Volume #37, Issue #1, Fall, 2004/5765

BOOK REVIEW

Wanderlust: 20 Extraordinary Travel Adventures, 500 Years of Travel Writing by Explorers of Jewish Origin, 1492-1992, edited by Jay Garfinkel. Washington, D.C.: BIC Publishing, 2000. 352 pp. Maps, Illustrations, Index. Paper, $21.95. Order from BIC Publishing, 529 14th Street NW, Suite 1115, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 662-7643.

Reviewed by Abe Hoffman

Two statements come to mind in reading Wanderlust— Don’t judge a book by its cover, and the advertising adage, “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” The meat in this book turns out to be more hamburger than steak. Jay Garfinkel repeatedly says his sources come from “long forgotten archives,” but there are some serious problems with how he defines “forgotten,” “archives,” “explorer,” and “traveler.” The publicity release accompanying the book says, “Garfinkel documents that Jews invented ... the copper astrolabe, accurate maritime maps, and navigational charts,” among other accomplishments. But Garfinkel only says in a couple of introductory paragraphs that Jews did these things, the selections in the anthology have nothing to do with these claims. The book breaks many of the rules of scholarship in its failure to indicate clearly from where the selections were taken, page numbers of the source, who translated the work if it was in a foreign language, or whether the selection is an excerpt or abridgement.

Contrary to Garfinkel’s claims, the travelers/explorers are not as obscure or forgotten as he asserts. Garfinkel fails to explain exactly who did what kind of writing. Some of the accounts were written by explorers, others by travelers; none of them, however, come from archival sources, since with one apparent exception (to be noted below) all were published, and almost all appeared as books.

There is also a serious problem with the subtitle claiming the anthology contains “500 years of travel writing. The first account chronologically (Garfinkel arranges the selections topically) deals with Gaspar da Gama around 1500, the second with Pedro Teixeira around 1600. The chronology then jumps to 1792 (Samuel Romanelli), and the remaining 17 selections all fall between 1836 and 1992—eight in the 19th century and nine in the 20th century, hardly “500 years of travel writing.”

As to their alleged obscurity, an online check of Amazon.com, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the UCLA Library reveals that while many of the sources are out of print, they are still accessible. A new edition of Travels of Pedro Teixeira was published in June 2001, the University of Alabama Press printed an edition of Romanelli’s Travel in an Arab Land as recently as 1989; the Jewish Publication Society published I.J. Benjamin’s Three Years in America and Nahum Slouschz’s Travels in North Africa. Almost all of the books from which the selections were taken can be found at the Los Angeles Public Library, UCLA, or both. Garfinkel assumes that readers seeking the full versions will want to buy them in “the used or rare book market,” but this is not a realistic option for students who may prefer seeking them at a library if they live near a large city or major university.

It is also questionable just how the theme of “Jewish” writers fits in here. Only about a third of the selections deal with Jews in what an earlier era termed “exotic places.” The two accounts of Arctic exploration, the description of dinosaur fossil hunting in New Mexico, the eruption of Mount Pelee, and the stagecoach trip across the Sierra Nevada Range (mistakenly titled “... Across the American Plains”) may have been written by people who happened to be Jewish, but there is nothing in their accounts relating specifically to Jewish interests. The stagecoach excerpt could just as easily have been taken from Mark Twain’s Roughing It, the Arctic explorations from any of dozens of similar writings. And Edouard Foa’s account of shooting elephants in Africa does neither Jews nor anyone else credit for readers today when elephants and other “big game” animals are in danger of extinction.

The first and last selections chronologically are not what they seem. Gaspar da Gama apparently left no extant account of his adventures, so Garfinkel supplied a secondary source by Moritz Kayserling whose 1894 book was reprinted in 1968—hardly an obscure source. And in a bit of chutzpah, Garfinkel includes his own apparently unpublished account of his trip to Israel in the late 1980s, thereby defining his own writing as one of the “20 Extraordinary Travel Adventures.”

So much for the sizzle; how about what lies between the book covers? Seven selections contain fascinating descriptions of Jews in far-off places, most notably Slouschz’s account of Jews living in caves in Libya in the 1920s; Louis Rabinowitz trying to raise support for Israel in postwar Calcutta; Henry Schoske reporting on postwar Jewish communities in Ecuador, Siam, and Iran; and Israel Cohen visiting Jews in China and the Philippines. These selections help us understand just how far the Diapora really spread Jews around the world. So, despite its editorial flaws, some of the accounts in this anthology are worth a look.

About the Author:
Abraham Hoffman teaches history at Los Angeles Valley College. He is Book Editor of Western States Jewish History.