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(MOSHE BENARROCH)
The novel tells the story of the city Tetuan situated in the north of Morocco, near Spain. This is the closest city in which Jewish Sephardim settled after being Chased from Spain.
The characters are The Family of Benzimra. The novels starts in 1860 and ends sometime in the 21st century in Louisiana.
The Benzimra's start leaving the city in the middle of the 19th century, because the "Juderia" cannot be expanded, epidemics and the lack of economic possibilities. They leave toward Tangier, then Brazil, where they can make money and return to Tetuan rich, to Argentina, To Venezuela, Spain and later to Israel.
In their travels they write about Tetuan, they come back, they leave it, and generations after leaving it they are still related to the city.
The longest chapter is the story of Mimon Benzimra who emigrates aged 50 to Israel, but after the death of his wife, decides to rebuy his own house on a trip to Tetuan and resettles there, where he chooses to die. His five sons come to visit him, thinking that he is crazy and try to convince him to go somewhere else, and not live with the Arabs.
Another chapter tells of Another Benzimra (Moises Benzimra) who left Tetuan in the 19th century and decided to live in the Amazons, there he created a tribe of Benzimra, not jews anymore, who called themselves, the Benzimrao tribe. (As much as this seems incredible it is based in a real fact).
Between each chapter there is a dialogue ( a total of 22) between a child and his mother, from the moment they talk about leaving, through their Aliyah, the big deception, till their death and resting in Heaven.
The novel is 160 pages long in Hebrew ( around 190 in English), and was published in 1999 by Bimat kedem Lesifrut in Israel, in Hebrew. Chapters of the novels appeared in Hebrew in the anthology East-West edited by Amnon Shamosh, and in the literary magazines Moznaim and Iton77.
Resumos Relacionados
- Keys To Tetuan
- Tetuan
- Lucena
- Cool And Collected Poems 1990-2005
- The Road To Fez
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