MY MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: Travel Journalist Judith Fein's Taboo-Busting Book of the Dead

"Communicating with the dead has been a secret part of my life for many years." –Judith Fein

Judith Fein’s fourth deep travel memoir, HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD AND HOW CULTURES DO IT AROUND THE WORLD, invites us along on her decades of investigations and explorations of the final frontier: Death.

For most of her life, Judith Fein has seen and heard dead people. Not all the time, thank goodness, or it would not leave much time for this prolific journalist to write about her soul-searching globetrotting with her ever-skeptical photojournalist husband, Paul Ross. "Judie and Paul" are the "Nick and Nora" of the travel adventure-supernatural set. She can see a ghostly figure in the middle of nowhere and believe it to be a specter. He can be right next to her, eyes huge, and afterward admit “maybe” it was real. Their yin-yang bonding and love adds to the delightful humor of this Odyssey.

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD signals a coming out of the woo-woo closet for Fein. The Oxford dictionary defines "woo-woo" as "unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine…" Throughout her illustrious career as a journalist, Fein has occasionally penned articles about seeking healers and rituals in “exotic” locales; although mostly she has flown under the radar as a gifted intuitive herself. This book puts the spotlight on Fein’s spiritual truths as she has lived them, revealing how she has embraced and been embraced by others around the world who perceive those truths without shame.

There is no navel-gazing in these stories that take us from her father’s untimely death (and her first stunned awareness that she could hear him beyond the grave) to her late mother’s skepticism that she and her daughter could communicate after her transition (and how wrong that turned out to be) to various vortexes of cultures and religions that accept death as a fact of life that does not end the soul.

Fein’s passion to communicate with her living readers shines as an honest desire to help others move through their grief and fears to an understanding that death itself is not the final word on existence.

A discussion guide ends the book with such thought-provoking gems as:

"Would you like someone to contact you after you die? Why or why not?"

REVIEW: THE SPOON FROM MINKOWITZ - What's not to Love?

REVIEW

How to crack the mystery of who we are, why we love, 
and where we came from can be the greatest mystery of all.

What's not to love?

In her newest memoir, THE SPOON FROM MANKOWITZ: A Bittersweet Roots Journey, award-winning international travel writer Judith Fein dives beneath the surface of her Russian Jewish American heritage--pushing past all obstacles--to find the truth behind the shrouded story of where she came from, what the Old World was like, and what remains of the places so many of our ancestors left behind when they came to America.

We cannot help but want to accompany this passionate woman who will not take "No" for an answer as she treks through graveyards, has a private audience with the Gypsy Baron of Moldova, meets the last Jew standing, communes with the dead, quaffs cognac with Russians, wanders among ruins, and hears the call of the ancestors, driving her on. Ultimately, it is our story too, as we experience the legacy of what was handed down to us in our families, relationships, beliefs, fears and longings.

Suddenly, I felt as though there were people behind me, following me. I turned around, but no one was there. I continued walking. Again, I felt the presence of a lot of people in my wake. I spun around and was greeted by a chorus of voices. Although I didn’t see anybody, I heard the Eastern European ancestors of many people like me calling out. “Remember us. Don’t forget us. Our story needs to be heard. Write our story. Write your story."--The Spoon from Minkowitz

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Originally published in Marlan Warren's L.A. Now and Then Blog
Author bio and more details, including Discussion Guide, can be found on the Author's Web Site or at http://bookpublicitybymarlan.blogspot.com

INTERVIEW: JUDITH FEIN ("THE SPOON FROM MINKOWITZ"): EMOTIONAL GENEALOGY

Title: THE SPOON FROM MINKOWITZ: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands

Author: Judith Fein with Photographs by Paul Ross

ISBN:     978-0-9884019-3-8

Published 2014 by GlobalAdventure.us

Author Website: Global Adventure Web Site

Available at Amazon:  Amazon: The Spoon from Minkowitz

Summary :  Author Judith Fein embarks on a quest to call on ancestors and urges us to do the same in The Spoon from Minkowitz: A Bittersweet  Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands.

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INTERVIEW

“Finding roots is the solution for a rootless life.”

 I heard the Eastern European ancestors of many people like me

 calling out. “Remember us. Don’t forget us. Our story needs

 to be heard. Write our story. Write your story."

—Judith Fein, The Spoon from Minkowitz:

                                           

     Judith Fein is a travel journalist’s travel journalist. Like a latter-day Marco Polo, she has globe-trotted without maps or preconceived notions. By her own account, she has swum with Beluga whales, consulted with a Zulu sangoma in South Africa, and eaten porcupine in Vietnam (“not with relish”). In 2011, when Fein and her photojournalist husband Paul Ross visited Tunisia during the Arab Spring, the French-speaking American Fein found herself on the radio, speaking to Tunisians about Democracy. Her popular travel memoir Life Is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel conveys her need to find out where people of different cultures come from and what makes them act, think, and behave the way they do. After decades of travel, there was one frontier that still eluded the “I-live-to-leave” Fein: the mystery of her own ancestral roots.

     Fein’s new book, The Spoon from Minkowitz: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands, takes us on the trip she finally made in 2012 to the shtetl her Jewish grandmother left behind in an obscure Russian (now Ukrainian) village.

     The Spoon from Minkowitz has garnered stellar reviews. Catharine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times, found The Spoon from Minkowitz “as tense as a thriller and as tender as a love story.” Zelda Shluker, editor of Hadassah Magazine, noted the book is “unlike any other back-to-roots book…driven by the author's almost mystical quest to recover the past…Her curiosity, openness and passion take us along on a journey that turns out to be ours as well.”

     We had the opportunity to catch Judith Fein for a moment when she was not in perpetual motion to talk about the deeper meanings of genealogy as explored in this book:

For those who have not yet read your book, what is “the spoon from Minkowitz”?

My grandmother was from a village called Minkowitz in what was then Russia. That fact plus five others were all she would ever tell me about where she was from and why she left; she didn’t want to talk about the past. My mother told me virtually nothing.

When I met my husband Paul, we were immediately attracted. But here’s the kicker: when I asked Paul's parents about their ancestral roots, it turned out his father’s family came from…Minkowitz

Okay. So the “spoon.” When Paul told his parents we were getting married, his father offered us the only thing left from his parents’ shtetl of Minkowitz: a soup spoon they brought with them to America. I treasured that spoon because it made our ancient, ancestral connection so real and concrete. We made a place of honor for it under the chupa  (Jewish wedding canopy) on a satin pillow.