Zev Vilnay (Vilensky, Hebrew: זאב וילנאי, born 1900; died 1988) was an Israeli geographer, author and lecturer.
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Zev Vilnay was born in Kishinev. He moved to Palestine with his parents at the age of six and grew up in Haifa. He served as a military topographer in the Haganah, and later in the Israel Defense Forces. [1] Vilnay and his wife Esther lived in Jerusalem. Their son, Matan Vilnai is a member of the Knesset [2] and Israel's deputy minister of defense.
He was a pioneer in the sphere of outdoor hiking and touring in Israel. Vilnay lectured widely on Israeli geography, ethnography, history and folklore.[1] His Guide to Israel was published in 27 editions[3] and translated into many languages.[4]
In the 1974 edition of his guide, Vilnay describes how he helped bring back to Israel the boat of a British naval officer, Thomas Howard Molyneux, who sailed the Jordan River from Lake Kinneret to the Dead Sea to map the region in the 19th century. [5]