Arts & Humanities

The Stern Family Lecture - Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Reading and Conversation with Award-Winning Israeli Author, Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a family of Yemeni descent and has lived and worked extensively abroad. She is the author of The Best Place on Earth (winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award) and The Art of Leaving (winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir). Her writing has appeared internationally and has been translated into multiple languages.

On Monday, October 27th at 6:00 p.m., Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES) at Washington University in St. Louis will host award-winning writer Ayelet Tsabari for a reading and discussion of her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted (Random House, 2024).

Tsabari will introduce her novel, which was the winner of the 2024 National Jewish Book. Building on the success of her memoir The Art of Leaving and her story collection The Best Place on Earth, Tsabari’s novel explores the experiences of Yemini immigrants in Israel from its founding through the backlash to the Oslo Peace Accords. These episodes in Israeli politics and culture continue to reverberate today.

Tsabari will also speak about growing up Yemeni in Israel, about re-finding and reclaiming that identity through writing and through extensive research into Yemeni culture and traditions. She will share audio and images from her research into the Yemeni women’s songs that are a leitmotiv in the novel, and speak of some of the unique challenges she has faced writing about Israel in English, her second language. This lecture will explore the many ways in which a writer’s cultural background, mother tongue, and origins influence and inform her writing, in terms of both content and style.

The event is free and open to the public and will be held in Umrath Lounge on the Danforth campus of Washington University in St. Louis. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m., followed by the main program at 6:00 p.m.

About the Book: Songs for the Brokenhearted traces intertwined stories of love, loss, and discovery spanning two transformative moments in Israeli history. One storyline begins in the early years of Israeli statehood in the squalor of an immigrant camp, where a forbidden love unfolds between the young Yaqub and the married Saida. The second, set in the volatile summer of 1995, follows Zohara, a disillusioned graduate student in New York, who returns to Israel after her mother’s death and uncovers startling family secrets hidden in recordings of her mother’s singing. Tacking back and forth between the early years of Israeli statehood and the mid-1990s, the novel explores intergenerational memory, the legacies of migration and displacement, and the complex bonds between mothers and daughters.

Critics have hailed the book as “a gorgeous, gripping novel filled with unforgettable characters” (Elizabeth Graver), and “an unparalleled triumph” in its portrayal of Israel’s marginalized communities (Ranen Omer-Sherman). With agile prose and unforgettable characters, Tsabari gives voice to experiences too often silenced, weaving together personal stories and broader histories of upheaval and survival.

Find more JIMES events at https://jimes.wustl.edu/events.
Those with specific inquiries about this event can contact Julia Clay at jclay@wustl.edu.