. The main location of Cemetery Club was a cemetery; here, the main female figure is a corpse. The film narrates the last journey of deceased Julia Particha from Jerusalem to Romania and back. Her journey begins in a Jerusalem bakery where she worked before her death, and it includes the Mahaneh Yehuda market where she was killed in a terrorist attack, the crematorium, the airport, and later, thousands of miles from “there,” little villages in Romania, a Romanian army base, churches, and Christian cemeteries. Julia, of Catholic denomination, left her family in Romania in order to convert to Judaism. She worked at a bakery in Jerusalem, took a Hebrew name— Ruth—and lived on “Beit Israel” street (literally, “Home of Israel”) near the Mahaneh Yehuda market. The HR manager of the bakery is chosen to escort her coffin back to her birthplace in Romania—though ultimately, he returns to Jerusalem with the coffin and corpse.47 Julia/Ruth’s face materializes in the film only through a still photograph attached to her employee’s card and in a video-clip shot by her son during their final meeting in Romania (see Figure 15.3). Her story is reconstructed by the voices of others. Galit Hasan-Rokem defines the Wandering Jew figure as the ultimate stranger who harbors in him- or herself symbolism from the Christian world and thus arouses fear in both Jewish and Christian circles.48 Both the HR manager and Julia, each in his and her own way, are strangers who combine within themselves a “unity of nearness and remoteness.”49 Julia/Ruth never finds the “right place”: She left her family to settle in Jerusalem—where she is considered a convert. Her coffin arrives in her village after a series of mishaps, and then her mother decides that she belongs in Jerusalem after all, and must be taken back there. Although he is Israeli, the HR manager is a stranger in his own daily environment. Separated from his wife, he lives in a Jerusalem hotel. He is accustomed to traveling from place to place as part of his job, and thus is glad to hit the road again and leave the bakery for a while. Similar to the legend of the eternal “Wandering Jew,” but in reverse, the HR manager wanders across Eastern Europe with Julia’s corpse trying to do the

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Figure 15.3. The face of Julia/Ruth (Galina Ozerner) with the HR manager (Marc Ivanir) in The Human Resources Manager (Shlichuto Shel HaMemune Al Mashabei Enosh). Directed by Eran Riklis, cinematography by Rainer Klausmann (Israel/Germany/France/Romania: 2-Team Productions and United King Films, 2010). Courtesy of 2-Team Productions.

“right” thing and find the proper resting place for her, a victim of a national and religious conflict. As Hasan-Rokem comments, “the adaptation of the Wandering Jew image is . . . the concrete product of a change of point of view— that is, the non-Jewish view of the Jew was adopted by the Jews themselves.” Moreover, Hasan-Rokem adds that the primary function of the legend was to clarify that Jews would only be treated as equals if they converted to Christianity.50 In the case of The Human Resources Manager, this seems to be the main telos of the journey. The manager, who travels to Romania with Julia/Ruth’s coffin strapped to the car roof, travels by van, by old Romanian military command car, by boat, and by wagon. When he meets her family, he gives them “holy bread” from Jerusalem and a cross pendant that he found on her. The various meetings between the manager and her family encapsulate various options of Christian-Judaic relations and end with a reconciliation of sorts.

Conclusion: A Never-Ending Journey Throughout my analysis here, I have maintained a focus on the final stage of the journey—arrival—in which the excitement and tension that have built up

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along the road peak as the imaginary and real collide. While the narrative in the first two films (My Michael and Seven Minutes in Heaven) suggests a “vertical inquiry” (to use Maya Deren’s term)51 of a situation that revolves around the flashback device, and their female heroines are constantly negotiating their place vis-à-vis the “home” located in Jerusalem, in the second two films (Cemetery Club and The Human Resources Manager), the inquiry is horizontal and the journey takes place in liminal, heterotopic “non-places”: an airport, a cemetery, a crematorium. The hallucinated and imagined spaces materialize into actual, tangible, and circular journeys from and to Jerusalem. The female protagonists in all these films are suspended between the present and the past, between life and death, and between Jerusalem and abroad. We may interpret the shifts in portraying women from the erotic through the clinical to necrophilic framing as a rupture between the city and its Jewish nomadic subjects. The practice of walking in the city of Jerusalem, along with the women’s temporal and spatial transformations and manipulations (heterochronia and heterotopia), point back to the trauma of exile. By recognizing the cinematic medium as a sensitive seismometer that records the changing modes of our collective unconscious, we can acknowledge that these films reflect a changing attitude within Jewish Israeli society and culture toward Jerusalem and Zion. Instead of a homebound journey that ends in putting down roots, these journeys turn back to wandering and exile, through which maternal, domestic, productive women are replaced by madness (Hannah), rootlessness (Minya and Lena), injury (Galia), and death (Julia/Ruth). Paola Melchiori notes that dislocation has always marked the terrain of the female traveler.52 The Jewish Israeli films examined here suggest an alternative remapping of the dwelling: a constant redrafting of sites rather than circularity of origin and return. These dislocations resonate their refusal to cooperate with the closure introduced by Zionism’s hegemonic national narrative. Instead, they keep searching for this narrative’s loose end; a search that is neither a conquest nor a domination but rather a continuous and ongoing journey.

Note s

Chapter 1 1. Michael Kowalewski, “Introduction,” in Temperamental Journeys: Essays on the Modern Literature of Travel, ed. M. Kowalewski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 7. 2. Jonathan Raban, For Love and Money: Writing, Reading, Travelling, 1969–1987 (London: Collins Harvill, 1987), 254. 3. Recent scholarship has produced some excellent panoramic views of the history of the genre. See Carl Thompson, Travel Writing (London: Routledge, 2011); Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, eds., Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London: Reaktion Books, 1999); Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 4. Youngs, Cambridge Introduction, 3; Paul Fussell, Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 5. For a cogent discussion of these models, see Thompson, Travel Writing, 9–30. 6. Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 15. 7. Barbara Korte, English Travel Writing from Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 24. 8. Youngs, Cambridge Introduction, 4; Daniel Carey, “Truth, Lies and Travel Writing,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 20–28. 9. Jan Borm, “Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology,” in Perspectives on Travel Writing, ed. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 23. 10. Valerie Flint, “Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus,” in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Travel Writing, ed. Zweder von Martel (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 94–110. See also Margarita Zamora, Reading Columbus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 145, 175; Paul Zumthor, “The Medieval Travel Narrative,” New Literary History 25 (1994): 820. 11. Tim Youngs, Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1815–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 8. 12. “Any narrative characterized by a non-fiction dominant that relates (almost always) in the first person a journey or journeys that the reader supposes to have taken place in reality while assuming or presupposing that author, narrator and principal character are but one or identical” (Borm, “Defining Travel,” 17). 13. Ibid., 13. 14. Guillaume Thouroude, “ Towards Generic Autonomy: The Récit de Voyage as Mode, Genre and Form,” Studies in Travel Writing 13, no. 4 (December 2009): 383. 15. Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 6. 16. Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Travel Writing as a Genre: Facts, Fictions and the Invention of a Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Journeys 1 (2000): 6.

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17. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 4. 18. Claire Lindsay, “Travel Writing and Postcolonial Studies,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 36–42.

Chapter 2 1. For a response to the state of the art at that time, see Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, eds., Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London: Reaktion Books, 1999). 2. Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) and The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; originally in French as L’écriture de l’histoire, 1975); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Objects (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; originally in French as Le miroir d’Hérodote: Essai sur la représentation de l’autre, 1980); Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). We could, of course, add other names—such as Peter Hulme, Mary Campbell, Mary Louise Pratt, Anthony Pagden, and Iain M. Higgins—to this list, not to mention more recent authors, such as Suzanne Conklin Akbari or Kim M. Phillips. For an assessment of these theoretical currents, see Mary Baine Campbell, “Travel Writing and Its Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 261–78. It was of course reductionist to simply focus on “the Orient,” as Said did, however impor tant the experience of Western imperialism in this area had been in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but perhaps thanks to its political charge, few works were as fruitful in bringing these issues to prominence. 3. As examples from this period we might consider the work of Richard Strassberg on Chinese travel writing, André Miquel and Houari Touati on Arabic sources, or Joshua Prawer and Abraham David on Hebrew pilgrimage and migration to Palestine after the Crusades. Also impor tant, albeit slightly later, was the study of early modern Indo-Persian travel writing by Muzzafar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 4. Besides his essay in this collection, see also Martin Jacobs, Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 5. See John-Paul Ghobrial, “The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory,” Past & Present 222 (2014): 51–93. 6. For the best critical edition of the Syriac, with an Italian translation and commentary, see Storia di Mar Yahballaha e di Rabban Sauma: Cronaca siriaca del XIV secolo, ed. Pier Giorgio Borbone, rev. 2nd ed. (Moncalieri: Lulu, 2009). For a brief discussion, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors and the Practice of Cross- Cultural Encounters,” in The “Book” of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, ed. Palmira Brummett (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 37–112, esp. 96–98. 7. See Chapter 14 in this volume. 8. See Chapter 11 in this volume. 9. See Chapter 1 in this volume. 10. Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, trans. and ed. John D. Sinclair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 324–26. Writing in the thirteenth century, Dante only knew Ulysses through Latin sources and offered a Christianized interpretation of the dangers of insatiable curiosity. European writers after the fifteenth century recovered a more genuine Homeric figure, emphasizing above all the practical phi losopher “qui mores hominum multorum videt et urbes”—what we might define as the essential Renaissance figure of the traveler as a man devoted to cultivating the virtue of prudence through his experience of human diversity. Notably, the libretto to Claudio Monteverdi’s

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opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria by Giacomo Badaoro (Venice, 1641) stays remarkably close to the theme of return to the homeland and the family—as opposed to restless wandering—in the original Odyssey. 11. As expressed by the twelfth-century Spanish poet Judah Halevi (1085–1140) in one of his famous verses. 12. See George K. Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (Providence: Brown University Press, 1965), 11–37. See also Iris Shagrir, “The Hidden Jew of Jerusalem: The Legend of the Eternal Jew in Medieval and Early Modern Pilgrimage Narratives,” Viator 49, no.  2 (2018): 333–59. The earliest detailed Latin account, describing an encounter of 1223 in (Cilician) Armenia, appeared in an anonymous Cistercian chronicle from the abbey of Santa Maria della Ferraria in southern Italy. The name of the Jew would vary in different accounts, but the earliest (Johannes Buddeus, Cartaphilus) often suggest a connection with the “beloved disciple” in the Gospel of John, so that the wandering Jew is not always associated with the rejection of Jesus but also to the figure of the convert (in some versions he even became “John Devotus Deo”). 13. Notably by means of a popu lar German pamphlet of 1602, Kurze Beschreibung und Erzehlung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus (“A brief description and narration regarding a Jew named Ahasuerus”). 14. Peter Burke, Exiles and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge, 1500–2000 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017), 39–81. 15. Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 16. Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross- Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 17. I am not considering here the case of slavery, which, of course, also generated massive forced movement of population across many centuries, and whose impact on the formation of new religious or other ethnic identities across the Atlantic and elsewhere in the Old World would require a substantial separate discussion. 18. David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 99–132. 19. See Chapter 8 in this volume. 20. The “crisis of rabbinic authority” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the eventual emergence of an orthodox defensive reaction, is a complex issue whose interpretation remains controversial. Some of its roots may be traced back to the Sabbatean affair, an eminently cross-cultural crisis that revealed the dangers of messianic enthusiasm and had a long aftermath, but responses to continuing changes in Christian intellectual and moral culture—which went well beyond the impact of Spinoza’s sharp critique of traditional religion—also seem decisive. 21. See Chapter 12 in this volume. 22. See Chapter 9 in this volume.

Introduction to Part II 116.

1. David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1978),

2. Valerie Flint, “Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus,” in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Travel Writing, ed. Zweder von Martel (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 106. 3. Clines, Theme, 118. 4. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16 (1975): 6–18; Tamara L. Hunt, “Introduction,” in Women and the Colonial Gaze, ed. Tamara L. Hunt and Micheline R. Lessard (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 148; Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); George Yancy, “Colonial Gazing:

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The Production of the Body as ‘Other,’ ” Western Journal of Black Studies 32 (2008): 1–15; John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002); Edward Snow, “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems,” Representations 25 (1989): 30–41. 5. Ian Rutherford, “Tourism and the Sacred: Pausanias and the Traditions of Greek Pilgrimage,” in Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece, ed. Susan E. Alcock, John F. Cherry, and Jaś Elsner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40–56; Jaś Elsner and Ian Rutherford, eds., Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 6. Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History 4.26.12 and 6.11.1–2, trans. Kirsopp Lake, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1926) 1:393 and 2:37. 7. Scott F. Johnson, “Real and Imagined Geography,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, ed. M. Maas (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2014), 394. 8. Scott  F. Johnson, Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 32. 9. Itinerarium Egeriae 10.7 and 5.8, trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed. (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1999), 120 and 113. 10. Ep. 49.14. See Joshua Levinson, “There Is No Place Like Home: Rabbinic Responses to the Christianization of Palestine,” in Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity, ed. Natalie B. Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 99–120. 11. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22–27. 12. Lucian, A True History, in Lucian: Selected Dialogues, trans. C. D. N. Costa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 251. 13. John Elsner, “From the Pyramids to Pausanias and Piglet: Monuments, Travel and Writing,” in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 226–27. 14. Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 46. 15. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge: New York, 1995), 30. 16. Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia [. . .] (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 2:303. 17. George Bush, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, Derived Principally from the Manners, Customs, Rites . . . and Works of Art and Literature, of the Eastern Nations (Philadelphia, 1850), 6. 18. Alexander Keith, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes, 1832), 75. 19. Ibid., 139–40. This passage was also quoted by Bush in his Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 526. 20. John Carne, Recollections of Travels in the East (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830), 142. 21. E. D. Hunt, “Holy Land Itineraries: Mapping the Bible in Late Roman Palestine,” in Space in the Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation, ed. Richard Talbert and Kai Brodersen (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 105.

Chapter 3 1. Elisabeth Robertson Kennedy, Seeking a Homeland: Sojourn and Ethnic Identity in the Ancestral Narratives of Genesis (Brill: Leiden, 2011), 33. See also Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 58. 2. Moshe Weinfeld, The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

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3. Peter Machinist, “Outsiders or Insiders: The Biblical View of Emergent Israel and Its Contexts,” in The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity, ed. Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 50. 4. Weinfeld, Promise of the Land, 4–5. 5. Virgil, The Aeneid 3.101 and 3.115, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking, 2006), 106. 6. Ibid., 3.198 (p. 109). 7. See also Deut. 32:10–14. Sara Japhet, “Conquest and Settlement in Chronicles,” Journal of Biblical Literature 98, no. 2 (1979): 205–18; Keith W. Whitelam, “Israel’s Traditions of Origin: Reclaiming the Land,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (1989): 19–42. 8. Japhet, “Conquest and Settlement,” 214. 9. Ibid., 218. 10. Whitelam, “Israel’s Traditions of Origin,” 34–35. 11. Machinist, “Outsiders,” 42. See also Guy Darshan, “The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean,” Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 689–709; Nili Wazana, “Natives or Immigrants: The Perception of the Origins of Israel and Other Peoples in the Bible,” in Shai le-Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, Its Exegesis and Its Language, ed. Moshe Bar-Asher et al. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007), 37–39 [Hebrew]. 12. Whitelam, “Israel’s Traditions of Origin,” 30; David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1978), 98. 13. Kennedy, Seeking a Homeland, 38. 14. Machinist, “Outsiders,” 49. 15. Kennedy, Seeking a Homeland, 39. 16. Ibid., 94. 17. Machinist, “Outsiders,” 51. 18. Quoted from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985). 19. Bible scholars have identified different sources here. See Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (London: SCM Press, 1972), 161; Ephraim A. Speiser, Genesis (New York: Doubleday, 1986), 86; Richard Elliott Friedman, “Sacred History and Theology: The Redaction of Torah,” in The Creation of Sacred Literature, ed. Richard Elliott Friedman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 29; Yair Zakovitz, “The Exodus from Ur of the Chaldeans: A Chapter in Literary Archaeology,” in Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch  A. Levine, ed. Robert Chazan, William  W. Hallo, and Lawrence  H. Schiffman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 429–39. 20. See Ibn Ezra’s well-known interpretation on the “secret of the twelve” (Deut. 1:2). For an interpretive history of these verses, see Menahem Kister, “ ‘Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead,’ ” in Studies in Ancient Midrash, ed. James Kugel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 43–56. 21. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 235. See also Joshua Levinson, “Dialogical Reading in the Rabbinic Exegetical Narrative,” Poetics Today 25, no. 3 (2004): 497–528. 22. Lubomír Doležel, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 207. 23. For an overview of these chapters in Jubilees, see Jacques van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 19–118. 24. The text and translation used here and throughout is based on James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Leuven: Peeters, 1989). 25. See James Kugel, A Walk Through Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 78; Devorah Dimant, “The Inheritance of the Land of Israel According to the Ideology of the Qumran Community,” Meghillot: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls 8–9 (2010): 113–33 [Hebrew]. A similar tradition appears in the Genesis Apocryphon 16–17. The relationship between these traditions, as well as their use of Ionian map

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traditions has been extensively discussed; see Daniel A. Machiela, “ ‘Each to His Own Inheritance’: Geography as an Evaluative Tool in the Genesis Apocryphon,” Dead Sea Discoveries 15 (2008): 50–66; Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation with Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13–17, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, vol. 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 105–26. 26. Machiela, Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon, 99. 27. Betsy Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible: Land and Covenant in Postbiblical Jewish Literature (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), 26. 28. Both Cana Werman and Daniel Machiela stress the centrality of the issue of legitimate claims to the land, that “the eventual kingdom of Israel—had been designated by God, from of old, as their rightful inheritance and portion” (Machiela, “ ‘Each to His Own Inheritance,’ ” 5). Werman cites in this regard 1 Macc. 15:33–34, where the Hasmonean Simon replies to accusations of improper land conquests made by the Seleucid king Antiochus VII: “We have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property, but only the inheritance of our ancestors, which at one time had been unjustly taken by our enemies” (Cana Werman, The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation, and Interpretation [Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2015], 47). 29. On the relation of the sojourn in Haran and the issue of inheritance, see Werman, The Book of Jubilees, 270; Atar Livneh, “How Long Did Abraham Sojourn in Haran? Traditions on the Patriarch in Compositions from Qumran,” Meghillot: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls 8–9 (2010): 197 [Hebrew]. 30. See also Josephus, Antiquities 1.154–57; Sebastian Brock, “Abraham and the Ravens: A Syriac Counterpart to Jubilees 11–12 and Its Implications,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 9 (1978): 135–52. 31. On the intricate web of exegetical motifs enabling this rewriting, see James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 244–54. 32. Kugel, A Walk Through Jubilees, 90–91. 33. Carol Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 31. 34. Ibid., 35, 45. 35. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 131. 36. James C. VanderKam, Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), 661. On the importance of this theology of separation in Jubilees and related literature, see also VanderKam, Jubilees, 57–60; van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 310–18. 37. 4Q259:1–4, in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. 26, Qumran Cave 4.XIX: Serekh Ha-Yahad and Related Texts, ed. Philip Alexander and Geza Vermes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 144. 38. Aaron Shemesh, “The Origins of the Laws of Separatism: Qumran Literature and Rabbinic Halacha,” Revue de Qumran 18 (1997): 224. 39. Ibid., 233. 40. Yair Furstenberg, “Outsider Impurity: Trajectories of Second Temple Separation Traditions in Tannaitic Literature,” in Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation from Second Temple Literature Through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, ed. Menahem Kister et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 41, 45, 47. 41. Charlotte Hempel, “The Place of the Book of Jubilees at Qumran and Beyond,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (London: T & T Clark, 2000), 187– 96; Werman, The Book of Jubilees, 54–69; Aaron Shemesh, “4Q265 and the Book of Jubilees,” Zion 73 (2008): 5–20 [Hebrew]. 42. Gen. Rab. 39.8, based on MS Vatican 30. This text is commonly dated to the mid-fifth century C.E., and Rabbi Levi is an early fourth-century Palestinian rabbi. Some manuscripts cite Gen. 15:18 (“to your offspring I assign this land”) as the concluding verse.

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43. On the emerging importance of subjectivity in rabbinic law and narrative, see Joshua Levinson, “From Narrative Practice to Cultural Poetics: Literary Anthropology and the Rabbinic Sense of Self,” in Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters, ed. Maren Niehoff (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 345–67. 44. E. Ann Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze (New York: Routledge, 1997), 5. 45. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16 (1975): 6–18; Tamara L. Hunt, “Introduction,” in Women and the Colonial Gaze, ed. Tamara L. Hunt and Micheline R. Lessard (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 148; Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); George Yancy, “Colonial Gazing: The Production of the Body as ‘Other,’” Western Journal of Black Studies 32 (2008): 1–15; John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002); Edward Snow, “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems,” Representations 25 (1989): 30–41. See also the contribution of Anat Zanger in this volume. 46. Corinn Columpar, “The Gaze as Theoretical Touchstone: The Intersection of Film Studies Feminist Theory, and Postcolonial Theory,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 30 (2002): 40. 47. Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization, 74. 48. See Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible, 32–33. 49. Jeanne van Eeden, “The Colonial Gaze: Imperialism, Myths, and South African Popu lar Culture,” Design Issues 20 (2004): 25–26. See also Marie  L. Pratt, “Scratches on the Face of the Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushman,” Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 119–43. 50. See Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible, 32–33.

Chapter 4 The epigraph is from François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus; The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, trans. Janet Lloyd (Berkeley: University of California Press), 230, 231. The texts discussed in this essay were first presented at the Text and Context workshop, convened at Beit Daniel on June 2011. My deepest gratitude goes to my friends and colleagues for their thoughts and remarks. The paper that became the basis for the present article was read at the Travel Narratives seminar at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Philadelphia 2012. I am greatly indebted to the participants for ideas and problems raised in the discussion. Many of them found their place in the final version. 1. See, in par ticu lar, the description of the Anonymous of Piacenza: Itinerarium Antonini Placentini: Un viaggio in Terra Santa del 560–570 d.C., ed. Celestina Milani (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1977); Antonini Placentini Itinerarium, ed. P. Geyer, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 127–74; English translation, in John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades, 2nd ed. (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 2002), 129–51. See Ora Limor, “Earth, Stone, Water and Oil: Objects of Veneration in Holy Land Travel Narratives,” in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place 500–1500, ed. Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, and Bianca Kühnel (London: Routledge, 2017), 3–18. On the other hand, one should mention here the absence of spectacular cure miracles at the main pilgrimage sites of Jerusalem, Rome, and to a degree also Santiago de Compostela, as observed by Benedicta Ward and others. See Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1987), 110–26. 2. Itinerarium Egeriae 2.5–7, ed. Aet. Franceschini and R. Weber, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 38–39; English translation: John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (London: S.P.C.K., 1999), 93. 3. Ora Limor, “Reading Sacred Space: Egeria, Paula, and the Christian Holy Land,” in De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. Yitzhak Hen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 1–15.

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4. Daniel the Abbot, in Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185, ed. John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill, and W. F. Ryan (London: Hakluyt Society, 1988), 135. See Richard M. Price, “The Holy Land in Old Russian Culture,” in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. R. N. Swanson, Studies in Church History 36 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 250–62; see Gen. 26:12. 5. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 15. 6. Adamnan’s De locis sanctis, ed. Denis Meehan, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1958); Adamnanus, De locis sanctis libri tres, ed. L. Bieler, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 175–234. 7. On Adomnán, see Sharpe’s introduction to Adomnán of Iona, Life of St.  Columba, trans. Richard Sharpe (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 43–65; Jonathan M. Wooding et al., eds., Adomnán of Iona: Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010). 8. Adomnan’s Life of Columba, ed. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 9. For Adomnán’s attitude to Jerome, see introduction to De locis sanctis, ed. Meehan, 13–16; Thomas O’Loughlin, “The Library of Iona in the Late Seventh Century: The Evidence from Adomnán’s De locis sanctis,” Ériu 45 (1994): 33–52. For Adomnán’s exegetical interests, see Thomas O’Loughlin, “The Exegetical Purpose of Adomnán’s De locis sanctis,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 24 (1992): 37–53. O’Loughlin devoted about a dozen articles and a full book to DLS, thus significantly advancing our knowledge and understanding of it. 10. Beda Venerabilis, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), book 5, chap. 15; English translation: Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price and R. E. Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), 300. 11. Beda Venerabilis, De locis sanctis, ed. I. Fraipont, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 245–80; Beda Venerabilis, Historia ecclesiastica 5.15–17. 12. In tabulis—probably wax tablets, used in antiquity and in the Middle Ages mainly for written records of temporary value: invoices, drafts, letters, but sometimes also for large-scale works; see Wilhelm Wattenbach, Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1958), 51–64; Richard A. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, “Wax Tablets,” Language and Communication 9 (1989): 175–91; Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (London: Longman, 1995), 182–83. 13. Introduction to De locis sanctis, ed. Meehan, 37; all further quotations are from that edition. 14. For the sparse details known about Arculf, see introduction to De locis sanctis, ed. Meehan, 6–9; Thomas O’Loughlin, “Adomnán and Arculf: The Case of an Expert Witness,” Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1997): 127–46; Nathalie Delierneux, “Arculfe, sanctus episcopus gente Gallus: Une existence historique discutable,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 75 (1997): 911–41; Ora Limor, “With His Own Eyes: Pilgrims and Writers in Early Medieval Europe,” in Studies in the History of Eretz Israel Presented to Yehuda Ben Porat, ed. Elchanan Reiner and Yehoshua Ben-Arieh (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2003), 383–409 [Hebrew]; Ora Limor, “Pilgrims and Authors: Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and Hugeburc’s Hodoeporicon Sancti Willibaldi,” Revue Bénédictine 114 (2004): 253–75; see also Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400– 600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 33–45. On the problem of Arculf’s very existence see below. 15. Ora Limor, “ ‘Holy Journey’: Pilgrimage and Christian Sacred Landscape,” in Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 321–53. 16. Beda Venerabilis, Historia ecclesiastica, 5.15; Beda Venerabilis, De locis sanctis, 19. See O’Loughlin, “Adomnán and Arculf,” 130–35; on the place of meeting, ibid., 131 n. 26. 17. For the Holy Land at the beginning of the early Muslim period, see Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099, trans. Ethel Broido (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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18. On this stage of travel, see Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 47–49. 19. This observation is true today as well. Barbara Nimri Aziz writes that illiterate pilgrims are so eager to document their personal reactions to pilgrimage that they will often enthusiastically dictate their experiences to a son, brother, or friend. Barbara Nimri Aziz, “Personal Dimensions of the Sacred Journey: What Pilgrims Say,” Religious Studies 23 (1987): 247–61, at 249. For a list of Holy Land itineraries and descriptions, see Reinhold Röhricht, Bibliotheca Geographica Palaestina (Berlin: H. Reuther, 1900). 20. An earlier instance is found in Jerome’s description of Paula’s journey through the holy places, but unlike Adomnán, Jerome took part in the journey. Hieronymus, Epistula 108, ed. Isidor Hilberg, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) 55 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1912), 306–51; English translation in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 79–91. See Limor, “Reading Sacred Space.” 21. O’Loughlin, “The Library of Iona”; O’Loughlin, “The Exegetical Purpose”; O’Loughlin, “Adomnán and Arculf”; Thomas O’Loughlin, “Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest: The Earliest Latin Account,” in Swanson, The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, 78–89. 22. On Jerome and pilgrimage, see Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 65–105. On Jerome and Paula, see above, note 20. 23. For a categorization of the sources on travel and holy places, see Howard, Writers and Pilgrims. 24. See, for example, the shroud story, DLS 1.9, and a discussion of this chapter in Ora Limor, “The Tale of the Shroud: An Inter-Religious Encounter in Seventh-Century Jerusalem Through the Eyes of an Irish Monk,” in Essays in Folklore and Jewish Studies in Honor of Professor Eli Yassif, ed. Tova Rosen et al., special issue, Te‘uda 28 (2017): 275–99 [Hebrew]. 25. On participant observation, see David Rotman, “The Marvelous in the Medieval Hebrew Narrative” (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2011), 238 [Hebrew]. 26. See the short summary by Rodney Aist, “Adomnán, Arculf and the Source Material of De locis sanctis,” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 163; Rodney Aist, From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writing of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). 27. Thomas O’Loughlin, “The De locis sanctis as a Liturgical Text,” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 181–92; David H. Jenkins, “Holy, Holier, Holiest”: The Sacred Topography of the Early Medieval Irish Church (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 28. DLS 1.1. On this chapter, see Thomas O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perception of an Insular Monk on the Location of the Biblical Drama (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 116–18. O’Loughlin analyzes the chapter as an exegesis of verses on Jerusalem in the Old and the New Testaments, in par ticu lar, Psalms 48 and Revelation 21–22; Thomas O’Loughlin, “Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland: Martyrium, Exegetical Key, Relic and Liturgical Space,” Ériu 54 (2004): 125–37; O’Loughlin, “The Exegetical Purpose,” 43–44. Maria Guagnano understands the chapter to be an exegesis of Psalm 46:4: Adomnano di Iona, I Luogi Santi, ed. and trans. Maria Guagnano (Bari: Edipuglia, 2008), 189. See also Haviva Pedaya, “Metamorphoses in the Holy of Holies: From the Margin to the Center,” Jewish Studies 37 (1997): 53–110 [Hebrew]; Ora Limor, “Conversion of Space,” in Religious Conversion: History, Experience and Meaning, ed. Ira Katznelson and Miri Rubin (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 31–59. 29. See W. J. T. Mitchell, “Holy Landscape: Israel, Palestine and the American Wilderness,” in Landscape and Power, 265. Adomnán’s description may echo the story of the casting out of the sellers and buyers from the Temple (Matt. 21:12–13). 30. In the middle of the fourteenth century, Niccolò of Poggibonsi also noted the cleanliness of Jerusalem, but without relating it to God: “All the houses of Jerusalem are vaulted, without any timber, and in like manner were built the piazzas and the streets of Jerusalem which rain does not make muddy, nor cause annoyance to the people who pass through the city.” Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare (1346–1350), ed. A. Bacchi della Lega and Bellarmino Bagatti (Jerusalem:

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Franciscan Printing Press, 1996), 11; English translation: Fra Niccolò of Poggibonsi, A Voyage Beyond the Seas, trans. T. Bellorini and E. Hoade (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1945), 9. 31. For summary and discussion, see Lawrence Nees, Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 23–57. 32. This “uneasiness” on Adomnán’s part when describing the dirt in Jerusalem’s streets was pointed out to me by Eitan Bar-Yosef. If there was any, it was probably created by the unfitting proximity of holiness and filth. One may turn here to Mary Douglas’s suggestion that pollution signifies nothing more than the violation of boundaries: “If uncleanness is matter out of place, we must approach it through order. Uncleanness and dirt is that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained” (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo [London: Routledge, 1966], 41). See Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 235–47. See also David Rotman’s observation about “near” marvelous spaces of nature. These spaces are “charged with the task of continually mending the defects of civilization in order to bring it in line with natural principles of fairness and justice. More than such stories express a ‘love of nature,’ they express alienation from the ‘familiar’ civilizational domain in which the narrating group is under constant threat” (Rotman, “The Marvelous,” vi). 33. Le codex Arménien Jérusalem 121, ed. Athanase Renoux, Patrologia Orientalis 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), 360–63; Itinerarium Egeria 48–49, pp. 89–90; Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 80– 81. On the finding of the true cross, see Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Stephan Borgehammar, How the Holy Cross Was Found: From Event to Medieval Legend (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991). 34. Itinerarium Egeriae 49.1–2; see also Sozomenus, Historia ecclesiastica 26.67, ed. J. Bidez and G. C. Hansen, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) 50 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1960); English translation: Sozomenus, Church History, trans. Chester David Hartranft, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 1007–10. 35. See Wilkinson’s discussion of Arculf’s sketches: Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 371–86. 36. Aist, “Adomnán,” 176–77. 37. Ibid., 176. 38. DLS 1.23. 39. “Sed et hoc etiam non esse praetereundum videtur”; “Sed et hoc nobis non esse tacendum videtur.” 40. See Sulpicius Severus, Chronicon 2.33, ed. Ghislaine de Senneville- Grave, Sources Chrétiennes 441 (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 300–303 (Migne, Patrologia Latina 20:148); Paulinus Nolanus, Epistulae 31.4, ed. Guilelmus de Hartel, CSEL 29 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1894), 271 (Migne, Patrologia Latina 61:327–28). 41. In tales of holy places, a stormy wind functions as a guardian, a gatekeeper who admits only the elect. See Elchanan Reiner, “Overt Falsehood and Covert Truth: Christians, Jews and Holy Places in Twelfth- Century Palestine,” Zion 63 (1998): 180–88 [Hebrew]; Elchanan Reiner, “A Jewish Response to the Crusades: The Dispute over Sacred Places in the Holy Land,” in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Simaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1999), 224–25. On broader connections of Jerusalem with winds, see, for example, the tradition put forward by Obadiah of Bertinoro (ca. 1445–ca. 1515), according to which Jerusalem is the origin of all winds: “All the winds of the world come and blow in Jerusalem. And it is said that every wind, before it goes to the place where it wants to go, comes to bow down to God in Jerusalem. Blessed be he who knows the truth” (letter of Obadiah of Bertinoro from the year 1488, in Letters from the Land of Israel, ed. Avraham Ya‘ari [Tel Aviv: Masada, 1971], 137). Jerusalem’s wind attracts the attention of inhabitants and visitors, as well as of writers and artists. Famous is Agnon’s story “From Foe to Friend.” 42. On rabbinic traditions, see Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 13; on the imbrication of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim eschatological traditions, see Ora Limor, “The Place of the End of Days: Escha-

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tological Geography in Jerusalem,” in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Jewish Art 23–24 (Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art, 1997/98), 13–24; Ora Limor, “Placing an Idea: The Valley of Jehoshaphat in Religious Imagination,” in Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel, ed. Renana Bartal and Hanna Vorholt (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 280–300. 43. On Jewish tradition of the mount, see Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, “The Mount of Olives Between Jews and Christians in the Roman-Byzantine Period” (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2000) [Hebrew]; on Muslim beliefs, see Ofer Livne-Kafri, “Jerusalem in Muslim Traditions of the ‘End of Days,’ ” in Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam: Selected Papers (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak BenZvi, 2000), 44–77 [Hebrew]. 44. Robert L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 114. 45. On the return of the Jews after the Muslim conquest, see Moshe Gil, “The Jewish Community,” in The History of Jerusalem: The Early Islamic Period (638–1099), ed. Joshua Prawer (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1987), 133–39 [Hebrew]. 46. On holy places as polemical arguments, see Reiner, “A Jewish Response to the Crusades,” 209–31. 47. Oded Irshai, “The Christian Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bordeaux Pilgrim,” Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 465–86, at 467. 48. Ibid., 470. See also Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 109–17. 49. Irshai, “The Christian Appropriation,” 473–74. 50. On the polemical weight of liturgy, see, for example, Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 56–91. 51. On Sukkoth and the possible meanings of its rituals, see Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Sukkot, Eschatology and Zechariah 14,” Revue biblique 103 (1996): 161–95. 52. 2 Chron. 7:9; Itinerarium Egeria 49. 53. 2 Chron. 6:12; Itinerarium Egeria 48. 54. Matt. 20:17–19, 26:1–2. 55. Rubenstein, “Sukkot,” 182–83. 56. See above, note 37. 57. Sozomenus, Historia ecclesiastica 26.67, ed. Bidez and Hansen, 1007–10; see O’Loughlin, “The Exegetical Purpose,” 44. 58. On the image of heavenly light and its possible biblical sources, see Katja Ritari, Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland: Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 35. As Ritari writes, the image is also related to the theme of resurrection as demonstrated in Vita Columbae 3.23, where the saint after burial will rise again “in luminosa et eaternali . . . claritudine.” 59. Felix Fabri, Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, vol. 1, ed. Conrad D. Hassler (Stuttgart: Societatis Literariae Stuttgardiensis, 1843), 388–89, 395–98. 60. Ibid., 389. 61. Rotman, “The Marvelous,” 257. 62. Stephen Sharman, “Visions of Divine Light in the Writings of Adomnán and Bede,” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 289–302; James E. Fraser, “Adomnán and the Morality of War,” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 106. 63. Paul Edward Dutton, “Observations on Early Medieval Weather in General, Bloody Rain in Par ticu lar,” in The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 174. 64. Vita Columbae 3.2, 3, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23; see Sharman, “Visions of Divine Light.” 65. Vita Columbae 3.23; see Gilbert Márkus, “Adiutor laborantium: A Poem by Adomnán?” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 153.

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66. Katja Ritari, “Heavenly Apparitions and Heavenly Life in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae,” in Wooding et al., Adomnán of Iona, 274–88, at 274–75. See Clare Stancliffe, “The Miracle Stories in Seventh-Century Irish Saints’ Lives,” in The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity, ed. Jacques Fontaine and Jocelyn N. Hillgarth (London: Warburg Institute, 1992), 94–96. See also Katja Ritari, Saints and Sinners, 31, on the holiness that makes the saint worthy to receive this great honor from God. 67. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 13. 68. Ibid., 31. 69. In their ritual character they may be seen as a kind of forerunner of the miracle of the holy fire that is first documented in the ninth century. Benedicta Ward defines the miracle of the holy fire “a liturgical miracle” (Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 123): “It was an annual, ritualized event that occurred at a certain moment in a ceremony; opinion was only divided about whether it was produced miraculously or by fraud” (121). Although less miraculous and less dramatic, the rain and wind marvels also bring together time, place, and divine interference, and unlike the holy fire, they were immune to the suspicion of fraud. See Lorraine Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 94: “Facts fabricated as evidence, that is, to make a par ticu lar point, are thereby disqualified as evidence. Nature’s facts are above suspicion, because presumed free of any intention.” 70. O’Loughlin, “Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland.” Another miracle of fire is found in DLS 1.9. 71. De civitate dei 21.7, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, 2 vols., CCSL 47–48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 768; English translation: City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), 976. See Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 3–19; Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Super natural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9. 72. Bartlett, The Natural and the Super natural, 8–9: “Miracles can be characterized by their causation, by the sense of wonder they arouse, or by their function as signs.” 73. Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence,” 97. See also Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1050–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998); Dutton, “Observations on Early Medieval Weather,” 167–80. 74. Adomnán includes other miracles in his book, but not related to weather. See the description of Mount Vulcan near Sicily in the last chapter of the book (DLS 3.6). 75. See Gabriel Zoran, Text, World, Space (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University–Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1997), 34 [Hebrew]. 76. See ibid., 23. 77. On the term “narrating community,” see Rotman, “The Marvelous,” 5–6. On the traveler as a trustworthy mediator, ibid., 232. 78. Ibid., 208. 79. “The Orient studied was a textual universe by and large,” writes Said on the way the Orient was depicted during centuries of writing and learning. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 52, and see the section “Imaginative Geography and Representations: Orientalizing the Orient,” 49–72. 80. Aist, “Adomnán,” 176–80.

Chapter 5 1. D. Fenning and J. Collyer, A New System of Geography; or, A General Description of the World, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: S. Crowder, 1766), 1:291. 2. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with notes by Rev. H. H. Milman, 6 vols. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856), 1:27. Milman (ibid., 27–28) included in his notes the observation of François Guizot (1787–1874) that Gibbon’s “comparison is exaggerated,

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with the intention, no doubt, of attacking the authority of the Bible, which boasts of the fertility of Palestine.” For Gibbon’s spirited defense, see The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, ed. John, Lord Sheffield (London: Blake, 1837), 724–26. For Voltaire, see Abregé de l’histoire universelle [. . .] par Mr. de Voltaire (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1753), 2:109. 3. See Fenning and Collyer, New System of Geography, 1:259–60, 290–92, 309–10, 481–82, 492–94, 499–500. 4. Ibid., 291. Shaw had actually not used the word “indolence,” but had written rather of “the great aversion . . . there is to labour and industry, in those few who possess it.” See Thomas Shaw, Travels, or Observations [. . .], 2nd ed. (London, 1757), 337. Fenning and Collyer’s remarks concerning both Shaw and Palestine were soon echoed—and by modern standards, plagiarized—by James Tytler in his revision of Thomas Salmon’s The New Universal Geographical Grammar [. . .], 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Printed for J. Spottiswood, 1782), 549. 5. [A. Guénée], Lettres de quelques juifs portugais et allemands [. . .], 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Chez Dufour, 1772), 1:403. The first edition appeared in 1769. 6. The History of the Works of the Learned: Giving a General View of the State of Learning Throughout Europe, and Containing an Impartial Account and Accurate Abstracts of the Most Valuable Books Published in Great Britain and Foreign Parts 1 (1740): 116–17. 7. For the Copley Medals awarded to Pringle and Cavendish respectively, see Charles Richard Weld, A History of the Royal Society, 2 vols. (London: John Parker, 1848), 2:567. In 1763 a periodical was launched calling itself The Complete Magazine of Knowledge and Plea sure, Containing the Greatest Variety of Original Pieces on the Most Curious and Useful Subjects. See Seth Rudy, Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 115. 8. Critical Review 8 (1759): 486–87. Portions of Shaw’s Travels appeared in vol. 18 (1761). For the 1759 remarks on travel literature, see also Charles Batten, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth- Century Travel Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 26–27. 9. Thomas Harmer, Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture [. . .], 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1776), 1:iv–v; 2:33. On Harner and other Nonconformists involved in what Michael LedgerLomas has called “the orientalizing study of the Bible,” see Ledger-Lomas, “Conder and Sons: Dissent and the Oriental Bible in Nineteenth- Century Britain,” in Dissent and the Bible in Britain, c. 1650–1950, ed. Scott Mandelbrote and Michael Ledger-Lomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 205–22. 10. James Franks, Sacred Literature, or Remarks upon the Book of Genesis, Collected and Arranged, to Promote the Knowledge, and Evince the Excellence, of the Holy Scriptures (Halifax: Holden and Dowson, 1802), xi. 11. Fenning and Collyer, New System of Geography, 1:509. On Shaw, see Peta Rée’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), www.oxforddnb.com, and the bibliography mentioned there; see also Ann Thomson, “Eighteenth-Century Images of the Arab,” in Beyond Pug’s Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping in Theory and Literary Practice, ed. C. C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 145–57. 12. James Macknight, A Harmony of the Four Gospels: In Which the Natural Order of Each Is Preserved, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1763), 1:151. 13. James Morier, A Second Journey Through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818), vii–viii. On his familiarity with Shaw, see ibid., 98–99, 167, 287, 290, 295. On Morier as traveler and novelist, see Pallani Pandit Laisram, Viewing the Islamic Orient: British Travel Writers of the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2006), chap. 2 14. George Bush, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, Derived Principally from the Manners, Customs, Rites [. . .] and Works of Art and Literature, of the Eastern Nations (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1850), 5, 24. On Bush, see Shalom Goldman, God’s Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 200–207. 15. George Paxton, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1819), 1:579–80.

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16. John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament [. . .], 6 vols. (London, 1748–63). On Gill, see James Leo Garrett  Jr., Baptist Theology: A Four- Century Study (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 93–106. 17. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, Which Have Remarkably Been Fulfilled, and at This Time Are Fulfilling in the World, 3rd  ed., 3 vols. (London: J. and R. Tonson, 1766), 1:41–42. 18. Ibid., 42–43. 19. Ibid., 54–55, 58–60. 20. John G. Kinnear, Cairo, Petra, and Damascus [. . .] (London: John Murray, 1841), 9, 62, 74, 185. 21. Ibid., 24, 171–72. 22. See C. B. Elliott, Travels in the Three Great Empires of Austria, Russia, and Turkey, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), 1:244. 23. Lord Lindsay, Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 1:14–15. On Lindsay, see Nicolas Barker, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: The Lives and Collections of Alexander William, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres, and James Ludovic, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres (London: B. Quaritch, 1978). 24. William Fleming, A Gazetteer of the Old and New Testaments, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Printing and Publishing Co., 1837), 1:56–57. 25. Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 138. Lewis erroneously gives the date of the first edition as 1828 rather than 1826. The words italicized by Fleming had been italicized by Keith himself in later editions. See, for example, his Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes, 1832), 353. 26. As Keith made clear (Evidence of the Truth, 355), he himself drew upon R. K. Porter, who had recently described the Arabs as “unsubdued and unchangeable.” On Porter, see below. 27. On Southey’s poem, see Andrew Warren, The Orient and the Young Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 46–61. 28. Kinnear, Cairo, Petra, and Damascus, 61–62, 75; see also 184. 29. See Thalaba the Destroyer: A Rhythmical Romance, 2nd  ed., 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Reese, and Orme, 1809), 1:146, 265. For Niebuhr, see also ibid., 57, 92–95, 133–34, 138, 143, 146, 156, 157–58, 194–96, 204; for Shaw, ibid., 136, 138–39, 141–44, 196–97, 205, 208, 258, 265–66. 30. John Carne’s travel letters for the New Monthly Magazine, which in 1821 had changed its name to the New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, were later collected in his Letters from the East, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1826); see there 1:400. On Carne (1789–1844), see the entry by Elizabeth Baigent in the ODNB. 31. Francis Jeffrey, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846), 2:470–47. See also Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 22. 32. Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817), 51, 363. On the poem, see Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 156–60; Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 222–24. 33. Macknight, Harmony of the Four Gospels, 1:136; Fenning and Collyer, New System of Geography, 1:508–9. See also The World Displayed 18 (1761): 60. 34. Robert Lowth, Isaiah: A New Translation, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Perth: Morison, 1793), 2:33; see also 78–79, 150, 158, 176, 195, 219. For the influence of Shaw, whose travel account had been translated into German in 1765, on Herder, see John D. Baildam, Paradisal Love: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Song of Songs (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 157–58, 183. 35. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1790), 1:xxii, 55. On Bruce and his travels, see Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile (New York: Harper & Row, 1962),

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15–42; Nigel Leask, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 2. 36. See, for example, Bruce, Travels, 1:xxxvii, 19, 55, 65, 91, 232. 37. Ibid., 289–90. 38. Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia [. . .], 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 2:303–4. 39. Bush, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 5 40. Ibid., 6. 41. H. Clay Trumbull, Studies in Oriental Social Life and Gleams from the East on the Sacred Page (Philadelphia: John D. Wattles, 1894), 1, 4. 42. The Harleian Miscellany; or, A Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts [. . .] Found in the Late Earl of Oxford’s Library, 8 vols. (London, 1744–46), 1:340. 43. Thomas Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof (London: William Tegg, 1869), 21. 44. Shaw, Travels (1757), 336–37. 45. J. S. Buckingham, Travels in Palestine, Through the Countries of Bashan and Gilead (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821), 209. On Buckingham, whose account was admired by T. E. Lawrence, see Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 59–66; Elliott Horowitz, “ ‘Remarkable Rather for Its Eloquence Than Its Truth’: Modern Travelers Encounter the Holy Land—and Each Other’s Accounts Thereof,” Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 445–49. 46. Alexander Macwhorter, A Series of Sermons upon the Most Impor tant Principles of Our Religion, 2 vols. (Newark, NJ: Pennington & Gould, 1803), 1:32. 47. The Works of Thomas Moore, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (Paris: Galignani, 1820), 4:186–87. 48. Josiah Conder, The Star in the East; with Other Poems (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1824), 5. 49. Josiah Conder, Palestine, Modern Traveller, vol. 1 (London: James Duncan, 1830), 6. On Conder, see Ledger-Lomas, “Conder and Sons,” 205–13; and David M. Thompson, “Finding Successors to ‘the Poet of the Sanctuary’: Josiah Conder in Context,” in Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales, ed. Isabel Rivers and David L. Wykes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 5. 50. Carne, Letters from the East, 1:249–50. 51. Conder, Palestine, 33. 52. Ibid., 69. 53. On Clarke in Palestine, see Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders, 17–24; Horowitz, “ ‘Remarkable Rather for Its Eloquence,’ ” 444–46. 54. Conder, Palestine, 70. 55. Frederick Henniker, Notes During a Visit to Egypt, Nubia, the Oasis, Mount Sinai, and Jerusalem (London: John Murray, 1823), 274; Conder, Palestine, 74. 56. Michael Russell, Palestine, or the Holy Land, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1831), 165–66. 57. Russell, Palestine, 169, 171. 58. T. R. Jolliffe, Letters from Palestine, Descriptive of a Tour Through Galilee and Judaea [. . .], 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London: Printed for Black, Young and Young, 1822), 1:103–4. For Conder’s use of Jolliffe, see his Palestine, 5, 10, 69, 147, 206–8, 221, 223, 280. 59. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act I, Scene IV. 60. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude: and Other Poems (London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy; and Carpenter and Son, by S. Hamilton, Weybridge, Surrey, 1816) 19. See lines 140–45, 272–74. 61. William Carpenter, A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures for the Use of English Readers (London: Wightman and Cramp, 1826), 325; Archibald Alexander, ed., A Pocket Dictionary of the Holy Bible, Containing a Historical and Geographical Account of the Persons and Places Mentioned in the Old and New Testaments (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union,

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1829), 308. See also Charles Hulbert, ed., Museum Asianum; or, Select Antiquities, Curiosities, Beauties, and Varieties, of Nature and Art, in the Eastern World (London: G. & W. B. Whittaker, W. Baynes and Son, and T. Blanshard, 1822), 10. 62. Keith, Evidence of the Truth, 124. Toward the same end, Keith cited Joliffe’s claim that “the wines of Jerusalem are most execrable” (ibid., 150). 63. W. Hughes, Illuminated Atlas of Scripture Geography (London: Charles Knight, 1840), 30; Samuel Green, ed., A Biblical and Theological Dictionary (London: John Snow, 1841), 190. 64. M. H. Adams, ed., The Rainbow and Other Stories: A Juvenile Gift (Boston: James M. Usher, 1850), 87–88. 65. George Fisk, A Pastor’s Memorial of Egypt, the Red Sea, the Wildernesses of Sin and Paran, Mount Sinai, Jerusalem, and Other Principal Localities of the Holy Land, 3rd ed. (London: Seeley, 1845), 248. See Horowitz, “ ‘Remarkable Rather for Its Eloquence,’ ” 452–53 (on Fisk’s account) and 442–52 (on Chateaubriand’s influence). 66. Connor’s account of his visit to Syria and Palestine, originally written as a series of reports to the Church Missionary Society, were first published in volumes 7 and 8 of its Missionary Register (henceforth MR), and subsequently as an appendix to William Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean (London: Seeley and Hatchard, 1822). For his comments on Jerusalem, see Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, 440–41; and MR 8 (1820): 392. For his education at Oxford’s Lincoln College before setting off for Malta, see MR 5 (1817): 430, 474. 67. Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, 78–79. On Jowett, see Gerald H. Anderson, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (New York: Macmillan, 1998), 344; and the entry by H. C. G. Matthew in the ODNB. 68. William Jowett, Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land (London: Seeley and Hatchard, 1825), 66, 187–88, 206. 69. Ibid., 207–8. Jowett, clearly quoting from memory, conflated the verse’s first two phrases, which in the King James translation read: “How is the gold become dim, how is the most fine gold changed.” 70. Jowett, Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land, 308. 71. John Carne, Recollections of the East; Forming a Continuation of the Letters from the East (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 42. 72. John Kitto, The Pictorial Bible: Being the Old and New Testaments [. . .], 3 vols. (London: Charles Knight, 1836–38), 2:202. 73. Russell, Palestine, 328. On Russell (1781–1848), who had converted from Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism shortly after completing his studies at Glasgow University, see Edwin James Aiken, Scriptural Geography: Portraying the Holy Land (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 57–88. 74. Robert Spence Hardy, Notices of the Holy Land, and Other Places Mentioned in the Scriptures [. . .] (London: Smith, Elder, 1835), 121. On Hardy, see Anderson, Biographical Dictionary, 280. 75. Bush, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 558. 76. Keith, Evidence of the Truth, 75. 77. Malcolm Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages: Trans-Atlantic Mythologies and the Novel (London: Penguin, 1995), 41. 78. Volney, The Ruins; or, A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, 3rd ed. (London: J. Johnson, 1796), 12–13. On Volney, see also Leask, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 112–17. 79. Keith, Evidence of the Truth, 139–40. This passage was also quoted by Bush in his Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 526. 80. Carne, Recollections of the East, 142. 81. On the subject in general, see D. J. Penslar, Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 82. Blount’s 1636 work was subsequently included in two popu lar anthologies: Thomas Osborne, A Collection of Voyages and Travels [. . .], 2 vols. (London: T. Osborne, 1745); and John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels, 17 vols. (Lon-

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don: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; and Cadell and Davies, 1808–14). For the relevant passage, see Osborne, Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1:552; Pinkerton, General Collection, 10:270. 83. Simon Patrick A Commentary on the Third Book of Moses, Called Leviticus (London: Ri. Chifwell, 1698), 556–57. On both Blount and Patrick, see Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 84. Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament. I have followed Gill’s modernized spelling of Patrick’s comments. 85. Elliott, Travels in the Three Great Empires, 2:407–8. 86. Ibid., 354. 87. Alexander Keith, The Land of Israel, According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob (Edinburgh: William Whyte, 1843), 428, 440; see also 457 on “the curse which has come up the land.” For his colleague’s fall, see Andrew A. Bonar and Robt. Murray M‘Cheyne, Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: William Whyte, 1844), 249. 88. Lindsay, Letters, 3rd ed. (1843), 2:70–71. 89. Lt. Col. James Lindsay was the son of Robert Lindsay (1754–1836), second son of the 5th Earl of Balcarres, and husband of Anne (his second wife), whom he had married in 1823. Lord Lindsay married their daughter Margaret in July of 1846. Their son James Ludovic Lindsay was born the following year. 90. Lindsay, Letters (1838), 2:71–72. 91. Marie-Joseph de Geramb, A Pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt, and Syria, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), 1:102, 219. 92. Ibid., 153. 93. H. B. Tristram, The Land of Israel; a Journal of Travels in Palestine (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1865), 136–37, 410. 94. J. A. Spencer, The East: Sketches of Travel in Egypt and the Holy Land (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), 393, 397, 418. Spencer’s work was republished, under the title Egypt and the Holy Land in 1854 and 1857. 95. D. A. Randall, The Handwriting of God in Egypt, Sinai, and the Holy Land, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, 1862), 2:51, 240. 96. Frederick Anderson, Michael  B. Frank, and Kenneth  M. Sanderson, eds., Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals, vol. 1, 1855–1873 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 453–54, 461–71, 478, 481, 485. 97. Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages, 163–67. 98. Among discussions of Twain’s remarks, see Lester I. Vogel, To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 218; Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 49. Neither mentions Randall’s Handwriting of God. 99. The Pictorial Bible, first published in the 1830s, was first reprinted in 1847–49, and again in 1855.

Introduction to Part III 1. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 54; see also his Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), particularly 7–9. On Said’s geographical concepts, see also John Antranig Kasbarian, “Mapping Edward Said: Geography, Identity, and the Politics of Location,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, no. 5 (1996): 529–57. 2. Said, Orientalism. 3. Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005).

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4. Persis Berlekamp, Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 5. Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 6. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 7. Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael W. Jennings, trans. Howard Eiland, Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, and Harry Zohn (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).

Chapter 6 1. Medieval Hebrew literature lacks a consistent terminology for the marvelous; and pele (the singular of pela’ot or pela’im) or mefu’ar, the terms used in the sources quoted below, are among a number of rough correspondences. On the marvelous in medieval Jewish (mainly Askhenazi) culture, see David Rotman, Dragons, Demons and Wondrous Realms: The Marvelous in Medieval Hebrew Narrative (Beer Sheva: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2016) [Hebrew]. 2. The wondrous is also an impor tant component of the rhetoric of Christian pilgrimage accounts from late antiquity and the Middle Ages, as discussed by Ora Limor in her contribution to this volume. On the medieval European understanding of the natural marvel, see Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 14–16. As Syrinx von Hees has argued, the Arabic term ‘ajā’ib similarly marks astonishing realities rather than supernatural wonders; see Syrinx von Hees, “The Astonishing: A Critique and Rereading of ‘Ağā’ib Literature,” Middle Eastern Literatures 8, no. 2 (2005): 104–5. Persis Berlekamp, in her study of illuminated manuscripts of ‘ajā’ib books, discusses the medieval Islamic notion of ‘ajā’ib, both in the sense of the natural marvel and as a literary genre; Berlekamp, Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 8–10, 22–25. 3. On medieval Jewish notions of geography and space, as expressed in travel literature, see Martin Jacobs, “ ‘A Day’s Journey’: Spatial Perceptions and Geographic Imagination in Benjamin of Tudela’s Book of Travels,” Jewish Quarterly Review 109, no. 2 (2019): 203–32. 4. On Jewish travels to the Levant during the period under discussion, its purposes and practicalities, see Martin Jacobs, Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 50–80. 5. In medieval Christianity, Jerusalem was often thought to be the center of the universe. From the crusader period, about a dozen so-called T-O maps survive (consisting of a circle divided by a T or a Y) that indicate three continents, with Jerusalem at the center; see Catherine Delano-Smith, “The Intelligent Pilgrim: Maps and Medieval Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” in Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550, ed. Rosamund Allen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 107–29. 6. On this topic, see also Martin Jacobs, “The Sacred Text as a Mental Map: Biblical and Rabbinic ‘Place’ in Medieval Jewish Travel Writing,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ra‘anan S. Boustan, Klaus Herrmann, Reimund Leicht, Annette Y. Reed, and Giuseppe Veltri (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:395–417. 7. Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Travel Writing as a Genre: Facts, Fictions and the Invention of a Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Journeys 1 (2000): 6 (reprint in Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, ed. Rubiés (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), chap. 1; Rubiés does not specifically refer to Jewish travel writing in this context. 8. In Marcus N. Adler’s estimation, Benjamin’s travels fell into the years 1166–73; see his annotations to The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London: H. Frowde, 1907), ed. and trans. Adler, English part, 1–2, note 2. David Jacoby has recently argued that Benjamin’s wanderings took about twice that time (1159/60 to 1172/73); Jacoby, “Benjamin of Tudela and his ‘Book of Travels,’ ” in

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Venezia incrocio di culture: Percezioni di viaggiatori europei e non europei a confronto; Atti del convegno Venezia, 26–27 gennaio 2006, ed. Klaus Herbers and Felicitas Schmieder (Rome: Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, 2008), 144–49. In any case, both scholars assume that Massa‘ot offers identifiable historical references—an approach that seems questionable on account of the rhetorical character of many of its place descriptions; see Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 28–29; Jacobs, “A Day’s Journey,” 208–9. 9. On imagined geography in Benjamin of Tudela, see Jacobs, “A Day’s Journey,” 222–31. 10. See Jacoby, “Benjamin of Tudela,” 137–40; Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 30–34. 11. The critical edition by Lazar (El‘azar) Grünhut, Die Rundreise des R. Petachjah aus Regensburg, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Kauffmann, 1905) [Hebrew], is based on the editio princeps (Prague, 1595) and comes with a German translation. Abraham David later published a sixteenth-century manuscript version (MS Warsaw University 258) that was unknown to Grünhut and significantly deviates from the received text; David, “Sibbuv R. Petaḥyah me-Regensburg be-nusaḥ ḥadash,” Qoveṣ ‘al Yad 13 (1996): 237–69; on the Sibbuv, see further Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 35–37. 12. On the dynamics between author and narrator in travel writing, see also Ora Limor in this volume. 13. First published by Adolf Neubauer on the basis of an Oxford manuscript (MS Bodl. Or. 135) in Ha-Levanon 5 (1868): 626–29, no. 40; reprint by Abraham M. Luncz in Ha-Me‘amer 3 (1920): 36–46. 14. As he did not consider the itinerary of Menaḥem ben Pereṣ to be the fruit of its author’s personal travels, Joshua Prawer declared it a medieval “forgery”; at the same time, Prawer has refuted earlier scholarship that believed it to be the work of a nineteenth-century forger; see Prawer, “Gefälschte hebräische Itinerarien des Heiligen Landes aus dem Mittelalter,” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16.–19. September  1986, Monumenta Germaniae Historica 33, no.  5 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1988), 506–9; Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 221–27. 15. His travel diary survives in a single, yet incomplete manuscript that served as the basis of Avraham Ya‘ari’s edition, Massa‘ Meshullam mi-Volṭera be-ereṣ yisra’el (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1949). The only extent English translation is outdated and misinterprets numerous passages; Jewish Travellers, ed. Elkan N. Adler (London: Routledge, 1930; reprinted as Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages: 19 Firsthand Accounts [New York: Dover Publications, 1987]), 156–208; highly superior is Daniel Jütte’s recent German rendering of Meshullam’s account, Von der Toskana in den Orient: Ein Renaissance-Kaufmann auf Reisen (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2012); on Meshullam and his account, see also Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 39–40. 16. On descriptions of the pyramids by Meshullam and Obadiah of Bertinoro, see Jacobs, “The Sacred Text as a Mental Map,” 408–9. 17. In fact, Meshullam may be said to express a proto-Orientalist attitude toward Levantine people and their mores; see Martin Jacobs, “From Lofty Caliphs to Uncivilized ‘Orientals’: Images of the Muslim in Medieval Jewish Travel Literature,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2011): 83– 88; Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 6, 157–58, 201, 203, 211–14. 18. Here I limit my discussion to Obadiah’s (first) letter written from Jerusalem in 1488 and addressed to his father back in Città di Castello; it was published by Menahem E. Artom and Abraham David, From Italy to Jerusalem: The Letters of Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro from the Land of Israel (Jerusalem: C. G. Foundation Jerusalem Project, 1997), 37–83 [Hebrew]. The commonly quoted English translation of Obadiah’s letters, which was first published by the Society of Hebrew Literature in London, omits sections, and sometimes misinterprets the wording; Miscellany of Hebrew Literature 1 (London: Trübner, 1872), 113–50. It later was adopted with insignificant changes by E. Adler, Jewish Travellers, 209–50; on Obadiah and his letters, see also Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 41–42. 19. See Elliott S. Horowitz, “ Towards a Social History of Jewish Popu lar Religion: Obadiah of Bertinoro on the Jews of Palermo,” Journal of Religious History 17 (1992): 138–51; Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 178, 185–86, 212–13.

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20. The Story of David Hareuveni, ed. Aaron Z. Aescoly, 2nd ed., with new introductions by Moshe Idel and Eliahu Lipiner (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1993), 7 [Hebrew]. The abridged English translation of ha-Re’uveni’s account by E. Adler is not based on Aescoly’s edition and glosses over many of the text’s problems; Jewish Travellers, 251–328. 21. See Miriam Eliav-Feldon, “Invented Identities: Credulity in the Age of Prophecy and Exploration,” Journal of Early Modern History 3 (1999): 203–32; Martin Jacobs, “David ha-Re’uveni— ein ‘zionistisches Experiment’ im Kontext der europäischen Expansion des 16. Jahrhunderts?” in An der Schwelle zur Moderne: Juden in der Renaissance, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Anette Winkelmann (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 191–206; Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 44–45. 22. On the question of the political and messianic motives in ha-Re’uveni’s mission, see Moshe Idel’s introduction to the reprint of Aescoly’s edition, xix–xliii; and Moti Benmelech, “History, Politics, and Messianism: David Ha-Reuveni’s Origin and Mission,” AJS Review 35 (2011): 35–60. 23. Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 25. Similar notions of natural marvels are expressed in medieval bestiaries; on this genre, see Florence McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Ann Payne, Medieval Beasts (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1990), including numerous illustrations; Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and Their Users in the Middle Ages (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton, 1998). 24. Petahiah, Sibbuv, ed. Grünhut, 1:6–7. All translations are mine. In a Jewish context, stories about elephants employed for executions have much earlier antecedents. Josephus, for instance, tells that Ptolemy IV Philopator (d. 204 B.C.E.) arrested all the Jews of Alexandria to have them trampled to death by elephants, “the beasts being actually made drunk for the purpose” (Against Apion 2.49–55; cf. 3 Macc. 6:18–29). 25. Ibn Battuta, whose travels took place more than a century and a half after Petahiah’s, offers a strikingly similar description of elephants trained for execution, though he puts them in an Indian setting, as opposed to a Mesopotamian one. The North African Muslim traveler’s account, while much more gruesome than that of the Ashkenazi rabbi, also has elephants executing the sultan’s sentence. For the Arabic source, see Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, 4 vols., ed. and trans. C. Defrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1853–59; reprint, Paris: Vincent Monteil, 1979), 3:330–31; the authoritative English translation is by H. A. R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (A.D. 1325–1354), 4 vols. (the fourth volume was completed by C. F. Beckingham) (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958–94), 3:715–16. 26. Story of David Hareuveni, ed. Aescoly, 13. 27. The name may allude to ‘Amāra Dūnqas, the early sixteenth-century ruler of the Funj, a nomadic cattle-herding people on the Blue Nile; see S. Hillelson, “David Reubeni, an Early Visitor to Sennar,” Sudan Notes and Records 16 (1933): 55–66. However, Hillelson’s attempt to establish the credibility of ha-Re’uveni’s references to Sudan and Nubia seems naive given the novelistic character of the story; Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 197. 28. Story of David Hareuveni, ed. Aescoly, 8. 29. Ibid., 9; here I read nemarim, “tigers,” instead of nemalim, “ants.” 30. On ha-Re’uveni’s depiction of Africans as savages and cannibals, see also Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 196–97. 31. Petahiah, Sibbuv, ed. Grünhut, 1:21. 32. MS Warsaw, fol. 130b, in David, “Sibbuv,” 264. 33. See b.Yevamot 116a and b.Makkot 5a; on the distances and travel times, see Jacob Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien im Zeitalter des Talmud und des Gaonats: Geographie und Geschichte nach talmudischen, arabischen und andern Quellen (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1929), 250–51, 293. 34. Petahiah, Sibbuv, ed. Grünhut, 1:21. 35. For an extensive discussion of premodern descriptions of the crocodile ranging from antiquity to the fifteenth century, including Meshullam of Volterra and Obadiah of Bertinoro, see David Malkiel, “The Rabbi and the Crocodile: Interrogating Nature in the Late Quattrocento,” Speculum 91, no. 1 (2016): 115–48.

Notes to Pages 107–110

303

36. Exod. 7:28, 8:2–4. 37. Obadiah of Bertinoro, Letter 1, From Italy to Jerusalem, ed. Artom and David, 52. For Naḥmanides’s identification of the ṣefarde‘a with the crocodile, see Perush ha-Ramban ‘al ha-torah, yoṣe le-’or ‘al pi defusim rishonim, ed. Yehudah M. Devir and Ya‘aqov Y. Boqsboim (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2008), 65; in fact, Naḥmanides quotes here an even earlier authority: Rabbenu Ḥanan’el’s commentary from the eleventh century; see Malkiel, “The Rabbi and the Crocodile,” 143. 38. Cf. Marco Polo’s rather naturalistic description of crocodiles (chap. 119), which he also considers to be serpents; Polo, The Travels, trans. Ronald Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958), 178–79. 39. In fact, as the crocodile is a carnivore, its consumption is prohibited both by Islamic and Jewish law. 40. Massa‘ Meshullam, ed. Ya‘ari, 51. 41. Ibid., 51–52. 42. Pliny, Natural History 8.37; for an edition of the Latin text alongside an English translation, see Pliny, Natural History, vol. 3, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 64–67. In another difference from Meshullam’s account, Pliny states that the crocodile’s size exceeds 18 cubits (ca. 26 feet), rather than paces (ca. 45 feet). The symbiosis between the crocodile and the so-called crocodile bird, often identified with the Egyptian plover (see also below note 45), has already been remarked on by Herodotus (one of Pliny’s sources), who states that the bird frees the reptile from leeches sticking between its teeth (Histories 2.68); see Malkiel, “The Rabbi and the Crocodile,” 118. According to the ornithologist Thomas R. Howell, this behav ior is “not incontrovertibly documented”; see Howell, Breeding Biology of the Egyptian Plover, Pluvianus aegyptius, University of California Publications in Zoology 113 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 1; however, Howell does not exclude that Egyptian plovers “sometimes pick food from jaws and teeth of crocodiles” (4). 43. Obadiah of Bertinoro (Letter 1, From Italy to Jerusalem, ed. Artom and David, 52) also knows of the tradition according to which the crocodile depends on a bird to be freed of its waste, but he does not attribute it to Pliny. In fact, Obadiah may here depend on Meshullam’s earlier account, which he seems to have read; see Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 41, 42, 178. 44. On the transmission of Eastern marvels material going back to Pliny and other ancient sources, see Rudolf Wittkower, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159–97. 45. The Egyptian plover (Pluvianus aegyptius, see also note 42 above), or crocodile bird (ṭayr al-timsāḥ), is known by a number of Arabic names, such as saqsāq (zaqzāq) or tawram; see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs, 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 10:510, s.v. “Timsāḥ.” 46. Massa‘ Meshullam, ed. Ya‘ari, 52. 47. Ibid. 48. Itinerary of Menaḥem b. Pereṣ, ed. Luncz, 43. 49. Ibid. Of course, the African rhinoceros has two horns on its nose, rather than one on the head and the other under its lower jaw. 50. Another thirteenth-century source that places crocodiles in Palestine is the chronicle of Jacques de Vitry (ca. 1165/70–1240), bishop of Acre; Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale—Historia Orientalis, ed. Jean Donnadieu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 362 (chap. 88); on this, see also Malkiel, “The Rabbi and the Crocodile,” 136 n. 75. De Vitry’s rather realistic description of the reptile makes the existence of crocodiles near Caesarea seem credible. 51. Itinerary of Benjamin, ed. M. Adler, Hebrew part, 60; in fact, MS London, Adler’s base text (British Library, Add. 27089), an Ashkenazi manuscript from the fourteenth century, has “land of Zion,” which is an obvious mistake, given the context; while I follow MS Rome (Casanatense Library, MS Hebr. 3097, in Italian handwriting and dated to 1428) in reading “land of ṣin.” 52. Itinerary of Benjamin, ed. M. Adler, Hebrew part, 60; by contrast, M. Adler (ibid., 66) translates “Some say that there is the Sea of Nikpa,” which he considers to be a place name, perhaps

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Notes to Pages 110–113

Ningpo (Ningbo), a seaport in the northeast of today’s Zhejiang province. However, Benjamin employs here the well-known motif of the “coagulated” or “congealed sea” from which there is no escape; thus already Karl Bartsch, Herzog Ernst (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1869), cxlv; see also David M. Blamires, Herzog Ernst and the Otherworld Voyage: A Comparative Study (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 41. 53. Itinerary of Benjamin, ed. M. Adler, Hebrew part, 60–61. 54. In his second voyage, Sindbad escapes an island by tying himself to the rūkh; for an authoritative translation, see The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories, trans. Husain Haddawy (New York: Knopf, 1998), 13; see also the fifth voyage, The Arabian Nights II, 33–34. In “The Third Dervish’s Tale” within “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” the protagonist escapes the one-eyed men by sewing himself inside a ram’s skin and is then carried away by a rūkh; The Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 125. On the different recensions in which the Arabian Nights have been transmitted and the various texts selected by Haddawy for his translations, see The Arabian Nights II, x–xiii. 55. On the voyage of Herzog Ernst, see above note 52. 56. On the history of the griffin/rukh motif, see Rudolf Wittkower, “ ‘Roc’: An Eastern Prodigy in a Dutch Engraving,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 1, no. 3 (1938): 255–57; Christa A. Tuczay, “Motifs in The Arabian Nights and in Ancient and Medieval Eu ropean Literature: A Comparison,” Folklore 116, no. 3 (2005): 276–81. 57. Marco Polo, Travels, chap. 8, trans. Lanham, p. 300. According to the fourteenth-century Book of Mandeville (chap. 29), a griffin may easily carry flying to its nest a horse or “two oxen harnessed together” (The Book of John Mandeville with Related Texts, ed. and trans. Iain Macleod Higgins [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011], 160). 58. Itinerary of Benjamin, ed. M. Adler, Hebrew part, 58–59. 59. Cf. Ibn Battuta’s account of pepper production on the Malabar coast that correctly describes the picked fruit as green (Travels, trans. Gibb and Beckingham, 4:807). White pepper consists of the seed of the pepper plant alone, after the skin of the fruit has been removed. 60. This fire was then believed to be the reason that pepper, in its commonly marketed form, looks black and shriveled; see Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 133–34, 138. 61. The rabbinic term margalit can denote both a precious stone and a pearl. However, its cognate marganita (b.Shabbat 90) clearly stands for the pearl oyster; Immanuel Löw, Fauna und Mineralien der Juden, ed. Alexander Schreiber (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969), 227–28. 62. Itinerary of Benjamin, ed. M. Adler, Hebrew part, 58. In fact, the pearl-fishing season is in spring, as noted by Ibn Battuta; Travels, trans. Gibb and Beckingham, 4:408. 63. Qazwīnī attributes this tale to Aristotle, the purported master of all ancient knowledge; see the Arabic text’s edition by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Zakarija ben Muhammed ben Mahmud el-Cazwini’s Kosmographie, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1849), 223, s.v. “durr.” Qazwīnī’s ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt survives in numerous illustrated manuscripts from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries that significantly differ from one another; see Berlekamp, Wonder, Image, and Cosmos, 6–8. 64. Massa‘ Meshullam, ed. Ya‘ari, 82; see also ibid., 54. 65. Ibid., 59. A few lines down, Meshullam uses the Italian loanword balsamo. 66. Ibid., 59–60. It seems noteworthy that Meshullam fails to mention Matarea’s significance in Christian tradition, which associated the place with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, and their flight to Egypt when King Herod sought to kill the child (Matt. 2:13–15). Sometimes the existence of the balsam grove was explained as a miracle resulting from the family’s rest there; see Stefan Halikowski Smith, “Meanings Behind Myths: The Multiple Manifestations of the Tree of the Virgin at Matarea,” Mediterranean Historical Review 23 (2008): 101–28. 67. Massa‘ Meshullam, ed. Ya‘ari, 60. Michele of Figline, a Tuscan priest and contemporary of Meshullam, similarly relates that a large guard of “moors” was stationed at the balsam garden; Da Figline a Gerusalemme: Viaggio del prete Michele in Egitto e in Terrasanta (1489–1490), ed. Marina

Notes to Pages 113–116

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Montesano (Rome: Viella, 2010), 74. However, Meshullam’s claim that each of the shrubs was guarded by four Mamluks seems to be one of the exaggerations that his account is replete with. 68. Massa‘ Meshullam, ed. Ya‘ari, 60. 69. Ibid. 70. See John Wansbrough, “A Mamlūk Commercial Treaty Concluded with the Republic of Florence, 894/1489,” in Documents from Islamic Chanceries, ed. Samuel M. Stern (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1965), 40. 71. On the courtly associations of exotica and marvels, see Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 68, 100–108. 72. For this term, see Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 133. 73. Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 15, 67–111. That said, since Hellenistic times, writers about India were expected to engage in marvel writing or “paradoxography”; see James  S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 92. 74. Stephen Greenblatt has discussed the role played by medieval marvels traditions in later colonialism. In this context, he calls into question interpretations that consider all premodern travel writings to be agents of empire. According to Greenblatt, the Book of Mandeville (see note 57)—arguably the most popu lar medieval book of marvels—articulates a relatively tolerant attitude toward cultural diversity; Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 26–51. 75. As Christine Johnson has shown regarding sixteenth-century German humanists, a scholarly approach that equally embraces the authority of recent observation and ancient (if often outdated) sources seems to be rather typical for the early modern period; Johnson, “Buying Stories: Ancient Tales, Renaissance Travelers, and the Market for the Marvelous,” Journal of Early Modern History 11, no. 6 (2007): 405–46. 76. Malkiel, “The Rabbi and the Crocodile,” 116.

Chapter 7 1. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), has encouraged a widespread revision of a nation-state oriented historiography in order to grasp long-term transformation of the Jewish society in the early modern period. 2. Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross- Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Roni Weinstein, Shavru et ha-Kelim: Ha-Ḳabalah ṿe-ha-Moderniyut ha-Yehudit (Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity) (Tel Aviv: Universiṭat Tel-Aviv, 2011); Giuseppe Marcocci, Aliocha Maldavsky, Wietse Boer, and  Ilaria Pavan, eds., Space and Conversion in Global Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 3. Marco Navarra, Lettere orientali cioé carteggio scientifico tra alcuni amici orientali compilate da Marco Navarra ebreo veronese (Venice: Guglielmo Zerletti, 1771). 4. The one on which this work is based is located at the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin, a gift of the Baron Todros. The others are at the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire of Strasbourg, where it was acquired from a batch belonging to a certain Bertolotti from Rome in 1886; at the Brotherton Special Collections of the University of Leeds library, where it belonged to Cecil Roth (no. 722); and the last in the eighteenth-century collection of books of the Liceo Scipione Maffei of Verona, which includes some handwritten corrections probably added by the author himself after the publication of his book. 5. That lone mention occurs in the correspondence of Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865). In answering a query sent by the Mantuan physician Samuel Dalla Volta (1772–1853), Luzzatto noted

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Notes to Pages 117–119

simply: “I don’t know anything about Marco Navarra’s lettere orientali” (nulla so delle lettere orientali di Marco Navarra). Samuel David Luzzatto, Epistolario italiano, francese, latino (Padova: Salmin, 1890), 261. 6. Jews as a topic in European Orientalism and Jewish responses to anti-Jewish Orientalism have been the focus of Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005); Michel Espagne and Perrine Simon-Nahum, eds., Les Juifs dans l’Orientalisme (Paris: L’Eclat, 2013); and Ulrike Brunotte, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, and Axel Stähler, eds., Orientalism, Gender, and the Jews: Literary and Artistic Transformations of European National Discourses (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015). These books provide, however, little attention to Italy and the late eighteenth century. 7. On this figure, see Cecil Roth, “Rabbi Menahem Navarra: His Life and Times, 1717–1777; A Chapter in the History of the Jews of Verona,” Jewish Quarterly Review 15, no  4 (1925): 427–66. Nello Pavoncello, Gli ebrei in Verona: Dalle origini al secolo XX (Verona: Vita Veronese, 1960), 70, suggested that this family stemmed from Jews expelled from the Duchy of Milan in 1597. The name Navarra could therefore be linked not to the Spanish region but to the city of Novara in Lombardy contradicting Roth’s assumption that this family had a Marrano origin. The most frequent patronyms of the members of this family, such as Mendel, Zalman, Sorellina (Surale, diminutive of Sara), also suggest an Askhenazi background. 8. Rossana Urbani and Guido Nathan Zazzu, The Jews in Genoa, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), docs. 1859, 1860, 1861, 2023. 9. Vittore Colorni, “La corrispondenza fra nomi ebraici e nomi locali nella prassi dell’ebraismo italiano,” in Judaica Minora (Milan: Giuffré, 1983), 661–807; and Colorni, “Postilla in tema di corrispondenze onomastiche ebraico-italiane,” in Judaica Minora 2 (Milan: Giuffré, 1991), 1–10. 10. Abdelkader Modena and Edgardo Morpurgo, Medici e chirurghi ebrei dottorati e licenziati nell’università di Padova dal 1617 al 1816 (Bologna: Forni, 1967). 11. Urbani and Zazzu, The Jews in Genoa, docs. 1860, 1861. 12. In Renata Segre, The Jews in Piedmont (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1986), vol. 3, doc. 2843, is attested the presence of a certain Giuditta Navarra, married to Salomon Segre, and her daughter in Casale Monferrato in 1734. 13. It was published by the Stamperia Reale from 1761 to 1769; by Carlo Giuseppe Ricca, 1770– 76; Stamperia di Ignazio Soffietti, 1777. 14. One volume for the year 1777 can be found at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin (P007.a 38) and the other for the year 1762 has been purchased at the Kestenbaum Auction, April 5, 2005, by the Katz Center Library in Philadelphia (AY891.A46). 15. The only references to this almanac, without, however, grasping its novelty for the Jewish world, are to be found in Lodovica Braida, Le guide del tempo: Produzione, contenuti e forme degli almanacchi piemontesi nel Settecento (Turin: Deputazione subalpina di storia patria, 1989), 53n, 67, 115n, 165n; and in Andrea Merlotti, “Il dibattito sull’emancipazione ebraica in Piemonte,” in Ebrej, via Vico: Mondovì XV–XX secolo, ed. Alberto Cavaglion (Turin: Zamorani, 2010), 179. On this kind of literature, see Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 16. Lodovica Braida, Il commercio delle idee: Editoria e circolazione del libro nella Torino del Settecento (Florence: Olschki, 1995). 17. Nello Pavoncello, “La tipografia ebraica in Piemonte,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 36 (1970): 96–100. 18. On this individual and his father, see Giacomo Carletto, Il ghetto veneziano nel 700 attraverso i catastici (Rome: Carucci, 1981); Federico Luzzatto, “La comunità ebraica di Conegliano veneto e i suoi monumenti,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 22 (1956): 235–36; G. Cervani and L. Buda, La comunità israelitica di Trieste nel sec. XVIII (Udine: Del Bianco, 1973), 93; Eugenio Tranchini, Gli ebrei a Vittorio Veneto (Vittorio Veneto: Dario De Bastiani, 1979), 69; Carla Boccato, “Conver-

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genze dell’imprendetoria ebraica veneziana sull’emporio di Trieste nella seconda metà del XVIII,” in Gli ebrei a Gorizia e a Trieste (Udine: Del Bianco, 1984), 106. 19. Samuel David Luzzatto, “Autobiografia, parte prima: Notizie storico-letterarie sulla famiglia Luzzatto,” Mosé: Antologia israelitica 1 (1878): 256, writes that “nel 1756 teneva 140 Maestranze (artisti) tutte cristiane che lavoravano nella sua fabbrica in Venezia, e in tutto nelle varie sue fabbriche di lana ne teneva 932, senza tener calcolo dei molti barcajuoli che in vari paesi stavano al suo servizio” (in 1756 he had 140 workers, all of them Christian, employed in his factory in Venice, and in all his factories he had 932 workers, without taking into account the many boatmen at his ser vice in different countries). 20. In the preface to the books mention is made of the instances of different prominent members of the community favorable to the publication of the Lettere orientali. 21. Giovanni Tabacco, Andrea Tron (1712–1785) e la crisi dell’aristocrazia senatoria a Venezia (Trieste Università degli studi di Trieste, 1957). 22. Piero del Negro, “Venetian Policy Toward the University of Padua and Scientific Progress During the 18th  Century,” in Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period, ed. Mordechai Feingold and Victor Navarro-Brotons (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 169–81. 23. Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, “Gli insediamenti ebraici nel Friuli Veneto e la ricondotta del 1777,” Archivio Veneto 5, no. 121 (1983): 5–23. 24. Franco Venturi, Venezia nel secondo Settecento (Turin, 1980), 176, writes “la politica veneziana, ovvero della sua classe dirigente, ha un carattere bifronte . . . , volta insistentemente verso il passato e ansiosa insieme di rinnovamento.” 25. Almanacco Orientale, 1777, 21. 26. I would like to thank Dr. Vered Tohar of Bar Ilan University for having pointed to my attention that these stories are taken from Abraham Ibn Hasdai’s Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir collection of novels, an extremely popu lar book that has been printed twice in Italy. In Mantua in the sixteenth century and in Leghorn in 1831 by Tubiana and sons. In the eighteenth century this work was widely circulated in many editions printed in Central and Eastern Europe. This interest toward fictional and real translations of works belonging to Indian cultures is synchronous to AnquetilDuperron’s translation in French of the Zend-Avesta (1771) and precedes by a couple of years the publication of the Bengali grammar by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1776) and Charles Wilkins’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita (1785). The knowledge about Indian Jews was vehiculated by the translation into Italian of Moshe Pereira de Paiva, Notizie degli ebrei di Cocino, originally printed in Amsterdam in 1678, that is found in many manuscript versions of the eighteenth century throughout northern Italian Jewish communities’ archives. 27. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 80. 28. Ibid., xii. 29. Almanacco Orientale, 1777, 13. 30. According to the later Hegelian division of Asia in two separate parts—a hither Asia to which India belongs and a farther Asia dominated by Japan and China. 31. Nissim Benvenisti, which combining Italian and Hebrew, means “miracles are welcome,” and Miniomi Tabà, which combining Aramaic—Miniomi is a rare name attested in the Talmud— and Hebrew, could mean “the good comes from my day,” are perhaps an indication of the contraposition between one character always looking with astonishment to the novelties brought by progress and the other who is satisfied with what he has. 32. On Saraval, see Paolo Bernardini, La sfida dell’uguaglianza: Gli ebrei a Mantova nell’età della Rivoluzione (Rome: Bulzoni, 1996), 88–104. For a complete list of his works, see Asher Salah, La République des Lettres: Rabbins, écrivains et médecins juifs en Italia au XVIIIe siècle (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 589–92. 33. Moshe Gorali, “Tirgum ivri shel oratoria meHendel,” Tazlil 2 (1961): 73–78. 34. Avvertimenti dell’anima ed opuscolo confessionale del celebre rabbino Nessim capo dei Babilonici (Venice: Santini, 1806). Rabbi Behaye is the only Jewish author to deserve a short biography and a special stress of his importance in a note in the Lettere orientali, 56.

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35. Lettera apologetica nell’occasione d’un certo libello diffamatorio contro gli ebrei (Mantua, 1775), written anonymously as a response to the attacks against the Jews contained in Giovanni Battista Benedetti, Dissertazione della Religione e del Giuramento degli Ebrei (Ferrara, 1773). 36. Jacob Saraval, Viaggi in Olanda (Venice: Zatta, 1807; repr., Milan: Polifilo, 1988). Saraval apparently was also the author of a fictional correspondence with Cicero, according to his own testimony in a letter to Giovan Bernardo De Rossi of 1779 quoted by Bernardini, La sfida dell’uguaglianza, 90. 37. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 141. 38. Ibid., 183. I was not able to find a correspondence to what is known about the historical figure of Saraval concerning Miniomi’s project of translation of the Mate Dan o Ha-Kuzari HaSheni (London, 1714) by David Nieto, whom he calls the Jewish Cicero (Navarra, Lettere orientale, 212), although other Italian Jews of Navarra’s time devoted themselves to this endeavor, such as Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea (1680–1743) from Mantua and later Elisha Pontremoli (1778–1851) with his Dissertazione in difesa della legge orale ossia tradizione, written in 1843 and still in manuscript. 39. Valabregue is mentioned by Navarra as one of the most illustrious Jewish intellectuals writing in French (Lettere orientali, 8). About Valabregue, a bibliographer of Hebrew and Oriental languages at the Bibliotheque du Roy and lay leader of the Avignonese Jews in Paris, see Ronald Schechter, “A Jewish Agent in 18th Century Paris,” Historical Reflexions 32 (2006): 39–63; and Federica Francesconi, “From Ghetto to Emancipation: The Role of Moise Formiggini,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 331–54. 40. On Pinto and Voltaire, see Adam Sutcliffe, “Can a Jew Be a Philosophe? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 31–51. 41. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 37. On this par ticu lar fame of Saraval’s homiletic style, see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 38–39. 42. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 178. 43. Ibid., 142. 44. Ibid., 14. 45. Modena and Morpurgo, Medici e chirurghi, 259. 46. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 28. 47. “Spacciano essi definitivamente per inculti e per barbari noi Asiastici, non che gli Africani e gli Americani tanto nei costumi, quanto nelle arti e nelle scienze” (They consider ignorant and barbarian us, the Asians, as well as the Africans and the Americans, both in the mores and in the arts and sciences). Navarra, Lettere orientali, 4. 48. Encyclopedie, vol. 9, art. “Juifs,” quoted in Navarra, Lettere orientali, 5. The first edition was printed in Paris between 1751 and 1765, while the second appeared in Livorno, 1770–79, in the same years of the publication of Navarra’s work. 49. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 9. 50. Ibid., 1. 51. Ibid., 20. 52. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 53. Ibid., 40. 54. Ibid., 42, 59. 55. Ibid., 12. This calls to mind somehow the Hegelian heliodromic movement of knowledge summarized by the Latin dictum “ex oriente lux.” Navarra in this is the heir of those Italian Jewish intellectuals who attempted to integrate the new science into their more traditional religious worldview. See David  B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 56. The choice of Italian for the correspondence is explained for it is one of the main means of communication in the world, perhaps less than French but with the advantage of being easier to write. Hebrew is excluded since it is more suitable for theological works and Latin because it is a dead language. Spanish is the vehicular language of Mediterranean Jews, but its knowledge is not

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much widespread among Gentiles. Other wise Nissim and Miniomi stress the ability of the Jews of speaking all the languages of the world. It is noteworthy that Navarra’s epistolary novel has not been purportedly written in an Oriental language and then translated into a Eu ropean one, as did Isaac Euchel, but directly in Italian, showing that Eastern Jews are no strangers in the West and they can beat the Europeans in their own field. On the question of the languages, see Navarra, Lettere orientali, 8, 17, 136, 144. For Euchel’s transculturation attitudes, see Andrea Schatz, “Kleider auf Reisen: Nachahmung und Transkulturation in Isaac Euchels Briefen des Meschullam,” Aschkenas 18–19 (2010): 321–38; and Stephan Braese, “Von Königsberg nach Livorno: Kleider und Sprachen in Isaac Euchels Briefen des Meschullam,” Aschkenas 18–19 (2010): 339–50. 57. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 55. 58. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 37 and 106. 59. Ibid., 14. The same idea is repeated when he describes the “pregiudizi soliti acquistarsi da un viaggiatore” (25) and while mentioning the “mal impiegati viaggi” (152). Miniomi however does not negate the importance of traveling in order to educate the mind to a mild relativism. Cf. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 31. 60. Ibid., 16. 61. Ibid., 19. 62. Ibid., 29. 63. Ibid., 54. 64. John MacKenzie, “Edward Said and the Historians,” Nineteenth Century Contexts 18 (1994): 9–25, writes: “Said fails to notice that the building of empire is first an internal pro cess, with internalised others (Welsh, Scots, Irish, working-class ‘provincials’), and second, that the others of 19th  century Eu ropean nationalism are more likely to be rival Eu ropeans, arguably more impor tant in the definition of culture and national character than imperial possessions and peoples.” 65. In the “Trattato del commerzio e della sua origine,” in Almanacco Orientale, 1777, 79, Navarra let off steam regarding his biases about the inhabitants of Africa, writing that “i popoli negri di colore sono stupidi di mente, barbari di cuore e pravi nei costumi” (black people are stupid of mind, barbarian of heart and wicked of habits). Nevertheless, he condemns some inhuman aspects of the traffic of slaves from Africa to the American colonies, but not the institution of slavery itself. Cf. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 124–25. On the European gaze at the African continent, see Katherine George, “The Civilized West Looks at Primitive Africa: 1400–1800; A Study in Ethnocentrism,” Isis 49, no. 1 (1958): 62–72. 66. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 82. The stress is my own. 67. Avraham Melamed, Raqhot Ve-Tavhot (The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Science and Philosophy) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2010). 68. Marco Navarra should be therefore included in the line of the Jewish skeptical tradition in Italy studied by Giuseppe Veltri, “Principles of Jewish Skeptical Thought: The Case of Judah Moscato and Simone Luzzatto,” in Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16th–17th Centuries, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 15–36. 69. Lois C. Dubin, “The Sages as Philosophes: Enlightenment and Aggadah in Northern Italy,” in “Open Thou Mine Eyes . . .”: Essays on Aggadah and Judaica, ed. H. J. Blumbert et al. (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1992), 72–73, has rightly stressed the naïveté of such an attitude that could sometimes turn into what Robert Darnton, quoted by Dubin, has called an “indiscriminate credulity.” 70. Jonathan M. Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 60. 71. In the Lettere orientali are quoted or mentioned 103 non-Jewish modern authors, among whom are 41 Italians, 35 French, 7 English, 4 Oriental, 16 of other European nations. Besides that Navarra quotes from 27 classic authors belonging to Greek and Latin culture and from 36 Jewish authorities of all the times. 72. Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens (1704–71), Lettres juives (La Haye: P. Paupie, 1738).

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73. Navarra could have known also the work by Antoine Guénée, Lettres de quelques juifs portugais et allemands à M. de Voltaire, avec des réflexions critiques (Paris, 1769). On this genre in Hebrew literature, see Moshe Pelli, “The Epistolary Story in Haskalah Literature: Isaac Euchel’s ‘Igrot Meshulam,’ ” Jewish Quarterly Review 93, no. 3/4 (2003): 431–69. Lisa Lowe, “Rereadings in Orientalism: Oriental Inventions and Inventions of the Orient in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes,” Cultural Critique 15 (1990): 115–43, has convincingly demonstrated that Orientalist stances in French Enlightenment texts and discourses are neither univocal nor static. However, Navarra is at odds with the instrumentalization of Jews in non-Jewish representations of their personae. 74. Navarra, Lettere orientali, 6. Although Nissim considers that the protagonists of the Lettres juives, Aaron Monceca, Joseph Brito, and the others, are the product of d’Argens’s imagination, in one occurrence Miniomi refers to them as real characters (Lettere orientali, 27). 75. It is interest ing to note that Elia Morpurgo in his Discorso pronunziato da E. M. Capo della nazione ebrea di Gradisca nel partecipar a quella comunità la Clementissima Sovrana Risoluzione del 16 Maggio 1781 (dedicata al Conte Filippo Gobenz) (Gorizia: De Valeri, 1782), 9, also mentions the negative impact of his reading of the letters by the Marquis d’Argens that induced him to demonstrate the excellence of the Jews in all fields of human knowledge and to have written one hundred “Jewish letters” to counter the negative influence of d’Argens. See Giuliano Tamani, “L’emancipazione ebraica secondo Elia Morpurgo da Gradisca,” Annali Ca’ Foscari 27, no. 3 (1988): 5–20, note 37; and Maddalena Del Bianco Cotrozzi, “Un incontro tra letterati alla fine del Settecento: Il carteggio Elia Morpurgo e G. B. De Rossi,” Annali di storia Isontina 4 (1991): 35–64, note 147. 76. “I libri che di lettere portano il nome sono oggimai in una quantita si’ strabocchevole, che forse tra la moltitudine potranno queste ancora introdursi al cospetto della repubblica delle lettere, malgrado l’essere triviali” (The epistolary books are today present in such a quantity that these perhaps will succeed to be introduced to the republic of letters, despite their triviality). This sentence uncovers the fictional character of Navarra’s letters “più adattata al moderno gusto” (more adapted to the modern taste). 77. It is noteworthy that Navarra’s predates similar and more famous ventures by intellectuals of the German Haskalah, such as Naftali Herz Wessely, Divrei Shalom Ve-Emet (Berlin, 1782); and the aforementioned Isaac Euchel, “Igerot Meshullam ben Uriyah Ha-Eshtemo‘i” (Letters of Meshullam son of Uriyah the Ashtmoite), Ha-Me’asef 6 (1790): 171–76, 245–49. While Euchel’s epistolary novel contains an indictment of the backwardness of Oriental Jews and a call to their westernization, in contrast to the declared purpose of Navarra, both Euchel and Wessely (see in par ticu lar the second letter of the Divrei Shalom Ve-Emet), like Navarra, tried to include within the borders of the civilized world, cultural areas, such as North Africa, Turkey, the Near East, that were in the Christian discourse of the time increasingly rejected into a radical alterity. The three of them are united in taking Italian Judaism as the perfect blend of East and West. See Lois C. Dubin, “The Rise and Fall of the Italian Jewish Model: From Haskalah to Reform, 1780–1820,” Jewish History and Jewish Memory, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 1998), 271–95. 78. This is why Nissim and Miniomi choose to correspond in Italian that together with French is considered to be “uno de’ due idiomi piu’ vaghi e i piu’ brillanti, tra quei dell’Europa” (one of the most beautiful and brilliant languages of Eu rope) Navarra, Lettere orientali, 8. And “le due lingue Italiana, ossia Toscana, e Francese sono a mio parere sufficienti oggidì per un letterato, eziandio Asiatico. Questa perciocché si è resa quasi universale, e in cui ogni buona opera, e Greca, e Latina, e di parecchie altre antiche lingue ancora, trovasi tradotta. Quella per la sua melodia, e armonia, riuscendo, come pur voi riconosciuto avrete, singolarissima spezialmente per la Poesia, e per la Musica.” (The French and the Tuscan languages are in my opinion enough today for a person of letters. The former because it has become almost universal, the latter because of its melody and harmony.) Ibid., 15–16. 79. He could have had in mind the same target as Aviad Basilea who, in his Emunat Hakhamim: La fede dei saggi (Mantua: Pazzoni, 1730), warns against those rationalist Jews who go so far as to negate revelation.

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80. A subversive strategy of self-Orientalizing has been analyzed by Katherine Elizabeth Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 81. Tzvetan Todorov, Nous et les autres: La réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (Paris: Seuil, 1989); Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). 82. William Horbury, “Jehuda Briel and Seventeenth- Century Jewish Anti- Christian Polemic in Italy,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 1 (1993–94): 171–92. 83. The only apologetic books written in Italian in the second half of the eighteenth century have been written after Navarra’s letters, such as Jacob Raphael Saraval, Lettera apologetica (Mantua, 1775); Elia Morpurgo, Discorso (Gorizia, 1782); Benedetto Frizzi, Difesa contro gli attacchi alla nazione ebrea (Pavia, 1784); Aron Fernandes, Dissertazione filosofico-critica (s.l., 1797). 84. Rana Kabbani, Imperial Fictions: Europe’s Myths of Orient (London: Saqi, 2008). 85. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2007). 86. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 27.

Chapter 8 I am grateful to Orit Bashkin, Joshua Levinson, and Kerry Wallach for their salient suggestions on previous drafts of this essay. I would like to thank the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and the Israel Science Foundation for their generous support for this research. Initial research for this essay was conducted as part of the project Free-Time Activity in Early Modern German-Jewish Life under the direction of Robert Liberles (Israel Science Foundation grant number 164/08). Sadly, Bob did not live to see this ambitious project through. I remain deeply indebted to him for his generous support and guidance. Yehi zikhro li-verakhah. All translations are my own unless other wise stated. 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762), trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 184. 2. Ibid., 451. 3. Joseph Hall, The Works of the Right Reverend Joseph Hall (1598; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1863), 9:645–46 4. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 153–57. 5. Richard Hurd, Dialogues on the Uses of Foreign Travel (London: A. Millar, 1764), 89. For a discussion see Geoffrey Summerfield, Fantasy and Reason: Children’s Literature in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1984), 135–36. 6. Rousseau, Emile, 184. 7. This corpus was initially mapped by Zohar Shavit in her “Literary Interference Between German and Jewish-Hebrew Children’s Literature During the Enlightenment: The Case of Campe,” Poetics Today 13, no. 1 (1992): 41–61. See also Leah Garrett, “The Jewish Robinson Crusoe,” Comparative Literature 54, no. 3 (2002): 215–28; Ken Frieden, “Neglected Origins of Modern Hebrew Prose: Hasidic and Maskilic Travel Narratives,” AJS Review 33, no.  1 (2009): 3–43; Iris IdelsonShein, Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 151–78; Rebecca Wolpe, “Judaizing Robinson Crusoe: Maskilic Translations of Robinson Crusoe,” Jewish Culture and History 13, no. 1 (2012): 42–67. 8. On the translational norms of the Haskalah, see Zohar Shavit, “From Friedländer’s Lesebuch to the Jewish Campe: The Beginning of Hebrew Children’s Literature in Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 33 (1988): 385–415; Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond

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(Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1995), 131–39; Tal Kogman, “Haskalah Scientific Knowledge in Hebrew Garment: A General Statement and Two Examples,” Target 19, no. 1 (2007): 69–83. 9. The reasons for Campe’s prominence among the maskilim have been the focus of some debate. Some studies attribute it to his friendship with Mendelssohn, others to his philo-Semitism, still others to his popularity within the German literary system. See, e.g., Israel Bartal, “Mordecai Aaron Günzburg: A Lithuanian Maskil Faces Modernity,” in From East and West: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750–1870, ed. Frances Malino and David Sorkin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 142–43; Shavit, “Literary Interference,” 48–52; Shavit, “Friedländer’s Lesebuch,” 405. For a different approach, focused on the content of the translations, see Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind, 154–59. 10. Tal Kogman, Ha-maskilim be-madaim: Ḥinuḥ yehudy le-madaim ba-merḥav dover hagermanit ba-et ha-ḥadashah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2013), esp. 72, 76, 86, 103–4, 114, 129. 11. See Zohar Shavit, “Ha-rihut shel hadar ha-Haskalah be-Berlin,” in Ke-minhag Ashkenaz u-Polin: Sefer yovel le- Chone Shmeruk, ed. Israel Bartal, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Chava Turnisansky (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1993), 194–207; Shavit, “Literary Interference,” 51–57; Tal Kogman, “Yeẓirat dimuyey ha-yeda ba-araẓot dovrot ha-germanit be-tkufat ha-haskalah” (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2000), 58–61, 74–84. A notable exception is David Zamość’s corpus of works, especially his translation of Campe’s Robinson, which maintained the dialogic form of the original and aimed at enticing the readers. Still, like most maskilic children’s books, Zamość’s work fell into oblivion in the decades following its publication. David Zamość, Robinzon der yinegere: ayn lezebukh fir kinder (Breslau, 1824). Another rare Jewish translation that keeps the dialogic form of the original intact is the anonymous 1784 German-in-Hebrew-characters adaptation, however this version omits many of the didacticisms of Campe’s version. See Anon., Historiya oder zeltzame und vunderbare begebenhayten aynes yungen zee fahrers (Prague, 1784). 12. Shavit, “Literary Interference,” 56–58. 13. On these Yiddish translations, see Shavit, “Literary Interference,” 50; Frieden, “Neglected Origins,” 3–35; Garrett, “Jewish Robinson,” 215–29; Wolpe,“Judaizing Robinson,” 53–54; Z. Reyzn, “Campes ‘Entdekung fon Amerike’ in Yiddish,” Yivo bleter 5 (1933): 29–40; Ber Shlosberg, “Hurwitz’s Tsofnas paneyakh,” Yivo bleter 7 (1937): 546–58; Meir Wiener, Tsu der geshikhte fun der Yidisher literatur in 19tn yorhundert (New York: Ikuf ferlag, 1945), 255–64. 14. In discussing eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century travel literature, I have in mind particularly European accounts of journeys to faraway lands, often in the context of colonialism. Of course, there are also other types of travel, to both nearer and farther places (trips to other Eu ropean countries, to the countryside, to the moon, or to the earth’s core, for example) however, these feature less frequently in maskilic works. 15. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (London: W. Taylor, 1719), 221. 16. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1987), 3. On this dynamic in rabbinic travel writing, see Levinson’s essay “The Travels and Travails of Abraham” in this volume (Chapter 3). 17. See, e.g., Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in EighteenthCentury British Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth- Century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 18. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Natural History (1748–89), trans. James Smith Barr (London, 1797), 4:348–350. On the Jewish reception of Buffon in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Iris Idelson-Shein, “Their Eyes Shall Behold Strange Things: Abraham Ben Elijah of Vilna Encounters the Spirit of Mr. Buffon,” AJS Review 36, no. 2 (2012): 295–322. 19. See, e.g., John Adams, A View of Universal History, from the Creation to the Present Time, 3 vols. (London: G. Kearsley, 1795), 3:52–55; and in the maskilic context, Shimshon Bloch, Sefer sheviley olam, 2 parts (1822–28; repr., Warsaw: Levin-Epstein Bro., 1894), 1:4a; Anon. [Menachem Mendel Lefin?], Oniyah soarah (ca. 1815; repr., Warsaw: Y. Unterhendler, 1854), 57. On the problems inherent in pursuing colonialism within an environmentalist mindset, see Mark Harrison, Cli-

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mates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. 10–17. 20. Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680–1715 (1935), trans. J. Lewis May (1953; repr., Cleveland: Meridian, 1963), 11. 21. Scholars often tie the preoccupation with travel in children’s literature to a larger fascination with horror and adventure among children and children’s writers alike. See, e.g., Anthony Kearney, “Savage and Barbaric Themes in Victorian Children’s Writing,” Children’s Literature in Education 17, no. 4 (1986): 233–40; Jeffrey Richards, introduction to Imperialism and Juvenile Literature, ed. Jeffrey Richards (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 8. And yet, we must not overestimate the importance of these elements for early children’s authors. Children’s literature, as it emerged in the decades surrounding the turn of the eighteenth century, was deeply didactic in nature and, to paraphrase Mary Thwaite’s famous formulation, tended to value primers over pleasure. In fact, in their journey from the study to the nursery, travel tales such as Robinson Crusoe or the multiply-authored “Tale of Inkle and Yarico” lost much of their suspense, let alone their literary vigor. The infatuation with travel among children’s writers should also be seen in the context of the early modern tradition of the grand tour. 22. Summerfield, Fantasy and Reason, 135–37. 23. Charles Lloyd, Travels at Home, and Voyages by the Fire-Side, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orm and Brown, 1814), 1:vii–xxiii. See also Henry Weber, introduction to Popular Romances: Consisting of Imaginary Voyages and Travels (Edinburgh: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orm and Brown, 1812), xix–xxi. 24. Richard B. Apgar, “Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008), 86. 25. On the popularity of the genre in the eighteenth century, see Percy Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962); Charles L. Batten Jr., Pleasurable Instruction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1–3. 26. Srinivas Aravamudan, “Trop(icaliz)ing the Enlightenment,” Diacritics 23, no. 3 (1993): 49; Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 34–35; George S. Rousseau, Enlightenment Borders: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses; Medical, Scientific (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 287–94. See also Martin Jacobs’s contribution to this volume. 27. Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 105. 28. Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan; or, The Impossibility of Children’s Literature (1982; repr., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 2. See my discussion in Iris IdelsonShein, “The Beginning of the End: Jews, Children, and Enlightenment Pedagogy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 3 (2016): 383–95. 29. For one of the earliest discussion of the colonial uses of the “child analogy,” see H. Alan C. Cairns, The Clash of Cultures: Early Race Relations in Central Africa (New York: Praeger, 1965), 85–96. 30. Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, “Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte” (1789), repr. in Schillers sämmtliche Werke (Stüttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1838), 10:369. 31. Nimrod Zinger, “Away from Home: Travelling and Leisure Activities Among German Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 56 (2011): 59–64, 77–78. 32. Ibid., 64. The precise episode in Emden’s Megilat Sefer to which Zinger refers does not appear in the extant manuscript of the memoirs, but only in the 1979 Bick edition, which, as pointed out by J. J. Schacter, is unreliable. However, other stories of this nature are plentiful, as may be seen from the examples below. 33. Hayim David Joseph Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov ha-shalem, ed. Aaron Freiman (Jerusalem: Mekitzey nirdamim, 1934), 137. See also Zinger, “Away from Home,” 66. I thank Nimrod Zinger for referring me to this discussion.

314

Notes to Pages 135–137

34. Mayse bukh (Basel, 1602), 138a–139a. On the image and uses of the Amer icas in early modern Jewish literature, particularly in Italy, see Limor Mintz-Manor, “Ha-siaḥ al ha- olam haḥadash ba-tarbut ha-yehudit ba-et ha-ḥadashah ha-mukdemet” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 2011). 35. For some further examples, see Glikl, Zikhronot Glikl, 1691–1719, trans. Chava Turniansky (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2006), 80–106; David Zamość, “Maaseh nora,” in Resisey ha-melitzah (Dyrenfurt, 1822), 20–24; Responsa Mordecai Suesskind Rothenburg, part 1, no. 26; “Maaseh Yerushalmi,” in Sarah Zfatman, Nisuey adam ve-shedah (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1987), 34–35. 36. Yehudah Horowitz, Megilat sdarim (1793; repr., Prague, 1884), 24a. 37. On the phenomenon of rabbinic interest in science in Eastern and Central Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Immanuel Etkes, “Li-she’elat mevasre ha-haskalah be-mizraḥ eyropa,” Tarbits 58 (1988): 95–114; David E. Fishman, “A Polish Rabbi Meets the Berlin Haskalah: The Case of R. Barukh Schick,” AJS Review 12, no. 1 (1987): 95–121; Rehav Rubin, “Chug ha-’areṣ by Rabbi Solomon of Chelm: An Early Geographical Treatise and Its Sources,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 8 (2008): 131–47; Maoz Kahana, “Scientific Demons: The Hatam Sofer as an Exorcist,” AJS Review 38, no.  2 (2014): 1–23; Idelson-Shein, “Their Eyes Shall Behold Strange Things,” 295–322. 38. On the themes of knowledge and general studies in the Haskalah, and the religious elite’s attitudes toward secular studies, see Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (2002), trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); “La‘akor et ha-ḥoḥmah mi-ha-olam: Oyvey ha-neorut u-shorshey ha-emdah ha-ḥaredit,” Alpayim 26 (2004): 166–90. 39. Horowitz, Megilat sdarim, 62a. 40. See discussion in Idelson-Shein, Difference, 161–62. 41. Moshe Mendelssohn-Frankfurt, Meẓiat ha-areẓ ha-ḥadashah kolel kol ha-gevurot ve-hamaasim asher naasu le-et meẓo ha-areẓ ha-zot (Altona, 1807), 123–24. 42. Lefin, Masaot ha-yam (1818; repr., Lemberg: D. H. Schrenzel, 1859), 50. On Libou as representing Lefin, see Nancy Sinkoff, “Strategy and Ruse in the Haskalah of Mendel Lefin of Satanov,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah, ed. Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 93–94. 43. Lefin, Masaot ha-yam, 47. Compare Joachim Heinrich Campe, “Kapitän Wilson’s Schiffbruch bei den Pelju-Inseln,” in Sämmtliche Kinder- und Jugendschriften von Joachim Heinrich Campe (1791; repr., Braunschweig: Schulbuchhandlung, 1830), part 9, vol. 25, pp. 142–43. 44. Isaac Euchel, “Igrot Isaac Euchel,” Ha-meassef (1785): 118. 45. On the concept of a “fake Haskalah,” see Shmuel Feiner, “Ha-maavak ba-Hasakalah ha-mezuyefet u-gvuliteyhah shel ha-modernizaẓiyah ha-Yehudit,” in Me-Vilnah li-Yerushalayim: Meḥkarim be-toldoteyhem shel Yehudey Mizraḥ Eyropah, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002), 3–24. 46. Perry Nodelman, “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1992): 30. 47. On the ideological meanings of the construction of space in the novel in general, and in Robinson Crusoe in par ticu lar, and its relation to the colonial project, see Lennard J. David, Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction (New York: Methuen, 1987), esp. 62–63. 48. Campe, Robinson der Jüngere (1779, repr., Strasbourg, 1784), 305–6. I have found this later edition to be closest to the Jewish translations, particularly to Zamość’s 1824 Hebrew version, which strives for relative adequacy. Given, however, the tantalizing amount of editions of Campe’s book, it is impossible to determine with certainty which edition was used by the maskilim. For two educative, though vastly different readings of Robinson der Jüngere, see Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 102– 20; Apgar, “Taming Travel,” 68–84 and passim. 49. See Anon., Historiya von den zeefarers Robinzohn (Frankfurt Oder: Profesor Elsner, 1813), [16]; Anon. [Joseph Vitlin?], Robinzon: Di geshikhte fun Alter Leb, ayne vahre und vunderbare geshichte tzum lezen (ca. 1820; repr., Vilnius: RYL MZ, 1894), 2:57a; Eliezer ben Shimon ha-Cohen Bloch, Maaseh Robinson (Warsaw: H. E. Bomberg, 1849), 48. Garrett and Wolpe view the motif of

Notes to Pages 138–141

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marriage as a Judaizing element in Vitlin and the 1813 translation. See Garrett, “Jewish Robinson,” 227; Wolpe, “Judaizing Robinson,” 50–51, 53. However, the appearance of this narrative twist in all three versions in somewhat similar form may also be taken to suggest the existence of a common source text (either Jewish or non-Jewish), perhaps a mediating text between Campe’s original and these Jewish translations. 50. Sinkoff, “Strategy and Ruse,” 93–94; Garrett, “Jewish Robinson,” 224–25. 51. Nancy Sinkoff, “Tradition and Transition: Mendel Lefin of Satanow and the Beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, 1749–1826” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1996), 163–68; Frieden, “Neglected Origins,” 17–24. 52. Idelson-Shein, Difference, 159–61. 53. Zamość, Robinson, 87. 54. On the Judaization of Defoe’s novel in this Yiddish version, see Garrett, “Jewish Robinson,” 215–27. 55. Vitlin, Alter Leb (Cracow, 1898), edition cover page. 56. On the Friday’s “Africanization” in this and other texts, see Idelson-Shein, Difference, 170– 76. For a discussion of the phenomenon more generally, see Roxann Wheeler, “ ‘My Savage,’ ‘My Man’: Racial Multiplicity in Robinson Crusoe,” ELH 62, no. 4 (1995): 824–25; Wheeler, Complexion of Race, 81–84; Pierre H. Boulle, “In Defense of Slavery: Eighteenth- Century Opposition to Abolition and the Origins of a Racist Ideology in France,” in History from Below, ed. Frederick Krantz (1985; repr., Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 232. 57. David Zamość, Agudat shoshanim (Breslau: L. Sulzbach and Sons, 1827), 20–24. 58. Andrea Schatz, “Detours in a ‘Hidden Land’: Shmuel Romanelli’s Masa’ ba‘rav,” in Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition, ed. Ra‘anan S. Boustan, Oren Kosansky, and Marina Rustow (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 164–84. 59. On the role of Sepharadi Jewry in the thought of the Haskalah and modern Ashkenazi Jewry in general, see Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sepharadic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 47–66. 60. Shmuel Romanelli, Masa ba-Arav (Berlin: Chevrat chinukh naarim, 1792), 57. 61. See also Asher Salah’s chapter in this volume. 62. For a discussion of similar uses of travel or the non-European other in early modern Jewish discourse, see Idelson-Shein, Difference, esp. 43–44, 102; Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. 292; Mintz-Manor, “Hasiaḥ al ha-olam ha-ḥadash,” 69, 108–9, 128, 149, 159, 210, 280. On colonialism and colonial imagery as a means to construct “Jewish whiteness” in general, see Eitan Bar-Yosef, “A Villa in the Jungle: Herzl, Zionist Culture, and the Great African Adventure,” in Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion, ed. Mark H. Gelber and Vivian Liska (Tubingen: De Gruyter, 2007), 85–102; Daniel Boyarin, “Colonial Drag,” in The Pre- Occupation of Postcolonial Studies, ed. Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), esp. 254–57. 63. For a discussion of this double identification, see Idelson-Shein, Difference, 163–70. 64. In recent decades, scholars of children’s literature have suggested that the target audience of children’s books is never truly clear cut. However, I would argue that the case of the Haskalah is unique in its deliberate refusal to define a target audience. 65. On these expectations, see Rose, Case of Peter Pan, 58–59. 66. Apgar, “Taming Travel,” 125. 67. Ibid. 68. Clare Bradford, Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Lourier University Press, 2007), 7. Bradford discusses the Orientalist analogy, but the message applies, I would argue, to colonialist discourse in general. 69. See McClintock’s notion of “anachronist space”; “a permanently anterior time within the geographic space of the empire,” in Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), esp. 30, 40.

316

Notes to Pages 142–157

70. For a gendered reading of Shelley’s Frankenstein, see Cynthia Pon, “ ‘Passages’ in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Toward a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Infobase, 2007), esp. 153. 71. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 2 vols. (1818; repr., London, 1823), 1:94. See discussion in Pon, “Passages,” 152. 72. Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 73. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 3. 74. Ibid.

Introduction to Part IV 1. Lauren Berlant and Jordan Greenwald, “Affect in the End Times: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant,” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 20, no. 2 (2012): 71–89. 2. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–93); Jessica Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Business World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 3. Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (New York: Nextbook and Schocken, 2011). 4. On processes of mimicry and being in between whiteness and civilization, see Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,”  October 28 (1984): 125–33.

Chapter 9 1. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds, vol. 1 (London: Fontana/Collins, 1972), 355, 375. 2. Miriam Frenkel, “Pilgrimage and Charity in the Geniza Society,” in Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen, ed. Arnold Franklin et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 59–66. 3. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–93), 1:1–28; Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (New York: Nextbook and Schocken, 2011). 4. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:74–75. 5. Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15–16. 6. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). 7. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:59–70. 8. Ibid., 3:313. 9. Ibid., 250; Cohen, Poverty, 139–55. 10. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3:250; Cohen, Poverty, 139–55. See also Miriam Frenkel, “Slavery in Jewish Medieval Society Under Islam: A Gendered Perspective,” in Männlich und weiblich schuf Er sie: Studien zur Genderkonstruktion und zum Eherecht in den Mittelmeerreligionen, ed. Matthias Morgenstern, Christian Boudignon, and Christiane Tietz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 249–60. 11. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3:250; Cohen, Poverty, 139–55.

Notes to Pages 157–166

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12. Taylor Schechter Collection, Cambridge University Library, England [hereafter TS], 13 J 13.16; Mark Cohen, The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 52–53, doc. 21. 13. TS 13 J 8.19; trans. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3:197. 14. Cambridge University Library Collection, Cambridge, England [CUL], Or 1080 J 34. 15. TS AS 147.22. 16. Cohen, The Voice, 110–62; Mark Cohen, “Geniza Documents for the Comparative History of Poverty and Charity,” in Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, ed. Miriam Frenkel and Yaacov Lev (New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 283–341. 17. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:327–331; Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 48–57. 18. About the Byzantines’ endeavors to rescue their own captives, see Rotman, Byzantine Slavery, 177–79. 19. For comparison: the whole revenue from renting twenty-one houses owned by the Fustat community amounted in a typical year (1181) to 632 dirhems, that is, 15.8 dinars. Bodl. Ms Heb. f 56 (Cat.2821, no. 16). The expenditure of that same community on charity and other communal expenditures in one week at the beginning of the thirteenth century was 63 dirhems, or about 1.5 dinar (TS NS J 251). The price of a standard house in Fustat was between 25 and 60 dinars, as estimated by Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 4:86–87. 20. Miriam Frenkel, The Compassionate and Benevolent: The Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2006), 235–39, doc. 1 [Hebrew]. 21. TS NS J 270. A letter written after 1153, published by S. D. Goitein, “A Letter from Ascalon During Its Occupation by the Crusaders,” Tarbiẓ 31 (1962): 287–90 [Hebrew]; also published by Moshe Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099), vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1983), 460–61, doc. 579 [Hebrew]. 22. ʻAbd al-Wahīd al-Marrakūshī, “Al Muʿjib fi Talkhīs Akhbār al-Maghrib” [in Arabic], in The History of the Almohades, ed. Reinhart Dozy (Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1968), 223. The text is preceded by a sketch of the history of Spain from the time of the conquest until the reign of Yúsof ibn-Téshúfin, as well as the history of the Almoravides. 23. TS 16.287, in Eliyahu Ashtor, History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria Under the Mamluks, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1970), 101–5 [Hebrew]. 24. CUL Or 1081 J 9; mentioned in Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:50. 25. TS 20.28; mentioned in Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:35. 26. TS 12.303; Cohen, The Voice, 59–60, doc. 26. 27. TS 6 J3.28; Cohen, The Voice, 37–38, doc. 13. 28. TS 18 J 4.4; trans. Cohen, The Voice, 38–39, doc. 14. Cohen suggests that Solomon was a refugee from the massacres and forced conversions in the Rhineland in 1096. 29. About the freedom of communication in this period, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:59–70. 30. Miriam Frenkel, “Medieval Alexandria: Life in a Port City,” Al Masāq 26, no. 1 (2014): 5-35. 31. TS 13 J 18.14. The letter is dated 1130. 32. TS 13 J 21.35; Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 4:265. 33. Moshe Gil and Ezra Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi and His Circle: 55 Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001), 206 [Hebrew]. 34. James W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication,” in Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 11–28. 35. Frenkel, The Compassionate, 142–49. 36. TS 13 J 27.11; Frenkel, The Compassionate, 566–70, doc. 79. 37. This reciprocal relationship resembles, in many ways, the common informal commercial partnership: the muʻāmalah; see Frenkel, The Compassionate, 145.

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Notes to Pages 166–172

38. TS 12.299, published by S.  D. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in the Light of Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1980), 338–43 [Hebrew]. 39. TS 16.287, written in 1208; see note 23 above. 40. TS 16.287. 41. Frenkel, The Compassionate, 227–31; Miriam Frenkel, “Charity in Jewish Society of the Medieval Mediterranean World,” in Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, ed. Miriam Frenkel and Yaacov Lev (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 343–64. 42. TS, Arabic Box 46.253; translated by Cohen, The Voice, 57–59, doc. 24. 43. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 123. 44. Ibid., 123–72.

Chapter 10 I am grateful to Ora Limor, Joshua Levinson, and Orit Bashkin for having invited me to join at various stages of the journey that this book celebrates, and to Yael Zerubavel whose invitation to serve as the Bildner Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University provided the conditions for writing this essay. Richie I. Cohen, Edan Dekel, Freddie Rokem, and Dina Stein are deeply thanked for comments, corrections, and suggestions. I refer in this chapter to some of my earlier research and present some new aspects of the theme that can be but partly investigated in the essay format. Since submitting this chapter, I have published several articles on the theme of the Wandering Jew that will only briefly if at all be mentioned in the notes. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 539/17), carried out in cooperation with Professor Israel Bartal. 1. George K. Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1991 [1965]), is the most comprehensive inventory of the materials on the topic based on the unique collection at Brown University’s John Hay Library; Galit Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes, eds., The Wandering Jew: Interpretations of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), offers a diverse selection of interpretive and historical essays on the theme. 2. I share this concept with, among others, David Nirenberg who has indicated that although we separately found this term adequate for what we wanted to analyze, the sharing grew out of a kindred spirit. David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 216 n.10. Nirenberg’s use of the concept emphasizes its constancy in neighboring groups, such as Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Spain. 3. Cf. Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths, 5: “This coproduction does not end with its codification in scripture.” 4. Mikhail  M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84ff. For an early application to folk narrative analysis, see Keith Basso, “Stalking with Stories: Names, Places, and Moral Narratives Among the Western Apache,” in Text, Play and Story, ed. Edward M. Bruner, Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society, 1984), 19–55. 5. This insight was suggested by Dina Stein. 6. Stith Thompson, The Folktale (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1946). Thompson (1885–1976) was the doyen of folk narrative scholarship in the United States and the founder of the illustrious department of Folklore (now also Ethnomusicology) at Indiana University, Bloomington. 7. Consequently, the legend may be closer to Todorov’s definition of the category of the “fantastic” where the inter-penetrability of the real and the imagined seem to be crucial, rather than the folktale in which the imaginary is encased in its own world; Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard, introd. Robert Scholes (Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973).

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8. The genre classification of folk narratives has been widely discussed since the Brothers Grimm. This is the major dual division that I practice, having adopted Claude Lévi-Strauss’s conception of the Grimms’ third genre, the myth, as a mode of thinking rather than as a genre. 9. Dina Stein reminded me of this parallel, suggested also in Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Cobbler of Jerusalem in Finnish Folklore,” in Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 119–53. 10. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “L’image du juif errant et la construction de l’identité européenne,” in Le juif errant: Un témoin du temps, ed. Laurence Sigal-Klagsbald and Richard I. Cohen (Paris: Adam Biro and Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaisme, 2001), 45–54. 11. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Contemporary Perspectives on Tradition: Moving on with the Wandering Jew,” in Konstellationen: Über Geschichte, Erfahrung und Erkenntnis, ed. Nicolas Berg, Omar Kamil, Markus Kirchhoff, and Susanne Zepp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 309–31. 12. Nayef Al-Joulan, “Essenced to Language”: The Margins of Isaac Rosenberg (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 56. 13. I am not contesting the brilliant analyses of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “Exile, History, and the Nationalization of Jewish Memory: Some Reflections on the Zionist Notion of History and Return,” Journal of Levantine Studies 3, no. 2 (2013): 37–70; and Israel J. Yuval “The Myth of the Jewish Exile from the Land of Israel: A Demonstration of Irenic Scholarship,” Common Knowledge 12, no.  1 (2006): 16–33, pointing at later Jewish internalizations of exile as a par ticu lar punishment adopted from Christianity especially in rabbinic sources, but I want to emphasize that the dichotomous principle itself is inherent and extensively propagated in the Hebrew Bible. Many earlier works, in par ticu lar by Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, and Yizthak Baer have inspired these and other discussions, also followed up by Haviva Pedaya and others. 14. See Chapter 3 in this volume. 15. F. E. Peters, The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004; orig. 1982). Notably, as far as I know, the figure of the Wandering Jew is absent from the traditions of Islamic and Arabic countries where Jews resided until the twentieth century. Such typical wanderers as the Quranic Fadilah are not identified as Jews; and Anderson, Legend, 422 n. 7, dismisses the parallel suggested by others but confirms the connection of Fadilah with postbiblical wandering Elijah/Al-Khadir. On the links between Elijah and the Wandering Jew, see, e.g., Harold Fisch, A Remembered Future: A Study in Literary Mythology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 71–80. 16. Ezek. 16:3 a notwithstanding, and in agreement with 16:3b. A radical critique of the biblical narrative adopted as a Zionist myth of autochthony is presented in Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity,” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 4 (1993): 693–725; and historically contextualized in Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley: University of California Press 2006). 17. Genesis (Bereshit) Rabbah 39:8, in Theodor and Albeck’s critical edition: J[udah] Theodor and Ch[aim] Albeck, Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary. Introduction and Registers Ch[aim] Albeck, ed. Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 2nd printing (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965), 370–71. 18. E.g., Yuval, Two Nations. See also Shulamit Elizur, “Exile on Native Soil,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 27 (2014): 21–36 [Hebrew], showing that the sense of exile may in late antique Palestinian Jewish liturgical poetry express various feelings of disadvantage even while being written in the Land of Promise. 19. Deut. 28:36–37, 63–65. 20. E.g., Heinrich Heine in much of his work; and in a very different manner Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews, 5 vols. (South Brunswick, NJ: T. Yoseloff, 1967–73); Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). This analytical paradigm strongly relates to another major perspective of discursive and cultural production set by Bakhtin at the focus of his theoretical work, namely, dialogue (e.g., Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination).

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21. E.g., Assaf Gavron, Moving [novel] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 2003) [Hebrew]; trans. Barbara Linner in German, as Alles Paletti (Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 2010); and most explicitly, perhaps, Eshkol Nevo, Neuland [novel] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 2011) [Hebrew]; trans. Sondra Silverstein (London: Chatto & Windus, 2014). 22. Augustine elaborated on a comparison that was already earlier made by Jerome, in his On Psalms, Homily 35; Augustine, Contra Faustum 12 (following Ambrose, De Cain et Abel 2.9.34–37). See Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 320–24. 23. Fernand Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 25–54; originally published in French in Annales E.S.C. 4 (1958): 725–53. 24. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. and foreword by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 75–110, 167–91, 111–48. 25. Primarily in an oral presentation in 1932, and then in writing: Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, “Geography and Folk-Tale Oicotypes,” Béaloideas 4 (1934): 344–55; von Sydow, Selected Papers on Folklore (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1948), 44–59. Regrettably, recent publications make it very clear that von Sydow’s position toward Nazism in Germany was not critical; see Nils-Arvid Bringéus, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow: A Swedish Pioneer in Folklore, trans. John Irons, Folklore Fellows Communications 298 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2009), 178–86. The ecotype concept is further elaborated in Lauri Honko, “Four Forms of Adaptation to Tradition,” Studia Fennica 26 (1981): 19–33; cf. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Ökotyp,” in Encyclopädie des Märchens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000). 26. Dov Noy, “The Jewish Versions of the ‘Animal Languages’ Folktale (AT 670)—A TypologicalStructural Study,” in Studies in Aggadah and Folk-Literature, ed. Joseph Heinemann and Dov Noy, Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1971), 171–20; Tamar Alexander, “Literary Tradition, Family Self Image and Ethnic Identity,” Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review (1994): 63–89; Tamar Alexander, “A Sephardic Version of a Blood Libel Story in Jerusalem,” International Folklore Review 6 (1986): 131–52; Hasan El-Shamy, Brother and Sister, Type 872 *: A Cognitive Behavioristic Analysis of a Middle Eastern Oikotype, Folklore Publications Group Monograph Series 8 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979); Eli Yassif, “The Man Who Never Swore an Oath: From Jewish to Israeli Oikotype,” Fabula 27 (1987): 216–36. 27. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Ecotypes: Theory of the Lived and Narrated Experience,” Narrative Culture 3, no. 1 (2016): 110–37. See also Hasan-Rokem, “Contemporary Perspectives,” drawing on Dorothy Noyes, “Tradition: Three Traditions,” Journal of Folklore Research 46 (2009): 233–68. 28. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Ex Oriente Fluxus: The Wandering Jew— Oriental Crossings of the Paths of Europe,” in L’orient dans l’histoire religieuse de l’Europe: L’invention des origins, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and John Scheid (Turnhout Belgium: EPHE & Brepols, 2000), 153–64. 29. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 85–92. 30. On the remarkable gift of languages, cf. the xenoglossy of popu lar prophets in northern Germany that have been suggested as parallel figures to the Wandering Jew in Jürgen Beyer, “Lutheran Popu lar Prophets in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Per formance of Untrained Speakers,” ARV—Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 51 (1995): 63–86, at 67; these prophets are also suggested as models for the Wandering Jew by P. V. Brady, “Ahasver: On a Problem of Identity,” German Life and Letters 23 (1968–69): 3–11. 31. Ernst Ludwig Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau (Aarau, 1856), 2:306, no. 489. 32. Hasan-Rokem, “The Cobbler of Jerusalem,” 144–45 n.33. 33. Bengt af Klintberg, “The Swedish Wanderings of the Eternal Jew,” in Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 154–68. 34. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 35. Similar conclusions may be recognized in Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Spaces of Dispersal,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 339–44; James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Transla-

Notes to Pages 176–177

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tion in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 264. Also suggested in Daniel Boyarin, A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). For applications of de Certeau’s thinking in direct reference to the Wandering Jew, see Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Jews as Postcards, or Postcards as Jews: Mobility in a Modern Genre,” Jewish Quarterly Review 99, no.  4 (2009): 505–46; Hasan-Rokem, “Material Mobility vs. Concentric Cosmology in the Sukkah—The House of the Wandering Jew or a Ubiquitous Temple,” Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, ed. Birgit Mayer and Dick Boumann (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 153–79. 36. For obvious reasons the Wandering Jew has arrived in the Western Hemisphere relatively late, but has richly developed across the divides between folk, popu lar, and canonical literature. The topic will not be addressed in this chapter, cf., however, Rudolf Glanz, “The Wandering Jew in America,” in Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 105–18. 37. Anderson, Legend, 12–16. 38. Ibid., 15–16 and 422 n. 8; Robert Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Ahima’az ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 250ff. 39. MS 16 f.74v–f.75r, Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University and versions. 40. An earlier written document had existed, the chronicle of the monastery of Santa Maria della Ferraria, ascribing to the year 1223 the visit of the stranger that Roger included in his report on the year 1228, Massimo Oldini and Umberto Caperna, Cronaca Santa Maria della Ferraria (Cassino: Francesco Ciolfi, 2008). 41. Anderson, Legend, 18–21. 42. Aaron Schaffer, “The Ahasver-Volksbuch of 1602,” in Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 27–35; Ziva Amishai-Maisels, “Menasseh Ben Israel and the ‘Wandering Jew,’ ” Ars Judaica 2 (2006): 159. 43. Anderson, Legend, 39–42; see also Hasan-Rokem, “Contemporary Perspectives,” 315–17. 44. On the name Ahasver, see David Daube, “Ahasver,” Jewish Quarterly Review 45, no.  3 (1955): 243–44, reprinted in Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 36–38; Galit HasanRokem, “Ahasver—The Enigma of a Name,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 4 (2010): 544–50; Alfred Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten: Ahasver, Moses und die Authentizität der jüdischen Moderne (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002), 219–20 n. 6. 45. Rivka Horwitz, “Moses Mendelssohns Interpretation des Tetragrammaton—‘Der Ewige,’ ” Judaica 55, no. 2 (1999): 2–19; no. 3 (1999): 132–52. Horwitz emphasizes the originality of Mendelssohn’s word choice in comparison with Luther’s Der Herr, the Lord, paralleling the Hebrew vocalization and spelling adonai, pointing out that Mendelssohn’s authority for this practice was Naḥmanides (Ramban), who had quoted Rabbi Sa’adyah Gaon, Maimonides, and other medieval Jewish exegetes on the same. For Horwitz this is an example of Mendelssohn’s tendency to favor the language of the people, which was harshly criticized by thinkers as widely apart as Rabbi Raphael Hirsch and Franz Rosenzweig; see, e.g., Franz Rosenzweig, “Der Ewige,” in Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937). “Herr” was not an option in early Yiddish spoken and written by German Jews unless characterizing a non-Jewish speaker: Glikl—Memoirs 1691–1719, ed. and ann. Chava Turniansky, trans. Sarah Friedman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press 2019), 116 n. 82. For further information, see the bilingual Yiddish and Hebrew edition: Glikl–Memoires 1691–1719, ed. and trans. Chava Turniansky (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2006), 176 n. 205, 181 n. 217. “Der Eybiker” is not documented in any historical dictionary of Yiddish. I thank Professor Chava Turniansky for her generous advice. Scholar of early Yiddish literature Dr. Oren Roman reviewed a number of nineteenth-century siddurim printed with a running German translation and found that most of them used der Ewige or Ewiger, according to context. Dr.  Daphna Mach who has studied German translations of the Hebrew Bible does not support the idea of a link between God’s sobriquet and that of the Eternal Jew. I thank both her and Dr. Roman for their help. 46. The bibliography on rumors is very extensive; the following refers to historical as well as modern instances: Jean-Noël Kapferer, Rumors: Uses, Interpretations, and Images (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990).

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47. Leonhard Neubaur, Die Sage vom ewigen Juden (Leipzig: Hinrichs 1884), https://archive .org /details/diesagevomewige02neubgoog; reprinted with his Neue Mitteilungen über die Sage vom ewigen Juden (Leipzig: Hinrichs 1893); Neubaur, “Bibliographie der Sage vom ewigen Juden,” Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 10 (1895): 249–67, 297–316; Neubaur, “Zur Geschichte der Sage vom ewigen Juden,” Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde 5 (1914): 211–23. 48. Hasan-Rokem, “The Cobbler of Jerusalem,” 121–22. 49. E.g., news from southern Spain in Swedish narratives, in af Klintberg, “The Swedish Wanderings,” 154–68. 50. Anderson, Legend, 175; see also pp. 174–227. 51. Adolf L. Leschnitzer, “The Wandering Jew: The Alienation of the Jewish Image in Christian Consciousness,” Hasan-Rokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 227–35; originally published in Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1971): 391–96. Alfred Bodenheimer has contextualized Leschnitzer’s views in the wider post-Shoah discussion of collective images of the Jewish people; see Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, 14–15. 52. Nicholas Halmi, The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), 1–26; Charles Larmore, The Romantic Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), emphasizes the critical views against romanticism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For a different perspective, see Hagar Salamon and Harvey  E. Goldberg, “Myth-SymbolRitual,” in A Companion to Folklore, ed. Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 119–35; Alexander Altmann, “Symbol and Myth,” Philosophy 20, no.  76 (1945): 162–71, esp. 163. 53. Richard I. Cohen, “The ‘Wandering Jew’ from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor,” in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, ed. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 147–75; Cohen emphasizes the transformation in art, from folk art to “high art,” and from stereotypical to almost mythological (153–59). 54. Richard I. Cohen is the most prominent scholar of the visual materials on the Wandering Jew: Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons (Berkeley: University of California Press 1998), 217–30; SigalKlagsbald and Cohen, Le juif errant; Richard I. Cohen and Miriam Rajner, “The Return of the Wandering Jew(s) in Samuel Hirszenberg’s Art,” Ars Judaica 7 (2011): 33–56. 55. Marion Spies, “Die Gestalt des Ewigen Juden in der englischen Romantik,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 9 (2000): 164–81. 56. Theodore Gish, “Wanderlust and Wanderleid: The Motif of the Wandering Hero in German Romanticism,” Studies in Romanticism 3, no. 4 (1964): 225–39. For a lighter tone, see Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Hammondsworth: Penguin 2001), 97–117. 57. Some earlier poems were included in collections of orally transmitted poems and songs; Otto Heller, “Ahasver in der Kunstdichtung,” Modern Philology 3, no. 1 (1905): 61–68, at 65 n. 5 mentions Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765; ed. Edw. Walford, London, o. J. [1801]), 253, 254: “The Wandering Jew,” noting that this ballad was already in the collection of Pepys (1700). Heller (66 n. 5) mentions Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. John Morley (London, o. J.), 151: “Song for the Wandering Jew” (written 1800). Heller (65 n. 6) refers to The Wandering Jew or Love’s Masquerade (London, 1797). 58. Tuvia Singer, “Between Eternity and Wandering: The Anti-Jewish Discourse on the Wandering Jew in the Long Nineteenth Century in Germany and Austria,” in The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism: Continuities and Discontinuities from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, ed. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß (New York: Routledge 2018), 392–407. 59. Jonathan Skolnik, “Writing Jewish History Between Gutzkow and Goethe: Auerbach’s Spinoza and the Birth of Modern Jewish Historical Fiction,” Prooftexts 19, no. 2 (1999): 101–25. Two years before the publication of Auerbach’s novel Zelig Korn [Kohn], also known as Friedrich Nork (apparently after his conversion), published an “ethnographic” novel relating the life of traditional Jewish families, Der Sabbathianer, oder Die Schöpsenfamilie: Fortsetzung des jüdischen Gil Blas (Leipzig, 1835), also including the figure of the Wandering Jew in the role of a messianic harbinger, demonstrating the fact that the figure is contemporaneously open to diverse interpretations.

Notes to Pages 179–181

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60. David Frisby, Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988); Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Specter of Ahasver,” Forum on Georg Simmel’s “The Stranger,” ed. Jakob Egholm Feldt and Amos MorrisReich, Jewish Quarterly Review (in press). 61. Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Wandering Jew—a Jewish Perspective,” Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division D, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 189–96; Hasan-Rokem, “Joban Transformations of the Wandering Jew in Joseph Roth’s Hiob and Der Leviathan,” in The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics, Hermeneutics, ed. Leora Batnitzky and Ilana Pardes (Berlin: De Gruyter 2014), 145–69; Hasan-Rokem, “Imagining the Wandering Jew in Modernity: Exegesis and Ethnography in Feuchtwanger’s Jud Süss,” in Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Jewish Ethnography, ed. Andreas Kilcher and Gabriella Safran (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 159–80. 62. In the column “Literarische Nachrichten,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 4 (1840): 444–62. I thank Dr. Ita Shedletzky for showing me the essay and for providing the identification of the author as Ludwig Philippson, the editor of the journal. See also http://findingaids.cjh.org /?pID​ =​121533#a12. The essay is included as part of Dr. Yom Tov Lewinsky’s Wandering Jew archive at the Folklore Research Center at the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See also Skolnik, “Writing Jewish History,” 122 n. 48 for the Ahasver-Streit, the debate on Ahasver. 63. The same feeling must have guided the German scholar who in a volume devoted to Moses Mendelssohn’s thought, depicts Mendelssohn as a positive “Gegenbild” opposing the traditional picture of the Wandering Jew—a better ideal to strive for than Ahasver. See J. Braecker, “Moses Mendelssohn, ein Gegenbild des Ewigen Juden,” in Ich handle mit Vernunft . . . : Moses Mendelssohn und die europäische Aufklärung, ed. Norbert Hinske (Hamburg: Meiner, 1981), 15–44. The late Prof. Shmuel Werses generously contributed the reference. A similar ideological tendency may have led Harold Fisch to reaffirm the earlier generation intellectuals’ rejection of the Wandering Jew in favor of Elijah as an authentic symbol of renewal unlike the goalless repetition symbolized by Ahasver; see Harold Harel-Fisch, “Elijah and the Wandering Jew,” in Rabbi Joseph Lookstein Memorial Volume, ed. Leo Landman (New York: Ktav, 1980), 125–35; Harold Fisch, A Remembered Future: A Study in Literary My thology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 44–45, 61–80. 64. S. Lublinski, “Ein jüdischer Roman,” Ost und West 1 (1901). In an essay by C. C. Aronsfeld, “Der Selbsthaß des Robert Jaffé,” Freiburger Rundbrief: Zeitschrift für christlich-jüdische Begegnung 7 (2000): 34, the author refers to Jaffé’s own description of the novel: “Ein junger Jude, der den ganzen Ahasverschmerz seines Volkes fühlt, wird, indem er sich von ihm zu befreien sucht, bei diesem Streben nach Assimilation, zu immer schmerzhafteren Erlebnissen geführt und erkennt am Ende, daß dem Schicksal seines Volkes kein Einzelner sich entziehen könne; in der tiefen, schwarzen Nacht dieser pessimistischen Erkenntnis ist abseits der Stern des Zionismus milde blinkend, halb verschleiert erst aufgegangen.” Aronsfeld himself has published an autobiography titled Wanderer from My Birth (London: Janus, 1997). This too is found in Dr. Yom Tov Lewinsky’s archive mentioned in note 62. 65. The author who died relatively young after a troubled life also published under the pseudonym Max Aram. 66. Tuvia Singer, “Navadut u-moderniut: ha-siah ha-antishemi al dmut ha-yehudi ha-noded be-mifne ha-meot ha-tsha-esre ve-ha-esrim be-germania uve-ostria” [Nomadism and Modernity: The Anti-Semitic Discourse on the Wandering Jew at the Turn of the Nineteenth–Twentieth Century in Germany and Austria] (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2013). 67. Minsky published his poem in Voshod, 6 December 1900. This too is in Dr. Lewinsky’s archive; see note 62. 68. Cf. historian Heinrich Graetz’s oral communication for British Jews, paraphrased in Hebrew by Y. S. Fuchs in Ha-Maggid 31 (1887): 323–25, 331–33. This source is another gift of the late Prof. S. Werses. Richard I. Cohen has enlightened me regarding the context, Graetz’s 1887 visit to

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the London World Exhibition; see Richard I Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 307 n. 37. 69. I have elsewhere treated in some detail the case of a postcard with Max Fabian’s 1902 painting Ahasver, displaying an unusual image of the Wandering Jew accompanied by a woman and a child, unlike most of his portrayals, both verbal and pictorial, where he is lonely. The legend of the German chapbooks usually mentions explicitly that he left his wife and child when he took off. The backside of the postcard bears the logo of the Eleventh Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1913. The copy of the postcard that I studied at the Judah L. Magnes Museum at the University of California, Berkeley, is autographed in Hebrew by a number of persons who appear to have been delegates to the congress, however, no addressee is indicated and the postcard bears no stamps or dates; see HasanRokem, “Contemporary Perspectives,” 322–23. 70. Karl Kautsky, “Are the Jews a Race?”—the last sentence of the eleventh and last chapter of the essay that was written in 1914. Kautsky Internet Archive, in Marxist Writers’ Archive, https:// www.marxists.org /archive/kautsky/1914/jewsrace/index.htm, accessed July 7, 2019, quoting the English translation published by Jonathan Cape in 1926, with no mention of the translator’s name, with the following publisher’s note: “Are the Jews a Race? now appears for the first time in English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under the title Rasse und Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, already included a number of impor tant additions and improvements, particularly the new chapter entitled Zionism After the War; for the present English version, the author has revised and brought up to date the second German edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine.” See also Paul Mendes-Flohr, “The Throes of Assimilation: Self-Hatred and the Jewish Revolutionary,” European Judaism 12 (1978): 38. 71. (Shmuel?) Alexandrov, Hamaggid 44 (1887): 349; the source was found in Dr. Lewinsky’s Wandering Jew archive (see note 62). 72. The place of birth is indicated as Bet-Lehem (Buber’s edition of Lamentations Rabbah) or Birat-Arava (printed version). Cf. Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature, trans. Batya Stein. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 152–60. Der eybiker yid  (The Eternal Jew) was among the first plays produced in Hebrew by the Habimah Theater in Moscow (Ha-Yehudi ha-nitsḥi, 1920). Written in August 1906, the one-act tragedy Der fremder (The Stranger; also known as Der eybiker yid [The Eternal Jew]) was printed in Yiddish in New York’s Der arbeyter, December 8, 15, 22, 29, 1906; and in Vilna’s Dos yidishe folk, January 9, 1907. 73. Raphael Edelmann, “Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew: Origin and Background,” in HasanRokem and Dundes, The Wandering Jew, 1–10.

Chapter 11 1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006), 30. 2. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 3. Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400– 1600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 209. 4. Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 8. 5. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs, “Introduction,” in Perspectives on Travel Writing, eds. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 3. 6. Paul Fussell, Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 209. 7. Ibid. 8. Holland and Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters, xi.

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9. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992). 10. Holland and Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters, xiii. 11. “The speaker in any travel book exhibits himself as physically more free than the reader, and thus every such book, even when it depicts its speaker trapped in Boa Vista, is an implicit celebration of freedom” (Fussell, Abroad, 214). 12. Bill Buford, “Editorial,” in “Travel Writing” issue, Granta 10 (1984): 7. 13. Carl Thompson, Travel Writing (New York: Routledge, 2011), 29. 14. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias,” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46–49. 15. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4. 16. Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, vol. 7 (New York: Alveltlekhe yidishn kultur kongres, 1968), 113. 17. The book is subtitled A bashraybung fun a rayze iber peruaner berg un velder, tsvishn tsivilizirte yeshuvim un indianer shvotim (A Description of a Journey Across Peruvian Mountains and Forests, Among Civilized Communities and Primitive Tribes) (Buenos Aires, 1944). All translations cited are my own. 18. The book is subtitled Rayze ayndrukn (Travel Impressions) Yidishn literatn un zhurnalistn farayn “H. D. Nomberg” (Buenos Aires, 1951). 19. Aroysgegebn durkh a gezelshafṭlekhn ḳomiṭeṭ (Buenos Aires, 1970). 20. Zachary Baker counted only ten holdings on WorldCat, but warned that the majority of Yiddish books were held by private individuals and not libraries. Also, the likelihood of deaccession of such a rarely read book makes this information of questionable significance. 21. Singer wrote the review under the pseudonym Yitshak Varshavski. “Interesanter bukh fun umbekantn shnrayber,” Forverts, October 29, 1944, Section II: 5–4. 22. As in his earlier piece Singer wrote the review under the pseudonym Yitshak Varshavski. “Di yidishe literarishe velt in zid-Amerike.” Forverts, February 23, 1958, Section II: 5. 23. See, for example, Paryszewski’s observations of the area around his hotel with street names such as Mata Judios and La Inquizacion and a church that still has the billet used for the auto-da-fé, the prison in which people were tortured and the table on which the holy court pronounced sentences upon those who had fallen into their hands (Paryszewski, Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte, 40). 24. Also near his hotel in Peru he encounters ancient homes, home fortresses built hundreds of years ago during the time of Francisco Pizarro—thick walls of raw unbaked brick mixed with stones (ibid., 40). 25. “A Yid, a Zotohila katsik,” in Dzhungls un shtet, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Yidishn literatn un zhurnalistn farayn, H. D. Nomberg, 1951), 240–48. 26. Sholem Asch, Mayn rayze iber Shpanyen (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1930). 27. A trope he uses fairly consistently in Dzshungls un shtet as well, except, as in the case referred to above, where the Jew happens to be an Indian. 28. See Pratt, Imperial Eyes, chap. 5, “Eros and Abolition,” esp. p. 97. 29. Paul Fussell, “On Travel and Travel Writing” in The Norton Book of Travel, ed. Paul Fussell (London: W. W. Norton, 1987), 13. 30. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 20. 31. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, eds. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), especially the editors’ introduction, pp. 5–7. 32. Holland and Huggan propose the concept of zones, “geographical-tropological regions, countries, or groups of countries,” and the textual density of travelers’ experiences that mediate the individual travel experience (Tourists with Typewriters, 110). 33. By this he means that travel writing is “the beggar of literary forms,” borrowing from “memoir, reportage and, most impor tant, the novel.” At the same time the narrative is a first-person account “authenticated by lived experience” (Buford, “Editorial,” 7).

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Notes to Pages 203–213

34. Casey Blanton, Travel Writing: The Self and the World (New York: Routledge, 2002), 30. 35. Percy Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 13. 36. Thompson, Travel Writing, 29. 37. Ibid., 30. 38. Fussell, Abroad, 214. 39. Fussell, The Norton Book of Travel, 16. 40. Minkoff, “Realizm un oysterlishkayt,” Di Tsukunft, January 1945, 49–50. 41. Pinye Katz, in Ikuf, August 1944. 42. David Orzuch, in Folksblat (Montevideo), partly reprinted in the end pages of Marcos Paryszewski, Dzshungls un shtet: Rayze ayndrukn (Buenos Aires: H. D. Nomberg, 1951). 43. Minkoff, “Realizm,” 50. 44. Ibid. 45. The concept is from the historian of science Steven Shapin cited in Thompson, Travel Writing, 72. 46. See Esther Romeyn and Jack Kugelmass, “Writing Alaska, Writing the Nation: Northern Exposure and the Quest for a New America,” in “Writing” Nation and “Writing” Region in Amer ica, ed. Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1996), 252–67. 47. Holland and Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters, 16. 48. Fussell makes an interest ing argument for the same regarding travel writing in the 1930s and cites Samuel Hynes’s observation of the double-edged nature of the writing as having “a strong realistic surface, which is yet a parable” (Fussell, Abroad, 215).

Introduction to Part V 1. Oswald A. W. Dilke, “Itineraries and Geographical Maps in the Early and Late Roman Empires,” in The History of Cartography, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 234–57; Scott F. Johnson, “Travel, Cartography, and Cosmology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott  F. Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 562–94; http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/. 2. Johnson, “Travel, Cartography, and Cosmology,” 570; Benet Salway, “The Nature and Genesis of the Peutinger Map,” Imago Mundi 57, no. 2 (2005): 119–35; Richard Talbert, Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); http://www .tabula-peutingeriana.de/. 3. Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches to Cartography throughout History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), xix. 4. John Brian Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographica 26 (1989): 3. 5. Shu-chuan Yan, “Mapping Knowledge and Power: Cartographic Representations of Empire in Victorian Britain,” EuroAmerica 37 (2007): 3. 6. Erik Cohen, Contemporary Tourism: Diversity and Change (London: Emerald, 2004), 17–48; Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976); Judith Adler, “Travel as Performed Art,” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1989): 1366–91; Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang, “The Trouble with Tourism and Travel Theory,” Tourist Studies 1 (2001): 5–22; Giuli Liebman Parrinello, “Tourist Versus Traveler Revisited: Back to the Eighteenth Century,” Journeys 13 (2012): 70–98; Erik Cohen, “Who Is a Tourist? A Conceptual Clarification,” Sociological Review 22 (2011): 527–55. 7. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002), 94–123. This, of course, does not prevent heritage tourism from having ancient precedents; see John Elsner, “Pausanius: A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World,” Past and Present 135 (1992): 3–29. 8. Georgia Frank, “Loca Sancta Souvenirs and the Art of Memory,” in Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le moyen âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval, ed. Béatrice Caseau, Jean-

Notes to Pages 214–220

327

Claude Cheynet, and Vincent Déroche (Paris: Travaux et Mémoires, Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2006), 193–201. 9. Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism (London: Secker and Warburg, 1991), 57. 10. Timothy Mitchell, “The World as Exhibition,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 220. 11. Jonas Larsen, “(Dis)Connecting Tourism and Photography: Corporeal Travel and Imaginative Travel,” Journeys 5 (2004): 24. 12. Alison McQueen, The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth- Century France (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003). 13. Quoted in Larsen, “(Dis)Connecting Tourism and Photography,” 22. 14. Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 148–49. See also Joan M. Schwartz, “The Geography Lesson: Photographs and the Construction of Imaginative Geographies,” Journal of Historical Geography 22 (1996): 16–45; Jeffrey Ruoff, “Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension; Cinema as Audiovisual Vehicle,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 12. 15. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 2000), 47. 16. Larsen, “(Dis)Connecting Tourism and Photography,” 26. 17. Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 8. 18. Karen R. Lawrence, Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1–2.

Chapter 12 An abridged version of this chapter was published in Israel Bartal, Tangled Roots: The Emergence of Israeli Culture, Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: SBL, 2020), 23–33. 1. Rehav Rubin, Portraying the Land: Hebrew Maps of the Land of Israel from Rashi to the Early 20th Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 287. 2. See J. B. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, ed. Denis E. Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 272–312. 3. See Elliott Horowitz’s contribution in this volume. 4. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979); Haim Goren, “Zieht hin und erforscht das Land”: Die deutsche Palästinaforschung im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003). 5. This tendency already began in the Christian travelogues of late antiquity, as documented by Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). In Jacobs’s words: “the colonizer and colonized cannot remain fixed binary subjects in the perpetually shifting contest of power and identity” (p. 9). 6. Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914: Church and Politics in the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). 7. Simona Merlo, “Travels of Russians to the Holy Land in the 19th Century,” Questioni di storia ebraica contemporanea, Rivista della Fondazione CDEC 6 (December 2013), http://www.quest -cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id​=​339. 8. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Yossi Ben-Artzi, “Ottoman Maps of the Empire’s Arab Provinces, 1850s to the First World War,” Imago Mundi 70, no. 2 (2018): 200–201. 9. “This Ottoman identification played an impor tant role in the perceptions of these individuals, and made their voices complex, combining both Zionism and Ottomanism” (Abigail Jacobson, “Alternative Voices in Late Ottoman Palestine: A Historical Note,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 21 [August 2004]: 43).

328

Notes to Pages 220–226

10. https://web.nli .org.il /sites/nli /english /digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx?presentorid​=​N LI _ EDU&docid​=​N NL03_ EDU700276181. 11. http://commons .wikimedia . org / wiki / File%3A1794 _ Anville _ Map _ of _ Israel%2C _ Palestine _ or_ the _ Holy_ Land _ in _ Ancient _Times _ - _Geographicus _ - _ IsraelPalestine -anville -1794.jpg 12. For a recent critical interpretation of the Gaon’s attitude toward European scholarship, see Eliyahu Stern, “Elijah’s Worldview,” in The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 37–62. 13. Rubin, Portraying the Land, 126. 14. Rehav Rubin, “Ḥug ha-’areṣ by Rabbi Solomon of Chelm: An Early Geographical Treatise and Its Sources,” Aleph 8 (2008): 131–47. 15. Hug Ha-arets Ha-shalem (Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Rav Frank, 1988). 16. “The Travels of R. Moshe Yerushalmi” (originally in Yiddish, 1769), in Abraham Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel (Ramat Gan: Masadah, 1976), 430–31 [Hebrew], translated from the Yiddish: ‫ובצפת תוב״ב נמצא שמש ובידו ספר מהקדוש ומהמקובל רבינו יצחק לוריא זלה״ה אשר קם וגילה כל קברי‬ ‫ והוסיף לכל‬,‫הקדושים וקברי התנאים ואמוראים הכפרים והעיירות — כי לפניו נשתכח הכל ממש – וציין אותם‬ ‫ואת כל התפילות הנאמרות‬, ‫תנא ואמורא את ענינו מה ללמוד על קברו תנא תנא ואמורא אמורא לפי מאמריו‬ ‫ יעלה קודם לצפת‬,‫ מי שרוצה לסבב בארץ ישראל ולילך על כל קברי הקדושים‬,‫ לפיכך‬.‫בבואך לקבר ובלכתך ממנו‬ ,‫אל השמש ויקח השמש הזה אתו ואת הספר ויכין לשמש חמור לרכוב עליו ומאכל ומשתה וישלם מכס בעדו‬ . . . ‫כי בכל קבר וקבר דורשים מכס‬ 17. Haim Goren, “An Eighteenth-Century Geography: Sefer Yedei Moshe by Rabbi Moshe Yerushalmi,” Cathedra 34 (January 1985): 78 [Hebrew]. 18. Only a handful of Jewish textual depictions of mid-eighteenth-century travels to the Holy Land were published. The closest travelogue to Yerushalmi’s book is Ahavat Tsiyon by R. Simcha ben Joshua of Założce [Ukrainian: Zaliztsi] (Grodno, 1790), depicting the author’s trip from Western Ukraine (then part of Poland) to Palestine in 1764–65. See Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel, 382–423, 773–75. 19. Here the Arabic-speaking Jewish peasants are presented as the autochthonous people of the Galilee. For HaCohen, their vernacular language served as a proof of “rootedness” in the Holy Land—bringing into one’s mind Russian radical-romanticist views of the 1870s on Eastern European peasantry. The Peki’in myth gained later in the years a symbolic role in popu lar Israeli culture, elaborated mainly by Labor Zionist intellectuals. 20. “The Travels of Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen” (1889), here cited from Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel, 653–54. ‫ ובאר טוביה‬,‫ נחלת ראובן או ואדי חנין‬,‫ לגדרה‬- ‫ משם‬,‫כי אנכי התויתי לעצמי את הדרך ללכת מיפו לראשון לציון‬ ‫ ואחר כן ללכת‬,‫ ליהוד‬,‫ ומעקרון דרך ראשון לציון לפתח תקוה‬,‫ ואח"כ לשוב לגדרה ומשם לעקרון‬,‫או קאסטינא‬ ‫ ומשם לשוב לראש פנה וללכת לחיפה דרך‬,‫ יסוד המעלה‬,‫ ראש פנה‬,‫ צפת‬,‫ טבריה‬,‫ מירושלם לשכם‬,‫לירושלם‬ ‫ ומשם‬- ‫ הקולוניא של היהודים יושבי הארץ משנים קדמוניות מדברים אך ערבית; מחיפה אל זכרון יעקב‬,‫פקיעין‬ .‫לשוב ליפו‬ 21. Ibid., 696–97: ‫ ואחינו‬,‫ עיר קדשם קרובה אליהם‬,‫הנוי והנצח של ירושלים יאצילו מרוחם על המושבות החדשים [!] ויושבי בם‬ ‫ ולכן יחושו כרגע האכרים החדשים את‬,‫ לב כל העם‬,‫היושבים בארץ יהודה מרגישים כי ירושלים היא לב ישראל‬ ,‫ בימי מועד יעלו אכרים לירושלים‬.‫ ויתנו אזן קשבת לכל הנעשה בירושלים‬,‫כל התנועה עת נוע תנוע עיר ציון‬ ,‫ זה הכח לירושלים על המושבות; ולעמת זה‬. . . ‫יתרועעו ויתודעו שם אל ״האנשים החדשים״ אשר אמרתי‬ ‫ מושבות אחינו עובדי האדמה המה למופת חי וקים‬.‫להפך תרב גם הפעולה של המושבות על הרי יהודה וציון בראש‬ ‫ לאכול לחם עצלות מבלי יגיע‬,‫ להתהלך עליה בטל כל היום‬,‫ כי לא נבראה ארץ ישראל לתהו‬,‫לבני ציון היקרים‬ ‫ ולא בית תפלה ומושב‬,‫ וכי ארץ חמדה טובה ורחבה נתנה לנו‬,‫כפים; כי תעודת ישראל בארצו לעבדה ולשמרה‬ .‫זקנים‬

Notes to Pages 227–234

329

22. A few examples of those nineteenth- and twentieth-century publications are available in the following anthologies: Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel; Abraham Ya’ari, The Goodly Heritage: Memoirs Describing the Life of the Jewish Community of Eretz Yisrael from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries, abr. and trans. Israel Schen, ed. Isaac Halevy-Levin (Jerusalem: Youth and Hechalutz Department of the Zionist Organization, 1958). 23. Ya’ari, Travels in the Land of Israel, 691–92: ‫ הגדות טפלות אשר גם המכחיש בהן לא יחוש כי על‬:‫כאלה כן גם יתר הדברים אשר יראו להנוסעים בעיר חברון‬ .‫העיר הזאת עברו הרפתקאות רבות והתגלגלה תחת מסבות שונות‬ 24. David Yudelovitch, Sefer HaMishar VeHaroshet HaMa’aseh Be’Ertz Yisrael (Warsaw, 1890), 51. 25. Ibid., 14–15. 26. Eyal Chowers, The Political Philosophy of Zionism: Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 61–61.

Chapter 13 1. Rita Singer, “Leisure, Refuge and Solidarity: Messages in Visitors’ Books as Microforms of Travel Writing,” Studies in Travel Writing 20, no. 4 (2016): 393. In a study of graffiti—albeit with very similar characteristics—Karen Stern calls them “abbreviated travelogues.” See Karen B. Stern, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 61. 2. Singer, “Leisure, Refuge and Solidarity,” 402. 3. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 2. 4. Mary  L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 7. 5. Emily Moskwa, “Reflections on Judgment: An Analysis of Tourists’ Contributions to Guest Books,” Tourism Review International 19, no. 4 (2015): 207–23, at 219. 6. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976). 7. See Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1956); Goffman, Forms of Talk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). 8. Chaim Noy, Thank You for Dying for Our Country: Commemorative Texts and Per for mances in Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 9. See Chaim Noy, “ ‘I WAS HERE!’: Addressivity Structures and Inscribing Practices as Indexical Resources,” Discourse Studies 11, no.  4 (2009): 421–40; “Writing in Museums: Toward a Rhetoric of Participation,” Written Communication 32, no. 2 (2015): 195–219. 10. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 8. 11. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Cultures: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 7. 12. These terms are drawn from Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7–24. 13. Leslie P. Hartley, The Go-Between (London: Penguin Books, 1953). 14. Tamar Katriel, Performing the Past: A Study of Israeli Settlement Museums (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997). 15. On heritage tourism, see Y. Poria and G. J. Ashworth, “Heritage Tourism: Current Resource for Conflict,” Annals of Tourism Research 36, no. 3 (2009): 522–25; Katriel, Performing the Past; G. J. Ashworth, “From History to Heritage—From Heritage to Identity: In Search of Concepts and Models,” in Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture, and Identity in the New Europe, ed. G. J. Ashworth and P.  J. Larkham (London: Routledge, 1994), 13–30; Dallen Timothy and Stephen Boyd, Heritage

330

Notes to Pages 235–245

Tourism (New York: Prentice Hall, 2003); Yaniv Poria, Arie Reichel, and Avital Biran, “Heritage Site Management: Motivations and Expectations,” Annals of Tourism Research 33, no. 1 (2006): 162–78. 16. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Cultures. 17. Indeed, when the British army was preparing for the battles over Jerusalem in 1917, Rachel’s Tomb was one of six Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sites of pilgrimage to be specifically marked as requiring special attention. See Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Chaim Noy, “Place and Its Texts: Rachel’s Tomb and Its Guardian as a Site of National Heritage,” Cathedra 148 (2013): 113. 18. Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages (Malibu, CA: Joseph Simon/Pangloss Press, 1993), 86. 19. I note the reflexivity here, where one genre of travel writing captures—describes and documents—another such (sub)genre. 20. Jennifer Baird and Claire Taylor, eds. Ancient Graffiti in Context (New York: Routledge, 2011). 21. Stern, Writing on the Wall. 22. Ibid., 79–80. 23. Ibid., 51. 24. In his work on visitor books and guestbooks in Victorian Britain and Ireland, Kevin James notes their popularity and that they served an “indispensable part of the culture of the nineteenthcentury” travel and visitation. Kevin James, “ ‘[A] British Social Institution’: The Visitors’ Book and Hotel Culture in Victorian Britain and Ireland,” Journeys: The International Journal of Travel Writing 13, no. 1 (2012): 44. Such writing spaces, James elaborates, and the related travel writing practices, “constituted a record that was central to the per formance of travel identities and spaces” (ibid.). See also Paula Findlen’s work on the origins of visitor books in museums in Italy in early modernity. Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 25. Cohen-Hattab and Noy, “Place and Its Texts.” 26. Susan Starr Sered, “Women Pilgrims and Woman Saints: Gendered Icons and the Iconization of Gender at Israeli Shrines,” NWSA Journal 11, no. 2 (1999): 48–71. 27. Susan Sered, “Rachel’s Tomb: Societal Liminality and the Revitalization of a Shrine,” Religion 19, no. 1 (1989), 27–40; Sered, “Rachel, Mary, and Fatima,” Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1991): 131–46. See Sered’s studies also in relation to the site’s changing meanings in the post-1967 period. 28. Noy, Thank You for Dying for Our Country, “ ‘I WAS HERE!’ ” 29. Eric Laurier and Angus Whyte, “ ‘I Saw You’: Searching for Lost Love via Practices of Reading, Writing and Responding,” Sociological Research Online 6, no. 1 (2001), para. 2.2. 30. This is highly impor tant also because since the 1930s–1940s (and most recently when it was included within the separation wall surrounding Jerusalem), the site’s religious and national character was a political issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regarding the holy places around Jerusalem. See, for instance, the Palestinian perspective on the site: Elise Aghazarian et al., Rachel’s Tomb: An Alien in Her Hometown? Perceptions from the Other Side of the Wall (Berlin: AphorismA, 2010); Tom Selwyn, “Tears on the Border: The Case of Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, Palestine,” in Contested Mediterranean Spaces: Ethnographic Essays in Honour of Charles Tilly, ed. Maria Kousis, Tom Selwyn, and David Clark (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). 31. James, “[A] British Social Institution.” Another, earlier, example concerns the Italian collector and nobleman Ulisse Aldrovandi, who managed the visitor books at his early modern museums in Bologna. Aldrovandi initially collected notes and arranged them on his visitor books’ pages, and later he used the books directly, which he kept meticulously orga nized as he did in relation to his collections of natural specimens. See Noy, Thank You for Dying for Our Country. 32. Glenn Bowman, “Sharing and Exclusion: The Case of Rachel’s Tomb,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 58 (2014): 30–49; Cohen-Hattab and Noy, “Place and Its Texts.” 33. Sered, “Rachel’s Tomb” and “Rachel, Mary, and Fatima.” 34. Stern, Writing on the Wall, 78.

Notes to Pages 245–256

331

35. Myron Aronoff, “The origins of Israeli political culture,” in Israeli Democracy under Stress: Cultural and Institutional Perspectives, eds. Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, 47-63. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), 54. For further elaboration see Noy, Thank You for Dying for Our Country. 36. Maoz Azaryahu, “Mount Herzl: The Creation of Israel’s National Cemetery,” Israel Studies 1, no. 2 (1996): 46–74, at 46. 37. Katriel, Performing the Past, 71. “In writing their words of thanks in the book,” Katriel adds, “visitors can be said to inscribe themselves into the museum text” (ibid.). 38. The association between national symbols, which affirm collective national identity, and cultural and religious practices and symbols is not new, rare, or unique to this site. Following Robert Bellah’s famous civil religion thesis, Don-Yehiya and Liebman conclude that the “major symbols of Zionist-Socialism, its myths and ceremonies, were laden with traditional [Jewish] motifs and representations.” See Eliezer Don-Yehiya and Charles S. Liebman, “The Symbol System of ZionistSocialism: An Aspect of Israeli Civil Religion,” Modern Judaism 1 (1981): 144. 39. See Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 99. 40. Jan Blommaert, “Writing as a Problem: African Grassroots Writing, Economies of Literacy, and Globalization,” Language in Society 33, no. 5 (2004): 654. 41. I refer to “discursive entries,” which include textual and/or graphic utterances over and above visitors’ autographs. 42. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 43. It was during the University of Pennsylvania Katz Center fellowship (2011–12) that I began my study of this museum, which was located near the Katz Center building. 44. Members of the NMAJH staff have indicated that typically over 80  percent of the visitors are not of Jewish heritage. This is similar to the figure mentioned in other Jewish and Holocaust museums I have studied in the Unites States. 45. Chaim Noy, “Voices on Display: Handwriting, Paper, and Authenticity, from Museums to Social Network Sites,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 26, nos. 5–6 (2020): 1315–32. 46. For further elaboration, see Noy, “Writing in Museums.” 47. Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967). 48. Stern, Writing on the Wall, 46. 49. The fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet (he or ‫ )ה‬serves as the definite article. The expression ha-sham, which in written Hebrew, is typically abbreviated by a postpone (‫)‘ה‬, literally means “The Name,” referring to God’s name. 50. I refer to the notion of social membership; see Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. 51. Chaim Noy, “ ‘My Holocaust Experience Was Great!’: Entitlements for Participation in Museum Media,” Discourse & Communication 10, no. 3 (2016): 274–90. 52. Chaim Noy, “Narrative Affordances: Audience Participation in Museum Narration in Two History Museums,” Narrative Inquiry (2020); and “Gestures of Closure: A Small Stories Approach to Museumgoers’ Texts,” Text & Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies (2020). 53. Sered, “Rachel’s Tomb” and “Rachel, Mary, and Fatima.” 54. Meira Weiss, “Bereavement, Commemoration, and Collective Identity in Contemporary Israeli Society,” Anthropological Quarterly 70, no 2. (1997): 91–101, at 91. 55. Cf. Stern, Writing on the Wall. 56. Compare, Chaim Noy, “Articulating Spaces: Inscribing Spaces and (Im)mobilities in an Israeli Commemorative Visitor Book,” Social Semiotics 21 no. 2 (2011): 155–73. 57. Jan Blommaert, “Chronotopes, Scales, and Complexity in the Study of Language in Society,” Annual Review of Anthropology 44 (2015): 105–16.

332

Notes to Pages 257–262

Chapter 14 1. See, for example, Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The Art and Artist of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901: Heralds of a New Age (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003). 2. Thomas Kollatz, “Fascination and Discomfort: The Ambivalent Image of the Netherlands in the Jewish-German Press in the 1830s and 1840s,” Studia Rosenthaliana 32, no.1 (1998): 43–66, here 55; and Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” in From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 1994), 71–92. 3. On the reception of Rembrandt in Germany, see Johannes Stückelberger, Rembrandt und die Moderne: Der Dialog mit Rembrandt in der Deutschen Kunst um 1900 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996). 4. Asher D. Biemann, Dreaming of Michelangelo: Jewish Variations on a Modern Theme (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); and Karen Michels, “Art History, German Jewish Identity, and the Emigration of Iconology,” in Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, ed. Catherine Soussloff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 167–79, here 168. 5. Michael Zell, “Eduard Kolloff and the Historiographic Romance of Rembrandt and the Jews,” Simiolus 28, no. 3 (2000/2001): 181–97, here 182, 185, and 187. On the Rembrandt reception in France in general, see Alison McQueen, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth- Century France (Amsterdam, NLD: Amsterdam University Press, 2004). 6. P. Demetz, “Defenses of Dutch Painting and Theory of Realism,” Comparative Literature 15 (Spring 1962): 108–12. 7. Stückelberger, Rembrandt und die Moderne, 43. On Bode, see Catherine  B. Scallen, Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), 37–102. 8. McQueen, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt, 58. 9. Édouard Drumont, La France Juive (Paris: Librairie Victor Palmé, 1888), 78; and McQueen, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt, 311. 10. Julilus Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, 1890), 67–68. 11. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 119. 12. Ibid., 95–180; Todd Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (London: Routledge, 2007), 41. 13. Max Liebermann, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Cassierer, 1922), 114–15. 14. Stückelberger, Rembrandt und die Moderne, 68. 15. Quoted in Werner Doede, ed., Berlin, Kunst und Künstler seit 1870 (Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1961), 42. 16. Erich Hancke, Max Liebermann: Sein Leben und seine Werke, 2nd  ed. (Berlin: Cassirer, 1923), 133. 17. Beth Irwin Lewis, Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-NineteenthCentury Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 46–51; and Max Liebermann, Siebzig Briefe (Berlin: Schocken Verlag 1937), 407–8. 18. Hans Ostwald, Das Lieberman-Buch (Berlin: Franke, 1930), 128. 19. Ibid., 132–34. 20. Max Lieberman to Alfred Lichtwark, June 5, 1911, in Birgit Pflugmacher, ed., Der Briefwechsel zwischen Alfred Lichtwark und Max Liebermann: Studien zur Kunstgeschichte (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003), 372–73; and Max Liebermann, Briefe, ed. Hannelore Schlaffer and Heinz Schlaffer (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1994), 21; Mathias Eberle, Max Liebermann: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien (Munich: Hirmer, 1996), 1:129–30, no. 1876/32.

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21. Eberle, Max Liebermann, 1:270–72, no. 1884/25. 22. Stückelberger, Rembrandt und die Moderne, 47–53; and Alfred Lichtwark, “Rembrandt und die holländische Kunst,“ in Alfred Lichtwark: Eine Auswahl seiner Schriften, ed. Wolf Mannhard, 2 vols. (Berlin: B. Cassierer, 1917), 2:261–73, here 262. 23. Marion F. Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann: Observations on the Politics of Painting in Imperial Germany, 1870–1914,” German Studies Review 3, no. 2 (1980): 171–206, here 196. 24. Ibid., 179; and Marion F. Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann and the Politics of Painting,” in Max Liebermann from Realism to Impressionism, exhibition cata log (Los Angeles: Skirball Cultural Center, 2005), 128–49. 25. Max Lieberman to Alfred Lichtwark, June  5, 1911, in Pflugmacher, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Alfred Lichtwark und Max Liebermann, 374. 26. Quoted after Ferdinand Stuttmann, Max Liebermann (Hannover: Fackelträger, 1961), 80. 27. Walter Cahn, “Max Liebermann and the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter,” in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, ed. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 208–27, here 216. 28. Larry Silver, “Defining Jewish Painters in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas 8 (Fall 2007) and 9 (Winter 2007–8). 29. The book in part appeared at first as Max Liebermann, “Die Phantasie in der Malerei,” Die Neue Rundschau 15, no. 3 (March 1904): 372–80; and as Max Liebermann, “Die Empfindung und Erfindung in der Malerei,” Kunst und Künstler 9, no. 8 (1911): 415–17. 30. Max Liebermann, “Imagination in Painting,” in Art in Theory, 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 29–33, here 32; and Max Liebermann, Die Phantasie in der Malerei (Berlin: B. Cassierer, 1916), 27. 31. Mitchell B. Frank, “Painterly Thought: Max Liebermann and the Idea in Art,” RACAR 2 (2012): 47–59. 32. Heinz-Jürgen Dahme, Soziologie als exakte Wissenschaft: Georg Simmels Ansatz und seine Bedeutung in der gegenwärtigen Soziologie (Stuttgart: Enke, 1981), 387–89; and Amos Morris-Reich, “Three Paradigms of ‘The Negative Jew’: Identity from Simmel to Žižek,” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 179–214. 33. Felicitas Dörr-Backes and Ludwig Nieder, eds., Georg Simmel zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995), 119. Liebermann and Simmel shared also similar views on art. See Laird Easton, ed., Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880–1918 (New York: Knopf, 2011), 289. 34. Georg Simmel, review of Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890), in Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), 1:232–43. 35. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), in The Blackwell City Reader, ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002), 11–19. 36. Georg Simmel, Rembrandt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Art, trans. and ed. Alan Scott and Helmut Staubmann (New York: Routledge, 2005), 21 and 24. 37. Ibid., 61. 38. Ibid., 11. 39. Ibid., 28–31. 40. Max Lieberman to Alfred Lichtwark, June  5, 1911, in Pflugmacher, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Alfred Lichtwark und Max Liebermann, 373. 41. See the thoughtful review of the article by Saskia Coenen Snyder, “The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times,” American Jewish History 94 (December 2008): 356–58. 42. Günter Busch, Max Liebermann: Maler, Zeichner, Graphiker (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer Verlag, 1986), 91. 43. Silver, “Defining Jewish Painters.” 44. Cahn, “Max Liebermann and the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter,” 222, 224, and 225. 45. Ibid., 227.

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46. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. 47. Gilya Gerda Schmidt, Martin Buber’s Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897–1909 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 129–30. On the relationship between Simmel and Buber, see Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 3 vols. (New York: Dutton, 1981–83), 1:23 and 134–35. 48. Klaus-Christian Köhnke, Der junge Simmel in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), 122–23. 49. Michael Berkowitz, “Between Orthodoxy and Modernism: Hermann Struck’s Influence on the Countenance and Soul of Zion,” in A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Visions of Israel from Biblical to Modern Times, ed. Leonard Greenspoon and Ronald Simkins (Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 2001), 261–84. 50. Ruthi Ofek and Chana Schütz, eds., Hermann Struck, 1876–1944 (Tefen: Open Museum; Berlin: Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin, Centrum Judaicum, 2007), 35. 51. Bernard Wasserstein, On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 308. 52. Hermann Struck, Die Kunst des Radierens: Ein Handbuch, 4th ed. (Berlin: Paul Cassierer, 1920), 176. 53. Jane Rusel, Hermann Struck: Das Leben und das graphische Werk eines jüdischen Künstlers (Frankfurt a. M.: P. Lang, 1997), 88, note 14; and Hermann Struck, “Einiges ueber Jozef Israels als Radierer,” Die Welt 13, no. 5 (January 29, 1909): 102–3. 54. Ofek and Schütz, Hermann Struck, 35. 55. Ibid., 34. 56. Ibid., 51, 54, and 60. 57. Ibid., 35. On the identity of the rabbi, see Max Friedeberg, “Ein jüdischer Künstler,” AZJ, September 20, 1901, 455–56, here 455. 58. Ofek and Schütz, Hermann Struck, 28, 32, 38, and 62. 59. Ibid., 28, 32, 38, and 62. 60. Friedeberg, “Ein jüdischer Künstler,” 455. 61. G. Kutna, “Hermann Struck,” Ost und West 2, no. 1 (1902): 27–36, here 29. 62. Ibid., 28. 63. Ibid., 31–32. 64. Ibid., 34–35. 65. Gilya G. Schmidt, ed. and trans., The First Buber: Youthful Zionist Writings of Martin Buber (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 197. 66. Ofek and Schütz, Hermann Struck, 44. 67. Martin Buber to Hermann Struck, October 13, 1904, in The Letters of Martin Buber: A Life of Dialogue, ed. Nahum  H. Glatzer and Paul Mendes-Flohr (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 106. 68. Struck, Die Kunst des Radierens, 176; Ofek und Schütz, Hermann Struck, 216–21 and 236–37; and Rusel, Hermann Struck, 131–42. 69. Ofek and Schütz, Hermann Struck, 36. 70. Leslie Morris, “Reading the Face of the Other: Arnold Zweig’s and Hermann Struck’s Das ostjüdische Antlitz,” in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 189–203, here 196. 71. Ofek and Schütz, Hermann Struck, 35; and Rusel, Hermann Struck, 88 n. 14. Struck therefore quotes Liebermann’s words on Israëls before he voices his own admiration for the Dutch painter. See Struck, Die Kunst des Radierens, 209; Struck, “Einiges ueber Jozef Israels als Radierer,” 102–3. 72. Georg Hermann, “Max Liebermann,” in Jüdische Künstler, ed. Martin Buber (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1903), 111–36. See also Max Liebermann, “Amsterdamer Judengasse,” Ost und West 9, no.  7  (1909): 453–54; Max Liebermann, “Aus dem Amsterdamer Judenviertel,” Menorah 3, no. 12 (1925): 255–56; Max Liebermann, “Judengasse in Amsterdam,” Menorah 5, no. 8 (1927): 472.

Notes to Pages 269–272

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Chapter 15 This chapter is part of a research project supported by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), grant no. 1078/13. 1. According to Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, in the absence of any form of territorial or political sovereignty, Jewish poetic imagination preserves Jerusalem in its symbolic state, personifying the city as a woman. Following Ezrahi and other scholars, we may recall images of Jerusalem as women in the Song of Songs, the book of Ezekiel, the medieval poetry of Judah Halevi, and, in the modern era, the poetry of Uri Zvi Grinberg and Yehuda Amichai. See Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, “ ‘To What Shall I Compare You?’: Jerusalem as a Ground Zero of the Hebrew Imagination,” PMLA 122, no. 1 (2007): 222. 2. On the analogy between the land and the woman in Western geography and culture and the erotic gaze it involves, see Gillian Rose in her cultural reading of landscape, “Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Pleasures of Power,” in Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 86–112. As per the Israeli context, see Zali Gurevitch and Gideon Aran’s analysis in “Al HaMakom: Antropologia Israelit” [On Site: Israeli Anthropology], Alpayim: Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy and Literature 4 (1991): 9–44; see also Boaz Neumann on the erotic dialectic between the pioneer and the land as the Great Mother in Land and Desire in Early Zionism, trans. Haim Watzman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 29–49. 3. See A. B Yehoshua, A Woman in Jerusalem, trans. Hillel Halkin (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006). 4. For additional aspects of the traveler’s gaze, see Joshua Levinson in this volume. 5. See Edward Said, “Traveling Theory,” in The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 227. 6. See Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Wandering Jew—a Jewish Perspective,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division D, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 189–96. 7. See Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 81. 8. See Jeffrey Ruoff, “Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension; Cinema as Audiovisual Vehicle,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 1–21. 9. See Bianca Kühnel, “Introduction,” in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art: Studies in Honor of Bezalel Narkiss on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Bianca Kühnel (Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998), xxii. 10. Ezrahi, “Jerusalem as Ground Zero,” 224. 11. The Six-Day War has been identified as a defining event in Israeli sociology and historiography. See Yosef Gorny, “Yeruhalayim Shel Ma’la, Yerushalaim Shel Mata B’Mediniyut HaLeumit” [Heavenly Jerusalem and Earthly Jerusalem in State Policy], in Yerushalayim Ha’Hatzuya 1948– 1967 [Divided Jerusalem, 1948–1967], ed. Avi Bareli (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1994), 11–15. 12. Gorny, “Yeruhalayim Shel Ma’la”; Zali Gurevitch and Gideon Aran, “Never in Place: Eliade and Judaic Space,” Archive des sciences des Religions 87, no. 1 (1994): 144. 13. In the anthology The Mount, the Dome and the Gaze, Hava Schwartz claims that in the backdrop of Israel’s strengthening of its enforcement on the Holy Basin, is the international delegitimization of the annexation of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian demands on sovereignty in Jerusalem, the Muslim denial of historical Jewish presence in Jerusalem, and the Israeli race to gain territorial and demographical power over the Palestinians. See Hava Schwartz, “HaShiva El HaMonument” [The Return to the Monument], in Ha’Har, Ha’Kipa Ve’haMabat: Har HaBait BaTarbut HaChazutit HaIsraelit [The Mount, the Dome and the Gaze: The Temple Mount in Israeli Visual Culture], ed. Noa Hazan (Tel Aviv: Pardes, 2017), 54–70. 14. As Ariel Hirschfeld posits, proximity and involvement in the place banish sacredness. See “Kol HaDmama—Al Rucha Shel Yerushalayim” [The Voice of Silence— On the Spirit of Jerusalem],

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Eretz Yisrael: Mechkarim B’Yediat HaAretz V’Atikoteha [Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies], Teddy Kollek Volume, vol. 28 (2007): 376. 15. See Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress (1869; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 54. 16. For a discussion on film and traveling, see, for example, Laura Rascaroli and Ewa Mazierska, Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie (London: Wallflower Press, 2006); Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Ruoff, Virtual Voyages; Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (London: Verso, 2002). 17. See in Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The Cinema of Poetry,” in Movies and Methods: An Anthology, ed. Bill Nichols, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 542–58. 18. Among the famous authors who described in their travelogues their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it is worth mentioning Benjamin Metudela, Pierre Loti, Chateaubriand, Herman Melville, and Gustav Flaubert; see David Mendelson, Zel Ve’Hizayon Be’Yerushalayim [. . .] [Visions of Jerusalem in the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Travelers and in the Arts] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Achronot, 2002). See also Ora Limor and Milcha Rubin, eds., Masaot Eretz HaKodesh: Oley Regel Nozri’im BeShilhey HaEt HaAtika-Teurey Masa Latinim [Travels to the Holy Land: Christian Pilgrims in the Ancient History—Latin Travelogues] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1998). Also, while considerably less in number, among the travel literature depicting stories of women one might find, for example, that of Pelagia. On Pelagia, see Ora Limor, “Kever Pelagia: Het, Harata veYeshua B’Har HaZeitim” [The Tomb of Pelagia—Sin, Repentance, and Salvation on the Mount of Olives], Cathedra 1 (January  2006): 13–40. 19. See Bruno, Atlas of Emotion. 20. See Chris Rojek and John Urry, “Transformations of Travel and Theory,” in Touring Cultures: Transformation of Travel and Theory, eds. Chris Rojek and John Urry (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 1–22; quoted in Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe, 162. 21. See Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe, 162. 22. See Joan Pau Rubiés, “Futility in the New World: Narratives of Travel in Sixteenth-Century America,” in Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, ed. Jaś Elsner and Joan Pau Rubiés (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 74–100. 23. Hillel Barzel, “Withdrawing Inwards as a Motif and Method of Formation,” Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 1979, and June 8, 1979. 24. In his introduction, Amos Oz mentions that he finished writing the novel before 1967, that is before the Six-Day War and the conquest of Jerusalem’s Old City. See Amos Oz, My Michael (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968) [Hebrew]. 25. See Amos Oz, My Michael, trans. Nicholas de Lange (London: Vintage, 1991), 102. See also Jacqueline Rose, States of Fantasy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 19. 26. Jacqueline Rose describes the erotic relationship between the Arab twins and Hannah and notes that the sexual fantasy of a dominant group or nation is filled by the colonized other. In this sense, the Arab twins symbolize the return of the oppressed (following here Frantz Fanon). See Jacqueline Rose, “Chroniclers of Pain,” The Guardian, May 10, 2008, 5. 27. See Nurith Gertz, “From Jerusalem to Hollywood Via the Red Desert: My Michael,” in Motion Fiction: Israeli Fiction in Films, ed. Ilana Dan (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1993), 143–71 [Hebrew]. 28. See Gershon Shaked, “Yerushalayim BaSifrut Ha’Ivrit” [Jerusalem in Hebrew Literature], Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 30. 29. See Oz, My Michael (1991), 82. 30. See in this context a discussion of My Michael by Hana Wirth-Nesher, “Amos Oz’s Jerusalem, My Michael,” City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 27; Naomi Sokoloff, “Longing and Belonging: Jerusalem in Recent Jewish Fiction,” Hebrew Studies 24 (1984):,137–49; Moshe Ron and Michal Peled-Ginsburg, “Jerusalem: la rue des Prophetes dans l’imaginaire de David Shahar,” Le cahiers du Judaism 25 (2009): 68–74.

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31. A wounded woman is portrayed similarly in the film Close to Home (dir. Dalia Hager and Vardit [Vidi] Bilu, 2006), which describes the daily life of two female border police in Jerusalem. 32. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi notes that characteristics of two fairy-tale figures have been used to conjecture images of Jerusalem as a woman: Snow White, the eternal object of the poet’s desire, and Sleeping Beauty, existing midway between consciousness and sleep, awaiting the prince who will awaken her. See Ezrahi, “Jerusalem as Ground Zero,” 228. 33. Laura Mulvey argues that the voyeuristic gaze is dominant in Hollywood cinema, whereby the passive feminine figure is an object for the active masculine gaze. See Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. 34. See Mary Ann Doane, “The Clinical Eye: Medical Discourses in the ‘Woman’s Film’ of the 1940s,” Poetics Today 6, no. 1/2 (1985): 205–27. 35. For a discussion on terror in Israeli short films, see Raya Morag, “Sound, Image, and Forms of Remembrance: Israeli Narrative Cinema During the Second Intifada,” Israel: Studies in Zionism and the State of Israel; History, Society, Culture 14 (2008): 71–88 [Hebrew]. 36. In the Jewish tradition, dressing up in costumes constitutes part of the customary Purim holiday celebrations. 37. See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 133. 38. See Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994). 39. See Maureen Turim’s definition of flashback, in Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film Memory and History (London: Routledge, 1987). 40. See Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27. 41. Ibid., 25. 42. As Maoz Azaryahu notes, Jerusalem’s landmarks include the Western Wall, Mount Herzl, Ammunition Hill, and Yad Vashem. See Maoz Azaryahu, “(Re)Locating Redemption—Jerusalem: The Wall, Two Mountains, a Hill and the Narrative Construction of the Third Temple,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 1, no. 1 (2002): 22–35. 43. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 44. Following de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. 45. See Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7–24. 46. See Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 122. Here Dimendberg relies on Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “flaneur.” See Also Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), 46–90. 47. The Hebrew name of the protagonist evokes the biblical image of Ruth, the paradigmatic convert who has left her homeland, symbolizing the acceptance of the other. 48. See Hasan-Rokem, “The Wandering Jew.” 49. Georg Simmel, quoted in Hasan-Rokem, “The Wandering Jew,” 195. 50. Hasan-Rokem, “The Wandering Jew,” 189–90. 51. See “Poetry and the Film: A Symposium with Maya Deren, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Parker Tyler, Chairman Willard Mass [1953],” in Film Culture: An Anthology, ed. P. Adams Sitney (London: Secker and Warburg, 1971). 52. Melchiori, quoted in Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 86.

C ontributor s

Israel Bartal is professor emeritus of Jewish History, and the former dean of the faculty of humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2006–10). He served as the chair of the Historical Society of Israel (2007–15). Since 2016 he has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences. Professor Bartal taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill, University of Pennsylvania, and Rutgers, as well as at Moscow State University, Paideia (Stockholm), and the Central Eu ropean University in Budapest. He is the author of The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 (2005, 2006), published also in Hebrew, Russian, and German. Orit Bashkin is a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (2017); New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (2012); and The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (2008). Her other publications deal with the Arab cultural revival movement (Nahda) in the late nineteenth century and the connections between modern Arab history and Arabic literature. Miriam Frenkel is a professor at the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main fields of research are Geniza studies, cultural and social history of medieval Judaism in the lands of Islam, and medieval cultural encounters between Judaism and Islam. Her book The Compassionate and Benevolent: The Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages (2006) won the Shazar prize. Galit Hasan-Rokem is Max and Margarethe Grunwald Professor of Folklore and professor of Hebrew literature emerita at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Among her publications are Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (2000); Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (2003); and co-edited volumes, The Wandering Jew: Interpretations of a Christian Legend (1986 with A. Dundes); A Companion to Folklore (2012 with R. F. Bendix); Louis Ginzberg’s “Legends of the Jews”: Ancient Jewish Folk Literature Reconsidered (2014 with I. Gruenwald). Her academic ser vice includes:

340

Contributors

head of the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University; president of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research; and editorial work at leading journals in folklore and Jewish studies. She is a published poet and a poetry translator. Elliott Horowitz [‫]ז”ל‬, to whom this volume is dedicated, taught medieval and early modern Jewish history at Ben Gurion University and Bar Ilan University. He also held numerous visiting positions at American universities including the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. Horowitz pioneered the use of anthropological approaches and the histoire de mentalités to Jewish history, and his book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (2006) brought together many of the central themes of his oeuvre: rituals and transgression, Jewish history and Jewish memory, and Jewish-Christian relations. From 2004 until his death, Horowitz served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Iris Idelson-Shein is a senior lecturer at the department of Jewish History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and director of the collaborative research group on Jewish Translation and Cultural Transfer in Early Modern Europe, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). She is the author of Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century (2014), and is currently working on a book on Jewish translation and cultural transfer during the early modern period. Her recent publications include essays in the Jewish Quarterly Review, AJS Review, Journal of Jewish Studies, and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and engage such issues as monsters, race, gender, and sexuality in early modern Ashkenaz. Martin Jacobs, a cultural historian of Mediterranean Jews living between Christendom and the world of Islam, is a professor of rabbinic studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of three monographs and numerous articles whose topics range from rabbinic literature and culture to Jewish-Muslim encounters, medieval travel literature, and early modern Jewish historiography. His most recent book is Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World (2014). Jack Kugelmass is a professor of anthropology and the Melton Legislative Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Miracle of Intervale Avenue (1986) and coauthor of From a Ruined Garden (1998). His most recent publications include Sifting the Ruins: Émigré Jewish

Contributors

341

Journalists’ Return Visits to the Old Country, 1946–1948 (2014), and “Strange Encounters: Expat and Refugee Polish-Jewish Journalists in Poland and Germany Shortly After World War II” (2019). Joshua Levinson is a professor of rabbinic literature in the Department of Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published articles on the cultural poetics of rabbinic narratives and the rewritten Bible in midrash, as well as The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash (2005). His current projects are travel narratives in rabbinic literature and the literary anthropology and sense of self in the law and literature of the rabbis in late antiquity. Ora Limor is professor emerita of history at the Open University of Israel. She specializes in medieval history,  focusing on two topics: Christian-Jewish encounters in the Middle Ages and pilgrimage, travel narratives, and sacred space in Christian and Jewish culture. Among her publications are Die Disputationen zu Ceuta (1179) und Mallorca (1286): Zwei antijudische Schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua (1994); Holy Land Travels: Christian Pilgrims in Late Antiquity (1998); and Pilgrimage: Jews, Christians, Moslems (coedited with Elchanan Reiner and Miriam Frenkel; 2014). Chaim Noy is an associate professor in the School of Communication in Bar Ilan University. His fields of interest are language and social interaction, discourse analysis, media, and communication studies—mostly in the context of travel, tourism, and museums. Noy’s recent book is Thank You for Dying for Our Country: Commemorative Texts and Per formances in Jerusalem (2015). Nils Roemer is the director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies and the Stan and Barbara Rabin Professor at University of Texas at Dallas. He published Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith (2005), German City—Jewish Memory: The Story of Worms (2010), and numerous articles and several co-edited volumes. He is also the coeditor of Germanic Review. His special fields of interest are the Holocaust and German and Jewish cultural and intellectual history. Joan-Pau Rubiés has in the past taught at the universities of Cambridge, Reading, and the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom and is currently ICREA research professor at  Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has written extensively on the history of travel writing and early modern cultural encounters, including Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance

342

Contributors

(Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Travellers and Cosmographers (Ashgate 2007). Asher Salah, professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has written extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment and Hebrew literature in Italy. Among his works are La République des Lettres: Rabbins, écrivains et médecins juifs en Italie au XVIIIe siècle (2007); L’epistolario di Marco Mortara (1815–1894): Un rabbino italiano tra riforma e ortodossia (2012); Diari risorgimentali (2018). He is currently a senior fellow at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies– Jewish Scepticism (MCAS-JS), University of Hamburg. Anat Zanger is a professor at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television Film Studies at Tel Aviv University; she was head of the university’s MA film studies program (2006–17). She is author of numerous books and papers, including Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguises (2006), Place, Memory and Myth in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (2012), and Jerusalem in Israeli Cinema: Wanderers, Nomads, and the Walking Dead (2020). She is coeditor of Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic (2011).

In d ex

Note: Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations. Abbas, Shah, 17 Abraham: Arab lineage linked to, 173; foundation narratives involving, 3, 24, 29–30, 32–45, 173; iconoclasm of, 35; identity of, 36–39, 42, 44; as returning founder, 34–35, 39; trials of, 42 Abraham al Baghdādī, 168 Abraham al Şiqilli, 160–61 Abū al-Barakāt, 164 Abū Naṣr al-Tustarī, 164 Abu Yūsuf ibn Ya‘kūb, 162 Adams, John Greenleaf, 80 Adomnán of Iona, 26, 48; De locis sanctis (DLS) (On the Holy Places), 26, 48–62; Vita Columbae, 59 Aeneas, 29–30, 34 Aist, Rodney, 54 ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt, 95 Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, 114 Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, 48 Alexander, Archibald, Pocket Dictionary of the Holy Bible, 79–80 Alexandrov, 181 Alexandrowitz, Ra’anan, 272 Alharizi, maqamāt of, 4 Almohad persecutions, 162 Ammianus Marcellinus, 67 Ammunition Hill National Memorial, Jerusalem, 213, 234, 242–48, 253–55 Amsalem, Reymond, 276 Amsterdam, Netherlands, 14, 18, 214, 256, 256–68 Anderson, Benedict, 97, 183 Anderson, George, 176, 178 Annales School, 174 anti-Semitism: Jews and Arabs as targets of, 95; at turn of the twentieth century, 258–60,

262; in Venetian Enlightenment, 119; Wandering Jew as instance of, 16, 152, 258 Anville, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’, Palaestina, 221, 221 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 132, 143 Apgar, Richard, 133, 141 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 181 Arabs: Abraham as founder of lineage of, 173; in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings, 66–73; Jewish identification with, 95. See also Islam/Muslims Arculf (bishop), 49–62 Argens, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’, 14, 125–27; Lettres cabalistiques, 126; Lettres juives (The Jewish Spy), 125–26 Arnold, Ken, 245 art, 214, 256–68 Asch, Sholem, Mayn rayze iber Shpanyen, 188 Ashkenazi Jews, 18, 94, 139, 220, 256 Aslanian, Sebouh, 17 Auerbach, Berthold, Spinoza, 179, 181 Augustine, Saint, 60, 174 Azaryahu, Maoz, 243 Azulai, Hayim Joseph David, 4, 135 Baal-Teshuva, 181 Babylonian Talmud, 106 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 171, 183, 255 balsam, 112–13 Barrett, Mary Hall, 80 Bartal, Israel, 18, 212 Barthes, Roland, 215 Basevi, Lazzaro, 119 Bashkin, Orit, 93–99, 147–53 Basilea, Aviad, 127 Bede, Venerable, 48–49, 62; History of the English Church, 48–49

344

Index

Beecher, Henry Ward, 88 Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo, 151, 154 Ben-Gurion, David, 271 Ben Israel, Menashe, 125 Benjamin, Walter, 179 Benjamin of Tudela, 4, 6, 12, 96, 101–2, 109–12, 114, 170, 230, 235; Sefer massa‘ot (Book of Travels), 102, 110 Ben Sira, 42 Berlant, Lauren, 150 Berlekamp, Persis, 96 Bhabha, Homi, 175 Bible: authority of, 125; foundation narrative in, 29–45; terrain and landscapes of, 65–66; travel represented in, 3, 23 blanks, in reader-reception theory, 33–40 Blanton, Casey, 203 Bloch, Marc, 174 Blommaert, Jan, 245 Blount, Henry, Voyage into the Levant, 85 Bode, Wilhelm von, 258, 259, 261 Bolivia, 189–90 Bordeaux Pilgrim, 25 Borm, Jan, 7 Börne, Ludwig, 257 Bradbury, Malcolm, 84 Bradford, Clare, 141 Braudel, Fernand, 154, 156, 174 Briel, Yehuda, 127 Brooks, Mel, Blazing Saddles, 153 Bruce, James, 72–73 Buber, Martin, 265–67 Buckingham, James Silk, Travels in Palestine, 75, 78 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de, Histoire naturelle, 132 Buford, Bill, 184, 202 Burke, Peter, 16 Bush, George, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 27, 66–67, 73–74, 84 Cahn, Walter, 264 Cairo Geniza. See Geniza: documents of Calimani, Simone (Simhah), 120 Calmet, Antoine Augustin, 125 Campbell, Mary, 184 Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 130–31, 133, 141, 312n9; The Discovery of America, 136; Discovery of Palau, 136; translation of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, 18, 130, 137–39 captives, as vagrants, 159–61 Cardoso, Isaac, 125 Carey, James, 165

Carne, John, 71, 77; Recollections of the East, 83–84, 84–85, 89 Caro, Rubin, 191 Carpenter, William, Popular Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures, 79 Cavendish, Charles, 65 Cemetery Club (film), 270, 278–80, 279, 282 Certeau, Michel de, 11, 175, 276, 277 Chateaubriand, François-René de Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, 80–81 children, and children’s literature, 98, 130–44, 313n21 Chovers, Eyal, 228–29 Christianity: and Jerusalem/Holy Land, 24–26, 53, 55–58; Jewish collaborations and commonalities with, 12–13, 119, 121, 125, 140; pilgrimage in, 24–25, 49, 56–57, 219, 234–35, 253; and piracy, 159–60; Wandering Jew as product of, 16, 171–72, 175–78, 181, 280. See also anti-Semitism; Islam/Muslims Chronicle of Ahima’az, 176 Chronicles, book of, 31 Church of the Ascension, Jerusalem, 54–55, 59, 62 Clarke, Edward, 76; Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, 77–79 Clement VII, Pope, 104 Clifford, James, 128, 231 Clines, David, 23, 31 Cohen, Mark, 155 Cole, Peter, 151 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 179 Collyer, Joseph. See Fenning, Daniel Colman, George, Inkle and Yarico, 133 colonial gaze, 24, 41, 43 colonialism. See empire Columba, Saint, 48 Columbus, Christopher, 6, 23, 136 Conder, Josiah: Palestine, 76–78; The Star in the East, 76–77, 79, 81 Connor, James, 76, 81 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 6 Constantine I, 25 contact zones, 7, 11, 185, 197, 199, 201, 231, 233 Cook, Thomas, 213–14 Corinth, Lovis, 258 Critical Review (journal), 65 crocodiles, 106–9 cultural history of travel, 11–19 Daniel (Russian abbot), 47 Dante Alighieri, 16 Datson, Lorraine, 60

Index Day, Thomas, 130 Defoe, Daniel: The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 137; Robinson Crusoe, 6, 97, 130, 132, 133, 137 Deleuze, Gilles, 174 De Pomis, David, 125 Deren, Maya, 282 De Rossi, Giovan Bernardo, 121 Derrida, Jacques, 232–33, 245 Deuteronomy, book of, 31, 172, 173 Diderot, Denis: Encyclopedie, 122; Supplement aux voyage de Bougainville, 133 Diez, Julius, 258 Doane, Mary Ann, 275 Doležel, Lubomír, 34 Dougherty, Carol, 37, 43 Dreyfus, Alfred, 148 Drumont, Edouard, La France Juive, 258 Dunner, Yosef Tzvi Halevi, 266 Dutton, Paul Edward, 59 ecotypes, 174–76 Edgeworth, Maria, 133 Egeria, 25, 26, 27, 46–47, 54, 57 Egidio of Viterbo, 104 Einstein, Albert, 266 elephants, 105–6 ‘Eli b. Amram, 158 Eliot, T. S., 71 Elliott, Charles, 85–86 Elsner, Jaś, 11 Elsner, John, 26 Emden, Jacob, 135 empire: children’s travel literature and, 98, 130–44; and the colonial gaze, 41, 43; and concept of savages, 134, 139–43; Haskalah and, 131; Jews and, 94, 97, 131; travel writing linked to, 184 Encaenia, feast of, 53–54, 57, 62 Enlightenment: culture as object of study for, 133–34; and the Holy Land, 26; and Jewish culture, 14, 18, 97–99, 122–27, 137, 142; and Orientalism, 93, 98–99; and self-other distinction, 93, 132; and Wandering Jew story, 179. See also Haskalah ethnographic gaze, 24, 41 Euchel, Isaac, 136–37, 310n77 Eurocentrism, 11–12, 19 exhibitions, 213–14 exile: Holy Land as other of, 149; instances of, 16–17; Jewish experiences of, 8, 16–18, 172–74; as theme in Pentateuch, 31; Wandering Jew linked to, 172–74, 181

345

exoticism, of foreign lands, 95–96, 100–101, 104–15, 133. See also the marvelous Ezekiel, 30–31 Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven, 271 Fabian, Johannes, 11 Fabri, Felix, 58, 62 Febvre, Lucien, 174 feminism, 8 Fenning, Daniel, and Joseph Collyer, A New System of Geography, 63–64, 66, 68, 72 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 181 film, 215–16, 269–82 First Aliyah, 212, 217, 224–26, 228–29 First Crusade, 101 Fisk, George, 80–81 Flaubert, Gustave, Salambo, 204 Fleming, William, Gazetteer of the Old and New Testaments, 69–70 flying camels, 106 folklore, 171–72, 174–76 Forverts (newspaper), 187 Foucault, Michel, 8, 127, 185, 278 foundation narratives, 24, 29–45; autochthonous vs. outsider paradigms of, 29–31; book of Jubilees and, 34–39, 42–45; comparison of, 44–45; founders as outsiders vs. returners, 30–32, 34–35; Hellenistic motifs in, 37, 43; midrash and, 39–45; role of vision in, 40–44; sectarian, 39 Franks, James, 65 Freimann, Shlomo, 236–41, 253 Frenkel, Miriam, 18, 150–52 Freud, Sigmund, 266 Fribas, Eldad, 276 Friedemann, Adolf, 266 Friedlaender, Max, 261 Friedländer, Michael, 136 Frizzi, Benedetto, 125 Fuller, Thomas, Pisgah-Sight of Palestine, 74–75 Furstenberg, Yair, 38–39 Fussell, Paul, 183, 184, 201, 203 Futūh, Shaikh, 158 gaps, in reader-reception theory, 33–40 Garfinkel, Harold, 251 Gavron, Assaf, 181 gaze, 24, 40–44; colonial, 24, 41, 43; ethnographic, 24, 41; female cinematic, 216; immigrant, 41; male, 24, 41, 275. See also vision Geffen, Shira, 269, 272 Genesis, book of, 32–33, 174

346

Index

Genette, Gérard, 6 Geniza: community of, 4, 155; documents of (Cairo Geniza), 4, 151–52, 154–55, 157, 159, 161–62, 169–70 Genlis, Stephanie, 130 Gentili, Anselmo, 119 Gentili, Asher, 119 Gentili, Isaac, 119 geography: early modern Jewish, 96; of the Holy Land, 63–66, 74–89; of Holy Land, 226–27; imaginative, 93 Géramb, Marie-Joseph de, Pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt, and Syria, 87 Gertz, Nurith, 274 Gibbon, Edward, 64, 83 Gill, John, Exposition of the Old Testament, 67, 85 Givon, Omri, 269, 274 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 179 Goffman, Erving, 232 Goitein, S. D., 151, 155 Gorny, Yosef, 271 Graffigny, Françoise de, Lettres d’une Péruvienne, 133 graffiti, 235–36, 241 Green, Samuel, Biblical and Theological Dictionary, 80 Greenblatt, Stephen, 11, 202 griffins, 109–11 Guattari, Félix, 174 Guénée, Antoine, 64 guidebooks, for pilgrims and travelers, 223–24 ha-Cohen, Joseph, 14 HaCohen, Mordechai ben Hillel, 224–26, 229 Halbfass, Wilhelm, 126 Halevi, Judah, 4, 18, 164–65 Hall, Joseph, 129 Ha-meassef (journal), 136 Hardy, Robert Spence, 83–84, 86; Notices of the Holy Land, 85 ha-Re’uveni, David, 101, 104, 105–6, 114–15 Harleian Miscellany (anthology), 75 Harley, John Brian, 212 Harmer, Thomas, Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture, 65, 73 Harris, John, Compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels, 67 Hartog, François, 11, 46 Hasan-Rokem, Galit, 27, 152, 280, 281 Haskalah: defined, 97; and the Holy Land in the Jewish imagination, 218; and Jewish

identity, 142, 144, 227; maskilic travel writing in, 98, 130–44; travel as metaphor for, 131, 135–36, 138 Hayfā’, daughter of Sulaymān ibn al-‘Arīq, 157–58 Hazard, Paul, La crise de la conscience européenne, 132 Hebrew language, 96, 300n1 Hegel, G. W. F., 258 Heine, Heinrich, 257; Travel Pictures, 18 Helena (mother of Constantine I), 25, 26 Henniker, Frederick, Notes During a Visit to Egypt, Nubia . . . and Jerusalem, 78 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 125 heritage tourism, 212–13, 230–55; Ammunition Hill National Memorial, Jerusalem, 242–48, 253–55; collective identity constructed in, 231–35, 238–40, 247–48, 253, 255; Jewishness of sites for, 253; Jewish/non-Jewish heritage of visitors to, 234–35, 242, 243, 245, 247–49, 251–55; meanings of, 233–34; National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, 248–55; Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, 234–42, 253–55; Zionism and, 234, 242–43, 245, 248, 253. See also visitor books Herzl, Theodor, 265, 278 Herzog Ernst, 110 heterotopia, 185 Heym, Stefan, 181 Hibbat Zion, 224 Hirschein, Peretz, 186 The History of the Works of the Learned (periodical), 64 Hoffman, Adina, 151 Holitscher, Arthur, 267 Holland, Patrick, 183, 184 Holocaust, 238, 242, 249, 253. See also Shoah Holy Land: Adomnán’s DLS and, 48–62; American accounts of, 87–89; curse upon, 66, 74–78, 81–89; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings about, 27, 63–89; as exhibition, 28; exile as other of, 149; maps of, 212, 217–29; and the marvelous, 26, 53–56, 109; meanings attributed to, 47–48; Muslims in, 49, 53, 56, 58, 271; Ottoman association with, 219–20; pilgrimage to, 24–26, 46–62; the real and the imagined in, 25; Russia’s association with, 219; temporality of, 25, 27, 74; terrain of, 63–66, 74–89; Western fascination with, 218–19; women in films about, 215–16,

Index 269–82; Zionism and, 149, 224–29. See also Jerusalem; Palestine Homer, Odyssey, 3, 6, 15, 26, 284n10 Hoole, John, 78 Horden, Peregrine, 170 Horowitz, Elliott, 27–28 Horowitz, Yehudah, Megilat sdarim, 135 Huggan, Graham, 183, 184 Hughes, William, Illuminated Atlas of Scripture Geography, 80 The Human Resources Manager (film), 270, 280–82, 281 Hurd, Richard, 129 Idelson-Shein, Iris, 18, 97–98 identity: Abraham’s, 36–39, 42, 44; book of Jubilees and, 36–38; early modern travel writing and, 98; heritage tourism and construction of collective, 231–35, 238–40, 247–48, 253, 255; late medieval, 13; maskilic travel writing and, 140–43; Orientalism and, 8; outsider paradigm and, 31–32; postcorporative, Westernized Jewish, 218, 227; separatism as issue for, 35–39, 44; travel experiences and, 135, 138–40; travel writing and, 3–4, 9, 10–11 immigrant’s gaze, 41 Irshai, Oded, 56–57 Isaac ben Sāsōn, 158 Ishmael, 66–69, 72–73 Isidore of Seville, 111 Islam/Muslims: East-West mediation by, 14; in the Holy Land, 49, 53, 56, 58, 271; Jews in relation to, 12–13, 95, 154, 164; pilgrimage in, 12, 234–35, 253; and piracy, 159–60. See also Arabs Israel. See heritage tourism; Holy Land; nationalism; Zionism Israëls, Jozef, 265, 267 itineraria, 24–25, 49–50 Itinerarium burdigalense (Bordeaux Pilgrim’s text), 56–57 Jacob, Christian, 212 Jacobs, Martin, 12, 95–96, 152 Jaffé, Robert, Ahasver, 180 James, Kevin, 241, 330n24 James’ Journey to Jerusalem (film), 272 Japhet, Sarah, 31 Japheth b. Amram al Jāzfini, 162 Jeffrey, Francis, 71–72 Jerome, Saint, 26, 48, 50

347

Jerusalem: films about women in, 215–16, 269–82; in the Jewish imagination, 269–72; pilgrimage in, 52–62; terrain of, 74–83, 86–88. See also Holy Land; Palestine Jesus: ascension of, 55–56, 58; Wandering Jew as taunter of, 16, 172 Jewish identity. See identity Jewish Orientalism, 94, 96 Jews: acculturation of, 98, 131–32, 135–44; and art, 214, 256–68; children likened to, 142–43; cultural contributions of, 124–26; as East–West mediators, 13–14, 93–99, 124–27, 139–40, 152–53, 310n77; and empire, 94, 97; encounters of, with other Jews in foreign lands, 149, 188–91, 194, 205; foundation narratives of, 29–32; as other, 94–95, 128, 142, 148, 150, 152, 267; otherness within community of, 147–48; pilgrimages of, 57; Rembrandt and, 258–59; in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century writings, 69, 84–85; stereotypes of, 94, 258; travel experiences of, 134–37; US heritage site for, 248–52. See also identity John Buddeus (or Cartaphilus), 16 John III, king of Portugal, 104 Jolliffe, Thomas, 76, 86; Letters from Palestine, 79–80 Joseph ibn ‘Awkal, 162 Joshua, 31 Jowett, William, 81–82, 86; Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land, 81–84; Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, 81–82 Joyce, James, Ulysses, 174, 181 Jubilees, book of, 34–39, 42–45 Judah al Ḥarīzī, 170 Judah ben Sighmar, 160 Judah ibn al-‘Ammānī, 165, 167 Junge Deutschland, 257 Junius, 85 Kabbani, Rana, 127 Kant, Immanuel, 263 Katriel, Tamar, 243 Kautsky, Karl, 181 Keith, Alexander, 86; Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, 27, 70, 73, 80, 84, 85; The Land of Israel, 86; Sketch of the Evidence of Prophecy, 73 Kennedy, Elisabeth, 29, 32 Kennicott, Benjamin, 120–21 Kerr, Alfred, 266

348

Index

Kinnear, John Gardner, 68–71 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 234 Kiš, Danilo, 181 Kitto, John, Pictorial Bible, 83–84, 89 Kolloff, Eduard, 257–59 Korte, Barbara, 6 Kotzebue, August von, Die Spanier in Peru, 133 Kracauer, Siegfried, 179 Kugel, James, 36 Kugelmass, Jack, 152–53 Kutna, G., 266 LaCapra, Dominick, 270 Lamentations, book of, 80–83 Langbehn, Julius, Rembrandt the Educator, 258–59, 263 Laurier, Eric, 240 Lawrence, Karen, 215 Lefin, Menachem Mendel, 136–37 Lenbach, Franz von, 258 Leschnitzer, Adolf L., 178 letters of recommendation, 155–59, 162–63, 165–69 Levinson, Joshua, 15, 23–28, 211–16 Levy, Asser, 249 Lichtwark, Alfred, 260, 261–62, 264 Liebermann, Max, 214, 257–68; Altmännerhaus in Amsterdam, 260; Judengasse in Amsterdam, 261; Die Phantasie in der Malerei (Imagination in Painting), 262–63; The Twelve-Year- Old Jesus in the Temple, 259–60, 262, 264, 267; Women Plucking Geese, 259 Limor, Ora, 24, 26, 95 Lindsay, Alexander, Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, 69, 86–87, 299n39 Lindsay, Anne, 86, 299n39 Lindsay, James, 69, 86, 299n39 linguistic turn, 8 Lithuanian Talmudic scholars, 212, 221, 222 Lloyd, Charles, Travels at Home, and Voyages by the Fire-Side, 133 Lost Tribes, 104, 106 Lowth, Robert, 72 Lublinski, Samuel, 180 Lucian of Samosata, A True History, 25–26 Luigi Alemanni, 119 Luitpold, Prince, 260 Maccabees, first book of, 42 MacCannell, Dean, The Tourist, 232 Machinist, Peter, 31, 42 MacKenzie, John, 124

Macknight, James, 66, 72 Macwhorter, Alexander, 75 Maimuni, Abraham, 158 male gaze, 24, 41, 275 Malkiel, David, 115 Mandev ille, John, 6 maps: of Holy Land, 212, 217–29; Jewish imagination and, 217–29; purposes of, 211–12; related to First Aliyah, 212, 217; of Rome, 211–12 Maroni, Marco, 119 the marvelous: the Holy Land and, 26, 53–56, 109; in Jewish medieval travel writing, 95, 100–101, 104–15; medieval Hebrew terminology for, 300n1; natural phenomena as, 53–60; in Paryszewski’s book on Peru, 191, 202; pilgrimage and, 25–26, 46–48, 56–62, 102–3, 108; properties of, 46–47. See also exoticism, of foreign lands The Marvels of the East, 95 Maṣlīaḥ ha-Kohen, 162 maskilim (writers of Jewish Enlightenment), 18, 130–44 Mayse bukh (Yiddish folk tale), 135 McClintock, Anne, 27 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 114 Meir b. Abū al-Thābit bar Yākhīn, 165 Melchiori, Paola, 282 Melito, 24 Melville, Herman, Typee, 6 Menaḥem ben Pereṣ ha-Ḥevroni, 101, 102–3, 108–9, 114 Mendelssohn, Moses, 177 Mendelssohn-Frankfurt, Moshe, 136 Menzel, Adolph, 261 merchants, 151, 154. See also trade Meshullam of Volterra, 4, 12, 101, 103, 106–8, 112–15 Michaelis, 125 midrash, 39–45, 181 Minkoff, N. B., 204 Minsky, Nikolai (pseudonym of Nikolai Maksimovich Vilenkin), 180–81 miracles. See the marvelous Mitchell, Timothy, 214 Mitchell, W. J. T., 47 Mizrahi, 265 mobility: as blessing and punishment, 172–74; visitor books as window on, 233; women and, 272 Montefiore, Judith, 236 Montefiore, Moses, 236, 241, 253

Index Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de, 14, 97; Lettres persanes, 98, 126, 133 Moore, Thomas, 65; Lalla Rookh, 71–72, 77, 79; Sacred Songs, 75–76 Morier, James, 66 Morton, Samuel, Columbus, 133 Moses ibn Ezra, 149 Moskva, Emily, 231–32 Mount Carmel, Holy Land, 83–84, 89 Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, 54–56, 58–59, 62 Mount Sinai, 46–48 Moyshe Yerushalmi, 223–24 Mulvey, Laura, 24, 41, 275 Mūsā ibn Khalīfa, 162, 167 Muslims. See Islam/Muslims My Michael (film), 269, 273–75, 275, 277, 282 mysticism, 222, 276 Naḥmanides, 107 narrative: flow of, 33, 34, 42–43; forms of, 5; techniques of, in travel writing, 6, 44 Nāsī, David b. Daniel, 157 Nathan ha-Kohen ben Mevōrākh, 163 nationalism: inclination for settlement encouraged by, 99; Jews’ adoption of other countries’, 148, 256; mapping of the Holy Land in the Jewish imagination affected by, 218, 224–29; modern Jewish, 149, 212, 218, 224–29; novels linked to, 183. See also Zionism National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, 213, 234, 248–55 natural phenomena, as marvelous, 53–60, 95–96, 100–101, 104–15 Navarra, Hizqiah Mordekhai, 117 Navarra, Marco, 117–20; Almanacco Orientale, 98, 118–28; Dissertazione storico-critica sopra il calendario, 119; Lettere orientali, 14, 116–17, 120–28, 308n56 Navarra, Menahem, 117, 119, 121 Navarra, Sara, 119 Nestorian diaspora, 14 Netz, Nadav, 276 Neubaur, Leonhard, 177 Nevo, Eshkol, 181 Newton, Thomas, Dissertations on the Prophecies, 67–68 Niebuhr, Carsten, 71 Nieto, David, 125 Nodelman, Perry, 137 Nora, Pierre, 233, 278 Noy, Chaim, 212

349

Obadiah of Bertinoro, 4, 101, 103–4, 106–7, 115 O’Loughlin, Thomas, 52 Orientalism: defined, 93; and East–West comparisons, 122–24; Enlightenment and, 93, 98–99; features of the Orient that characterize, 63, 122; and the Holy Land, 65, 70–74, 227; Jewish, 94, 96; Navarra’s Almanacco Orientale and, 98, 116–17, 122–28; in poetry, 65, 70–72, 79; and premodern Jewish world, 95–96; travel writing’s role in, 8 otherness: adaptations to, 148–49; emotions connected to, 149–52; Enlightenment and, 93, 132; intra-Jewish, 147–48; of the Jews, 94–95, 128, 142, 148, 150, 152, 267; lens (gaze) through which to see, 41; of the marvelous, 26; Orientalism and, 93; reactions against, 148; in travel writing, 3–4, 10–11, 26; types of, 148 Ottoman Empire, 219–20 Oz, Amos, My Michael, 269, 273, 274 Palestine: curse upon, 66, 74–78, 81–89; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings about, 27, 63–89; illustrations of, 266–67; pilgrimages to, 24, 26; landscape of, 63–65, 74–78, 81–83, 86–89; maps of, 212, 217–29; marvels in, 108–9. See also Holy Land; Jerusalem Palestinian Talmud, 181 Paris, Matthew, Chronica Majora, 176 Paryszewski, Marcos, 15, 152–53, 186–87, 189; Dzshungls un shtet (Jungles and Cities), 186; Fun der Vaysl bizn La Plata-teykh (From the Vistula to La Plata), 186–87; Tsvishn vilde un tsivilizirte, 186–207 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 272 Patrick, Simon, 85 Paulinus of Nola, 25 paupers. See vagrants Pausanius, Description of Greece, 24 Paxton, George, Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures, 66–67, 68, 73 pearls, 111–12 Pecht, Friedrich, 259 pepper, 111 Peru, 152–53, 188–207 Petahiah of Regensburg, 4, 101, 105–6, 114; Sibbuv (Circuit), 102, 105 Peutinger Table, 211 Pfizer, Gustav, 179 Philippson, Ludwig, 180

350

Index

photography, 215 pilgrimage: Adomnán’s DLS as exemplary account of, 48–62; Christian, 24–25, 49, 56–57, 219, 234–35, 253; documentation of, 50; geography related to, 217–18; guidebooks for, 223–24; historical developments in, 24–25; to the Holy Land, 24–26, 46–62; Islamic, 12, 234–35, 253; Jewish, 57; the marvelous and, 25–26, 46–48, 56–62, 102–3, 108; nationalist vs. religious motives for, 225–26, 229, 234, 253; Rachel’s Tomb as site for, 234–41, 253; reception of accounts of, 50; roots of, 24; Russian, 219; trade combined with, 103, 112, 154; vision and, 24, 46–48 Pincherle, Isaac, 117 Pinski, David, The Eternal Jew, 181 Pinto, Isaac, Apologie pour la Nation Juive, 121 piracy, 159–60 Plato, 29 Pliny the Elder, 107–8 Pococke, Richard, Description of the East, 68, 76 poll taxes, 162–63 Polo, Marco, 6, 110 Porter, Robert Ker, 27, 73 Portugal, 96 postcoloniality, 8 poverty, in Geniza community, 155–56. See also vagrants Pratt, Mary Louise, 7, 127, 185, 192, 231 Pringle, John, 65 Psalms, book of, 269 Purcell, Nicholas, 170 Qā’it Bāy, 113 Qumran community, 38–39 Raban, Jonathan, 5 race: Jews and, 263; theories of differences of, 95, 135; whitening of Jews, 139 Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, 213, 234–42, 253–55 Randall, David Austin, The Handwriting of God, 88 ransom, 160 Raspe, Rudolph Erich, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 97, 130 Raumer, Friedrich von, Taschenbuch, 257 reader-reception theory, 33 refugees, as vagrants, 161–63 Rembrandt, 214, 257–61, 263–68; Die kleine Beschneidnung, 260; Die kleine Darstellung im Tempel, 260

Riklis, Eran, 270, 280 Roberts, David, 69 Roemer, Nils, 14–15, 214 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 176 Romanelli, Samuel (Shmuel), 4–5, 139–40 Romanticism, 178–79 Roth, Cecil, 117 Roth, Joseph, 181 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 97, 129–30 Rubiés, Joan-Pau, 7, 272 Ruderman, David, 18 Rule of the Community, 38 Russell, Michael, 78–79, 83; Palestine, or the Holy Land, 83 Russia, and the Holy Land, 219 Said, Edward, 11, 93, 270; Orientalism, 7–8, 93, 122, 124 Sa‘īd ben Mu‘ammar, 157 Salah, Asher, 97–98 Samuel ha-Kohen, 166 Saraval, Jacob Raphael, 120–21 Sauma, Rabban, 14 savages: Arabs as, 66–68; children likened to, 98, 131, 134, 140–43; Jews’ identification with, 131, 140, 142; non-European colonized peoples as, 98, 106, 124, 131, 134, 138–43 Schatz, Andrea, 139 Schechter, Ronald, 142 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 134, 179 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 179 seeing. See vision Self Made (film), 269, 272 Sephardic Jews, 96, 139, 256 Sered, Susan, 238, 241, 253 Seven Minutes in Heaven (film), 269, 274–77, 282 Severan marble plan of Rome, 211 Sforim, Mendele Mocher (S. Abramovich), Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third, 5 Shaftesbury, Lord, 129 Shaked, Gershon, 274 Shakespeare, William, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 79 Shavit, Zohar, 131 Shaw, Thomas, Travels, 63–68, 71–72, 74–76 Shekhina, 181 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 142 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 179; “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude,” 79 Shemesh, Aaron, 38 Shemesh, Tali, 270, 278

Index Shlomo of Chełm, 222–23 Shoah, 181. See also Holocaust Shoshkes, Hayyim, 186 Silver, Larry, 264 Simmel, Georg, 179, 263–65, 267 Simpson, Thomas, Essays on Several Curious and Useful Subjects, 65 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 187, 204–5 Singer, Rita, 230–55 Six-Day War (1967), 242, 247, 255, 271 Skolnik, Jonathan, 179 Slevogt, Max, 258 Smith, Anthony, 32 Smollett, Tobias, 65 Solomon ben Benjamin, 162–63 Solomon ben Elijah, 168 Sontag, Susan, 215 Southey, Robert, 65, 179; Thalaba the Destroyer, 70–71 Spain, 96 Spencer, Jesse Ames, 87–88 Spinoza, Baruch, 18, 149, 256 Staël, Germaine de, 129 Stamperia Reale, 118 Stern, Fritz, 259, 265 Stern, Karen, 235, 241, 251 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 3 Strabo, 203 Stretzer, Thomas, A New Description of Merryland or Ls Souricière, 133 Struck, Hermann, 214, 257, 265–68; The Art of Etching, 265; The Face of Eastern European Jewry (with Arnold Zweig), 267; Galizischer Jude, 266; Jew from Amsterdam, 266; A Jewish Girl, 266; Old Jew of Jaffe, 267; Polnischer Jude, 266; Polnischer Rabbiner, 266; Talmudstudium, 266; travelogue illustrations, 266–67 Sue, Eugène, Le juif errant, 180 Sukkoth, 57 Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels, 133 Talbot, William Henry Fox, 215 Talmud, 106, 181, 222 Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata, 78 Tavernier, J. B., 67 Thompson, Carl, 203 Thompson, Stith, 171 Thouroude, Guillaume, 7 Timberlake, Henry, 74–75; True and Strange Discourse of the Travailes of Two English Pilgrimes, 75

351

Todorov, Tzvetan, 126 tourism. See heritage tourism trade, combined with pilgrimage, 103, 112, 154. See also merchants travel writing: autobiographical aspects of, 50, 184; children’s literature and, 98, 130–38, 313n21; critical/subversive character of, 132; criticisms of, 129–30; cultural history of, 11–19; defining features of, 5–7, 184; early modern Jewish, 98; empire linked to, 184; epic qualities of, 183–84; fictional aspects of, 5–7, 11, 50, 51, 116–17, 127, 184–86, 203–5; identity and, 3–4, 9, 10–11; Jewish, 8, 12–13, 15, 19, 95–96, 98, 100–115, 153, 188; maskilic, 98, 130–44; medieval Jewish, 95–96, 100–115; and otherness, 3–4, 10–11, 26; popularity of, 133; role of vision in, 41; scholarship on, 7–8, 10–12; third-person, 50, 102; types and va rieties of, 4–7, 211, 230–31 Tremellius, 85 Tristram, Henry Baker, 87 Trivellato, Francesca, 17 Tron, Andrea, 119 Trumbull, Henry Clay, 74 Tschudi, Hugo, 261 Twain, Mark, The Innocents Abroad, 88–89, 271 Ugolino, Biagio, 121 Uhde, Fritz von, 260 ‘Ullā ha-Levi ha-Ne’emān, 163 Urry, John, 215 vagrants, 151, 154–70; captives as, 159–61; itineraries of, 163–64, 170; refugees as, 161–63; social function of, 155–56, 164–69; as source of knowledge about medieval Jewish travel, 155–56, 170; types of, 156–63; women as, 156–59 Valabregue, Israël-Bernard, Lettre d’un Milord contre l’admission des Juifs aux brevets, 121 VanderKam, James, 38 Van Eeden, Jeanne, 43 Ventura, Marochée, Calandrier hébraïque, 118 Verne, Jules, 273 Vilna Gaon (Eliahu ben Shlomo), 135, 212, 220, 222, 223; Halukat Eretz Yisrael l-gvulot’ha, 220–22, 220 Virgil, Aeneid, 15, 29–30, 34 vision: in foundational narrative, 40–44; and pilgrimage, 24, 46–48. See also gaze

352

Index

visitor books, 213, 230–55, 330n24; at Ammunition Hill National Memorial, 243–48, 244, 246, 254; audiences for, 232–33, 239–41, 247–48, 251; collective identity fostered by, 232; identity construction through, 231–32; institutional nature of, 241–42, 245, 248, 254; mobility/immobility evoked by, 233; at National Museum of American Jewish History, 249–52, 250, 254; at Rachel’s Tomb, 234–42, 239, 253–54. See also heritage tourism Volney, Constantine: The Ruins, 84; Travels Through Syria and Egypt, 84 Voltaire, 64, 83, 121, 127 Wahrman, Dror, 132 Wandering Jew, 171–82; anti-Semitism and, 152, 258; circulation of story of, 177–78; co-production of story of, 171, 172, 176, 178, 181; Enlightenment and, 179; eternal punishment suffered by, 16, 27; identity and meaning of, 16, 148, 152, 171–72, 176–77, 280–81, 285n12; Israeli films and, 270, 280–81; and the meaning of mobility, 172–74; versatility of legend of, 175, 178–82 Ward, Benedicta, 59 weather. See natural phenomena, as marvel Weinfeld, Moshe, 15, 29–30 Weiss, Meira, 253 Werner, Anton von, 261 Wessely, Naftali Herz, 310n77 Western Wall, Jerusalem, 235, 242–43 Wheeler, Roxann, 132 Whitelam, Keith, 31

whiteness, 139–40, 143 Whyte, Angus, 240 Wilken, Robert, 56 Wolman, Dan, 269, 273 women: and bias in travel writing, 215–16; in films about Holy Land, 215–16, 269–82; and mobility, 272; and Rachel’s Tomb, 235, 238; as vagrants, 156–59 The World Displayed; or, A Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels (anthology), 65 Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 242–43 Yaḥyā al-Iskandarani ben Amram, 163–64 Yehoshua, A. B., 270, 280 Yeshū‘ā ben Joseph, 160 Yiddish, 153, 187, 205–7 Yom Kippur, 190–91 Youngs, Tim, 5, 6–7 Yudelovitch, David, 227–28 Zakarīyyā’ bin Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, Cosmography, 112 Zamość, David, 138–40, 142 Zanger, Anat, 215–16 Zantop, Susanne, 134 Zionism: heritage sites and, 234, 242–43, 245, 248, 253; and the Holy Land, 149, 224–29; Struck and, 265, 268; and Wandering Jew legend, 181; women and cinematic critique of, 216, 270, 282. See also nationalism: modern Jewish Zweig, Arnold, and Hermann Struck, The Face of Eastern European Jewry, 267 Zweig, Stefan, The World of Yesterday, 18