Jewish travel writer extraordinaire Ben Frank featured

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal


Ben G. Frank is one of the most prolific -- and well-traveled -- writers about Jewish sights, sites, communities, attractions and travels worldwide.

Huffington Post runs a lengthy interview/conversation with him, conducted by Bernard Starr, sparked Frank's most recent book, The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond (Globe Pequot Press, 2011).

Frank's curiosity about this extraordinary phenomenon of the Diaspora sparked his mission to find and visit remote and isolated -- sometimes forgotten -- Jewish communities in surprising locations. As a travel writer with a passion for Jewish history, Ben Frank is the perfect person to have undertaken the task. He eventually visited 89 Jewish communities. I interviewed him to learn more about his fascinating journey.

When did you first get the urge to undertake this demanding adventure? Did you have concerns about the difficulties you might face in remote locations?

It all began in 1964 on a trip to Algeria. As a reporter/journalist, I was fascinated by the emigration of Jews from that war-torn country to France, where they were guaranteed the rights and privileges of French citizens, since, according to the Cremieux Decree, they too were French. When I landed I met with the last few Jewish residents in Algiers. They called themselves "le Dernier Carre," the last unit in Napoleon's army to stand in battle and defend themselves in the form of a square.

How did you find out about these scattered wandering Jews?

In the case of Algeria, I contacted organizations, such as the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and others who follow and aid Jews in the Diaspora. I discovered that Jews were scattered globally, including concentrations in Asia and South America. Jews have lived in India, for instance, for 2,000 years and they are still there. With contacts and research tools, I located them. 

Read the full article

Slovakia -- New Jewish Guidebook

Synagogue in Stupava. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mazel tov to Maros Borsky on the publication of his valuable new bilingual Slovak-English guidebook to Jewish Monuments in western Slovakia. Zidovske pamiatky zapadneho Slovenska/Jewish Monuments of Western Slovakia  was launched last week in Bratislava and Trnava.

A slim paperback illustrated with full-color pictures of each site, the book provides details -- including GPS coordinates -- for Jewish heritage sites in  more than two dozen other towns in Slovak regions of Bratislava and Trnava, giving basic history and current details.

Most of these sites are off the beaten track and not included on the  Slovak Jewish Heritage Route, a network of 25 key sites around the country.

Serbia -- Belgrade Jewish Museum downloadable guidebook

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I just found a downloadable version (PDF) of the illustrated, 35-page guidebook to the Museum of Jewish History in Belgrade, published last year. Go to the link by clicking HERE. I will add it to the other PDF guides I have on my iPad....

Poland -- New Jewish Guidebook to Poland Published in Warsaw

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A new Jewish guidebook to Poland goes on sale this month, published under the auspices the Museum of the History of Polish Jewry, now under construction in Warsaw and due to open in 2013.  Here's what the Museum's Virtual Shtetl web portal has to say about the new guidebook (it's unclear if there is an English language edition yet, though I assume there will be one):

Zabytki kultury żydowskiej w Polsce (Monuments of Jewish Cultural Heritage in Poland) is a new, richly illustrated, guide to places that merit a visit and closer acquaintance. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews has assumed patronage over the guidebook, which will go on sale on June 19^th.

Books published under the Museum’s patronage have included popular-science works, albums and historical atlases. Today they are joined by a guidebook to Jewish historical monuments in Poland that survived World War II, published by Carta Blanca. It encourages readers to visit these sites during holidays.  

MHPJ involvement in the guidebook’s creation was enormous, mainly because the source material for the work was provided by the Museum’s Virtual Shtetl community portal, which contains information on nearly 2000 localities within Poland’s current and pre-war borders. Our heartfelt thanks also go to Magda Propokopowicz, who was in charge of editing that material.

The guidebook is divided into 11 regions and describes 170 locations (both places that are well-known such as Łódź or Kraków, as well as small towns and villages) which were once inhabited by Jewish communities – at times very large. The Jewish contribution to each locality is shown against the background of its history. The text portrays eminent local personalities, describes the history of local synagogues, cemeteries and other Jewish communal facilities, and is intertwined with Jewish jokes, curiosities and anecdotes. The guidebook is beautifully illustrated with as many as 370 photographs by respected travel photographers Anna Olej-Kobus and Krzysztof Kobus. This fascinating tale of Jewish places in Poland is supplemented by a dictionary of basic Jewish terms, atlas of historical monuments rendered in a scale of 1:1 500 000 and an introduction to Judaic history, customs and traditions.

Since the goal of the guidebook is to popularise Jewish sites in Poland, it answers questions such as:

• -  Which Polish synagogue is considered the most beautiful?
• -  Where can one taste genuine kosher food?
• -  When are Yom Kippur, Pesach, Purim and other Jewish holidays celebrated?
• -  Which Polish city hosts every year the largest Jewish culture festival in Europe?
• -  What is the town of Leżajsk world famous for?
• -  What does the name Umschlagplatz mean?
• -  Which Jewish cemetery features the largest number of tombstones and unique matzevot that survived the Nazi occupation?
• -  What can be found today in Łódź on the grounds of the huge factory that was once owned by the industrialist Izrael Poznański?
• -  Is it still possible to feel the atmosphere of a shtetl anywhere in Poland?  
• -  How to find the boundaries of the former Warsaw ghetto?

 I have to say, that most of these questions are answered in my Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe, which takes in 14 countries, not just Poland.

This new guidebook is by no means the first Jewish guidebook to Poland. There have been regional and local guides published since the 1980s, and a national guidebook came out around 1991.

In 2010, Pascal -- a leading Polish publisher of travel books, came out with an updated version of Adam Dylewski's 2002 English-language guidebook, which had the unfortunate title "Where the Tailor Was a Poet...Polish Jews and Their Culture"  The new edition --which I saw on sale in Krakow this month -- is simply called "Polish Jews and Their Culture, an Illustrated Guide."

Bulgaria -- New Guidebook to Jewish Bulgaria

Synagogue in Sofia

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A new, richly illustrated, guidebook to Jewish Bulgaria has been published by Vagabond Press. Written by Dimana Trankova and Anthony Georgieff, the 168-page book is the first such comprehensive, stand-alone guide. (My book Jewish Heritage Travel includes a chapter on Bulgaria along with chapters on 13 other countries.)  From what I saw in the online preview, the new book looks packed with information, history and photos.

Click HERE to see the web site and preview.