Wonders
Wonders of the world on the atlas in the story of Judaism: built for it, long used by it, or standing on its holy ground.
Built 691 – 692 CE
The Dome of the Rock
Jerusalem
It stands on the Temple Mount, over the Foundation Stone where, by Jewish tradition, the Holy of Holies of the Temple stood: the holiest site in Judaism.
Trade routes that carried it
Routes on the atlas that its missionaries, merchants and pilgrims travelled. The map above draws them in the years they ran.
c. 700 CE – 950 CE · by land and sea
Radhanite route via the Red Sea
One of the ways of the Radhanites, Jewish merchants who, Ibn Khordadbeh wrote about 870, traded between the land of the Franks and China and spoke Arabic, Persian, Greek and Frankish.
c. 762 CE – 950 CE · by land, sea and river
Radhanite route via Baghdad
The Radhanites' way by Antioch, the Euphrates and Baghdad, the seat of the exilarch who led the Jews of the caliphate, then by sea from the Gulf to India and China.
c. 780 CE – 1050 · by land, sea and river
Volga trade route
Its trade ran through Itil, the capital of the Khazars, whose ruling elite took up Judaism in the 8th or 9th century; Jewish merchants traded there beside Muslims and Rus'.
c. 130 BCE – 1453 CE · by land
Silk Road
Persian-speaking Jewish merchants traded along it into China; the community at Kaifeng, there by about 1000, may have come this way.
Symbol meaning
Star of David
The Magen David, or Shield of David: two interlaced triangles. Prague's Jews bore it on a flag granted in 1354, many Jewish communities took it as their seal from the 17th century, and in the 19th it became the sign of Judaism as a whole. It has no root in scripture, and stands on Israel's flag.
Timeline
30 places in order of arrival: when the first believers came, from where and how; when it became the main faith there, and when it faded.
c. 1000 BCE, at once the main faith, until 135 CE · Jerusalem
Under the monarchy of David and Solomon, as the Bible tells it, Jerusalem became the centre of the worship of YHWH and the site of the Temple; Rome barred Jews from it after 135.
c. 600 BCE, until 399 BCE · Elephantine
Jewish soldiers guarded this Nile island for Egypt and then Persia, with their own temple of YHW; it was destroyed in 410 BCE, and the colony leaves the record after about 399 BCE.
from Jerusalem · by migration
597 BCE, until 1951 · Babylonia (Babylon)
Nebuchadnezzar II deported King Jehoiachin and Judah's elite here in 597 BCE and more in 586 BCE; Babylonian Jewry, home of the Talmud, lasted until Iraq's Jews left in 1950-51.
from Jerusalem · by migration
c. 300 BCE, until 1967 · Alexandria
Jews settled here under the first Ptolemies and the Torah was translated into Greek; the community, rebuilt after its destruction in 117 CE, left Egypt after the wars of 1956 and 1967.
from Jerusalem · by migration
c. 300 BCE, until 2023 · Antioch
Jews lived here from the city's founding about 300 BCE; the community of Antakya, one of the oldest in the diaspora, ended when its last members left after the earthquake of 2023.
from Jerusalem · by migration
c. 139 BCE · Rome
Jews were recorded in Rome by 139 BCE and grew in number after Pompey brought captives from Judea in 63 BCE; theirs is the oldest Jewish community in Europe still living.
from Jerusalem · by migration and trade
c. 20 CE · Tiberias
Herod Antipas founded Tiberias about 20 CE; after the revolts against Rome, Jewish leadership moved to Galilee, and the rabbis here completed the Jerusalem Talmud about 400.
from Jerusalem · by migration
c. 300 CE, until 1492 · Sefarad (Toledo)
Jews lived in Roman Spain by about 300, and Toledo held one of Sefarad's largest communities until Ferdinand and Isabella expelled every Jew who would not convert in 1492.
from Rome · by migration
c. 380 CE, until 1950 · Yemen (Sanaa)
The kings of Himyar adopted Judaism about 380 and ruled as Jews until the Aksumite conquest of 525; Yemen's Jews, later centred on Sanaa, left for Israel in 1949-50.
from Tiberias · by migration and trade
c. 400 CE · Constantinople
Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews lived in the city from late antiquity; after 1453 the Ottomans settled more Jews here, and from 1492 they took in refugees from Spain.
from Antioch · by migration
c. 400 CE · Persia (Isfahan)
Jews lived beside Isfahan by the 5th century, in a town later called al-Yahudiyya; Iran's Jews, far fewer since 1979, still live here.
from Babylon · by migration
c. 400 CE, until 627 CE · Hejaz (Yathrib)
Jewish tribes, among them the Qaynuqa, Nadir and Qurayza, lived in Yathrib before Islam; Muhammad expelled the first two, and the men of the Qurayza were put to death in 627.
from Tiberias · by migration
638 CE, main faith from 1948 · Jerusalem
After the Arab conquest, Caliph Umar let Jews live in Jerusalem again, and a letter tells of 70 families from Tiberias; Jews were the city's largest group by the 1870s.
from Tiberias · by migration
c. 740 CE, until 969 CE · Khazaria (Atil)
The ruling class of the Khazars, whose capital Atil stood on the lower Volga, took up Judaism in the 8th or 9th century; the Rus prince Sviatoslav destroyed their state in 965-969.
from Constantinople · by migration and trade
c. 808 CE · Maghreb (Fez)
Jews settled in Fez soon after the Idrisids founded it (789-809), joining older North African communities; Maimonides lived here in the 1160s, and most Moroccan Jews left after 1948.
from Toledo · by migration
c. 900 CE · Ashkenaz (Mainz)
Jews from Italy, among them the Kalonymus family of Lucca, settled here by the 10th century; Mainz, Worms and Speyer became Ashkenaz's first centres despite the massacres of 1096.
from Rome · by migration
c. 1000, until 1850 · Kaifeng
Jewish merchants, probably from Persia, settled in the Song capital and built a synagogue in 1163; without rabbis, the community had merged into its neighbours by the mid-19th century.
from Isfahan · by trade
c. 1000 · Malabar (Cochin)
Copper plates of about 1000 grant privileges to the Jew Joseph Rabban at Cranganore; the community later moved to Cochin, and most of its people left for Israel in the 1950s.
from Babylon · by trade
c. 1070, until 1290 · London
Jews from Rouen followed William the Conqueror to England; after massacres such as York's in 1190, Edward I expelled all of England's Jews in 1290.
from Mainz · by migration
c. 1300, until 1943 · Poland (Kraków)
Jews from German lands settled here by about 1300, and in Kazimierz from 1495; the Nazis murdered nearly all of them and destroyed the ghetto in 1943, leaving a small community.
from Mainz · by migration
c. 1330, until 1991 · Ethiopia (Gondar)
The Beta Israel, first recorded fighting the emperor Amda Seyon in the 14th century, kept a Torah-based faith near Lake Tana; nearly all moved to Israel in airlifts of 1984-91.
1492, until 1943 · Thessaloniki
Jews expelled from Spain rebuilt the city's community from 1492 under Ottoman rule and were its largest group for centuries; the Nazis deported nearly all of them to Auschwitz in 1943.
from Toledo · by migration
c. 1500, until 1944 · Lithuania (Vilnius)
Jews settled here by the 16th century, and the city of the Vilna Gaon became a centre of learning called the Jerusalem of Lithuania; most of its Jews were murdered at Ponary in 1941-44.
from Kraków · by migration
c. 1602 · Amsterdam
Portuguese conversos of Jewish descent settled here from the 1590s and openly returned to Judaism; their Esnoga synagogue, opened in 1675, is still in use, though the Nazis murdered most Dutch Jews.
from Thessaloniki · by migration
c. 1636, until 1654 · Dutch Brazil (Recife)
Under Dutch rule, Jews from Amsterdam founded Kahal Zur Israel here, the first synagogue in the Americas; when Portugal retook Recife in 1654 they had to leave.
from Amsterdam · by migration
1654 · New Amsterdam
Twenty-three Jewish refugees from Recife landed in 1654; New York later became the largest Jewish city in the world through migration from Eastern Europe after 1880.
from Recife · by migration
1656 · London
After Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam petitioned Oliver Cromwell, Jews were allowed to live openly in England again from 1656.
from Amsterdam · by migration
1794 · Odessa
Jews were among the first settlers of this Black Sea port in 1794, and it became a centre of Hebrew and Yiddish writing and early Zionism; its Jews were massacred in 1941, but the community revived.
from Kraków · by migration
1862 · Argentina (Buenos Aires)
A congregation of Western European Jews formed here in 1862, and from 1889 Jews from the Russian Empire came in large numbers; Buenos Aires has Latin America's largest Jewish community.
from London · by migration
1909, main faith from 1948 · Israel (Tel Aviv)
Jews of Jaffa, many of them immigrants from the Russian Empire, founded Tel Aviv in 1909; Israel's independence was declared here in 1948, and Jews from Europe and the Middle East poured in.
from Odessa · by migration
