travel – From Under the Fig Tree

Holy Toledo!

joselitApril 10, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

When people talk of travel as broadening, they usually have Paris in mind, not Toledo, Ohio. But as I discovered recently, travelling to the heartland of America can be just as eye-opening.

I had come to the University of Toledo to deliver an illustrated lecture about the Ten Commandments and to participate in a Jewish-Christian-Muslim conversation about religion in contemporary America. By the end of my 24-hour stay, I had learned a lot.

For starters, I was exposed to the debilitating, corrosive effects of de-industrialization on the urban landscape. I then discovered that despite a first-rate women’s basketball team, the lecterns in the university’s student union are not equipped with digital technology. I subsequently drove all over town in search of a laptop as well as a clicker and, in the process, visited Corpus Christi Church where an interfaith dinner was being held.

While in church, I met a Jewish student clad in a yarmulke as well as a tallit, a ritual garment customarily worn only in the morning, much less in a Catholic house of worship. I found a laptop, too, courtesy of a professor of Islamic studies.

If this didn’t set my head spinning, the Q & A session that followed my formal remarks certainly did.
...continue reading "Holy Toledo!"

Roots

joselitDecember 28, 2010November 16, 2017Leave a comment

For their final assignment, the students in my "Jewish Geography" class were asked to come up with a guidebook to some of the historic places they had explored over the course of the semester. Almost to a person, they made sure to include the Jewish farming communities of Woodbine, N.J., and Petaluma, Calif., on their itineraries.

Radishes. Creative commons Flickr image by Tamara Dunn

No matter how their guidebooks were cast -- places to avoid; places to seek out; places that spoke of possibility; places that spoke of loss -- Woodbine and Petaluma were on virtually everyone's list.

The runaway popularity of these two farming colonies among GW undergrads might have to do, in part, with the way the particulars of their history run counter to standard notions of the modern Jewish experience. Doctors, lawyers, accountants and professors are a familiar bit of business. But farmers in the family? What a novelty!

The students' affinity for Woodbine and Petaluma might also have to do, I suspect, with the growing appeal of farming, which over the past few years has gone from being an artifact of America's past into a beacon of its future. On college campuses across the country, farming is now chic.

Whatever its rationale, heightened interest in the history of American Jewish farmers is welcome news. In that connection, those who'd like to learn more, or who have farming stories to share, should be in touch with Scott Hertzberg, himself a vegetable farmer from Prince George's County, Md., who is currently assembling a website on Jewish farming in America.

As Malka Heifetz Tussman, one of my favorite poets, would have it, drawing freely on metaphors of the soil in her poem, "Cellars and Attics":

…Children should know where
They come from.

'Yes,' I say.
Children are not radishes.
Children have deep roots.

What would Herzl think?

joselitNovember 29, 2010November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Three cheers for Tel Aviv! Recently, the Lonely Planet travel guide singled out the Mediterranean entrepot as one of its top 10 cities for 2011. "Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea," it noted, adding that "hedonism is the one religion that unites its inhabitants."

For those more accustomed to associating Israel with the Holy Land than with hedonism, Lonely Planet's endorsement may set tongues wagging and eyes rolling. And yet, it's hardly the first guidebook to steer prospective tourists towards the beach or the café and the carefree pursuit of pleasure and away from holy sites and the cultivation of responsibility.

As early as the 1930s, texts such as Samuel Sharnopolsky's Guide to Palestine: Land of Health Resorts made much of its natural delights. For one thing, it likened the country to the "California of the Orient," where the ozone-rich air was a blessing and every day a sunny one. For another, it sang the praises of the "firm and manly" character of its inhabitants, highlighting their "elasticity and sinuousity." The place had something for everyone, enthused the guidebook's author. "To the pilgrim, to the tourist, to the archeologist, to the seeker of sunshine and health, Palestine stands open-armed, beckoning all to come."

In the years that followed, El Al picked up where Sharnopolsky left off. In the wake of the runaway success of Leon Uris' 1958 novel, Exodus, and the ensuing popularity of the Hollywood film that was based on it, Israel's national airline promoted a two week trip that was heavy on popular culture and light on ancient history. Taking out full-page advertisements in the New York Times, it invited would-be travellers to experience their very own "sixteen-day Exodus," where they would "go on location to the same places where Otto Preminger took his film crew."

So much for walking in the footsteps of the matriarchs and patriarchs.

Still, I suspect that Herzl would be heartened rather than dismayed by these interpolations. After all, wasn't it he who said, "When we journey out of Egypt once again we shall not leave the fleshpots behind?"

The high road

joselitAugust 26, 2010November 16, 2017Leave a comment

For centuries, taking to the road has been the stuff of grand adventure and equally grand literature. From Benjamin of Tudela's 12th century Book of Travels to Jack Kerouac's 1957 On the Road, travel has been bound up with freedom and an enhanced sense of self.

But what if travel turned out to be more a matter of constraint, of diminished expectations, than of affirmation?

Consider the experience of kosher-keeping Jews in America of the early 1900s, at a time when kosher food was hard to come by. For them, travelling throughout the United States was surely no picnic.

To ensure that those American Jews who observed the dietary laws at home could maintain them while on the road as well, the United Synagogue of America published a pocket-sized compendium listing those venues where a good kosher meal could be had. Its Directory of Kosher Hotels, Boarding Houses and Restaurants in the United States (1919) provided a detailed list of "racial restaurants" where America's Jews could find a ready welcome and an ample menu.

For African Americans, in turn, the pleasures of travel in the United States were mitigated not by the dictates of religion but by the cruelties of racial prejudice, which severely hampered their freedom of movement. By supplying a list of hotels and "tourist homes" where African American travelers might safely rest their heads, The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936) held the world at bay.

As much a form of travel literature as Kerouac's salute or Benjamin of Tudela's picaresque tales, this text is the subject of a new play, The Green Book, which will be given a staged reading in Washington, D.C., next month, under the aegis of Theatre J and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

With my students in tow, I hope to be on hand for that event. And who knows? Perhaps it'll even give rise to a brand new course.

Images: Benjamin of Tudela in the Sahara, in the 12th century. Engraving by Dumouza, 19th century. Source: Wikipedia. And a highway view from creative commons licensed Flickr content.