Jacob's Gift: A Journey into the Heart of Belonging
Jonathan Freedland on his inspiration...

On June 8 2001 my first son, Jacob, was born.
Eight days later, and following Jewish tradition, he was circumcised. At the ceremony, in words spoken out loud, I formally entered him into the "covenant of Abraham."

The statement caught me by surprise; in the days and weeks that followed it kept coming back to me. What exactly had I done? What imprint had I put on this tiny, unmarked person? Had I given Jacob a great gift — or a heavy, lifelong burden?

The questions rattled around in my head. But three months later, on September 11, 2001 I realised these were not just dilemmas of my own. Suddenly the world seemed gripped by this complex business of identity. Ancient, even tribal attachments were not vanishing in the globalised 21st century; on the contrary, they were becoming more intense.

I suppose I had mulled these issues for years, but now they had a new urgency. What did it mean to belong and why did it matter to people so much? What did it mean to be part of a tribe, including my own? I soon understood that the answers would lie close to home, with the group Jacob had just joined — his own family.

The result is Jacob's Gift — the story of three members of my own family but also, I hope, an inquiry into the wider terrain of identity and belonging. It is a book about family — and the way the past shapes the future.