Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore; A Memoir in Five Generations |  | Author: Elisa New
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $3.44
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Rating:  3 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0465015255
Dewey Decimal Number: 929.20973
EAN: 9780465015252
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| • | ISBN13: 9780465015252 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Drawn to an image of her great-grandfather’s ornately carved cane, scholar Elisa New embarked on a journey to discover the origins of her precious family heirloom. Treading back across the paths of her ancestors, she travels from Baltimore to the Baltic to London in order to find and understand an immigrant world profoundly affected by modern German culture, from the Enlightenment through the Holocaust. Deeply ambitious in its narrative sweep, Jacob’s Cane captures the rich texture of life on several continents as New’s family searches to establish itself in the tobacco trade. A fascinating history of one family’s story of progress, innovation, and struggle, Jacob’s Cane will change the way we think about the Jewish American experience.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Jacob's Cane - Wow, this book hit home for Me! November 21, 2009
Heidi Hamberg (New York, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I saw the review by Aaron Leibel on the author's web-site,[...] I knew I had to explore this tale of Jewish immigration from Lithuania to America and elsewhere -- my grandparents also grew up in Riga and, like the author's family, they too lost most of their family to the Nazis.
I was so moved by the similarities that I immediately started to look through my old family papers. By the time I finished reading the book however, I realized that this was the work of a literature scholar -- I could not compete with her. Professor New's research took almost ten years she says, visiting Europe three times, England, Israel, and many stops on the Atlantic Coast interviewing her USA descendants. On many of these trips her various daughters were in tow, the oldest one, Yael, translated for her in French and Russian. Professor New herself speaks fluent Hebrew from her early childhood visits to Israel she says, and it was then used to find, converse and hold hands with the only living family member from Riga family whom had escaped the Nazis and had not previously been found. She (Rivka) is now 86 and well!
This memoir is extraordinary. One or two chapters were difficult to get through, but in retrospect I see now their importance as background to the various family business ventures in the USA and London.
I have read a great deal about the Holocaust and the Nazi era; this family memoir by the author provides a new perspective, painful again to recall, but so touching for me, and the emotions cause the tears to flow.
Not for the casual reader... February 7, 2010
Jill Meyer (Santa Fe, NM)
Elisa New's memoir, "Jacob's Cane", is not for the casual reader. It's not easy going for a reader; as the book's secondary title explains, it's a family's journey from Europe to the US and then back again.
The journey back to Europe is actually three journeys. After leaving the Riga area in the mid-1880's for the US, several of Jacob Levy's sons and grandsons are tempted to settle in London for economic reasons in the early 1900's. The five men - three sons and two grandsons of family patriarch, Jacob - are offered jobs at a London cigarette factory owned by a distant family relative. Jacob's sons accept Bernhard Baron's job and also take his name. The second journey back to Europe is Elisa New's own. She had grown up on family stories of life in Lithuania before the her great-grandfather, Jacob, emigrated to Baltimore, along with several family members. The third journey back is done by Jacob, in 1928, when he returned to his native village in Lithuania to see family members left behind. And who were murdered by the Nazis and their Lithuanian helpers in 1942 and 1943. (How eerie and sad is it to look at a family picture with twelve or so family members in it and know that all but one ended their lives in the burial pits in Lithuania and Latvia?)
New is a very detailed writer and the book covers everything from how tobacco is grown in the US and then shipped to England for manufacture into cigarettes to the science behind "shrinking" of fabric. It's never boring.
"Jacob's Cane" is the beautiful hand-made cane his family members gave him to mark his return in 1928.
New is a good writer and the book is worthwhile reading if the reader is interested in the subject. I wish she had included a lot more pictures in the text.
 Jacob's Cane From A Baltimore Perspective February 15, 2010
Marian G. Figlio (Crofton MD)
Jacob's Cane is an ambitious book that discusses Lithuanian and German Jews in Baltimore, my ancestors exactly. The book does open a window to the milieu of my great-grandparents and grandparents. But this book is marred by numerous factual errors. Some I picked out: every Marylander who has ever vacationed at the closest Atlantic beaches knows that Bethany Beach is in Delaware; people who studied the state of Maryland in elementary school may remember that tobacco is grown only in Southern Maryland; Baltimoreans with some sense of history know that Redwood Street was called German Street during the time period the author spends pages discussing. Hometown Hero Babe Ruth lived for some time at St. Mary's (known as a reform school or orphanage) so the folks Jacob helped who were from there could not have been black in very segregated Baltimore. Now that mother, aged 87, is reading it, she calls everyday to tell me about more mistakes. The way the author describes the interiors of the houses on Eutaw Place (where my father's grandparents lived) is inaccurate; the excursion boat to Tolchester didn't leave from Locust Point and so on. She did tell me her Aunt Rae worked as a cigar roller when she was very young. But the worst factual mistake of all is something that will be noticed by many people nationwide who may want to read this book. Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah and one of the most important women in American Jewish history, was not the wife of Rabbi Benjamin Szold, but unmarried and childless even though she did so much for children. My mother feels that, in a number of instances, the author "took something of the facts" and surmised from there. Regrettably, this appears to be the case.
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