Foreword by Joseph Hodes, Ph.D., Author, “From India to Israel”:
"Angelica Jacob’s beautifully written memoir, Finding Home, begins in 1970’s Bombay and continues to 1980’s Australia. It is the story of a young woman’s journey to a new land, but it is also the story of an Indian Jewish community.
Angelica is a member of the Bene Israel, Jews who have lived in India for 1,800 years. Since the creation of the state of Israel, the community has gotten increasingly smaller in India.
This memoir weaves together what is uniquely Indian and universally Jewish, providing a fascinating account of a young woman’s journey. ...A good historian can recount the changing of the guard, but only a poet or skilled writer can write words that leap off the page and grab one’s emotions. This book does just that."
- Joseph Hodes, Ph.D., Author, “From India to Israel”Assistant Professor, International Studies, Texas Tech University, USA.
Finding Home - Memoir of a Jewish girl: Bombay to Sydney is based on themes of Jewish identity and home. The memoirs document the life of a young woman growing up in a once-flourishing Jewish community in post-colonial Bombay, who leaves the home of her birth to build a new life in Australia.The book germinated from a compelling need to record the unique milieu of the once-thriving, now vastly diminished Bene Israel of Bombay, believed to be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, before the institutions and community completely disappear.
The memoir unfolds as vignettes that poignantly, and with humor, capture intimate scenes of the religious and cultural life of one Jewish family in Bombay (now Mumbai). They chronicle the trajectory of a steadily dwindling congregation captured by the imagination of a Jewish homeland, and the impact this exodus to Israel had on those who remained.
Some historical research and facts of the Jews of Bombay, their origins, past, place and cultural and religious life are interwoven into the narrative.The book offers a poignant message of inclusivity in these divisive times as we witness the rise of anti-Semitic and anti-immigration sentiments. It will appeal to the international Jewish diaspora as well as minorities and young people discovering their own identities in a multi-cultural world.
About the author: Angelica Jacob is an author, writer, former staff reporter of The Australian, Australia’s national broadsheet newspaper, editor, and entrepreneur. She is a published nonfiction co-author of “Discover the Gifts and Talents in Your Child”, (Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 2000), a parenting book that equips parents and teachers with strategies, activities and skills to help children think and learn better and create an enriched home environment. She also co-edited “Gifted Children: The Challenge Continues” (NSW Association for Gifted and Talented Children, Sydney), a collection of papers and essays by Australian and international academic experts in the field of gifted education.
Angelica has a Master’s Degree in General Studies, with Distinction and Credits, from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, a Professional Certificate In Financial Planning with Distinction from UCLA – Extension and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from St Xavier’s College, then affiliated to the University of Bombay. See: www.angelicajacob.com.
