The Journeys of David Toback: As Retold by His Granddaughter Carole Malkin (Walker Large Print Books)

Rating:
Summary: History lessons no one should forget
Review: I purchased this book because it appealed to my interest in Jewish history, and because I thought perhaps it also discussed the historical relationships of Muslims and non-Muslims in the Caucasus in the late 19th century. (Not to mention its low price.)

Alas, David Toback (or rather, his grand-daughter, who adapted the book from his 1888 and 1889 journals) only once mentioned the Caucasus Muslim communities, despite travels over several years of extreme duress. This consequence stemmed from his apparent lack of contact with Muslims, however, undoubtedly not from their respect for dhimmis around them.

In any case, Toback's saga has much to hold the reader's interest in its own right, and I was delighted with the book, which I tore through in one marathon four-hour sitting last summer. Toback relates, after all, the extreme poverty of the Jewish communities during those times, their pious, even righteous religious orthodoxy, and the afflictions imposed upon them by hateful tsarist troops, peasants and lawmakers, who deprived Jews of lives, liberty and property at their routine whim.

Certainly in current times, one cannot say that Jews anywhere in the world live wholly without fear and some concern about the future, as anti-Antisemitism has made a frightening and extraordinary comeback only 60 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and 50 years after 1 million Jews were driven with nothing but the clothes on their backs from their homes and businesses within the Arab Muslim world.

Despite the recent turn of events, however, this book provides a very real reminder that things can always be worse. Indeed for David Toback, they almost always did get worse, until he finally convinced his wife to flee to the US., a feat which took several years to accomplish.

In truth, there is not so much difference between the attacks, firebombings, murders and forced evacuations suffered by Toback's people and family and the situation of Jewish people today in Israel and France and in Moscow and the Caucasus, where Muslim fundamentalists think nothing of blowing up pizza parlors, buses, theaters and schools.

A question this book raised for me is why North American Jews remain so complacent. This book showed the perilous possibilities that can and do sometimes flow from ignoring the past and the trends of one's times.

--Alyssa A. Lappen