Menachem ben Peretz of Hebron
Menachem ben Peretz of Hebron (or Menachem ben R. Peretz of Hebron, or Menachen ben Peretz; Hebrew: מנחם החברוני, pronounced: Menachem ha-Hevroni, lit. Menachem of Hebron) is the alleged-name of a French Jew who spent several years in Hebron in the first quarter of the 13th century. He is described as a writer of an epistle, in which, among other things, he documented the tradition of identification of Jewish holy sites in the Land of Israel, sites which he got to know from his conversations with Jewish inhabitants of the Land of Israel during his years of residence and travels there. Content The treatise which contains the epistle attributed to him is made of two parts: The first part, a kind of travelogue, depicting a pilgrimage to various sites in the Land of Israel, and the second part is full of fiction stories. The second part describes Menachem as prayer leader for eight years in Hebron, and specifies a date: Tammuz, ד'תתקע"ה (1215) The depiction of the journey begins in Hebron, where the author visited the tombs of ancestors; he then continued to the tomb of the prophet Jonah, in Halhul, and from there he proceeded to Rachel's Tomb in