When tradition, coming from the depths of time, directs destinies, souls, and life. Such is the way among the Sephardic Jews. Eliette Abecassis takes us on a journey between Spain, Morocco, Strasbourg, Canada, and Israel. Places where the tribulations of history have led the Jews and notably here the Sephardic Jews.
Through an impossible love between two people, hindered by a possessive mother, a secret that cannot be revealed, an uncertain fiancé, a determined yet doubting fiancée, we witness, page after page, the wreck of the engagement and the marriage.
This work unveils the customs of the Sephardic Jews, their hopes, their certainties, and their anxieties. We discover their folklore, their cuisine, their way of living and hosting. This novel is essentially sociological for that reason. A beautiful moment of reading, a journey into these customs that cannot be acquired, as they are above all innate and deeply inscribed in the soul of the Sephardic Jews.
This might be their strength and their weakness. Strength, because they remain pure; weakness, because they do not regenerate. A duality whose threads are woven by millennia of tradition and cannot easily be unraveled.
Thierry Jan, writer
