Looking For Home

Where is home?

Robert Ben-Nun Benayoun was born and raised in Morocco in the 1950s and '60s--a Sephardic Jew in an Arab country with a strong French influence. As a teen, he felt a calling to the Jewish homeland and moved without his family to Israel to finish high school. Following mandatory military service in the Israeli Army during which time he served in the Yom Kippur War, he discovered a love of the Sinai Peninsula, then under Israeli control. He loved exploring its wild, rugged beauty as a lead guide on adventurous camping trips into the vast desert and ended up meeting the woman who would become his wife, Deborah, after a whirlwind romance. But Deborah was a Texan and not Jewish. Where would they settle? How would Robert pass along his multinational and religious heritage to their children?

Looking for Home follows Robert on an intimate journey of self-discovery among the Arab, Jewish, Israeli, Canadian, American and Texan worlds, and a new-found love of the Spanish Costa del Sol. History, cultures, and religion of the Old and New Worlds combine for a fascinating and colorful multilingual story of family and finding a place to belong.