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Joseph Rotenberg’s debut collection, Timeless Travels, is a treasure chest full of memories, bon mots, humorous anecdotes, and stories that simultaneously belong to another time but twist reflexively to look at today.
Throughout the book, and across a variety of genres, Rotenberg considers nothing less than what it means to be a Jewish person in America. Albeit a well-traveled one. Ranging from the Lower East Side and Riverdale to Gaza or Moscow, these stories stamp the armchair traveler’s passport with every turn of the page. Unifying the variety of places and formats is the spirit of unity that pulls together disparate people and experiences from throughout the world and across time.
In his foreword to Timeless Travels, Yeshiva University professor Jeffrey Gurock talks about the Maggid, a “sermonizer [that] carried his intellectual properties from town to town and displayed his spiritual and educational wares to appreciative audiences.” For him, Rotenberg is a modern maggid. So, open up the book and experience the world around you in a completely different way.
Whether talking about his book or life in general, Joseph is a natural raconteur and draws on many strains of Jewish-American culture and history.