David Toback was Carole’s maternal grandfather. He was born in Russia in 1875 and as a young man, he traveled throughout Russia as a youth. In his early twenties, he made a decision to immigrate to America like millions of other European Jews who were fleeing oppression at the same time. After his arrival, he ultimately became a kosher butcher on the lower East Side of New York. In 1933, he decided to write a memoir that described his early life in Russia; he began his writing on the first anniversary of the suicide of one of his fours daughters. David wrote in Yiddish and filled many school notebooks with his memories, ending up with almost 1,000 pages of his story.

 

Carole became aware of these notebooks while she was living with her aunt in Brooklyn. They had remained in a closet for over 40 years, unread by anyone. But one day, her aunt took out the box with the notebooks and Carole found out about their presence. Her aunt told her that she was giving them away to a man who could read Yiddish, so they disappeared. But Carole never forgot those notebooks and was surprised when many years later they were returned to Brooklyn when the Yiddish-speaking man passed away. She asked her aunt if she could have them and she took them over. However, their fate was the same as before as they were relegated to a different closet in Berkeley.

 

Over the years, Carole became fascinated with the untranslated and unread notebooks of her grandfather and sought out individuals who could translate them for her. Finally she found a young Orthodox Jewish man in Berkeley who agreed to translate, and for the first time, someone became aware of the stories of David Toback.  As the books were translated, Carole began to know the grandfather that she had only seen a few times as a child. But Carole found that the completed translation needed additional work. She took to revising the story by selecting, organizing and filling in those areas that were missing in order to form a coherent and dramatic narrative that brought the story into a consistent style. She also made a trip to the Soviet Union to try and find whatever still existed of late 19th century Russia.  Carole spent over five years working on her book.

 

The final finished version was published by Schocken Press as The Journeys of David Toback in 1981. After its publication, the book was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times (8/9/81) Book Review section by the noted critic, Ted Solotaroff, who called the book “a life story that reads like the most skillful fiction.” Journeys was selected as one of the outstanding books of 1981 by New York Times editors.

 

In the Afterword of the book, Carole wrote “In sum, I have used a certain amount of poetic license. I wanted to bring the notebooks to life and form them into a polished whole, and while doing so I tried to be as faithful as possible to the soul that first animated them”