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`Hog 1-1141. in
Farminz gtott. Hilis
has aii the elements

unforgettAble
ing,"

P5iur Raskin,
Oct 13,2004'

Wandering Jews

Filmmaker discovers
history's almost-forgotten adventurers.

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_S_pecial to ihe Jewish News

T

elevision producer Jay
Garfinkel's journeys of per-
sonal discovery have taken
him to destinations as
remote as the desert beyond the Israeli
city of Eilat and as close as Oak Park,
where his brother, Chaim, lives.
Now, his journeys have taken him
back in time to discover Jews from
other eras who blazed new trails.
Garfinkel, producer/writer of the
Library of Congress-sponsored film
Christopher Columbus: God, Gold and
Glory, :ook off with an idea to write
5bot.t Jewish explorers after he
researched the 1492 sea journey that
opc.ied America.
The Washington, D.0 -based author
of Wanderlust: 20 Extraordinary Travel
Adventures (BIC Publishing; $21.95)
use-,. his anthology to introduce 20
explorers of Jewish origin through
excerpts from their travel writings.
Although these adventurers experi-
enced the excitement of discovery,
they have not been in the limelight
until now.
"When I read about an explorer dis-
covering something for the first time, I
share the tremendous joy," explains
Garfinkel, 52, who included his wife
and two ,:hildren when he embarked
on the Israeli trek that becomes the
subject of his own essay.
"The first time that Nahum
Slouschz (1871-1966) goes to find
Jews living in underground caves in

Libya, he's connected to a people that
nobody has heard of in 1,000 years.
When he finds out their customs and
talks to them, there's tremendous
excitement, and I share that same
excitement in the reading. I want to
know what the outcome will be."
Covering the time span between
1492 and 1992, the author introduces
each explorer with a biography and an
attempt to define the historical impor-
tance of what that person found.
Then, he presents the explorer's own
)mments.
Among the adventurers covered in
the book are Arminius Vambery
(1832-1913), who disguised himself as
a Sunni Muslim Dervish to go
through Armenia, Iran and Turkistan;
Gottfried Merzbacher (1843-1926),
who climbed the Tian Shan mountain
range in northwest China; Nathaniel
Isaacs (1808-1860), who traveled
through Zulu country and the
Comoro Islands; and Peidro Teixeira
(1570-1650), who sought to map the
wilderness of the Amazon River and
its tributaries.
"For the most part, these were secu-
lar men of Jewish origin, but it's a very
mixed group," says Garfinkel, whose
work as a documentary filmmaker has
taken him on travels around the
world.
"Benjamin II (Joseph Israel
Benjamin, 1818-1864, who changed
moniker to honor the famous llth
century traveler Benjamin of Tudela
and explored the western United
States) always identified with Judaism,

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Explorers Benjamin II, Ney Elias and Arminius Vambery