Grateful to Zibby’s Bookshop for creating such a special space to celebrate books and conversations that matter!
On March 26, 2025, join us for an inspiring evening with Jennifer Lang, author of Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses. In this beautifully woven memoir, Jennifer captures the trials of returning to Israel—the country where she and her French husband met and married—a move driven by love, compromise, and the pursuit of peace. Lang wrestles with the deeper meaning of belonging, identity, and shalom bayit (peace in the home). Her story is a powerful testament to resilience, sacrifice, and the struggle to create harmony in one of the world’s most complex regions.
Don’t miss this chance to hear Jennifer’s insights, share in a thoughtful discussion, and celebrate the power of storytelling. Buy a book, get it signed, and be part of the journey!
Find Jennifer on the move in March: 19: Writing to Heal at Bonai Shalom in Boulder, CO 24: Seniors in Sync at Temple Beth Am in LA 25: Writing to Heal at Temple Judea in Tarzana 26: In conversation with Lisa Niver at Zibby’s bookshop in Santa Monica
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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
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.
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.
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.
“These women were pivotal to both the process and the outcome of the trial. Yet they were marginalized on many occasions, literally reduced to footnotes.“
It’s worth paying attention to what is – or isn’t – happening to our “large” parties. They are quite small, or at least that’s how they appear in the polls even as Election Day draws near.
We need not know where every decision will lead before taking the first step. Sometimes acting upon our deepest convictions is itself the beginning of wisdom.
New opportunities and challenges have always come and gone. But pulpit clergy with their years of training, education and perspective on life, generated from atop the pulpit, are especially well suited for whatever lies ahead.
The Tower of Babel reminds us how easily language can divide us. Our shared history reminds us of what becomes possible when we find ways to understand one another.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.
Meet Jennifer Lang and Lisa Niver at Zibby’s Bookshop March 26, 2025
Lisa Ellen Niver
Grateful to Zibby’s Bookshop for creating such a special space to celebrate books and conversations that matter!
On March 26, 2025, join us for an inspiring evening with Jennifer Lang, author of Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses. In this beautifully woven memoir, Jennifer captures the trials of returning to Israel—the country where she and her French husband met and married—a move driven by love, compromise, and the pursuit of peace. Lang wrestles with the deeper meaning of belonging, identity, and shalom bayit (peace in the home). Her story is a powerful testament to resilience, sacrifice, and the struggle to create harmony in one of the world’s most complex regions.
Don’t miss this chance to hear Jennifer’s insights, share in a thoughtful discussion, and celebrate the power of storytelling. Buy a book, get it signed, and be part of the journey!
REGISTER HERE for March 26th event
Find Jennifer on the move in March: 19: Writing to Heal at Bonai Shalom in Boulder, CO 24: Seniors in Sync at Temple Beth Am in LA 25: Writing to Heal at Temple Judea in Tarzana 26: In conversation with Lisa Niver at Zibby’s bookshop in Santa Monica
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.
[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
more information https://israelwriterstudio.com
SAVE THE DATE: March 26, 2025
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.
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.
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
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.
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