A soaring, heart-wrenching, and hopeful family memoir of a mostly-forgotten Middle Eastern Jewish community.
After dwelling for centuries on the poverty-stricken fringes of Yemeni society, the desert nation's proud Jewish community was forced to emigrate, en masse, to Israel soon after that nation's founding. In this deeply personal and historically rich family memoir, Naomi Kehati Bronner opens a window into the unique world in which her parents grew up—a Yemini-Jewish world whose ways remained virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages.
Suddenly finding themselves forcibly thrust into the modern world, Kehati Bronner's parents and their immigrant community struggle to adjust and assimilate, while still raising their children to remember and honor their ancient traditions. Her own deeply personal story of assimilation, reinvention, and self-discovery not only sheds light on the complexity of modern Israel, but mirrors the immigrant journey of countless people around the world—and in the case of Jews, Israel's powerful role in providing a new sense of peoplehood.