My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past,   ISBN:9781565129337

Customer Rating: 

This book amazed me from cover to cover, and I became sad toward the end as I knew I would run out of pages to savor.

Sabar's writing is tight, from the journalism background no doubt, but his subject is broad. He chronicles a people, a poor minority of a minority the Kurdish Jews, and a language, Aramaic, set against his exploration of his father's life, exodus to Israel and later career as a professor at UCLA. I enjoyed the psychological part of this book, Sabar learning to appreciate his father and culture, as much as the history of Aramaic and the Kurdish Jews.

I was really impressed by this book and have sent several copies to friends. Best book I've read in years, and I've read some great ones.

Customer Rating: 

This is a fascinating book depicting an area rarely discussed and of special interest to Jews in the Diaspora. One of the finest books I read this past year. Bonnie Mitchell Hurwitz

Customer Rating: 

The book is beautiful, like new, not a scratch, and promptly sent. I'm very pleased.

Customer Rating: 

My Father's Paradise is the author's exploration of his family's roots. Ariel's father, Yona, left his town of Zhako in Kurdish Iraq as a child, in a mass exodus of thousands of Kurdish Jews to Israel. From there, as a young adult, Yona emigrated to America. Ariel explores his own relationship with his father, as he traces the roots of his father's past and explores the culture and language of Zakho. Ariel shares his own struggle with wanting to be a modern American teenager and having disdain for his father, to finally, as he grows up, wanting a closer relationship with his father and a connection to the past. The reader sees glimpses of life in Zhako, Israel, and America. This is a very worthwhile read that speaks to larger themes of how culture survives across continents and borders.

Customer Rating: 

This book is a moving story of discovery and love, a multi-generational history of people searching for a better life while staying connected to roots and tradition. It provides a fascinating history of the Jews of Kurdistan, one man's determination to keep an ancient language alive and a young man's search for a way to understand his family and in particular, his father. Well written.