Burnt Bread and Chutney: Growing Up Between Cultures - A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Childhood (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

~ Carmit Delman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“From the outside, no matter what the gradations of my mixed heritage, the shadow of Indian brown in my skin caused others to automatically perceive me as Hindu or Muslim. . . . Still, I trekked through life with the spirit of a Jew, fleshed out by the unique challenges and wonders of a combined brown and white tradition.”

In the politics of skin color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her uncommon heritage.

Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman’s memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and textures intertwine, Carmit’s unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel—and the knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts—and the inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes, Jewish, Indian, and American.

Carmit Delman’s journey through religious traditions, family tensions, and social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with grace and an acute sense of depth. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously unseen world.

From the Inside Flap

?From the outside, no matter what the gradations of my mixed heritage, the shadow of Indian brown in my skin caused others to automatically perceive me as Hindu or Muslim. . . . Still, I trekked through life with the spirit of a Jew, fleshed out by the unique challenges and wonders of a combined brown and white tradition.?

In the politics of skin color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her uncommon heritage.

Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman?s memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and textures intertwine, Carmit?s unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel?and the knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts?and the inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes, Jewish, Indian, and American.

Carmit Delman?s journey through religious traditions, family tensions, and social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with grace and an acute sense of depth. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously unseen world.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: One World/Ballantine (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345445945
• ISBN-13: 978-0345445940
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #853,879 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Book, December 28, 2002

By	Inna Tysoe (Earth) - See all my reviews

Burnt Bread and Chutney is at one level a biography of a girl/woman who is ethnically and culturally half Bene Israel (Indian Jewish). But it is much more than that. It is also an intimate portrayal of a woman-dominated household where a table full of spicy curry is a traditional Shabbat meal and where women tell stories while men make music. Indeed, it is through these stories as much as through a recounting of her life's many adventures that Carmit Delman explains to us, the readers, who and what she is. For in a book that is ostensibly her biography you will find tales of the generations who preceded her. Here you will find the legend of how the Bene Israel came to India; here too is the story of the Bombay mango that altered destinies; here are the stories of pogroms and miraculous escapes in Eastern Europe; here is the story of Carmit's parents who never considered their bi-racial marriage special or revolutionary; and here too is Carmit's own story. Here, amidst the tales of generations, we find the story of a girl growing up in two countries (America and Israel) and in many worlds. And somehow, all those stories blend into one tale of impossibly varied and unique hues.

Reading this tale was, for me, like listening to a Doors album. For just as it seems impossible that the blues, classical music, traditional tunes, and stories can be blended into one music and one theme, so it seems impossible that so many stories on so many levels can create one unique and varied tapestry. Yet somehow both happen... and reading Carmit Delman's work, like listening to the Doors, helped safeguard me against the wholesale automation of human beings. Against Disney and against automated call centres. For in Burnt Bread and Chutney ageless wisdom not only survives but flourishes. And in an age where our very identities have collapsed into a by-now-all-too-familiar jumble, this wisdom and a safeguard we desperately need.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story, so-so writing, July 2, 2005

By	mojosmom (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This is a very interesting book! Talk about your culture clash and your family secrets! Like many children of mixed cultural backgrounds, Carmit found it a bit difficult to fit into either. But it was more difficult because she was a minority within a minority, a dark-skinned, South Asian who "didn't look Jewish", and an Indian whose family had a different religion and different traditions from the Hindu majority. As a child, her grandmother makes her promise that she will always return to the Bene Israel, and she does.

Her family history, too, set her apart. Her grandmother was betrothed to a man who turned out to be an alcoholic. This put an end to the engagement, but it also made her grandmother practically unmarriageable. Until her sister's husband offered to take her as his second wife. He treated her and her daughter very differently from the way he behaved towards his first wife, being abusive, forcing her to live in poverty while her sister lived in luxury. The family's condescension towards Nana-bai and her descendents continued into the author's generation.

While I wasn't terribly impressed with the author's writing style (I thought she jumped around a lot, among other things), the book is well worth reading for an understanding of the difficulties of growing up in a multi-cultural household, of being "odd girl out", as well as to learn a little bit about this small, perhaps dying, segment of Judaism. I would, in fact, have liked to have learned more about Bene Israel, its history, how its practices differ from mainstream Judaism, but I guess that would be another book!

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting book, September 16, 2009

By	Robbie Foster - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Burnt Bread and Chutney: Growing Up Between Cultures - A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Childhood (Kindle Edition)

Enjoyed learning more about Indian culture especially from an Indian Jewish author. I enjoyed the book/