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 Entering a Fascinating Now-Gone World Feb 24, 2010
I am an Ashkenazi Jew and the world of the Sephardites is /was quite foreign to me.
I was fascinated by Jean Naggar's book and its detailed and loving view of her young life in Egypt. She grew up in a very educated, cultured and wealthy environment, so different from mine in New York, the daughter of Russian shetl parents.
Strangely, perhaps, this was a real page turner for me, and suspect it would be also for others.
 Sipping from the Nile Feb 24, 2010
It was a deeply felt pleasure to read Jean Nagar's memoir. She describes a very particular time and place in which she spent an extraordinary childhood, yet the feelings described so elegantly and precisely in her superb writing style are universally resonant. Although this is Jean's personal story, the story of a Sephardic Jew living a privileged yet nearly cloistered life in mid-twentieth century Egypt, it seems an important story for anyone interested in Jewish life at all. While Jean grew up in Egypt, Ann Frank was growing up in Holland, and my mother was growing up in New York. These three women, all only roughly contemporaries, all Jewish, all living (one not surviving) through the Second World War are all,legitimately Jewish, all practicing their Judaism in their own ways, all having their own "Jewish experience"--yet how different those experiences are from one another. How diverse and amazing!
Jean's intense connection to the strong threads that bind her family and the threads that binds her to the generations that came before and those that come after offer opportunity for insight. Jean's wonderful book shares her profound sense of peace and comfort with this connectedness: Perhaps understanding and experiencing through family, our own places in the great chain of life is the closest we will ever come to understanding the Eternal.
An account of how the broad strokes of history affect a family Feb 23, 2010
This is a sweeping, multi-generational history of two well known Jewish families buffeted by the waves of nationalism sweeping across Egypt and the Middle East. It is an account of the transformation the families endured to overcome the Exodus and the move to Europe and the US. Don't miss it.
Rich, toughing memoir Feb 16, 2010
Sipping From The Nile is a memoir entrenched with family values, rich characters, and vivid descriptions of areas, emotions, and traditions. Jean Naggar has found her craft! Sipping From The Nile held my interest from the moment I began the first chapter, and the treasured family photos that she included along the journey only further captivated my interest. Jean Naggar describes a world that one wishes she could encounter, at least I did. I find myself, at the end of this beautiful story, hoping that my children will have as rich and loving memories of their lives as Jean did. Thank you, Jean, for sharing your life experience with the rest of the world. Truly a touching and beautifully written memoir.
A marvelous book, from end to end. Feb 09, 2010
I found Sipping from the Nile a totally engaging and evocative tale of real life and real people in an exotic and disappearing environment. The authenticity of the authorial voice is strong and engaging, taking the reader down back alleys and boulevards, both literally and figuratively. The place, the people, the experiences are all stunning. The opportunity to visit with several generations of the author's family---to observe the river of family alongside the river of the land--was a journey unto itself. Ms. Naggar is a most astute observer of her world, and a skilled artisan of language. The pleasure of her imagery flows on in my mind weeks after closing the book: the foods, the aromas, the colors, the textures, the sounds, the love all play through my head on endless repeat, and I wallow in it. The next time I will read it much more slowly, and stay longer in her sadly vanished world.
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