Gathering Grains of Sand

ALMOST EIGHTY YEARS AFTER Samuel Jacobs died in Glasgow, only two of his original seventeen grandchildren remained, and his life story was at dire risk of being lost to the sands of time. But fate thought differently. When, following the death of his own father, Jeff Kaye stumbled on his great-grandfather Shmuilo, he began to track him down to find out how he got from his birthplace in a farm beside Vievis, Lithuania, to Glasgow, Scotland. Inevitably, the journey forces Kaye to grapple with core questions of Jewish existence, Israel, and the human condition, culminating in an encounter Kaye would have preferred not to share.

JEFF KAYE serves as a Vice President at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He moved to Israel from his native Scotland in 1981, with a degree in psychology from the University of Strathclyde. Beginning his professional life as a teacher and school principal, he was sent to Detroit, Michigan by the Jewish Agency for Israel as a senior emissary. On his return to Jerusalem he served the organization for a decade as a senior executive, before becoming the Executive Vice President of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. He is cofounder of the Israel Academy of Philanthropy.