In conversation with authors Eva Novy and Elana Benjamin
Date: Thursday 8th October 2015.
Venue: Waverley Library, Bondi Junction.
Elana Benjamin
“Who am I?” is a question that we all utter to ourselves at some point in our lives in our quest to understand ourselves and our families in more depth. Our identity defines us and gives us meaning. Yet, the question of identity is not so straight forward, especially in an era of migration, emigration and displacement which challenges what binds us to places and people. Eva Novy’s Darling, Impossible! and Elana Benjamin’s My Mother’s Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bondi explore these notions of identity and for these writers their Judaism plays a vital role in defining who they are. Novy and Benjamin spoke with Susan Bures AM as part of the Eat, Pray, Naches! ‘festival’ of Jewish stories at Waverley Library in front of a receptive and engaging audience. In April, the library began collating submissions from local Jewish post-war immigrants and their families and they received over 100 submissions!
What has become evident from these stories is the wonderful cross section and multiculturalism of the Jewish community who settled in Bondi and its surrounding suburbs. Eva and Elana are members of this community and their stories, told through their books, highlights the importance of their Jewish community to them. Despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, both writers (who were in the same year at Moriah College) take comfort in the community that comes from being part of a much larger, global Jewish community.
Both writers spoke of their varied multicultural background which ranges from Hungarian and South African to Indian and Iranian but both express their feelings of connection to something greater than their origins alone. Their stories deal with a sense of belonging, to individual identity, to a communal identity, to language and the desire to learn it (in the case of Darling, Impossible!) but also a desire by some to reject language, as a reaction to their horrific experiences of The Holocaust.
Eva Novy
Eva Novy’s Darling, Impossible! is a work of fiction which centres on a Hungarian migrant family and their Australian born daughter Lily who feels that if she learns the Hungarian language, it will unlock family secrets for her which hold the key to her father’s death.
Elana Benjamin’s My Mother’s Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bondi is a memoir which tells the story of her family’s migration from Iraq to India to Australia. A historical exploration into the Sephardic and Persian Jews, told through the paradigm of food.
What becomes evident from these stories and listening to these writers speak are how these stories provide a snapshot into what it means to be Australian today. Despite coming from a varied background, a sense of community was formed in Sydney from the Jewish diaspora and both writers express their identification with being Australian. This sense of community can be extended across a multitude of cultures and the stories of these individual stories are the essence of our community.
More information on Eat Pray Naches and future events is available here.