Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore

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.

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.