Dear readers,
A weak and distant sun shines through the window. The glass of tea scalds Naama’s hands, but she holds it tight, craving the pain. Ami is dead, his body slashed and his blood and brains spattered on their bed. Yet all she can see in her mind’s eye is a baby in the rubble. She grips the hot glass even tighter …
“Into the Rubble,” my new story, is now up on The Times of Israel. Just as “Shelter” focused on Ruth Mutzafi, who appeared as a secondary character in “Cold Water,” so “Into the Rubble” is the story of Naama, the silent young girl staring out the window in the kitchen of Etti Badihi, where Ruth takes refuge in “Shelter.”
I’ll be publishing further stories in the series at The Times of Israel (nice to be back there!) and, perhaps, here and there in other publications. The next story is already drafted. The best way to keep up with them, and with other pieces I write, is, of course, to subscribe to this newsletter. Please let other readers know that.
Writing these stories is my way of coping with the high tension, dread, death, and destruction of this time. Some readers have questioned whether now is really the time to be writing fiction about this war. Frankly, if you had asked be before October 7 whether the perspective that time provides is vital to writing fiction that touches on current events, I would have replied in the affirmative. But the creative process is mysterious, and these stories are my response to what I’m feeling now.
A week and a half I published a piece in Hebrew in Yashar, a new web journal edited by a few friends of mine from the religious left. If you read Hebrew, it’s a publication worth following. I haven’t had time to do an English version of my piece yet, but the English title would be something like “Come Let Us Reason Together: How We Can Prevent a Rift with Jewish Critics of Israel Overseas.” It tells a story that few know about—how the Israeli government and Zionist leadership responded to Jewish students active in the New Left when that movement turned against Israel after 1967 by acknowledging their good intentions and engaging with them on their own terms.
I want to recommend another Substack newsletter for those of you who read poetry. Aviya Kushner is a fine poet and a perceptive writer about poetry. On Being and Timelessness covers Jewish poetry, ancient and modern, written in English and translated from all the other languages that Jews have written in over the ages. She’s brought to my attention several poets I didn’t previously know about.
These are the days in which we are anxiously awaiting for the return of our hostages, day by day. It’s nerve-wracking, because of the chances that something will go wrong and that Hamas won’t keep up its end of the bargain. We can only hope for good tidings today and in the days to come, and for an ultimate end to the fighting in a way that will bring peace and security to all of us, here in Israel and in Gaza as well.
Haim
Thank you for sharing this story!!
Devastating new story, Haim. Thank you for writing it.