JRC Book Group: Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari
Join the engaging conversation with your JRC community. JRC’s Book Group meets on the second Sunday of every month. This month’s book is Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari and will meet by Zoom.
About the book:
A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter in the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.
1950 Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.
1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing her skin were lighter, her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.
Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.
Read more: https://www.ayelettsabari.com/books/songs-for-the-brokenhearted-a-novel/
Upcoming Books
1/10/2027 | Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story By Angela Buhdahl
Zoom
From the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi, a stirring account of one woman’s journey from feeling like an outsider to becoming one of the most admired religious leaders in the world
Angela Buchdahl was born in Korea and grew up in Tacoma, Washington, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Profoundly spiritual from a young age, Angela Buchdahl felt a connection to God when only a child and felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi at age sixteen. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish and entitled to lead a congregation—she stayed the course, which took her first to Yale, then to rabbinical school, cantorial school, and finally to the pulpit of one of the largest, most influential congregations in the world.
Today, Angela Buchdahl is revered by Jews and non-Jews alike for her invigorating, joyful approach to worship, and her belief in the power of faith, gratitude, and responsibility for each other, regardless of religion. She does not shy away from challenging topics, be it racism within the Jewish community to sexism she confronted when she aspired to the top job. Buchdahl has also been a sought-after leader and voice through some of the most challenging moments in recent history, from the murder of George Floyd to the hostage standoff in Colleyville, Texas to the horrors of October 7th. Buchdahl’s consistent message is that it is up to us to strive for a world of more humanity, especially in today’s challenging times.
Angela Buchdahl has gone from outsider to officiant, from feeling estranged to feeling embraced—and she’s emerged with a deep feeling of being bound to a larger whole and mission. Here, she has written a book that is both a memoir and a spiritual guide for everyday living, which is exactly what so many of us crave right now.
2/14/2027 | More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen
Zoom
No one knows you like your book club.
High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.
But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.
Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.