February 22, 2017
Goon I Feel You
How such gentle names belie the bodies checked into boards. Like in another context you could say: Here maple leafs fall among islanders, and think I’m talking about vacationing […]
July 16, 2016
The Best Place on Earth: In Conversation with Ayelet Tsabari
Recently, I had the pleasure to correspond with Ayelet Tsabari, whose debut short story collection, The Best Place on Earth, won the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and was a 2016 Editor’s Choice in The […]
June 28, 2016
A Real Kind of Sublime
We look at alien grace, unfettered by any determined form, and we say: balloon, flower, heart, condom, opera, lampshade, parasol, ballet. Hear how the mouth, so full of longing for […]
January 31, 2016
The Happiness Game: On Yael Hadaya’s “Housebroken” (Part 2)
“The Happiness Game,” the second story in Housebroken, is my favorite of the three novellas. While the idea of a happiness game is a universal paradox, it is also quintessentially an Israeli one. […]
January 25, 2016
I Wanted to Ruin It for You: On Yael Hedaya’s Housebroken (Part 1)
Do you remember that strangely addictive taste of drugstore lipstick on your teenage lips And how it wouldn’t taste the same if you bit right into it? But […]
December 27, 2015
On Failure and Redemption: Bernard Malamud’s Pictures of Fidelman
Morality begins with an awareness of the sanctity of one’s life, hence the lives of others—even Hitler’s, to begin with—the sheer privilege of being, in this miraculous cosmos, and trying […]
December 10, 2015
Notes on Love and Violence, Part 3
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” —Albert Einstein (1) […]
December 6, 2015
Uri Ur (Wake Up): On Aviv Geffen and Impossible Homelands
Ha’eymah ha’eyvah shirim shel milchamah vesin’at achim sheb’chol yom goveret. (The terror, the hostility the songs of war and brotherly hate that gets stronger each day.) —Aviv Geffen, “Uri Ur” […]
October 29, 2015
Hello from the Other Side
I tasted once The milk of a woman friend, The milk of a sister— Not to slake my thirst But for the liberty of my soul. —“Memory of a […]
October 5, 2015
The Silence of Syrian Rue
Love is not the last room. There are others along the long corridor that has no end. —“On the Wall of a House,” Yehuda Amichai Yael lived in […]
March 9, 2012
David Grossman: Why? Who Died?
Today I’m re-posting this piece by Israeli writer David Grossman (discovered via)—an introductory note by the translator, Sol Salbe, appears in italics below. Last Friday Haaretz did something unusual: it […]