The Forward newspaper columnist Masha Leon on "The Scattered Tribe."

Discovering Jews Off the Beaten Path: Ben Frank Explores the Exotic Diaspora

Should you plan to travel to exotic regions, don’t make a move without first reading Ben Frank’s latest memoir and travel guide, “The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora From Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond” (Globe Pequot, 2011). During a New York stopover on his national book promotion tour, Frank, who boasts, “I’m 78 and still traveling,” told me: “What is most important is that even though we have a Jewish homeland, Jews still live in the Diaspora. But it is a different Diaspora than 60 or 70 years ago. It is one of choice. Jews, now living in exotic communities, do everything to survive [as Jews], even though their numbers are small. And, if you want to go to a country that has not changed in the past 50 years, go to Burma [now called Myanmar]. There are only 20 Jews in the entire country. In Yangon [once called Rangoon] there is one man, Moses Samuels, who keeps Judaism alive in Burma. Every morning, he opens the [150-year-old Musmeah Yeshua] synagogue and waits for tourists from America or Australia for a minyan. Then there’s Cuba, where the Jewish community is thriving as much as one can under a dictatorship.”
Frank’s far-flung exotic destinations include the vibrant Jewish congregation in Tahiti’s capital, Papeete, where he met many Algerian Jews. The community’s synagogue, built in Tahitian style, is named Ahaba ve Ahava (“The Congregation of Love and Friendship”) and hosts nearly 200 for Yom Kippur services. Frank told me: “I met a man, a Frenchman, in Tahiti whose father never told him he was Jewish until he became 21. The father fled Czechoslovakia, joined the Red Army in the USSR, escaped from a gulag, got to France, joined the French Foreign Legion, was in Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, was sent to prison in France and then married a nurse who was not Jewish. When he finally landed in Tahiti he became a religious Jew and went through conversion with Chabad…. These are some of the unforgettable characters I discovered on my journey.”
We chatted at length about the chapter “Sibir, The Sleeping Land: Riding the Trans Siberian Railway and Visiting Irkutsk, Birobidzhan, and Vladivostok.” Following a comprehensive history of Siberia, which is home to some 30,000 Jews, with 3,000 Jews in Irkutsk (aka the “Paris of Siberia”), Frank writes that though they were once involved in the fur trade and mining, “today in Russia’s ‘free market’ economy [Jews] are professionals, business people, entrepreneurs, who live alongside ethnic minorities such as Tartars, Chuvash people and Buryats.” He notes that in “mid-2004 a middle-of-the night electrical fire nearly destroyed Irkutsk’s entire historical synagogue [built in the 1860s], including the loss of valuable records.” He quotes a member of the congregation: “The synagogue is now a new building inside old walls…. After a five-year struggle, with renovation… the decorative interior with elegant shining chandeliers and the prayer hall with the Holy Ark were put in place.”
No passport, visa, ticket or pat-down required to relish this book. Just read and enjoy.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/160022/kosher-jewgrass-country-and-folk-performed-by-mare/#ixzz227VNDMsA

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