An interview with Charles London,
author of Far From Zion

January 26, 2010

Charles London recently took some time to answer a few questions for the New Vilna Review via email. His most recent book, Far From Zion, offers a portrait of different Jewish communities around the globe, and was a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. His first book, One Day the Soldiers Came, dealt with issues surrounding the impact of war on youth, including child soldiers.

NVR: Your new book Far From Zion offers readers a glimpse into a wide variety of different Jewish communities around the world, what inspired you to begin this project in the first place?

It happened by accident. I had never actually thought I would take a journey like this. I had never strongly identified with my Judaism. But when I was doing research in Bosnia for my first book, One Day the Soldiers Came, about children and war, I stumbled upon the Jewish community in Sarajevo. Not only had I not realized there was a Jewish community in Sarajevo, I was shocked to find that they ran the multi-ethnic youth group that I was there to visit. They had used their historical experience of displacement and vulnerability to help that city survive the siege during the war in the nineties, and were using their position to help Croats, Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims talk to each other and to reconcile. They ran a soup kitchen every day of the siege of Sarajevo; they had the best pharmacy in the city, and they got thousands of civilians out through the front lines to safety during the war. It was an amazing thing. Their story inspired me, as did the way they got along with their Christian and Muslim neighbors. They were truly acting as their brother's keeper, which I find to be one of the highest values of Judaism. They were actively tearing down the boundaries between themselves and their neighbors and were safer for it, and were growing stronger as a Jewish community because of it.

Shortly after my time in Bosnia, my grandmother passed away and I discovered that she had come from a Yiddish speaking shtetl outside Norfolk, Virginia. She had never spoken about it. The community was long gone, but I suddenly felt a longing for something I never knew I lacked: a sense of place in the vast continuum of the Jewish experience. So, thinking again of the Bosnian Jews, I set off to find far-flung communities around the world that might teach me something about how they got there, why they stayed, and what it meant to be part of this global people in an interconnected world.

NVR : Could you tell us a little about how you decided which communities to focus on in the book?

Originally, I considered modeling my journey on the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudeleh, the 12th century rabbi who wrote the first travelogue of Jewish diversity, but I quickly nixed that idea. That was his journey, not mine. Instead, I tried to focus on communities that had different or surprising experiences from what I knew of Jewish life, so I went to Burma to see a community about as far flung as I could imagine, hanging on the edge of survival. I went to Uganda to see the birth of a new Jewish community is sub-Saharan Africa and to Iran to see why some 15,000 Jews stayed living under the regime of the Islamic Republic. Everywhere I went, had something new to show me about a different way to create community and to create a Jewish and a national identity. The diversity showed me the strength and vitality of the Jewish people, even as it showed me the effort it took to have a meaningful Jewish life in the modern world, be it in Arkansas or Tehran. I also realized that for every place I went, there were 20 others I could have gone. I could spend the rest of my life looking for these communities and not exhaust the search, though that is changing. Over 80% of the world's Jews live in Israel or America now. I do hope that other 20% can remain a source of creativity and strength for the rest of us.

NVR: Could you share with us one moment or experience that you had while working on this project that was particularly meaningful for you?

There were so many--enough to fill a book! But right now, two places come to mind. In Uganda, a group of black African subsistence farmers had been practicing Judaism in their own for about 100 years, and were just starting to come to the attention of global Jewry. They were making formal conversions by the hundreds and doing some amazing interfaith peace work and economic development. They ran a primary school and a high school serving youngsters of all faiths. It was an amazing thing to walk along a dusty hill in eastern Uganda on Friday evening and have a group of African school children of all faiths yell out "Shabbat Shalom."  And in Bentonville, Arkansas, right in the heart of the Bible Belt, the first new Jewish community in the south in over 50 years is springing up. Like the Jews in Uganda, it's a DIY kind of community. They are building their faith institutions and practices for themselves, without a professional class of educators and clergy like I'd had growing up on the east coast. In both cases, these communities reminded me that, even as some Jewish communities fade around the world-as they have for centuries-others are springing up.

NVR: What did you find most surprising as you were doing research and writing this book?

I was probably most surprised by the Jewish community in Iran, how openly they lived as Jews and how they struggled with many of the same communal problems as the American Jewish community--generational divides, the challenge of engaging youth, and internal political disagreements. They must be extremely careful because they are a religious minority under a brutal theocratic regime, but they certainly do not suffer as much as some of the other minorities--the B'Hai or the Sunni Muslims for example. The respect many Muslim Iranians expressed for the Jewish people made me quite optimistic for the future, though the recent government crackdown on all dissent dashed much of my optimism. As Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah attack their own citizens, the Jews are just as vulnerable to arrest, torture, and murder, not as Jews, but as Iranians. It is a scary time.

NVR: Were there things you discovered about yourself or your own sense of Jewish identity along the way?

I discovered that I had a Jewish identity, for one thing! I had never had a strong sense of Jewish identity or a desire for one before I went on this journey. After worshiping with Jews all over the world, and seeing communities thriving and fading, I realized that I wanted to take an active role in my faith. I wanted to learn more about it, to engage with it. It seems a simple realization, but it struck me that I would only get out what I put in, and I had never put anything into my faith before. So I've started learning about these stories and these rituals--the spiritual technology of Judaism that has lasted for thousands of years and that binds each of these communities together, wherever they are, whatever their political or religious beliefs. I realized there was room for me in this faith too, but I, like each of the communities I visited, would have to make my own place in it.

NVR: What are you working on now?

I continue to travel to share the stories from this book. I am also working on a very different project, a series of adventure novels for middle schoolers, due out next year. It's called the Calamitous Adventures Club, and it's about two couch-potatoes whose parents are famous explorers and who, in spite of themselves, are dragged around the world on adventures and make some amazing discoveries, but all they really want to do is get cable. It's actually quite biographical! I started writing it on a flight between Tehran and Frankfurt when I was pretty tired of traveling.

NVR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thanks for taking an interest in my journey.