Judaic Treasures of the
Jerusalem was and remains the holiest of cities in the Holy Land, but Jews also gave a measure of holiness to three other cities there: Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. The holiness of Jerusalem arises in part from what remains there, but more from what took place there. So it is with its sister cities. Hebron is where the patriarchs and matriarchs lived and are buried, and it was the first capital of King David. Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, was chosen by the patriarch of the Jews in the second century as his seat. The Palestinian Talmud was largely composed in its great rabbinical academy. in the environs of Safed, high in the Galilean hills, are the graves of the leading rabbis of late antiquity. Its stature as a holy city was enhanced in the sixteenth century, when it was the greatest center of Jewish mysticism and seat of Jewish legal scholarship. To gain entree into the company of the three more ancient holy cities, it called itself Beth-El, suggesting identity with the biblical site which Jacob called "The Gate of Heaven."
A striking pastel-colored manuscript "holy site map" links these four holy cities together. Drawn and painted in Palestine in the second half of the nineteenth century, it depicts those venues which indicate their holiness. There is a suggestion of their geographic positioning, but the "map" is far more a statement of the place these cities hold in Jewish veneration, than of the geographical site they occupy. To pious Jewish families, such wall plaques were more meaningful depictions of the Holy Land than the most aesthetically beautiful and topographically exact representations.
A small illustrated guide book to the burial places of biblical figures and saintly rabbis in the Holy Land, Zikaron Birushalayim, appeared in Constantinople in 1743. It tells the pious pilgrim where graves may be found and what prayers are to be said. Prefaced by a panegyric to the land, it cites a midrashic statement that, in time to come, when Jerusalem shall be rebuilt, three walls-one of silver, one of gold, and the innermost of multicolored precious stones-will encompass the dazzling city.
In Hebron the pilgrim is not only directed to the holy grave sites, but also regaled with wondrous tales. One tells of a sexton of the community sent down to search for a ring which had fallen to the depths of the patriarchs' burial cave, finding at the floor of the cave three ancient men seated on chairs, engaged in study. He greets them; they return his greetings, give him the ring, and instruct him not to disclose what he had learned. When he ascended and was asked what he had seen, he replied: "Three elders sitting on chairs. As for the rest, I am not permitted to tell."
For actual pilgrims, the little volume provided factual information. For pilgrims in their own imagination, it offered edification through tales and quaint illustrations. The last page has a woodcut of Jericho, a seven-walled city, below which a man surrounded by a multitude is sounding a shofar. The most striking woodcut is of an imposing building, representing the Temple in Jerusalem.
In the concentric circles of holiness cited in the Tanhuma, Jerusalem is at the center of the Holy Land; the Temple at the center of Jerusalem; and the Holy of Holies at the center of the Holy Temple. The Temple is prominently featured in illustrated books about the Holy Land. In A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine, three chapters describe and three engravings portray the Temple. Early Hebrew books are quite poor in illustrations, because relatively few deal with subjects that demand visual presentation.
Among these are books dealing with laws concerning the Temple, and since its architecture and vessels are pertinent to the laws, they invite illustration. A case in point is Sefer Hanukat Ha-Bayit by Moses (Hefez) Gentili (1663-1711), published in Venice in 1696. A treatise on the building of the Second Temple, it abounds in engraved architectural illustrations, including a menorah, the seven-branched candlestick; most notable is a large pull-out map of the Temple, identifying fifty-eight components of the Temple's structure. The engravings were added after the printing, as was the map, and a copy containing both is rare.
Moses Gentili, born in Trieste, lived in Venice where he taught Talmud and Midrash, and perhaps philosophy and science as well. His best-known work, Melekhet Mahashevet, Venice, 1710, a commentary on the Pentateuch, contains a picture of the author, a clean-shaven, ministerial-looking gentleman.
There are many published descriptions and illustrations of the Temple's appearance in many languages. Some are based on careful study of the available sources, others are creations of the imagination, generally inspired by the grandest building the artist knew. A plan of the Temple to be is found at the end of the 1789 Grodno edition of Zurat Beit Ha-Mikdash (The Form of the Holy Temple) by Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), one of the major figures in Jewish scholarship in the first half of the seventeenth century. The book is one of Heller's earliest works and is a projection of the plan of the Temple as envisaged in the prophecy of Ezekiel.
We have thus traversed the Holy Land and glimpsed its holy places, past, present, and future.