The Art of Leaving, by prize- winning Israeli author Ayelet Tsabari could well have been titled The Art of Grieving, The Art of Longing, The Art of Rebelling and The Art of Loving, all themes within Tsabari’s evocative memoir.
Organized around episodic moments in the author’s life, the memoir is a kaleidoscopic array of experiences of a Mizrachi woman’s search to reconnect to her fractured emotional core. Written with candor, authenticity, and unflinching sincerity, Tsabari is angry at Israel, her “screwed up country” feeling like an interloper, “mostly erased” in a predominantly Ashkenazi Israel.
Growing up in Petah Tikvah, nine-year-old Tsabari loved to write and share her stories with her father. Unmoored by her father’s untimely death in 1982, Tsabari struggled to repel the pull of her country. She refused to fit into the mould of the Ashkenazi legacy that was as different from her own as was the dark color of her skin. Tsabari eschewed the oft-taken path of a “mishtaknezet” the light-skinned Mizrachi girl who strives to pass into the mainstream culture as an Ashkenazi. After completing an obligatory stint in the IDF, Tsabari abandoned Israel refusing to don the pejorative mantle, “freha,” a stereotype of a Mizrachi female --- a shallow, promiscuous, floozy—a label made famous in lyrics by Mizrachi pop singer Ofra Haza whom Tsabari idealized.
Tsabari becomes a “hippie” surviving on menial jobs. She drifts into India’s “beach Zen” and party life in Thailand and Goa. Her memoir encapsulates the vulnerability and desperation that led to sordid encounters with predators, a fleeting marriage and “taflon” associations. Unfulfilled and psychologically fragmented Tsabari yearns to “belong” but sabotages every meaningful relationship. “Leaving is the only thing I knew how to do.” In free fall for many years, Tzabri did not awaken to her writing talents until she was well into her thirties upon meeting Sean, a sailor who worked on a tugboat and ironically introduced Tsabari, “to the rewards of stability”. Their “loopy love” along with her determination to succeed--- writing in English, a language foreign to her--- comprise Tsabari’s heartfelt, search to synthesize the shards of her life.
The most compelling chapters comprise her recollections of “cultural prejudice” she endured as a Mizrachi woman in an alien Ashkenazi-based culture. Now settled in Canada with frequent visits to Israel, Tsabari has learned “the art of staying.” She proudly teaches her daughter lessons in self-worth, exulting in her birthright and poignantly reconstitutes her splintered life in a place she calls home…for now.
