The promise to my mother that became a book

the novel “scarred stone”

There are stories that a person carries inside for years, not knowing if the day will come when he will be able to say them out loud. They do not disappear. they are waiting They change shape in silences that hang in the room, or in sentences that mom says casually.

the book “scarred stone” Born out of deep promise to my mother; A promise that was not signed with big words, but lived among us for years like a heartbeat that does not need to be explained. My mother wanted the story of her life to be told – that the way, the faith and the strength with which she held a whole life would not remain only in the family memory.

When the story that is burned into the memory becomes a voice

For years I did not dare approach this story.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted too much. The story was too close, too expensive, too big. I feared that I would not be able to bear the full complexity of it; That I wouldn’t know how to write the pain without reducing the intensity, or touch the woman behind the story, my mother, without losing the special peace and wisdom she had.

There are stories that scare us to write precisely because they live inside us. They are found in language, in memories, in a look, and in things that are not always explicitly said.

Before writing there was listening

My writing did not start in front of the page. It started much earlier – in those years when I was on the periphery of the world of adults, absorbing the stories from the air around the beaver ceremony.

My mother’s story was already burned into me. I breathed it all my life, without knowing that I was collecting materials for creation.

At some point I realized that this story is not just mine, and not just my mother’s.

The untold story

Through my meeting with audiences in Israel and around the world, I discovered to what extent the story of the Beta Israel community is still not known in its full depth. Many knew the story of the immigration and the journey, but much less the life that was there before: the home, the tradition, the faith, and the women who held a deep and rooted Jewish-African world.

There I realized that the silence could no longer bear what was entrusted to it.

When fear stopped controlling me

The fear did not go away. He just stopped managing me.

I realized that such stories are never written with complete confidence. They are written out of responsibility and love. That’s how he was born “scarred stone”: out of a desire to give voice to female and intergenerational power. A private story that carries within it a broad echo of identity and belonging.

For me, writing is an act of repetition:

Restoring a voice to those who have not always been heard.
Returning depth to a story that is sometimes told only from the outside.
and returning a place to women who have lived their whole lives without asking for recognition.

This is an attempt to keep the promise to my mother – not to make her a flat figure of heroism, but to allow her to be a whole woman: with cracks and strength, with faith and a voice.

Not as a burden. as a voice

There is a moment when a story that was too big begins to take shape. Not because it is smaller, but because the person carrying it is finally ready to approach it.

“scarred stone” is that moment for me.
The moment I realized that the story absorbed in me as a child wanted to go out into the world.

Not as a burden.
as a voice