||eBook Description: "Attention ladies and gentlemen: the Captain has switched off the No Smoking sign. Keep your seat belts lightly fastened, order a double bourbon on the rocks, kick back and get comfortable. We are in for a long strange flight through the streets of Boston and Philadelphia, Philippine tribal villages, lush tropical islands, a storybook kingdom, and the State of Israel.
In this collection of curious short stories and odd little essays, C. L. Hoffman introduces us to a colorful array of ""square pegs"" and social desperados, kibitzers, criers, wild men and wise guys. Hoffman describes each of these types with rare insight and empathy, proving once again that it takes one to know one.
Most of the sketches about life in today's Israel, to be found in the second half of the book, have been published previously in the Jerusalem Post."||
Carl Hoffman: After I had wandered around Manila's business district for more than an hour, a small, squat, gray building adorned with a large iron menorah and topped with a golden dome loomed sharply into view. Cleverly camouflaged amidst the gleaming office towers and five-star hotels, set behind a tall wrought-iron gate and protected by uniformed Filipino security guards, the Philippines' one and only synagogue stood shockingly before me. Later, at the lavishly catered kiddush, a pale, bespectacled and very young man in a black velvet kippa introduced himself to me as the Rabbi (The Rabbi! I gawked. In the middle of Manila!) and asked if this was my first visit to the shul.
"It's my first visit to any shul in more than thirty years," I said to him.
He smiled, shook my hand, and said, "Welcome home."
