Jewish history, from ancient times to the present, is replete with legends about pilgrims and with pilgrimage sites — both within and outside Israel. And many modern-day people, though not considering themselves pilgrims, traverse the paths of pilgrims, visiting historic sites and paying respect at the graves of holy men and women and great rabbis.
This fascinating new book, Pilgrimage and the Jews, combines historical accounts of pilgrimages with descriptions of present-day tourist sites. The book is both a history lesson and a contemporary guide book.
The writers draw their readers to one site after another. Even if you never make the pilgrimage yourself, after reading this work, you will feel as if your feet touched the cobblestones once trod by ancient Jewish pilgrims. The authors walk their readers through such diverse terrain as Hebron, the burial site of the Patriarchs; the graves of great Hasidic rabbis in tiny Eastern European villages like Lezhansk, Poland; and Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, New York, where Chabad Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson is buried.
Most powerful of all is their pilgrimage to the death camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.
