Meshullam da Volterra's Vow to Visit the Land of Israel

🗺️ A banker and gem trader, Meshullam made a vow during a time of trouble to visit Eretz Yisrael. He recorded his journey there and back to Italy in great detail; it survives in a single manuscript.

You’re reading Stories from Jewish History, a weekly newsletter exploring Jewish thinkers, events, and artifacts, from the famous to the obscure. We’ve already spend some time with a fifteenth-century Italian traveler to Eretz Yisrael last week, when I wrote about the journey of R. Eliyahu of Ferrara. Several others accounts of Italian Jews making aliya…