In Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses, Jennifer Lang vividly captures the trials and tribulations of returning to Israel–the country where she and her French husband met and married–a move driven by love, compromise, and the search for peace within her family. As Jennifer wrestles with the overwhelming disorder of an unfinished home and the emotional upheaval of emigration, she also reflects on the deeper meaning of belonging and the sacrifices made for the sake of shalom bayit, or peace in the home. Her story is a powerful testament to the resilience required to find balance amidst the chaos of life’s biggest transitions and to live in one of the most volatile regions of the world.

Jennifer Lang, an American-born writer and yoga teacher, has called Israel home since 2011, where her life and writing have been deeply influenced by the land’s rich history and spiritual energy. Her second book, Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses, masterfully weaves her experiences of life in Israel with her journey of self-discovery through yoga. I’m thrilled to join Jennifer on March 20, 2025 at Zibby’s Bookshop, where we’ll discuss our latest books, share stories of transformation, and explore the power of storytelling in navigating life’s challenges.

 

ABOUT Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses

American-born Jennifer traces her nonlinear journey—both on and off the yoga mat—reckoning with her adopted country (Israel), midlife hormones (merciless), cross-cultural marriage (to a Frenchman) and their imminent empty nest (a mixed blessing), eventually realizing the words her yoga teachers had been offering for the past twenty-three years: root down into the ground and stay true to yourself. Finally, she understands that home is about who you are, not where you live. Written in experimental chapterettes, Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses spans seven years (and then some), each punctuated with chakra wisdom from nationally-acclaimed Rodney Yee, her first teacher.

Excerpt from Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses

Balagan

Two months after the God Talk with the girls, the day after we land in Israel, we step inside our windswept-gray front door of our house in Raanana. I gasp. The late August heat suffocates me like a tight wool turtleneck. 

“Alors?” Mari asks.

What do I think of a place I’d seen once, eight months earlier, in the country for my nephew’s wedding, when a realtor and I stood in the foyer and my shoulders softened, saying: “You don’t know our story, but I don’t want to move here, yet can picture living within these walls.”

She had no clue that three years earlier, we’d spent what I dubbed The Year of Living Differently in this city, to stretch our children’s Weltanschauung beyond the red-white-and-blue flag. She had no idea that we’d arrived whole and left divided; Mari and Son aching to stay, Daughters and I eager to go. She had no inkling that I’d agreed to return for ten years—from the eldest entering the army to the youngest exiting the army.

Call it payback to my husband for living in my homeland for the 15 years.

Call it shalom bayit[i] or peace in the house.

Call it compromise…

“You really want to know?” I ask Mari.

My thoughts are vicious and biting like a rattlesnake.

The girls race from room to room, shouting to each other, their voices bouncing off the stone walls, reiterating what I already know: it’s a mess.

We’ve arrived in time for the Jewish New Year but long before the house is livable. Construction workers roam every room. Hefty tools litter the tiled floors. The kitchen countertop is MIA. New appliances stand forlorn in the barren space. Layers of grime cover every surface. Outlets malfunction. Paint splotches spot windows and walls.

He puppy-dog eyes me.

“Aze balagan[ii]!”

Mari and I speak a linguistic hodgepodge—French, English, Franglais, Hebrew, Hebrish—depending on mood.

“You might want to sleep on an air mattress, but the kids and I will stay elsewhere.”

I morph from upbeat into kvetch as I emigrate from New York to Israel.

Mari drops it. He neither confronts nor cajoles in his usual way. Living in America was never his fantasy, returning to Israel, never mine. My surrender came with conditions. At the top of my list: let me be.

ZIM

Days later, a mammoth truck carrying our red clay-colored container reverses into our driveway, its seven stars and three letters recognizable from afar. Six weeks earlier, it decamped from the Port of New York, heaving with our material possessions, leaving me to stare at our stripped century-old New York Tudor, the only one that ever felt like home in the 21 years of our mobile marriage, and sob.

Here, halfway around the world from my American-girl-reference point, the movers taunt us with ready-or-not-here-we-come. We’re far from ready. Inside is a wreck, but outside, the sun broils me.

Mari and I watch them unload. A boy vrooms on his skateboard. A high-hanging date tree provides insufficient shade. A couple emerges from the house next door. I await the ordinary onslaught of questions: Where are you from? Do you have kids? What do you do?

After trading names and professions, the salt-and-pepper-haired veterinarian with an unmistakable Israeli accent says they raised kids on Long Island.

“I can’t believe you came here when we dream of living there,”he says.

I cackle to cover my desire to cry.

Mari and I exchange a long-married-couple look: save me.

A mover asks where to put our dining room chairs. Mari directs the swarm of stocky men air-traffic-control style. I dash inside to indicate what goes where:

 

Our sofa, mattresses, desks, nightstands, and flat-screen TV are encased in bubble wrap like King Tut. Cardboard boxes of books and photo albums along with Container Store bins of Legos and American Girl dolls tower above us.

As movers schlep in and out, I recall my children’s favorite bedtime story, a Yiddish folk tale called It Could Always Be Worse. The tale of a man who lived with his mother, wife, and six children in a one-room hut. Miserable, he ran to the rabbi, who instructed him to take in the chickens then the goat and lastly the cow until the chaos became unbearable, and his rabbi then told him to free the animals one at a time at which point the family slept peacefully and the man relished the relative quiet.

While these burly men heave and ho, I think about the civil war raging in Syria—a mere 500 miles north—realizing how fortunate we are: immigrants by choice, completely intact.

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[i] The Jewish religious concept of domestic harmony and good relations between spouses

[ii] Originally a Persian word, balchan morphed into balagan as it migrated from Turkey to Russia to Lithuania to Palestine during the late 19th century

SAVE THE DATE: March 20, 2024

Join us at Zibby’s Bookshop for an evening with two remarkable Jewish authors, Jennifer Lang and Lisa Niver, as they explore the complexities of identity, family, and the challenges of building a life in a new land. Jennifer will delve into her latest book, Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses, sharing her experiences of moving from New York to Israel, and the struggles and surprises of navigating a new life. Lisa will discuss her memoir, Brave-ish, reflecting on her own journey of transformation and resilience. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from two powerful voices as they share their stories of balancing love, compromise, and the search for belonging.

About Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature

When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during Israel’s First Intifada, she understands their differences: she’s a secular tourist, he’s an observant immigrant. Determined to make it work, they spend the next 20 years rooting and uprooting their growing family, each in search of a place where they can feel home and whole. In Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family.

MORE ABOUT JENNIFER LANG:

From Jewish Women’s Archive: Q & A with Jennifer Lang, Author of “Places We Left Behind”

Canvas Rebel: Meet Jennifer Lang

Jennifer Lang on INK IN YOUR VEINS

1455 AUTHOR SERIES | Jennifer Lang discusses Home Family & Faith in her memoir PLACES WE LEFT BEHIND

92nd Street Y: An American Ex-Pat in Israel: Jennifer Lang in Conversation Rabbi David Ingber

https://www.youtube.com/live/H7isW32IXYw?si=QJSgaUzR0Yk1Z1ee

The Writers Center: Virtual Craft Chat with Memoirist Jennifer Lang

Israel Writers Studio: a home for English-language creative writers

Jennifer Lang with Blair Glaser at Zibby’s Bookshop

https://www.youtube.com/live/KF-TA3rBuNg?si=SZ7j7No0k4Mo5AEk

A Bay Area transplant in Tel Aviv, Jennifer Lang runs Israel Writers Studio. American by birth, Israeli by choice, and French by marriage, she is celebrating Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature (2023) and Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses (10/15/2024). Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was an Assistant Editor at Brevity Journal. When not at her desk, she might be walking along the edge of the Mediterranean or on her yoga mat–practicing since 1995, teaching since 2003. Find Jennifer at israelwriterstudio.com, on Instagram and Facebook.