15 of the Best Jewish Travel Sites You Probably Don’t Know About

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Jewish travel is a combination of contemporary cultures and historical enterprises.

Plus, it literally spans the entire world, making Jewish travel remarkably vast, diverse, and seemingly never-ending.

Certainly many of us know the highlights, like the Western Wall, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, and the Museum of Tolerance. But what about those experiences which are much-less-talked-about, yet still reveal integral episodes within Jewish history, faith, Peoplehood, lifestyle, and culture?

Here are 15 remarkably under-the-radar Jewish travel experiences — from North America to India, and Israel to China, each with a complementary video to boot:

1. Zedekiah’s Cave

📍 Location: Israel

Zedekiah’s Cave — also known as Solomon’s Quarries — is a five-acre underground limestone quarry that runs the length of five city blocks under the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Of great historical importance in Freemasonry, it was carved over a period of several thousand years and is a remnant of the largest quarry in Jerusalem, stretching from Jeremiah’s Grotto and the Garden Tomb, to the walls of the Old City.1

Today, the site is home to a concert hall — yes, a concert hall. Talk about acoustics! Here’s an example:

2. The Ghetto Fighters House

📍 Location: Israel

The Ghetto Fighters’ House is not only the first Holocaust museum in the world, but also the first of its kind to be founded by Holocaust survivors. Since its establishment in 1949 in northern Israel, the museum tells the story of the Holocaust during World War II, emphasizing the bravery, spiritual triumph, and the incredible ability of Holocaust survivors and the fighters of the revolt to rebuild their lives in a new country about which they had dreamed — the State of Israel.

3. Capital Jewish Museum

📍 Location: Washington, D.C.

For 60 years, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington collected and shared stories about the unique nature of Jewish life in the U.S. capital — a history that is local, national, and international. This ultimately culminated in the new Capital Jewish Museum, founded in 2018, with a mission to connect diverse communities, inspire reflection about the relevance of history to today, and encourage visitors to explore their role in making change.

The collection of the Capital Jewish Museum is composed of historic artifacts, personal and family papers, and archival documents and photographs from the 1850s to present day.

4. Old City of Acre (Akko)

📍 Location: Israel

Just north of Haifa, Acre (Akko in Hebrew) tumultuously represents the history of the Land of Israel, possibly more than any other city in the country. It’s been shaped by the Romans, the Ottomans, the Crusaders, the Mamelukes, the Byzantines, and the British.2

Today, Acre is home to a brilliantly coexistent mixed population of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Old City of Akko is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the oldest ports in the world. The city is also home to part of the Bahai World Center.

5. ANU - Museum of the Jewish People

📍 Location: Israel

After almost a decade of $100-million renovations, ANU recently became the largest Jewish museum in the world, reimagined and rebranded as the Museum of the Jewish People, which tells the ongoing and extraordinary story of the Jewish People.

It celebrates the multiculturalism of Jewish diversity and adopts an inclusive, pluralistic approach to Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish Peoplehood — spanning three massive floors, in a building on the campus of Tel Aviv University.

6. Anne Frank Walking Tour

📍 Location: Amsterdam

During the Anne Frank Walking tour, a professional guide takes you around Amsterdam and shows you the city from the perspective of Anne Frank, during the Second World War. Starting from the Jewish Quarter and ending at the Anne Frank House, this two-hour tour offers a seemingly first-person, in-depth lens that depicts what Anne Frank and others experienced, including the many hiding places in the city where families like the Franks were forced to seek refuge.3

7. Israel National Trail

📍 Location: Israel

The Israel National Trail is a hiking oasis that traverses Israel between its southern and northern borders, covering a wide range of landscapes, a rich variety of flora and fauna, and a diversity of cultures. Named by National Geographic as one of the 20 best “epic hiking trails” in the world, it stretches from Kibbutz Dan, near the Israel-Lebanon border in the north, to Eilat and the Red Sea in the south (approximately 1,100 kilometers, or 683 miles, long).4

8. The First Jewish Ghetto

📍 Location: Venice, Italy

The term “ghetto” originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, Italy, where authorities urged the city’s Jews to live, starting from the year 1516.5

In the ghettos of Venice, Diaspora Jews took refuge, while Jewish traditions, places of worship, and cultures were practiced there on the sole condition that they did not offend Christians. It took several years for Jews to build synagogues, since the serenity of their settlement was questioned many times. Nowadays, Jews continue to meet in the ghettos of Venice, in places which have become emblematic for their community.

9. The Lost Tribes

📍 Location: Gondar, Ethiopia

Jews have lived in Ethiopia for more than 2,000 years. According to Ethiopian tradition, one-half of the population was Jewish before Christianity was proclaimed the official religion in the fourth century CE.6 The Jews maintained their independence for more than a thousand years in spite of continuous massacres, religious persecution, enslavement, and forced conversions.

Today, Jews number only 25,000, less than one-percent of the population. The vast majority live in Gondar, among the Simien Mountains in northern Ethiopia.

10. Beit She’an National Park

📍 Location: Israel

Beit She’an is believed to be one of the oldest cities in the region, and played an important role in history due to its geographical location at the junction of the Jordan River Valley and the Jezreel Valley. It served as an Egyptian administrative center during the Late Bronze Age, as well as a settlement known as Scythopolis during the Hellenistic period. Today, the ancient city ruins are now protected within the Beit She’an National Park.

11. The Far East

📍 Location: India

The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity, and Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in India in recorded history.7 While some Indian Jews have stated that their ancestors arrived during the time of the Biblical Kingdom of Judah, others claim descent from the Ten Lost Tribes of the pre-Judaic Israelites who arrived in India earlier.8 Still some other Indian Jews contend that they descend from the Israelite Tribe of Manasseh, and they are referred to as the Bnei Menashe.

The Jewish population in British India peaked somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 in the mid-1940s, but the community declined rapidly due to emigration to the newly formed State of Israel in 1948. The Indian Jewish community is now estimated to count no more than 5,000 people.

12. Tiberias

📍 Location: Israel

Tiberias is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it is considered — since the 16th century — one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, alongside Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed (Tzfat in Hebrew).

Tiberias was founded circa 20 CE by Herod Antipas and was named after Roman emperor Tiberius.9 It became a major political and religious hub of the Jews in the Land of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea during the Jewish–Roman wars.10 From the time of the second through the tenth centuries CE, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and much of the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled there.11

13. Ohel Moshe Synagogue

📍 Location: Shanghai, China

Built in 1927, the Ohel Moshe Synagogue was also the headquarters of the Jewish Youth Organization, and served the Jewish refugees who fled the Holocaust. Hence why the neighborhood of Tilanqiao is known as “a modern-day Noah’s Ark.”12

Despite Shanghai being more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Europe, more than 20,000 stateless Jews fled to China’s largest city to escape the Holocaust between 1933 and 1941. Shanghai was not just a safe haven; it was also a modern city with an established community of Russian Jews who, a decade earlier, had built the Ohel Moshe Synagogue.13

14. Jewish International Film Festival

📍 Location: Australia

The Jewish International Film Festival is home to one of the most comprehensive selection of Israeli and Jewish-themed films in the world. An annual three-week festival dating back some 30 years, more than 50 films are screened across nine venues in seven cities.

15. Jewish Museum Berlin

📍 Location: Germany

Opened in 2001, the Jewish Museum Berlin is the largest Jewish museum in Europe, presenting the history of Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to present day, with new focuses and new scenography. It consists of three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. It is one of the most visited museums in Germany.14

The end.