Jewish maps of the Holy Land have been drawn by Jewish writers in biblical and rabbinical literature and in early modern Jewish scholarship. The earliest cartographic sketches were drawn by Rashi (1041 – 1105), and were soon followed by many Jewish scholars. On the other hand, Jewish mapmakers also chose to copy or imitate maps by Christian mapmakers. The maps depict the biblical borders of the Holy Land, the allotments of the tribes, and the forty years of wanderings in the desert. Most of them are in Hebrew, while others are in Yiddish, Ladino and other European languages.
This study followed the development of the Hebrew-Jewish maps from the first ones drawn by Rashi in the 11th Century to the early modern maps printed in the first quarter of the 20th century. It focuses on four aspects of these maps. It presents an up-to-date corpus of maps of various types and genres. It suggests a classification of these maps according to their source, shape and content. It presents and analyses the main topics that were depicted in the maps. Lastly, it tracks two parallel courses of development: traditional depictions of the borders of the Holy Land in simple sketches following Rashi’s tradition; and artistic pictorial maps which follow European-Christian maps.
A book and several articles were published. The Hebrew edition of the book won the Yitzhak Ben Zvi Prize in 2016, and the English edition was published by De Gruyer and Magnes Press in 2018.