This collection studies Jewish involvement in seafaring from Biblical, through Greco-Roman, Medieval and Early Modern periods to the present. This broad historical perspective allows a closer look at various attitudes of Jews to maritime activities, especially as shipowners and traders in the Mediterranean regions.

Here the late Raphael Patai (1910-1996) recreates the fascinating world of Jewish seafaring from Noah's voyage through the Diaspora of late antiquity. In a work of pioneering scholarship, Patai weaves together Biblical stories, Talmudic lore, and Midrash literature to bring alive the world of these ancient mariners. As he did in his highly acclaimed book The Jewish Alchemists, Patai explores a subject that has never before been investigated by scholars. Based on nearly sixty years of research, beginning with study he undertook for his doctoral dissertation, The Children of Noah is literally Patai's first book and his last. It is a work of unsurpassed scholarship, but it is accessible to general readers as well as scholars. An abundance of evidence demonstrates the importance of the sea in the lives of Jews throughout early recorded history. Jews built ships, sailed them, fought wars in them, battled storms in them, and lost their lives to the sea. Patai begins with the story of the deluge that is found in Genesis and profiles Noah, the father of all shipbuilders and seafarers. The sea, according to Patai's interpretation, can be seen as an image of the manifestation of God's power, and he reflects on its role in legends and tales of early times. The practical importance of the sea also led to the development of practical institutions, and Patai shows how Jewish seafaring had its own culture and how it influenced the cultures of Mediterranean life as well. Of course, Jewish sailors were subject to the same rabbinical laws as Jews who never set sail, and Patai describes how they went to extreme lengths to remain in adherence, even getting special emendations of laws to allow them to tie knots and adjust rigging on the Sabbath. The Children of Noah is a capstone to an extraordinary career. Patai was both a careful scholar and a gifted storyteller, and this work is at once a vivid history of a neglected aspect of Jewish culture and a treasure trove of sources for further study. It is a stimulating and delightful book.

Since Noah built the Ark, Jews have had an interesting if understated relationship with the sea. The names Torres, Pallache and Wolff hardly ring out in the history books and yet one crewed with Columbus, another was a seafaring triple agent, and the third built ships with Harland, including the Titanic. This is a special history of the Jewish people, an eclectic collection of stories and a confection of surprises, bringing to light some of the forgotten people of history, as well as reminding us of the integral contribution that the sea has made to the existence of the Jewish people over the last 2000 years.

Research on Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel in the modern era has long neglected the sea and its shores. This book explores the Yishuv’s hold on the Mediterranean and other bodies of water during the British Mandate in Palestine and the Zionist “maritime revolution,” a shift from a focus on land-based development to an embrace of the sea as a source of security, economic growth, clandestine immigration (haapala), and national pride. The transformation is tracked in four spheres – ports, seamanship, fishery, and education – and viewed within the context of the Jewish/Arab conflict, internal Yishuv politics, and the Second World War. Archives, memoirs, press, and secondary sources all help illuminate the Zionist Movement’s road to maritime sovereignty. By the State of Israel’s founding in 1948, the Yishuv had a flourishing nautical presence: a national shipping company, control over the country’s three active ports, maritime athletics, fish farming, and a nautical training school.

The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. These studies show that the utility of Jewish merchants in an era of European expansion was vital to their acculturation and assimilation.