This is a marvelous novel, filled with music, stories, and a deep-dive into several little-known aspects of if Israeli history.

It's 1950. Yemenite Jews have joyfully accepted the opportunity to come to Israel. A highly traditional people with clothing and practices that would seem at home in the 15th century, they are shocked to be dumped in a refugee camp with shoddy tents, meager food and skimpy (to them) donated clothes. Their children spend most of their time in communal childcare. The Israelis seem too secular, too western. It is a bitter disappointment.

Yacub hears something beautiful for the first time since leaving Yemen--a young woman singing a Yemeni song. He wants to respect her modesty, but he cannot resist returning to hear this beautiful song.

In 1995, Zohara returns to Tel Aviv following the death of her mother Saida. Zohara is at a rough spot in her life and has a grating personality that, well, grates on her Israeli family. She takes on clearing her grandmother's house and finds a box of cassette recordings of a woman singing Yemeni songs., some traditional, some she has never heard. She doesn't remember ever hearing her mother singing, so who could this be?

Put some of the great Yemeni singers on your Spotify and prepare to be astonished. This full-throated singing has been women's art for centuries, with songs passed down orally since most Yemeni women were illiterate. Women created their own songs to express the things they could never have in a rigid society where girls were often married as children.

Life in Zohara's Israel is as fraught as life in Saida's. Many Israelis are outraged at Yitzhak Rabin for signing the Oslo accords while others see it as a chance for peace. Where will the Yemenis fall, with their sense of otherness?

"Songs for the Brokenhearted" is a glorious reading experience. Don't miss it. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is so lovely in so many ways. The richness of the culture, both Israeli and Yemeni, that this story draws, the depth of the emotion, simultaneously heartbreaking and hope-filled, and keep observation of human nature and interpersonal relationships. I also love the theme of discovering facets of our family and friends that we didn’t know existed mainly because the ones closest to us don’t always show us their whole selves. This is a beautiful book that humanizes Israel and Israelis at a time when that is sorely needed. Bravo!

This is a beautiful book about a number of topics, some I feel unqualified to write about, but I may touch on them briefly. Largely this book is about grief in its many forms. Its about oppression and how there are many little ways to break through that oppression.

Zohara is what I would call, our guide. She's our guide through a very difficult time in Israel and our guide through grief. Its not only the grief of losing her mother, but of rediscovering herself. That is a grief because in many ways Zohara is reconnecting to her roots through what she learns about her mother's past. She learns so much about her mother, in a very short period of time, that she is forced to change her outlook on so much.

Tsabari wades into cultural identity, into the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, into the culture of the Jews that came from far and wide to settle in Israel only to find their way of life looked down upon and their very selves lessered. There is a lot being said about how women (in so many cultures but we're focused on the Yemeni culture here) are kept down and how that affects them. The women in Yemeni culture sing the women's songs, relegated to a lesser form of artistry simply because they are sung and written by women, in order to release some of their pain and anger and passion into the world. I think its beautiful they are called Poetesses.

So, too, does Tsabari touch upon a sort of assimilation, forced or otherwise. Zohara comes to grips with what damage her education away from home did to her sense of self, to her sense of community with the Yemeni, to the way she even looked at her own mother. This feels not dissimilar to what Americans did with the Indigenous in our country. Because of her desire to be like the "right" Jews, Zohara sacrificed parts of herself, including her relationship with her mother.

Tsabari also touches on religious extremism and, i think in a sense, indoctrination. Through his grief, Zohara's nephew Yoni is ripe for the picking for those who would shape that grief into a weapon. Its difficult to talk about with any level of authority for me because I am not qualified or equipped to wade into a centuries old conflict. But I do feel it was handled with extreme care. Its plain to see how big of a conflict this is, and with the books set in the early '90s there is a real sense of hope warring along side the anti-peace factions (calling it anti-peace is distilling it down to a very basic level and isn't anywhere near what was happening).

A beautiful story about a perspective I do not know much about. Such an interesting culture and I loved the time period chosen.

Israel – to ancient Jews, it was “the land of milk and honey.” To millions since 1948, it has been the State of Israel. The country and the region have been in the throes of conflict in which the loss of life, limb and property has been horrific. It is in this land that Ayelet Tsabari has set her historical fiction novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted.

There are two threads to this story. One is set in 1995. Zohara is a Jewish Yemeni woman who is estranged from her husband and has been pursuing a post-graduate degree in New York. Now she returns to Israel for her mother’s funeral, to clean her house, and to be close to her family. Her homecoming opens the door to all sorts of unexpected experiences, emotions, and revelations.

The other thread is set decades earlier. It is 1950. A young woman named Saida is in a camp, Rosh Ha'Ayin immigrant camp, when she meets a young man named Yaqub. The two meet privately for talks. Yaqub writes stories and reads them to Saida. There is an obvious attraction between them, but Saida is married. Despite their attraction and feelings for each other, the two cannot be together. Later, we learn that the unthinkable happens to Saida, her husband, and their infant son. (view spoiler)

As someone who’s lived for much of this history but remembers only bits and pieces of it, I found the political tidbits compelling, particularly since the region continues to be a continuous state of war today. However, the personal struggles are even more captivating because of the social, religious customs, and the differences between generations. There is also the fact that Zohara has been studying in the U.S.; now she’s returned home to a family whom she has missed but hasn’t really felt close to. She’s becoming involved, enmeshed even, in the lives of others. For Zohara, at times, it feels like a hot mess! I love her family and friends, particularly teenage nephew, Yoni and friend, Nir Ozeri.

Initially, I was uncertain about picking this book to read, but I’m glad I read it. It’s a different culture and a tumultuous time. There are so very many brokenhearted in this book. And there are songs that speak to them, maybe to one at a time, or maybe to all.

I received a digital copy of Songs for the Brokenhearted in exchange for my honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley, Harper Collins, and Ayelet Tsabari

4 stars

I’m very grateful to Random House for making an ARC copy of this fine book available through NetGalley.

The book tells us, from several points of view, about a family of Jews who emigrate from Yemen to Israel in 1950, and follows three generations of one family through 1995. On their arrival they look to Israel as “the promised land” but find themselves relegated to tents in a crowded, poorly resourced refugee camp. Even after obtaining housing, they are treated as second-class citizens by the Israelis of European origin (Ashkenazi Jews). The main character, Zohara, is pushed to assimilate after winning a scholarship to a prestigious high school dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, and eventually goes to New York for graduate school. She returns to Israel when her mother dies suddenly, and her immediate and deep re-exposure to her family and old friends brings to the fore her conflicts about who she is and where she belongs. As Zohara cleans out her mother’s house she learns, slowly, about her mother’s rich and complex past, including this illiterate woman’s creation of poetry through song, a Yemeni tradition.

Added to the mix are Israelis' conflicts about the peace process and Palestinians, leading to the murder of Prime Minster Rabin.

The characters are fully developed; I found myself understanding/empathizing with almost all of them. This is a rich and very touching historical novel.

Note: I did benefit greatly by reading the Kindle version of the book. There were a number of words, terms and references that I was unfamiliar with, and it was very helpful to be able to look them up instantly.

Who are our parents? Growing up, we see them a certain way. Do we ask questions as we get older? Are those the ones that will help us later on? Are we even interested in knowing the people they are and how they became that way? Only after we are older and they are gone do we think of those questions. But is there anyone left who knew them when they were young and who can give us the answers we seek?

"Songs For the Brokenhearted", is about these very issues. Zohara, our protagonist,returns to Israel upon the death of her mother, after years of living in America. Fortunately, for her, there are people who can give her the answers she seeks. But does she really want to know? This novel is well written and deals with a universal topic. That it addresses the Yemeni immigrants in Israel who faced similar issues that immigrants to the US had to face, makes it all the more interesting. They were always thought of as other, a blight, an embarrassment, even though they were Jews who moved to the holy land at the invitation of the Israeli govt. This is a compelling story and I do recommend it.

There are two story lines here…
Yaqub and Saida meet in 1950 at a water fountain in an immigrant camp in Israel after coming over from Yemen.
Yaqub fell in love as soon as he saw her… and more so when he heard her singing ..sitting along the waters edge. Heartbreaking Yemeni songs. Saida ended up in love with him too.
Well.. they could not be together as Saida was already married and had a baby boy.
The other story is about Saida’s granddaughter Zohara in 1995..who is in college in New York.. comes home to Israel after her mother Saida dies and learns much more about all her family history.
I LOVED this story!
Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC!

This is a complex story of a mother and her daughter and really highlights the Jewish Yemeni culture and the differences between these two generations. The story skips around so that the reader needs to pay attention. I often found myself putting this book down to go research a name, event, or place. This added to the richness of the book for me. It's an unforgettable story and done so well that it leaves you feeling as if you're still right there in Israel. I love that it was both a great story and that it brought to the forefront some of the issues of the Sephardi Jews.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this novel. It's a ten star read for me!

4.5
An unexpected look at loss and belonging, family, identity, home, and history. The characters in this novel were so well developed and real.
Zohara returns ' home' to Israel after the loss of her mother and has to grapple with the question -- can you ever really go home? All complicated by changing dynamics in the rest of her family and in the landscape of the nation, as well as her identity as a Yemeni Israelite. The story is overlaid with the back story of her mother's emigration and growth in the 1950s along with Zohara's discovery of some her mother's written and recorded songs as part of the Yemeni women's songs. Just...really well done.

There’s much to learn from stories that are passed down from generation to generation. This book takes us from NYC to Israel in the 1990s where one girl returns to discover secrets from her mother’s past.

Zohara was working on her PhD in NYC when she got the call to come back home to a town close to Tel Aviv as her mother had just died. It’s a familiar plot where the daughter finds out all kinds of new information. But this one is different with the Jewish traditions that are followed during shiva. Zohara discovers all kinds of unknowns about her mother, sister, nephew, and boyfriend from years ago. There was a reason she left: to search for the person she wanted to become. And yet, it felt good to be back home with those she loved.

The author takes the readers to a time when her mother, Saida, and husband came from North Yemen with thousands of others from the Middle East to Israel and settled in temporary refugee camps. The Law of Return had just passed and granted those of Jewish ancestry the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship in the 1950s. However, they weren’t fully prepared for all the people. They were hungry, living in tents and trying to survive in the bitter cold.

Since I’m not as familiar with the Jewish culture, it was somewhat of a learning curve where I had to look up words to understand the meaning. Parts were slow and yet the author’s stories were well written and engaging. No doubt, she did a lot of research. I was fascinated of how the Jewish women, years ago, followed strong traditions with their young marriages, singing songs, keeping their husbands happy and so much more.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of September 10, 2024.

"Songs for the Brokenhearted" by Ayelet Tsabari alternates between two time periods; Saida and other Yemini Jewish woman, who immigrated to the newly founded Israel and Saida’s daughter, Zohara, who has returned to Israel from New York City following her mother's death in 1995. The book discusses the differences in values and cultures between parents and children, whether you can ever go home, how Israel was formed, what groups immigrated there as well as the discrimination of Arab Jews by Ashkenazi European Jews, and the controversy over the Oslo Peace Accords which led to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. I learned a lot about patriarchal ways of the Yemini Jews and the challenges they had assimilating into the Israeli culture and the tradition of the Yemeni female singers. Most surprising to me was the unresolved topic of the Yemini children who disappeared or were stolen from the Yemini refugee camps. While I learned a lot about this time period,

I didn’t love the writing and thought portions were a bit uneven. However, I found the history very interesting and liked the characters.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and Random House in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 10, 2024.

Two timelines [which I quite like!].

Saida, 1950, a married Yemeni Jew living in an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha'ayin, meets Yaqub. He hears her singing, They fall in forbidden love; they go their own ways.

Zohara, thirty-something, 1995, returns from New York City where she is a graduate student, upon her mother's [Saida's] death. She has been estranged from both her mother and sister Lizzie, as well as her past life in Israel. Married although separated from her American husband, she feels lost between two worlds especially as she discovers her mother's past and tries to make a connection with who she was and who she is.

This is about heartbreak and broken people. And how Yemeni Jews feel betwixt and between.

Just a few of the bases covered: Love and friendship and lost opportunities. Discovery. The Mizrahi [Yemeni] Jews vs the Ashkenazi. The community of Yemeni women who are known to sing and write songs as part of their tradition and to record history [they didn't have a voice so they used song]. The treatment of women. Prejudice against those with dark skin. Promises with what would be in Israel and realities. Palestinians. Lots of backstory on both Zohara and Saida. And Yoni, Zohara's rebellious teenaged nephew caught in the maelstrom of Israeli politics, bereft at the death of his beloved grandmother. The disapearance of young children from the camps--very belatedly investigated and to what end? The Oslo Accords and the political conflict in Israel culminating in the death of Rabin.

Some of the descriptions were fabulous:
"friends whom I hadn't seen in years; all had aged into cliches"
"Inside her closet, my mother's dresses hung like ghostly figures."
A description of flight attendants: "Who in their right mind would walk in such shoes? With pointed heels, like small, upside-down pyramids."
And for once humor--when Saida took a plane for the first time and saw her image in the mirror--having never seen one before!

Grudge: so many foreign words that did not show up on the Kindle search; a glossary would have been wonderful!

Tsabari is a Yemeni Jew. She researched extensively for this book though some of it is a memoir.

Beautiful but dense [and sometimes I felt a bit repetitive].

No [real] spoiler; I didn't care for the ending, Still, a recommended read. 4.25.

A woman returns to Israel to grieve the death of her mother with whom she had a fraught relationship and comes to embrace her heritage as a Yemeni Jew which she vehemently rejected when she was younger.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari is a mixed first and third person multi-POV dual-timeline story across generations of three Yemini Jewish people connected to one woman. In 1947, Yaqub moves to a camp in the newly forming Israel, he notices Saida, a young married Yemini woman who sees him, too. Fifty years later, Saida’s daughter, Zohara, returns to Israel for the funeral and Zohara’s nephew, Yoni, is struggling to deal with his grandmother’s death.

I’m really glad that I gave this book a shot because I learned a lot. I had never heard of the Yemenite, Mizrahi, and Balkan Children Affair, the assimilation of Arab Jewish people in Israel’s history to create a homogenous society and the colorism that carried over from Euro-centric beauty standards, the Jewish refugees who moved to the Philippines during the Holocaust, or the history of anonymous Yemini poetesses and how their songs were changed but lived on in rhythms and unique lines to create a collaborate tradition of oral storytelling. I was very pleased to see Ofra Haza mentioned several times, as she was an iconic part of my own childhood and the childhood of many of my friends for her role as Yocheved in The Prince of Egypt.

A major theme of Songs for the Brokenhearted is critique of the Israeli government. Not only for the Children Affair, but for continued assimilation, stereotyping of Palestinian people, and the radicalization of the youth and the draft. Zohara makes direct reference to how some of the books she read as a kid had harmful ideas of Palestinians and makes a friend who is half-Palestinian and half-Jewish who starts tearing down the boxes many of us subconsciously have that separate Jewish people and Southwest Asians and North Africans when many Jewish people are also Southwest Asian and North African. In his grief, Yoni gets deeper and deeper into radicalization and is angry at the Oslo Accords as well as the Israeli government’s refusal to do anything about the missing children.

Zohara goes on a journey of learning more about her mother and a culture she felt cut-off from. Her parents didn’t pass on parts of their culture and even kept several secrets because they believed their daughters wouldn’t understand. As a teen, Zohara was sent to a private school that she later realized might have been designed to assimilate her further. This alone made the title feel so apt because it is heartbreaking to read an adult slowly start to realize everything that she has lost only after both of her parents are dead.

I would recommend this to fans of literature critical of governments and societal systems, readers looking for a Yemini Jewish POV, and those looking for a book being candid about assimilation.

The death of a mother is always complicated, especially when you lived far apart, both in location and in attitudes. This beautifully written book is about 35 year old year old Zohara, a Yemeni Israeli woman who has come home to Israel from New York City for her mother's funeral. Zohara has had some difficult years and recently divorced her husband and has become unable to finish her PHD in literature. The author uses all of the senses in this story as we can almost feel the hot winds and the sand beneath our feet, smell the colorful flowers and citrus trees outside Zohara's childhood home, taste the warm and spicy Yemini soup and hear the sad, poetic songs her mother recorded when she sang. Zohara's story alternates with the story of her mother Saida when she was young married woman with a small boy and trying to survive in a immigrant camp in 1950. the third story is about a young man named Yoni, who was quite close to his grandmother Saida even when her two daughters were not.

Zohara arrives initially dismissive of everything; her illiterate mother that sent her away to school at age 14 and seemed forever upset about her young son who died while they were in the camp, and her sister Lizzie who she never had much in common with and who raises children instead of seeking the intellectual life that Zohara prefers. Zohara's journey home brings with it finding answers to many questions about her mother and the reasons her mother acted as she did. Along the way, Zohara also discovers the beautiful songs her mother composed and sang and learned that her mother's early life was filled with heartbreak.

There is a fair amount of politics in this story and I found it interesting to learn about the history of the Yemeni people and their struggles to protect their identities in a place that was never really home. The love story of young Saida and Yaqub, a young man who met Saida as she was singing by a rock; was both sweet and sorrowful. As Zohara reconnects with old friends and family, she begins to understand her life is not so different from her mother's after all. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC to review.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an advance reader copy of this book.

This beautifully conceived and crafted novel brings to life a lesser known immigrant experience: that of the Yemeni Jews who arrived in Israel in 1949 and 1950. They were seen as “other” by the dominantly Ashkenazi (European) culture, and with blatant racism their traditions were suppressed, including educating children to reject their family and religious practices. Only in the last decade have some of the Mizrahi customs been revived publicly, though discrepancies in education, income, and social status remain.
The action takes place during the summer of 1995, as the Oslo peace talks between Yitzhak Rabin’s government and the Palestine Liberation Organization are moving forward and being ratified, and Israelis are torn between the desire for peace and resentment at having land given away in the process.

At the heart of the story are the tape-recorded songs that Zohara discovers when she returns to Israel at her mother’s death. Through them Zohara learns about the songs composed and sung by Yemeni women. While the men sang in synagogue, the women had an oral tradition that reflected the private experiences and emotions of women at home and in life, not written down and rarely recorded. Zohara’s mother was unusually gifted in these.

This is a novel of missing fathers and sons, and misunderstood mothers and daughters. It brings together three storylines: There is young immigrant Yaqub in the 1950’s. Then In 1995, the focus is on 31-year-old highly educated Zohara, who is at the center of the plot and the narrator in her sections. Finally, there is Yoni, Zohara’s 17-year-old nephew, who is dealing with grief and confusion about his life and his country. All converge around the death of Saida, Yaqub’s first love, who is Zohara’s estranged mother, and Yoni’s beloved grandmother. These imagined lives are richly drawn in both their emotions and actions.

Through these characters, Tsabari has opened up a world with her depiction of the Jewish Yemenite experience in Israel, both its tragedies and its beauties. And it has a wider appeal and resonance in the literature of immigration and “otherness.”

I highly recommend it to all.

Zohara wasn’t like the other Israeli Jews. Her parents left Yemen for Israel in 1950; upon arrival in Israel they were put in camps, considered backwards and other. Their skin was darker, their faith and ways conservative.

Her father died when she was at school, and her relationship with her mother and sister strained.

Zohara was living in New York City, working on her dissertation, when her mother passed. Returning to Israel became a transformative journey into her family’s tragic past. Learning about her mother’s private life alters Zohara’s understanding of her legacy and impacts her personal trajectory.

I learned so much about the Yemeni and about Israeli history, the background to one of the most touching love stories I have read in a long time. I loved learning about the Yemeni women’s tradition of singing and songwriting and the role it played in their communal and private lives. The novel is full of wonderfully drawn, complex characters caught in the tides of history.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Zohara is a young Yemeni Jewish PhD candidate who returns to Israel when her mother passes away. Employing dual timelines to tell the story of Saida, Zohara’s mother, and Yucab, who her mother met in an immigration camp, in the late 1940s, and Zohara’s experiences growing up in an Israel who judged the Yemeni harshly. Tsabari’s novels encompasses broad swaths of history and culture, much of which I was not familiar. And in this work the author gives honor to the singing Yemeni women who often had no way to express themselves except through this tradition of song.
Very informative and an engaging story of love and cultural clashes overcome by the strength, perseverance, and courage of the Yemeni women.
Recommended for those interested in learning more of this culture.

Ayelet Tsabari packs a lot of Jewish history and Yemeni tradition in "Songs for the Brokenhearted," a story about a young woman who finds love in Israel's early days and her daughter, who discovers that her people and her home matter more than she realized.

I received an advance copy of the book, thanks to Netgalley. I was unfamiliar with the author and, admittedly, fairly ignorant about Israel and the migration Jews made there, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Yemeni Jews??? I didn't have a clue.

I found myself repeatedly Googling words, Israel's history of peace talks with the Palestinians, Yemen's Jewish history and the name of a female Yemeni singer who apparently was really popular back in the day. I also knew nothing about the Yemeni children who disappeared from the refugee camps in Israel's early days.

"Songs for the Brokenhearted" follows two timelines: Saida, who has immigrated to the newly founded Israel from Yemen; and her daughter, Zohara, who has returned to Israel following her mother's death in 1995.

Their stories, alone, made for an interesting and well-written tale. How timely is the book's narrative about the peace talks and the deadly turn "peace" takes?