A family-appropriate educational historical novel for middle grade / young adult readers ages nine and up, and also with appeal for adults.
Ezra Curiel is a normal twelve year-old Sephardi Jewish boy living in Spain. When he is not vigorously defending his neighborhood titles as the reigning athletic champion, he is studying for his upcoming bar mitzvah under the tutelage of the famed Rabbi Don Yitzhak Abravanel while a very young Yosef Caro watches solemnly from the side. That is the “normal life” of Ezra Curiel, who lives alongside his adoring eleven year-old sister, Shira, and their doting parents.
But the year is 1492 CE. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella have decreed that the entire Jewish population must convert and join the Catholic Church. If they do not reject their Jewish identity forever, then they will be expelled immediately with little more than the clothes on their backs. Refusing to submit to the tyrannical oppression of the Spanish monarchy, now Ezra and the Curiel family have a new normal:
Destitute yet persevering Sephardi Jewish refugees. Plundering and vicious Berber pirates. Hospitable Arabian caravan drivers. Mysterious African traders and tribesmen. Swindling Moroccan snake charmers. Venetian artisans and merchants. Ruthless Ottoman Turkish soldiers. And a quest and an adventure that leads Ezra and the Curiels from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other, and all the way to the land of Israel itself.
Endless Diamonds: A Tale of the Expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain is a family-friendly, highly-detailed and accurate work of historical fiction that is both dynamic and easily comprehensible. It brings one of the greatest yet little understood calamities of the Jewish people to life for both young readers and adults alike. With Endless Diamonds, families are encouraged to learn in a whole new way about the event that permanently altered the global Jewish community and changed the entire world forever.