Celebrating heritage and community: Ayelet Tsabari in conversation with Federation
“When we write our stories well, other people find resonance.”
With Zehorit Heilicher’s cooking class on Yemenite cuisine, Spice & Fragrance, on January 23rd, you’ll get a fragrant and delicious bit of insight into one aspect of Yemenite culture. With the second event of Federation’s Yemenite Double Feature, you’ll be able to dive in even deeper. Yemenite-Israeli author Ayelet Tsabari will be at Bet Shalom on February 20, 2020 to talk about her memoir, The Art of Leaving. This memoir in essays doesn’t pull any punches. From the death of her beloved father, to her time in the Israel Defense Forces, to her struggle to find her sense of self as a young woman, Ayelet is candid, witty, and thought-provoking.
“I actually gave the book to my oldest daughter, and I said to her, ‘If you really want to get a glimpse into my life and how I feel and think, read this book,’” said Zehorit, who will be moderating the conversation with Ayelet. “So much of it resonated for her because of visiting Israel so often and spending time with my parents. Some of the memories that Ayelet mentions in her book are also my daughter’s memories—of food, and flavors, and colors and sound and music. The underlying thread is the commonality of the human experience, of an immigrant, of a person who loses a parent, of dealing with grief, of defining home, all of that.”
For a sneak peek at the conversation between Ayelet and Zehorit, take a look at our interview with Ayelet, where we cover everything from writing in another language to doing the work to discover who you really are.
Q: From reading The Art of Leaving, it becomes so apparent that your teenaged self was adamant about who you weren’t—you weren’t a soldier, you weren’t a Freha girl. Do you think knowing what we aren’t helps us discover what we really are?
Ayelet: I tend to think that’s not a very good way to define ourselves. It was youth, the rebellion of youth, and not wanting to fit into pre-packaged identities. It’s also wanting to be different. I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I was a late bloomer, but it was through actively trying to find who I am that I did.
Q: Can you talk about the process of writing The Art of Leaving? Was writing it cathartic or illuminating in any way?
A: I wouldn’t say it was cathartic at the time, no. I started writing it about 12 years ago, and I started it in fragments, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. It wasn’t necessarily a book, I was writing a piece, and then another piece, and then another piece. A lot of the work that was done to shape it into a book was done in the revision part, where I put it together—like a patchwork. I had all these pieces and was like, “Hmm, looks like there’s a narrative here.” I don’t write as therapy. That’s not what I have in mind. Writing to me is about making something beautiful and creating art. Surprisingly, though, it was really illuminating. I was reaching a lot of realizations about my life. In retrospect, when I finished writing the book, I found that there was a lightness.
Q: I heard this idea somewhere that if you’re someone who speaks multiple languages, it’s not only difficult to express one thought in the same way in each language, but that we’re actually different people entirely in different languages. If you’d written your memoir in Hebrew and not English, would it have come out differently?
A: Oh, no doubt. It would have been different in every way. I have no doubt that I am a different writer in English. I always thought of poetry as the last frontier, but recently I wrote some poems, and they showed up to me in English. I love the challenge of it, of writing in English.
Q: I spoke with Zehorit earlier on, who is moderating your event in February, and she was saying how much resonance she and her daughter felt with your book, as folks of Yemenite-Israeli descent. Was that a happy accident, or did you go into the writing process with the thought of reaching other Yemenite-Israelis?
A: I believe that when we write our stories well, other people find resonance. Literature is about the human experience, and we read seeking that resonance and wanting to connect. That said, I definitely had my community in mind. I wrote it with an eye to celebrating my heritage, and celebrating community and wanting others like me to see themselves represented.
Ayelet will be speaking at Bet Shalom on February 20. Register now!