Inside every Jew lies the soul of a Scotsman. So says Vicki Boykis in her short, funny travelogue e-book There’s Something About Scotland.
They’re a lot alike, Boykis writes: two bargain-hungry nationalities with endearing attachments to gut-wrenching ethnic foods. (Scots, meet gefilte fish; Jews, meet haggis.) But more than that, Boykis writes, “Just like Jews, Scots have been the underdog for so long that they’ve developed an attachment to it.”
And so this Russian-born, American-reared Jew dragged her husband from suburban Philadelphia to the Scottish highlands for cold and rain, castles and whisky. The latter, she writes, tasted like “iodine with a hint of national sorrow.”
With dry humor, Boykis recalls native meals (she threw up), the constant chilly mist (which soaked her daily) and the noticeable lack of Jews (“After a day of lochs, I was ready for lox“). Nonetheless, she left with a severe case of Scottish envy: “It was one thing to belong to a persecuted minority group,” she writes, “but it was another to belong to a persecuted minority group that had their own tartan and clan set.”
The e-book is a fantastic and quick 72 pages. And at 99 cents, it’s affordable for any self-respecting Jew or Scotsman.
