1974 - present

Elana Benjamin is a writer with a special interest in social issues, sharing people’s stories, and how the past influences the present. Elana’s father Abe arrived in Bondi in 1966, from Bombay (now Mumbai), India, aged 22. Elana has lived in the Bondi area all her life. Elana’s book, ‘My Mother’s Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bombay to Bondi’, is a memoir–history about her Sephardi Jewish family’s migration from Iraq to India to Australia. (Sephardi Jews are non-European Jewish people from an Asian or Arabic country such as India, Singapore, Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Morocco or Iraq.) During the 1950s, several thousand Sephardi Jews from the Arab world, particularly Egypt, sought refuge in Australia.

Elana holds an Arts/Law degree from the University of New South Wales and lives close to Bondi Beach, with her husband and two children. Her writing has been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, Sunday Life, SBS Voices, Essential Kids and the Jewish Book Council blog.

In Elana’s words, “I feel really passionate about Jewish education because it passes on knowledge, customs and traditions to the next generation. Ultimately, the next generation is the one that’s going to be around when we’re not. I think the main reason the Jewish people have survived for so long is because of the importance placed on education and schools. I went to Jewish day schools all the way through, and my Jewish identity was shaped by them. I have a great awareness of the traditions and history of the Jews- of both Sephardi and Ashkenazi (European) Jewry, including the Holocaust - and it’s influenced my awareness of what it is to be a minority, and the importance of equality and tolerance, because so many Jews were historically denied those things. Fundamentally, everyone is equal."

Courtesy Elana Benjamin and the project Eat, Pray, Naches: Jewish Community Stories.