Alan M. Tigay - The Jewish Traveler: Hadassah Magazines Guide to the Worlds Jewish Communities and Sights

Hadassah Magazines Guide to the Worlds
Jewish Communities and Sights

edited by

Alan M. Tigay

This book was set in 9 point English Times, and printed and bound by Book-mart Press of North Bergen, NJ.

Copyright 1994 by Hadassah Magazine

10 9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Jason Aronson Inc. except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Jewish Traveler : Hadassah magazines guide to the worlds Jewish communities and sights / edited by Alan M. Tigay.[New ed.]

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-56821-078-0

1. JewsSocial life and customs. 2. Voyages and travels1981

Guidebooks. I. Tigay, Alan M. II. Hadassah magazine.

DS143.J46 1994

910'.2'02dc20

93-31386

Printed in the United States of Americaon acidfree paper. For information and catalog write to Jason Aronson Inc., 230 Livingston Street, Northvale, NJ 07647-1726, or visit our website: www.aronson.com

For my father,
who gave me his sense of direction

Over the past ten years I have noticed I have a greater and greater tendency to sit through the credits at the end of a movie. Sometimes its for a specific purpose, like to find out whether those upstate New York landscapes in The Last of the Mohicans were really filmed in New York (they were actually shot in North Carolina), but just as often I have simply felt compelled to sit, to pay homage to the hundreds of people whose contributions made the film possible. Now I understand why.

Every month over that same decade, as one more Jewish travel feature ran in Hadassah Magazine, I became indebted to more and more people who made the magazine and me look good, and in the process of turning the magazine columns into a book the number increased, it seems, exponentially. Literally hundreds have helped, and those I mention here are only those whose contributions seemed to go beyond the call of duty, friendship, or responsibility.

First I want to thank the thirty-two writers who wrote the books chapters. Truth be told, I would have preferred to write them all myself. That other writers made many of the trips I dreamed of, or dreamed up, is a source of envy. That each of them did such a good job of turning my dream into their own is a source of great respect. I must single out Phyllis Ellen Funke, who alone accounts for twenty-eight of the books one hundred chapters. She is as much a collaborator on the entire bookincluding chapters she did not writeas someone who fulfilled individual assignments.

This book would not have been possible without the support of the Hadassah family. Zelda Shluker, the magazines senior editor, has been a constant source of ideas since the column began. Dorothy Silfen, the magazines editorial secretary, has been a resourceful and indefatigable researcher, coordinator, and liaison with writers, photographers, and artists. Joan Michel has been the chief copy editor of the magazine column for five years, and her red pencil has improved virtually every chapter she worked on. Roselyn Bell, the magazines former senior editor, helped make the column a success in its early years and has remained a member of the Hadassah team. Nancy Kroll Margolis, the magazines former director of advertising and associate publisher, was one of the first to see the possibility of transforming the magazine feature into a book, and supported the idea until it became a reality. In the transformation to book form, I had valuable support from Meyer Fecher, Julie Fax, Adam Dickter, and Shani Friedman. For translating written images into illustrations, I am indebted to Karen Caldicott, whose drawings grace fifty of the chapters.

My special thanks to Edith Zamost, chairman of Hadassah Magazine, and Frieda Lewis and Rose Goldman, her predecessors, who have supported this project and put up with the demands it made on my time. Thanks, as well, to Deborah Kaplan and Carmela Kalmanson, the current and immediate past presidents of Hadassah, for their encouragement over the years.

The success of The Jewish Traveler is in no small measure due to the help of dozens of people in the travel industry, many of whom have gone well beyond the call of duty to help. I especially want to thank Sheryl Stein of El Al Israel Airlines, Maureen Ambrose and Nils Flo of SAS, Krzysztof Ziebinski at LOT Polish Airways, and Jeffrey Kriendler, longtime communications director of Pan American World Airways. Among the people from various national travel organizations who have gone out of their way on more than one occasion are Erika Faisst Lieben of the Swiss National Tourist Office, Hedy Wuerz of the German National Tourist Office, Pilar Vico of the Spanish National Tourist Office, Mary Bakht of the Hong Kong Tourist Association (and formerly of the Japan National Tourist Office), and George Hern and Marion Fourestier of the French Government Tourist Office.

Every chapter in the book has benefited from people in the city covered, and in the year it took to update all the earlier chapters I have been aided not only by the original authors but by contributors from around the world. Id particularly like to thank Roxanne Abrams and Bernard Fishman in Baltimore, Gabor T. Sznt in Budapest, Kenneth E. Collins in Glasgow, Eric Beare in Hong Kong, Suzanne Belling in Johannesburg, Douglas Davis in London, Evelynne Joffee in Melbourne, Sherry Stein in Montreal, Jeffrey H. Tigay in Philadelphia, Edita Machova in Prague, Seebert J. Goldowsky in Providence, Carla Falk in Rome, Morton Narrowe in Stockholm, and Marian Turski in Warsaw. Many people closer to home have also offered advice on the communities they know best, including Kamil Muren on Istanbul; Marvin Tokayer and Michael Schudrich on Tokyo; Alexander Smuckler on Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Vilna; and Marlene Schwartz on Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo.

No director ever had a better circle of family, friends, and support staff. I sit through the credits at the end of a movie because I have come to understand their importance. If this book allows me to stand tall, the names listed here belong to the people who lent me their shoulders.

Travel guides arent supposed to be controversial, but Im going to go out on a limb and assert that Toronto has the best bagels in Canada.

Ask most Canadian Jews where the best bagels are found and they will unequivocally name Montreal. Even the Fodors guidebook says the Quebec metropolis is Canadas bagel capital. Some Toronto Jews, to be sure, will stand up for their own, but if you put the question on Torontos Bathurst Street you will find many Montreal partisans, as well as those who simply acknowledge that there is a legitimate debate. Theres even a bagel place in TorontoSt. Urbains, named after a street in Montreals old Jewish neighborhoodthat sells Montreal bagels. Just try to find a Toronto bagel in Montreal. Its like looking for a Chevy dealer in Tokyo.

The conventional wisdom about Canadian bagels has little to do with taste, but it has quite a bit to do with the philosophy of this book. The differences are environmental. Montreals Jews live in, and are influenced by, an atmosphere of Gallic bravado. Toronto Jews live more under the influence of British understatement (especially about their food). Being a minority in a society that is itself a minority has left Montreal Jews more in an oppositional mode. Montreal has the most predominantly Orthodox Jewish community in North America, and Toronto is more typical of the Jewish mix south of the border. The same cultural forces that produced such a difference (the monolithic religious ethos of French society versus the pluralism that increases as one moves from Britain toward the United States) also contributes to different attitudes toward bagels.