Benjamín de Tudela and the Journey’s Motives: Jewish Education and Encounter with Oneself’s Identity through the Other

Abstract

This paper addresses a specific topic: the reasons that moved the Spanish teacher and humanist Benjamín de Tudela (1130-1173) to travel for more than ten years all around the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Minor Asia and, less likely, the Far East. The corpus to consider is his Libro de viajes (1160-1173), one of the most comprehensive and didactic logbooks in Western literature. This work is regarded today as one of the first demographics documents concerning Jewish communities of the diaspora. Having identified the reasons which prompted a tour of this caliber, I shall analyze basically two. On the one hand, the teaching mission itself, in accordance with the precept ordering the intergenerational transmission of faith and values. On the other hand, a motive I qualified as of divine or supernatural origin, and which I liken to Abraham´s journey from Ur of the Chaldees to the Promissed Land. To develop this last point I take into consideration the analysis made by rabbi Silvina Chemen of the two opening verses of the Bible fragment called Lej lejá (Genesis, XII:1-XVII:27) and which she likens to interreligious dialogue.