Barrelhouse Reviews: Places we Left Behind by Jennifer Lang

Reviewed by Dorothy Rice

Vine Leaves Press / September 2023 / 156 pp

The Places We Left Behind is a love story that begins in 1989 during the First Intifada in Israel between the author—an American tourist and secular Jew—and a French, religiously observant immigrant. In 1990, during the first Gulf War, they marry, windows covered with plastic sheeting, Scud missiles dropping and sirens shrieking. They unwrap their wedding gifts in Haifa (his chosen home): his-and-hers gas masks, courtesy of the Israeli government, along with the more typical crystal vases and ceramic serving dishes.

While terrifying, beginning marriage, then a family, in a war zone isn’t the conflict at the core of Lang’s memoir. Rather, these conflicts include the couple’s differing religious practices, where to live and find peace of mind, and the narrator’s need to reclaim her eroded identity. All of this manifests in the couple’s rootlessness, as they move from Israel to Paris, California to New York, back to Israel, back to New York, before making Israel their home. Altogether, it’s a twenty-year journey fraught with anger and frustration, but also mutual compromise and commitment to marriage and family.

The Places We Left Behind integrates poetry and prose. Brief chapters often also work as standalone pieces, like flash nonfiction. Liberal use of white space enhances meaning, as do pro-and-con lists, flow charts, and the strikeouts. All these strategies invite the reader into the narrator’s thoughts, and prod both the reader and the narrator to consider what she isn’t prepared to express outright (perhaps even to herself). Creativity, playfulness, and craft are evident in the memoir’s format, shape, and language.

When they first meet, both are in love, and there is major chemistry at play. After a night in his boyishly decorated room, Lang writes:

Tell me everything, he says, adorning me with butterfly light kisses. […]

No, wait, I want to know why you’re here, I say, running my fingers through his silky chestnut hair. What made you immigrate?

Israeli chutzpah, Haifa, the Mediterranean, beach, bodysurfing, falafel, spicy food. Plus, my brother plans to make aliya too. […]

And since aliya comes from the verb la’a lot, which means to go up, I went up in my Jewish observance. Tu comprends?

Do I understand that he changed his lifestyle for a country? Absolutely not.

Lang uses strikeouts as a visual negation—illustrating that while she understands his words, she doesn’t comprehend, nor does she elect to question, his choice. As the couple tests the boundaries of their new love, she is disinclined to discuss their differences. She is in love and doesn’t want those feelings to end.

They move in together after a whirlwind eight weekends. A scene from those early days sets the stage for Lang sublimating her more relaxed attitude towards observance of the Jewish sabbath. The passage also illustrates formatting choices throughout the memoir-in-miniature that lend meaning beyond the words on the page:

After another four weekends of back-and-forth bus rides, I pack my worldly belongings into two duffel bags and unpack into Philippe’s floor-to-ceiling cupboards. One sweltering Friday afternoon, I find him brooding in our bedroom and ask what’s wrong.

Do you think you could do Shabbat more like me?

Every seven days, we dance around it.

If we spend the 25 hours with my nonobservant friends, we discuss in advance if he’ll eat a vegetarian meal in a non-kosher kitchen, if he’ll tolerate a television blaring or lights turning on and off. Conversely, if we spend it with religious friends, if I’ll agree to sleep separately or dress modestly as if on opposing ends of a teeter totter:

When he feels comfortable, I’m ill-at-ease. […]

Fine, I capitulate. I’ll try my best to respect your rules, but I’ll always eat in anyone’s house and every restaurant.

Philippe shrugs.

Some phantom weight slides from his shoulders onto mine.”

This exchange reverberates throughout the years to come, and ultimately proves prophetic. Lang’s capitulation becomes the pattern by which her sense of self, perhaps imperceptibly at first, crumbles away in the interest of love, home, marriage, and family.

The conflict concerning where to live and raise their family stalks Lang from country to country. When in Israel, or contemplating returning there, Lang feels suffocated, alienated from family and professional life, and unable to be her true and best self. In the United States, her husband is not at peace, unable to practice Judaism the way he would prefer. For Phillippe, the States will never truly be home. Lang writes: “No matter where we reside, one of us will always rue the loss of the place we left behind.”

In the end, whether because the children have grown sufficiently that there is time to breathe more freely, get a decent night’s sleep, and see beyond the day-to-day, or because the author has returned to the yoga practice which brings her inner peace and mental clarity, the couple finds peace. Therapy sessions prove fruitful. Phillipe finally concedes it was a mistake to press his wife to practice Judaism his way, and Lang brings stipulations of her own to the table. The dialogue begins with Phillippe, then switches to Jennifer.

I’m sorry I ever asked her to keep Shabbat, to do things that made her so uncomfortable. […]

Change is possible. I can change. You can change. We can move to Israel, adapt to the changes. I’ll go. I agree. But there’s one more thing.

Deep breath.

I need to be myself. To do Judaism my way—not yours. The kids have learned the laws of the Sabbath and kashrut and will be old enough to decide how and if they want to observe.

This twenty-year love story, across countries and continents, brings the couple back to Israel, to interpret their faith and to grow—together and individually—however they choose.

Dorothy Rice is an author, freelance editor, and the Managing Editor of the nonfiction and arts journal Under the Gum Tree. In previous lives, she cleaned up toxic waste sites and abandoned tire piles with the California EPA, earned an MFA in Creative Writing at 60, and raised five children. She has published two memoirs with small presses--Gray Is the New Black (Otis Books, 2019) and The Reluctant Artist (Shanti Arts, 2015) and is currently seeking representation for a middle-grade novel, The Percival Curse. Dorothy has recent work in Typehouse Magazine, Five South, and  Literary Mama. www.dorothyriceauthor.com