Incredible India-Mumbai

Anyone who has visited the  Jewish community in Mumbai, aka “First City of India,” knows how difficult it is to get around the city’s traffic jams. Welcome news from Mumbai, India. A monorail to ease traffic congestion begins Sat. Feb. 1  About 5,000 Jews live in Incredible India, most in Mumbai. For more on the Jews of India, check out “The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond,”(Globe Pequot Press.) http://amzn.to/J3Z47T  Check out my blog at www.bengfrank.blogspot.com “I Travel the World.” Follow me on twitter @bengfrank :   

"Revolutionary Romance Book casts Jews in fast-paced adventure through Russian history."
Morton Teicher
Special to the Detroit Jewish News

http://www.bengfrank.blogspot.com/

Klara's Journey Review

Incredible India

India is certainly one of the most popular destinations of Israeli tourists. No wonder that “India Travel on Line” reported that the largest number of tourists this month to attend Pongal, a four-day festival, were from Israel. This special tourist event took place in Trichy, a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. For more info on the small but active Jewish community of “Incredible India,” check out “The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond,” (Globe Pequot Press). Wherever books are sold: http://amzn.to/J3Z47T Check out my blog at www.bengfrank.blogspot.com “I Travel the World.” Follow me on twitter @bengfrank :

 

 

Book Talk 1/23/14

Great time last night at Boca (Boca Raton, FL) Sabra Hadassah group for a book talk on “Klara’s Journey, A Novel,” --“a story of betrayal, high drama and love.” Talked about my travels in Russia, including Siberia, tracing Klara’s Journey: Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and yes, even Harbin in China, as well as my experiences on the Trans-Siberian railway so I could understand the long journey she took alone.

Good reception by the group as many read the novel before my talk.

 

“Klara’s Journey,” an historical novel, (Marion Street Press) is a gripping account of the Russian Civil War and its consequences.

 

Available on all ebook formats and wherever books are sold.  http://amzn.to/13Sp769 

 

 

 

 

Lest we forget: On January 13, 1953, an article appeared in Pravda, titled, “Vicious Spies and Killers Passing Themselves off as Doctors and Professors.” The newspaper item said that a group of the country’s most eminent doctors---all of them Jewish---had allegedly been plotting to poison Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership. The accusations were intended to serve as a prelude to a vast purge of Soviet Jews. Boxcars were already in place at train stations throughout Western Russia to deport Jews to Siberia Fortunately, Stalin died on March 5, a few days before the trail was to start. A month after his death Pravda announced that the doctors were innocent.

For more on this and two chapters on Russia today, check out my “The Scattered Tribe, Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond,” (Globe Pequot Press).  http://amzn.to/J3Z47T  

 

The opening salvo for Birobidzhan in Siberia.

Thanks to the JTA archive, I discovered what must have been the opening salvo for the establishment of Birobidzhan in Siberia, the Soviet answer to Zionism, a report in the Herald Tribune in 1926, that a plan was in the works in the former Soviet Union. So, in 1934, tens of thousands of Jews traveled eastward to the “Jewish paradise in the Russian Far East. But they were duped; it was a sham. Many would suffer in the Stalin purges later that decade. But the Jewish community survived. Today there are several thousand Jews in Birobidzhan. I traveled there. Check out what I saw there a few years ago  in “The Scattered Tribe: Traveling The Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond,” (Globe Pequot Press). http://amzn.to/J3Z47T

JTA: : http://www.jta.org/1926/08/16/archive/soviet-government-plans-jewish-republic-in-siberia-kalenin-says#ixzz2qVlUpd4x