MY
HALF-CENTURY OF TRAVEL TO 88 COUNTRIES IN A 2-MINUTE TALK BEFORE THE JEWISH
BOOK COUNCIL, IN NEW YORK CITY
Recently I had the
honor of speaking at the Jewish Book Council’s “Meet the Author Program,” of
JBC network authors on tour. The talk is a testimonial to a happy aspect of my
life and the people I met along the way.
“When
I was 14-years-old, my father put me on a Greyhound bus in downtown Pittsburgh,
bound for Detroit.
When
I got there, my cousins showed me the city: Vernors Ginger Ale plant,a Tiger
baseball game, Chrysler assembly line, I called it:Travel. After all, I went from one destination to another. And I had fun.
And
I have been traveling ever since: 88 counties
in over half a century --- mostly to exotic Jewish communities--- “The Scattered Tribe,”
I’ll
take you to Rangoon, Burma, where Moses Samuels opens a 100-year-old synagogue
every day in a country with only 20 Jews, hoping for tourists to arrive for a minyan.
To Vietnam where the Chabad rabbi
welcomed me to a Passover seder ---full of French and
American expats, all working in--- you
guessed it,--- the shmate business.
To
Mumbai and Cochin and Delhi, where I attended a Jewish wedding; the women all
dressed in colorful saris bedecked with jewels.
To
Tahiti, where the occupations of the Jews are doctors or selling black pearls,
You’ll
ride the Trans-Siberian railway with me and meet Jews in Irkutsk Birobidzhan, Vladivostok, and then we’ll hop
over to Havana, Cuba where we’ll visit the
most photographed kosher butcher shop in the world.
To Morocco where I got caught in a snow storm
in the Atlas Mountains on my way to a Merekesh synagogue.
And
finally home to Israel where a woman from Tahiti once told me the only paradise
in the world is Jerusalem.
Then I remembered a saying of another ancient
people. The Chinese, who say ‘ the journey of a 1000 li begins with the first
step.’ So when you plan your next trip, who knows you might choose one of the
exotic lands in my book, “The Scattered Tribe.”
“The Scattered Tribe.:Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond.” (Globe Pequot Press.) is available wherever books are sold.
“The Scattered Tribe.:Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond.” (Globe Pequot Press.) is available wherever books are sold.
.Blog
Twitter: @BenGFrank
·
