She argued that the symbolism embedded in the Passover ritual expresses the political celebration of freedom and the cultural quest for purity.
Published in several editions, the book remains in print as the only systematic anthropological examination of Passover's religious and secular symbols.
[4][5] As noted by the Washington Post, "Dr. Cernea was on her second honeymoon in 1987 when she discovered a little-known Jewish community in Myanmar (Burma) and the country’s only synagogue, the historic Mushmeah Yeshua Temple.
To reconstruct that community's history and culture, Cernea traveled to all places where small groups of descendants of Burma's Jewish community are known to live: India, Australia, Israel, United Kingdom, and California, interviewing scores of families of Jewish Burmese ancestry and gathering family histories, documents, pictures, diaries, and personal recollections.
Among the presenters in her book are some of the most eminent American academics, including Milton Friedman and Leon Lederman, both Nobel laureates respectively in economics and physics, historian Hana Grey, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, and some other 30 scholars.