I downloaded this book quite some time ago so when I finally picked it up to read I was happily surprised to see that it represents Israel and Judaism and that the author is a Yemeni Israeli Jew.
Songs for the Brokenhearted covers the 1950’s pilgrimage of Yemeni Jews to Israel via Saida, a young girl who is married and has a baby and unwilling falls in love with another man while at the camp in Israel for Yemenites. Knowing nothing can come of this they go their separate ways. In 1995, around the time Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Saida’s youngest daughter, Zohara, comes back to Israel to sit shiva after Saida’s death. While there she discovers secrets about her mother that she sets out to solve.
At first glance I felt like this should have been 3 separate books since the three storylines seemed to have nothing to do with each other except for the relations of the characters, but as the book continued the I realized each storyline is actually dependent on the others. While I enjoyed the historical factors I thought Zohara’s recent past was a bit slow and found myself skimming those parts. That being said overall I really enjoyed this and thought it was an excellent way to tell about several factors of Israeli history that some people (ahem, me) might not know about.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy of this. Songs of the Brokenhearted hit the shelves on September 10th.

Set in a part of the world I know little about, this is a dual timeline story of Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel soon after its founding. Regarded as crude and uncivilized by European Jews, they struggled to find a true home in the land they’d long dreamed of. The 1950 storyline of Saida is intertwined with that of her daughter Zohara who returned to Israel from NY in 1995 after learning of her mother’s death. I’m inspired to read more about Israel’s early years and made note of several titles a teacher in the novel recommended to Zohara’s nephew Yoni.

I always love reading books with characters from different cultures. I didn't really know much about Yemeni Jews before reading this, but I definitely gained a deeper understanding of the culture (especially those that immigrated to Israel after World War II). I felt like these characters were really realistic and relatable (even in their mistakes). The only criticism I have is that the book felt repetitive at times (some of the characters' journeys felt like they had been described many times over). I would have liked a little bit less exposition in the middle of the book and maybe one or two more chapters at the end to tie up everything. I do think Tsabari is a talented writer, and I'd be interested in reading more of her work in the future.

I really enjoyed this beautifully written book. A love story on hold for over 40 years and mother/daughter dynamics. I found this story to be very timely for a deeper understanding of the formation of the Israeli state in Palestine given the current state of affairs in that part of the world.

3.5 stars rounded up. This was a quiet, well-written family saga spanning multiple generations and storylines. It wasn't a particularly exciting book, but I liked the characters and the cultural element. It's a very Jewish tale, in the best way possible. It's not a light read and was often sad, but there's definitely a lot to like here.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I am a long time fan of Tsabari but her newest work takes her writing to another level. This book will end up on my top 10 for 2024 for sure. Tsabari tells the story of Zohara - a young aimless occasionally unlikeable Israeli of Yemeni descent who returns to Israel from a life of exile abroad when her mother dies. It is 1995 and the country is riled by the threat and promise of peace. Zohara knew her family was complicated but like many children preferred not to ask questions and only comes to understand her mother through death. The primary - but not only vehicle - for this knowledge comes through her mother’s secret recordings of her Yemeni songs. But there is a bigger story here - one of dualities. Tsabari tells us about the Yemeni Jewish emigration experience in the 1950s and their rude welcome by Israelis of Eastern Europe descent - discrimination that persists today. Tsabari paints a portrait of Israeli society riven into division by the 1995 peace process. We come to understand what it means to be an Israeli Jew living among diaspora Jews in NYC. We also keenly observe the mother / daughter relationship (among Zohara and her mother but also with Zohara and her much older sister, and a cast of supporting characters each with a story to tell). Highly recommend. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

Courtesy of Netgalley and Random House, I received the ARC of Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari. This well researched debut novel transported me to Israel and the Yemen community airlifted there in 1950. Focusing on the history and culture of the women and their place in families, their creative songs that captured their emotions, Tsabari portrayed them so that I became immersed in their stories. Reading about the search and revelation of lost family memories and secrets was like following a mystery trail! The timeline into 1995 and the Oslo Accords showed how these families changed and remained the same. Great characters!

I absolutely loved this lyrically written book about the Yemeni Jewish experience in Israel. Told through the eyes of Zohara in the 1990’s, and Yaqub in the 1950’s and Yoni in the 1990’s, their stories relate the challenges by this community in keeping their traditions while assimilating into Israeli society. Zohara’s mother, Saida, was air lifted to Israel from Yemen, but Zohara never truly understood her mother. At the first opportunity Zohara left Israel for NY, only to return at Saida’s death. Yoni is Zohara’s nephew, lost after the sudden death of his grandmother, and unsure what direction to take. Yaqub was Saida’s true love but their fate was not to be realized for many years. The tradition of songs by the Yemeni women was their way to express themselves in a patriarchal society. I never knew about the Yemenite, Mizrachi and Balkan Children’s Affair, and was shocked to learn about it. I highly recommend this excellent book. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Ayelet Tsabari's Songs for the Brokenhearted begins with Zohara, a grad student in 1995 New York who is suddenly called back to Israel when her widowed mother , Saida, dies. As Zohara cleans out her mother's house, she encounters items that reveal to her a part of her mother's life that had been hidden from her. There are cassettes of her mother's singing, yet she never knew her mother sang. There are puzzling papers, and documents that hint of a hidden life. As Zohara tries to find out who her mother really was, she also reconnects with the community and extended family that she left behind,
The reader is treated to two absorbing intertwining narratives: that of Zohara in 1995, during the time of the Oslo Accords and Rabin's assassination, and that of Saida, as a vulnerable Yemeni girl who has been married off to an older man who loves someone else, about her own forbidden love in the refugee camp, and the shocking kidnap of her first child.

Tsabari crafts an immersive and eye-opening novel with characters and settings that are rarely explored in fiction.

This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time! It is beautifully and sympathetically written about family and traditions and love. This is a book to get immersed in. It was also quite an education about my own history and family. The story takes place primarily in Israel and New York, in timelines from the 1950s and 1990s. Highly recommended!

This review is really difficult for me to write. I was SO excited for this book. It is on such a fascinating topic, especially given the climate around Israel and Jews today. But, I was just kind of bored and not invested in the characters or the story at all. Maybe because it is a topic that touched so close to my heart that I struggled with it. Or maybe I just overhyped it up in my head - and my expectations were completely unreasonable. All that being said, I did find that the historical aspects of this book were well done and they were fascinating. The story just did not do it for me and I did not like the characters. Dual timelines - a forbidden love story between two Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel for a better life in 1950. And 1995 - the daughter of one of these Jews who lives in New York City and has rejected many of the strict religious lifestyles that she was raised with. When she returns to Israel after her mother's death, she uncovers secrets that make her question everything she once believed. If it sounds interesting to you though, give it a try. And share your opinions... I am rarely the unpopular opinion so enjoy hearing other perspectives.

Thank you Netgalley for my advanced reader copy.

Songs for the brokenhearted tells the story of a mother in 1950 and her daughter in 1995. The daughter uncovers secrets of her mother’s life and has to grapple with the reality of the life she thought she knew so well. The stories unfolds against the background of Israel and explores the concept of identity, family, religion, ethnicity, race, love, etc. the backdrop and setting of Israel and the Jewish people coming into Israel was fascinating and timely. A character-driven historical story that will please many readers of historical fiction and family stories.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Songs for the brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari

PROs: Informative about history, politics, cultures and religions. Well written. Great job depicting what it was like living in Israel and Yemen. Character AND plot driven.

CONs: it was a bit slow for me; second half of the book was a quicker pace. Longer than it should have been.

The story is told in two timelines and multiple POVs. The main characters were unlikable at times but I find that it makes the story more relatable.

Thank you NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beautifully written, well researched historical fiction, told in dual timelines. In 1995, Zohara is living in New York, and learns of the sudden death of her mother, Saida. She travels back to Israel, reconnects with family and friends, and slowly starts to uncover the history of her mother as a young woman. She knew her mother had been in an immigrant camp as a young wife in 1950, with her husband and young son. She did not realize that while there, she met young Yaqub at the riverbed, who was entranced by both her beauty and her lovely singing voice. They fell in love, but Saida was a married woman, and their love could never be. Through her fictional characters, Ayelet Tsabari has brought the history of the immigrant camps in Israel of the 1950's, including the frequent disappearance of young children, as well as the turbulent events and protests that occurred in 1995. vividly to life. There is much of the history of both times that I never realized. This book is so much more, though, than just the history. It is a story of courage, the resilience of women, and how they utilized singing together to keep their unwritten stories alive. I thoroughly enjoyed the book! Thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy. The opinions of this revew are my own.

Songs of the Brokenhearted
This novel was so much for me, a learning experience, a beautiful tender love story, coming of age, family relations, just to name few.
The story is about Yemeni Jews who have arrived in Israel in 1949-1950 and their descendants. I learned a lot, because I didn’t know anything about Yemeni Jews, how they were put in camps instead of what they expected from the desired Holy Land. They were discriminated against by the Eastern European Ashkenazy Jews , who treated them as lower class citizens. Many couldn’t read and write, and the women sang of their life’s and their love.Saide and Yaqub meet at a water fountain near their refugee camp as young adults and fall into forbidden love. Saide is married and has a baby, Rafael. Rafael’s disappearance Is a heartbreaking story, especially finding out that it was not an isolated incident. Many Yemeni Jewish babies “ disappeared “ and were given to Ashkenazi Jewish parents to adopt them. The story goes back and forth between the early days of Saide’s and Jaqub’s meeting and later in the early 1990’s after Saide’s death, when her estranged daughter Zohara returns from America for her mother’s funeral and finds out secrets about her mother’s life she never knew. I also learned that the famous Oslo accords for peace was not favored by everyone in Israel. The writing is beautiful, for me definitely a 5 star debut novel.
Thanks NetGalley, the publisher and author for the advanced copy. Opinions are my own only.

In Songs for the Brokenhearted, Tsabari explores the fragile and often fractured sense of identity that accompanies displacement. The characters are typically immigrants or second-generation children of immigrants, grappling with what it means to belong, to fit into the cultural fabric of both their adopted homes and their ancestral roots. Whether set in the busy streets of Tel Aviv or in foreign landscapes, Tsabari's stories evoke the deep sense of estrangement that can come from navigating the push and pull of different worlds.

Tsabari’s characters are intensely human—flawed, vulnerable, and aching with desires for connection and resolution. Their internal worlds are carefully crafted, with each story offering a glimpse into their struggles and small victories. In many stories, there is a palpable sense of loss—whether it’s the loss of home, love, or a sense of self. Tsabari doesn’t offer easy answers or tidy conclusions, which makes the emotional experience of reading the collection all the more impactful. These characters, like many of us, are left grappling with unresolved emotions and fractured relationships.

Her writing style is intimate and poetic, yet grounded in the everyday realities of her characters’ lives. Her descriptions of places—whether bustling urban landscapes or quiet, introspective moments—are evocative, giving readers a sensory experience that feels both familiar and distant. This blend of intimacy and distance is one of the central tensions in her work, reflecting the characters’ own journeys through the spaces between cultures and identities.

One of the most striking aspects of Songs for the Brokenhearted is how it bridges the gap between the personal and the political. Tsabari doesn’t shy away from addressing the complexities of cultural and national identities. Through her story, readers gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of being an immigrant in Israel, with its layered histories and social tensions, and the challenges of assimilation or retention of cultural heritage.
Ayelet Tsabari’s talent for capturing the intricacies of human relationships, alongside the broader context of cultural and historical dislocation, makes this collection a powerful exploration of what it means to seek home—in the world and within oneself. Her ability to blend lyrical prose with vivid realism ensures that these stories linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦.”

Happy publicationweek to this stunning novel! I have had Tsabari’s memoir, The Art of Leaving, sitting on my shelf for far too long and now, thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for this advanced reader copy of her debut novel, I am bumping it up as a priority on my tbr.

Zohara grew up in the shadow of her brother’s disappearance and her father’s passing before being sent to a prestigious boarding school at 14, where she began to reject her heritage, including her mother and their complicated relationship. Now coming back to her homeland to bury her mother, Zohara, thirty-one and weary and seemingly aimless, begins to see her history in a new light and gain new perspective on her life as she finds a greater sense of her place in the world.

We mostly get Zohara’s present day POV but are also provided a few POVs from her nephew in the present and her father in the past. In a lot of ways I sympathized with Zohara and really loved this story. Though I have yet to visit Israel, between the vivid writing and the stories from a college friend who grew up there and my mom who visited several years ago, I felt like I was there; that I could see it, feel the warmth, hear and taste the sights.

I didn’t know about the immigrant camps for non-native born Jews when Israel became a legitimized nation and that there were many infants that vanished during those early years; infants claimed by the camps and hospitals to have died but nothing verifying such claims. I can’t imagine that heartbreak. This story dives into not just the hidden history of the small yet resilient nation of Israel and its inhabitants but also the complexity of family relationships. The title itself is perfect for this novel and while I loved it, it does address heavy topics. Warnings include death of parents (medical illnesses), vanishing children, mentions of the Holocaust and antisemitism, minor drug use and profanity, and some infidelity. Still, I highly suggest you pick it up! 4.5 rounded to 5

This is a lovely novel about Zohara and her family beginning in 1950 and vacillating between then and 1995. It takes place in both Yemen and Israel as we witness how the family changes as they are forced into an immigrant camp and how nephew Yoni eventually writes an essay explaining their misfortunes...and their joys. It's both spiritual and lyrical as these stories will live on in time! I knew very little about this situation and am grateful to have read about their heartbreaks but also the belief systems that kept them faithful through it all!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Super interesting story about refugees to Israel from Yemen in the early development of Israel juxtaposed with Israel during the 90’s. Beautifully written, somewhat atmospheric. There is love and loss and a lot of personal growth. While I have been to Israel, I was not familiar with the towns in the story. That didn’t matter, the story was still compelling. It is important that we understand the culture and history better especially when the media reports are skewed. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This is such a wonderful novel, the first I’ve read by Ayelet Tsabari; I will definitely be seeking out her earlier work. The story takes place in Israel in 1995 as well as a storyline taking place in 1950. Zohara, while in Thailand, gets a call that her mother died suddenly. She immediately returns home and starts to learn that her seemingly simple mother was more complex and unknown to her than she ever imagined.

I really enjoyed Zohara’s journey of discovery as well as her nephew’s. The author seamlessly integrated all of the characters and storylines, delivering an impactful and engaging novel, set against a backdrop of the complicated history of Israel. For me, the best books are ones where I am learning about other cultures while also enjoying the narrative. I am excited to read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and Random House for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.