Memoir Forthcoming
Dew Drop on Jasmine
Synopsis
Meital, a Jewish Israeli New Yorker studying at Columbia University finds herself in the mystical backwaters of Java at age 19 and falls in love with Yudi, a handsome Muslim Indonesian villager. Against the wishes of Meital’s parents – whose ideology was born out of the Holocaust, Israeli nationalism and memories of the Cuban revolution - the two elope and marry. While defiantly choosing her life partner might seem like her greatest conquest upon entering adulthood, she then goes on a twenty-year journey of unfathomable devotion to win back her parents’ love and acceptance. In the process, she travels the world and transcends cultures, one nation at a time.
After the Second World War, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Meital’s maternal grandparents left Europe and took a boat to Cuba. In the same year her paternal grandparents stepped foot in Israel. The families experienced the hardships of being refugees against some of the 20th centuries’ most pivotal historic events - from the Cuban Revolution to the birth of Israel. Their children, who witnessed these hardships first-hand, eventually realized the American Dream and found financial success and the chance to live a vibrant Jewish life in New York. However, their tumultuous background only hardened their Jewish identity.
Yudi’s family, on the other hand, were from another world altogether. He grew up barefoot in a seaside fishing village in Java. He lived in a bamboo house that was lit up at night by oil lanterns and fireflies. He had a well to get water from. Surrounded by rice fields and coconut groves, steeped in Islam, in traditional culture and in nature, Yudi’s upbringing couldn’t be further from the doorman building on Park Avenue South, in Manhattan, where Meital’s parents lived.
Set against the backdrop of their two distinct family histories, this extraordinary love story between Meital and Yudi – one of the last of its kind before the digital age - triumphs against all odds.
With incredible perseverance, determined to build a life together, Meital ultimately joins the United Nations and the two embark on their own global odyssey – living in New York, Tel Aviv, Jakarta, Geneva, Yerevan, New Delhi, and many more capitals across the world as they raise three children: half Jewish, half Muslim.
Dew Drop on Jasmine is a touching memoir, which also serves as a significant, well-researched oral history of the periods, events and geographic landscapes that it covers. Taking the reader on a powerful journey of forgiveness, tolerance, and reconciliation, the book reveals some of the most deeply entrenched barriers within all of us.
Beautifully written, with lilting sensuality and timeless universal appeal to the heart, Dew Drop on Jasmine tells one of the most poignant and unique love stories of our time. It is not just about challenging one’s beliefs to find an even greater truth – but in every way this true story is a statement to the world, a statement to mankind – that love conquers all.
