The doctors said there were several options this time. We could do nothing and my father would die in a few weeks. He could undergo chemotherapy, and if it worked it would give him another few months. They could give him radiation treatment, but the chances were that that would hurt more than it would help. Or they could operate and remove his tongue and his larynx. It was a complicated surgery that would take more than 10 hours, and, considering my father’s advanced age, the doctors didn’t think it was a viable option. But my dad liked the idea. “At my age, I don’t need a tongue anymore, just eyes in my head and a heart that beats,” he told the young oncologist. “The worst that can happen is that instead of telling you how pretty you are, I’ll write it down.”

The doctor blushed. “It’s not just the speech, it’s the trauma of the operation,” she said. “It’s the suffering and the rehabilitation if you survive it. We’re talking here about an enormous blow to your quality of life.”

“I love life,” my dad gave her his obstinate smile. “If the quality is good, then great. If not, then not. I’m not picky.”

In the taxi on our way back from the hospital my dad held my hand as if I were 5 years old again and we were about to cross a busy street. He was talking excitedly about the various treatment options, like an entrepreneur discussing new business opportunities. My dad is a businessman. Not a tycoon in a three-piece suit, just a regular guy who likes to buy and sell, and, if he can’t buy or sell, he’s ready to lease or rent. For him business is a way to meet people, to communicate, to get a little action going. Just let him buy a pack of cigarettes at some kiosk, and within 10 minutes he’s talking to the guy behind the counter about a possible partnership. “We’re really in an ideal situation here,” he said, totally seriously, as he stroked my hand. “I love making decisions when things are at rock bottom. And the situation is such dreck now that I can only come out ahead: With the chemo, I’ll die in no time at all; with the radiation, I’ll get gangrene of the jaw; and everyone’s sure I won’t survive the operation because I’m 84. You know how many plots of land I bought like that? When the owner doesn’t want to sell, and I don’t have a penny in my pocket?”

“I know,” I said. And I really do.

When I was 7, we moved. Our old apartment had been on the same street, and we’d all loved it, but my dad insisted that we move to a larger place. During World War II, my dad, his parents, and some other people hid in a hole in the ground in a Polish town for almost 600 days. The hole was so small that they couldn’t stand or lie down in it, only sit. When the Russians liberated the area, they had to carry my father and my grandparents out, because they couldn’t move on their own. Their muscles had atrophied. That time he spent in the hole had made him sensitive about privacy. The fact that my brother, sister, and I were growing up in the same room drove him crazy. He wanted us to move to an apartment where we would all have our own rooms. We kids actually liked sharing a bedroom, but when my dad makes up his mind, there’s no changing it.

One Saturday a few weeks before we were supposed to leave our old apartment, which he’d already sold, my dad took us to see our new place. We all showered and put on our nicest clothes, even though we knew we weren’t going to see anyone there. But still, it isn’t every day that you move to a new apartment.

Though the building was finished, no one lived in it yet. After dad made sure we were all in the elevator, he pressed the button for the fifth floor. That building was one of the only ones in the neighborhood that had an elevator, and the short ride itself thrilled us. Dad opened the reinforced steel door to the new apartment and began to show us the rooms. First the kids’ rooms, then the master bedroom, and finally the living room and the huge balcony. The view was amazing and all of us, especially my dad, were enchanted by the magical palace that would be our new home.

“Have you ever seen such a view?” he hugged my mom and pointed to the green hill visible from the living room window.

“No,” my mom replied unenthusiastically.

“Then why the sour look?” my dad asked.

“Because there’s no floor,” my mom whispered and looked down at the dirt and exposed metal pipes under our feet. Only then did I look down and see, along with my brother and sister, what my mother saw. I mean, we’d all seen earlier that there was no floor, but somehow, with all my dad’s excitement and enthusiasm, we hadn’t paid much attention to that fact. My dad looked down now too.

“Sorry,” he said. “There was no money left.”

“After we move, I’ll have to wash the floor,” my mom said in her most ordinary voice. “I know how to wash tiles, not sand.”

“You’re right,” my dad said and tried to hug her.

“The fact that I’m right won’t help me clean the house,” she said.

“OK, OK,” my dad said. “If you stop talking about it and give me a minute’s quiet, I’ll think of something. You know that, right?” My mother nodded unconvincingly. The elevator ride down was less happy.

When we moved into the new apartment a few weeks later, the floors were completely covered in ceramic tiles, a different color in each room. In the socialist Israel of the early 1970s, there was only one kind of tile—the color of sesame—and the colored floors in our apartment—reds, blacks, and browns—was different from anything we’d ever seen.

“You see?” my dad kissed my mother on the forehead proudly. “I told you I’d think of something.”

Only a month later did we discover exactly what he’d thought of. I was alone at home taking a shower that day when a gray-haired man wearing a white button-down shirt came into the bathroom with a young couple. “These are our Volcano Red tiles. Direct from Italy,” he said, pointing to the floor. The woman was the first to notice me, naked and soaped up, staring at them. The three of them quickly apologized and left the bathroom.

That evening at dinner, when I told everyone what had happened, my dad revealed his secret. Since he hadn’t had the money to pay for floor tiles, he’d made a deal with the ceramics company: They would give us the tiles for free, and my dad would let them use our place as a model apartment.

The taxi had already reached my parents’ building, and when we got out, my dad was still holding my hand. “This is exactly how I like to make decisions, when there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain,” he repeated. When we opened the apartment door, we were greeted by a pleasant, familiar smell, hundreds of colored floor tiles, and a single powerful hope. Who knows? Maybe this time, too, life and my father will surprise us with another unexpected deal.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

“It was just a split second,” he said with a sigh. “But by the time my brain told my arm it was better off not digging into that machine, I had nine fingers left.”

I remember listening carefully and trying to look sad. But the powerful sense of hubris pulsing deep inside me told me that these sorts of things might happen to unlucky strangers, but not to me.

“If I ever drop a watch into a machine full of blades,” I thought to myself, “there’s no way I’ll do something stupid like reach in to get it.”

I thought about that story a few weeks ago, on the morning my wife and I told our son, Lev, who is almost 6 years old, that we were going on a family trip to Paris. My wife talked excitedly about the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, and I mumbled something about the Pompidou and the Luxembourg Gardens. Lev just shrugged his shoulders and asked wearily if we could go to Eilat instead. “It’s just like going abroad,” he reasoned, “except everyone speaks Hebrew.”

And then it came, that split-second error that I would pay for dearly. The kind of mistake that leaves you with an even number of digits, admittedly, but that inflicts an emotional scar from which you can never recover.

“Have you ever heard of Euro Disney?” I asked in a cheerful voice, bordering on hysteria.

“Euro-what?” asked Lev. “What’s that?”

My wife immediately stepped in with her well-honed survival instincts. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “It’s just this place where—you know, it’s really far away and very silly. Come on, let’s look at some pictures of the Eiffel Tower on the web.”

But Lev had perked up now: “I don’t want to see the Eiffel. I want to see pictures of the place Dad just said.”

That afternoon, when the boy went to his Capoeira class, where they’ve spent the past two years teaching him how to expertly kick his peers to a Brazilian beat, I approached my wife tearfully and asked for forgiveness: “He sounded so unexcited about the trip, and I just wanted to cheer him up.”

“I know,” she said and hugged me warmly. “Don’t worry. Whatever it is we have to get through, it’ll go by quickly. However horrible it is, it’s just one little day in the rest of our lives.”

Two weeks later, on a gray, damp Sunday morning, we found ourselves shivering in the square outside what’s now called Disneyland Paris. Sad employees in happy uniforms physically blocked our access to the rides. “Entrance is currently permitted only to residents of the Disney Hotel and holders of the Disney Passport, which may be purchased at the box office,” one of them explained in a throaty, doleful Amy Winehouse voice.

“I’m cold,” Lev whimpered. “I want that lady to let us in.”

“She can’t,” I said and breathed some warm air on his nose in a pathetic attempt to melt the frozen snot hanging from his nostrils.

“But those kids went in,” he wailed, pointing at a cheery group of children who waved their shiny Mickey Passports at Ms. Winehouse. “How come they get to go in and I don’t?”

I tried an inappropriately serious response: “Remember how we talked about the social protest in summer? About how not everyone gets the same opportunities?”

“I want Mickey!” the boy whined. “I want to talk to Mickey about this. If he and Pluto knew what that lady was doing, they’d let us in.”

“Mickey and Pluto don’t really exist,” I said. “And even if they did, how likely is it that a dog and a mouse could influence the profit-maximization policy of a successful publicly traded company? Chances are, if Mickey came to our aid, he’d be fired in—”

“Popcorn!” the boy yelled, “I want popcorn! Glow-in-the-dark popcorn like that fat girl is eating over there!”

After two boxes of unusually sticky popcorn that would become phosphorescent poop later that evening, Winehouse let us and another thousand or so desperate families in, and we all lunged at the rides. My peacenik wife, in her desire to avoid trampling a crying baby, stepped aside briefly, costing us another 20 minutes’ wait for the Dumbo carousel. The line seemed very short when we were standing in it. That, perhaps, is the true genius of the place: the ability to snake the lines around in a way that always makes them look short. While we were waiting, I read a few interesting tidbits about Walt Disney on my iPhone. The site I was on claimed that, contrary to urban legend, Disney wasn’t really a Nazi but just a regular anti-Semite who hated Communists and was especially fond of Germans.

Scattered around us in the confusing labyrinth of lines were some ornamental stone posts sprouting tiny plants. Lev complained that the miniature trees stank. At first I told him he was just imagining it, but after I saw the third father hold his son up above a post so he could pee on it, I realized that the same god who had blessed the park’s designers with transcendental architectural wisdom had also blessed my son with keen senses. It was a little warmer by now, and Lev’s snot was liquid again. My wife sent me off to find a tissue. I discovered on my quick excursion that anything you can buy with money could be easily obtained in the park, but unprofitable items like bathrooms, straws, or napkins were virtually impossible to find. By the time I got back to my family, Lev was gleefully climbing off the Dumbo carousel. He ran over and hugged me.

“Dad! That was fun!” As if on cue, a huge Mickey Mouse appeared and started chatting with the visitors.

“Tell Mickey,” Lev instructed me, “that we want to open up a Shekel Disney just like this one in Israel.”

“What’s a Shekel Disney?” I asked.

“It’s like here, but instead of taking euros from people, we’ll take shekels,” explained my financial midget.

Mickey came closer. Now he was within touching distance. I threw out a “Bonjour” in his direction, hoping to break the ice. “Welcome to Disneyland Paris!” Mickey replied, waving at us with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand.

Translated by Jessica Cohen

My first encounter with the real Poland took place a decade ago when I was invited to the Warsaw Book Fair. I remember feeling surprise when I walked out of the airport, a reaction I couldn’t account for at the moment. Later, I realized that I had been surprised that the Warsaw spread before me was alive in Technicolor, that the roads were full of cheap Japanese cars, not horse-drawn carriages, and yes, also that most of the people I saw were utterly clean-shaven.

Over the past decade, I traveled to Poland almost every year. I kept getting invitations to visit and, although I had generally been cutting down on flying, I found it hard to refuse the Poles. Although most of my family had perished under horrendous circumstances there, Poland was also the place where they had lived and thrived for generations, and my attraction to that land and its people was almost mystic. I went looking for the house my mother was born in and found a bank there. I went to another house where she had spent a year of her life and found that it was now a grassy field. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel frustrated or sad, and even took pictures of both sites. True, I would rather have found a house instead of a bank or a field. But a bank, I thought, was better than nothing.

During my last visit to Poland a few weeks ago, for a book festival in another part of the country, a charming photographer named Elzbieta Lempp asked if she could take my picture. I agreed happily. She photographed me in a café where I was waiting for my reading to take place, and when I returned to Israel, I found that she had emailed me a copy of the picture. It was a black-and-white shot of me talking to a tall, mustached man. Behind us, out of focus, was an old building. Everything in the photograph seemed to be taken not from reality, but from my childhood imaginings of Poland. Even the expression on my face looked Polish and frighteningly serious. I stared at the image. If I could have unfrozen my photographed self from his pose, he could have walked right out of the frame and actually found the house where my mother was born. If he were brave enough, he might even have knocked on the door. And who knows who would have opened it for him: the grandmother or grandfather I never knew, maybe even a smiling little girl who had no idea what the cruel future had in store for her. I stared at the picture for quite a while, until my 5-year-old son came into the room and saw me sitting there, eyes glued to the computer screen. “How come that picture has no colors?” he asked. “It’s magic,” I smiled and ruffled his hair.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

It isn’t only my son who learned something these last two months. I, along with hundreds of thousands of other Israelis also learned a thing or two, the most important being that if the people who gathered in this land want to continue living as one nation, they have to work at it. During the last decade, Israeli society has become radically polarized. Many talk about the Tel Aviv bubble, but it’s not just Tel Aviv that has cut itself off from the rest of the country. The religious are continuing to move away from the secular, and the Israeli Arabs, who always had a hard time identifying with the Zionist country, find it even harder under a hostile right-wing government.

In retrospect, the fact that almost all of the various groups in this divided society could stand shoulder to shoulder and shout the same slogans is nothing short of a miracle. In the not very distant past, those same groups had occupied the same space only to clash and hurl insults at each other. For the political establishment, facing a divided, despairing public has always been very convenient. But this summer, this despair turned into hope. And hope, it seems, is one of the greatest enemies of politics in our region. It’s easy to understand the hysteria of all those lazy politicians who have been trying for years to make us believe that their only job is to slow down the inevitable downhill slide.

Something else I learned this summer is that democratic responsibility does not end with casting a ballot every four years; democratic responsibility also requires the public to take to the streets in order to remind its elected officials to be attentive to the will and needs of the voters throughout their terms and not only when they need their votes. For years, we were taught that every demonstration or protest undermines the country and sends a message of weakness to our enemies, but this summer we learned that that was indoctrination by a system that wanted us quiet and obedient so it could continue doing whatever it wanted.

Looking back, it’s clear that this summer was nothing short of a civics lesson that an entire nation taught itself, and that we won’t be able to understand and sum up its many implications for quite a few years to come.

This summer’s revolution was neither political nor pragmatic; it was a consciousness revolution, and as with a stone that has been thrown into a lake, the extent of the ripples it creates cannot be predicted. The people who make up the core of this struggle are in their mid-20s, and in the past, many in that group, disgusted and despairing, wouldn’t exercise their right to vote. Quite a few of this new cohort are students, future doctors, economists, engineers, and lawyers. Have the self-centered, get-rich-quick dreams that some of them conjured up been transformed into something else? Will the process they have been part of, which proved that change is possible, give birth to thousands of new social, political, and economic initiatives? I will be very disappointed if it doesn’t. And this summer was a time when the word “disappointment,” one of the most popular words in the geopolitical region in which I live, simply vanished from our vocabulary.

Soon the autumn chill will be upon us, and winter rains will follow. But even they will not be able to wash away the new hope and the shared knowledge of all those who marched together these last two months: that this summer can be repeated, and that if it isn’t and the town squares remain empty forever, we have only ourselves to blame. Because the final thing I learned this humid and amazing summer is that those who refuse to take to the streets and dream alongside their neighbors are taking the risk that their dreams, just like my son’s goldfish, will die of loneliness.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

My wife and I went to that demonstration. The people around us looked optimistic and excited. There were children taking part in the demonstration with their parents, and they imbued the event with the confusingly festive air of a picnic or a rock concert.

The media says the middle class is the core of this struggle.

“The middle class is the easiest group to screw,” Alon, a demonstrator pushing a baby carriage, explained to me, “It’s hardest for them to take to the streets; the poor can go all the way—they have nothing to lose anyway. The rich can hire lawyers and lobbyists and who knows what else. But the middle class is stuck there in the middle: without the economic power required to oil the system, but with just enough to worry about losing what it has. That’s why they’ve been milking us dry for years. But it’s over now.” Alon was talking about the housing crisis and money, but I could sense something else underlying his words, something that is shared by all the people I spoke to at the demonstration: how alienated they feel from the Knesset that is supposed to represent them. Isreal’s parliament pushes through, on a daily basis, laws favoring the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, and other groups skilled at lobbying and manipulating it. It has never engaged in any dialogue with the tens of thousands of people who decided one evening to take to the streets.

It’s no accident that the demonstration was called for the same evening as the finale of Kochav Nolad, A Star Is Born, the Israeli version of American Idol. The message transmitted by going head-to-head with the finale of the highest-rated TV program in the country is that living alongside the shallow, arm-waving, brainwashed Israel is another Israel, a quiet, round-spectacled Israel, and he wants to remind his elected officials as well as himself of his existence. It’s funny to see how this group of people, in their cool, trendy clothes, feels so unrepresented: It contains artists, lawyers, academics, doctors—not the types you stereotypically find shouting about not having their voices heard. But in the Israel of 2011, these are precisely the people who can’t find themselves any genuine political representation. The people demonstrating here are exactly the same people who don’t feel quite comfortable with the flood of new laws, such as the recently passed boycott law, that limit basic freedoms.

Many demonstrators see themselves as apolitical. Despite the fact that they came here supposedly to talk about housing issues, their concerns run much deeper. The suffocation they feel isn’t caused so much by a shortage of square meters as by their frustration about not being counted by those who hold the reins of the country and are steering it to some very unpleasant places.

Standing on a traffic island in the middle of Ibn Gevirol Street was a young woman whose red hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was holding a cardboard placard that said in beautiful, rounded handwriting: “My message is too complicated for this placard.” I don’t know how many of the tens of thousands of people walking past her stopped to read it, but for me, that placard most precisely represents the tent protests.

It’s hard to know whether this protest will develop into anything significant. It all depends on the placard the red-headed girl decides to hold up at the next demonstration, whether the protesters will, in the end, be able to formulate their protest into the kind of clear, sharp messages that those people pretending to represent them will not be able to ignore. If all that comes out of this protest is dissatisfied consumers complaining about the cost of housing and cottage cheese, it will fade within weeks. But I want to believe that more will emerge.

As Alon said right before he disappeared into the throng of demonstrators, “The poor fight for food. I may have food but I am hungry.”

“What are you hungry for?” I asked.

“For a country that is a little less heartless,” he said, and gave the baby, who had just woken up, a bottle. “One that doesn’t try to push only a culture of power and force, but also a culture that values compassion. Being a Jew isn’t just being a settler, you know; being a Jew also means having compassion. I swear. You don’t believe me? Go home and Google it.”

Translated by Sondra Silverston

The skinny young guy sitting next to me says, “It’s me. I did it. When we got on the plane, I talked to my wife on my cell, remember? She told me she was on the way to the beach with our daughter and the baby. I’m sitting here with my safety belt buckled, and all I can think about is, why the hell am I going to Italy? Instead of spending Saturday with my wife and daughters, why am I flying six hours, including a connecting flight, for some hour-long meeting my boss said was important? I hope the plane breaks down. I swear, that’s what I thought; I hope the plane breaks down, and look what happened.”

As we re-enter the terminal, a big woman wearing a flowered dress and dragging a suitcase the size of coffin goes up to the skinny guy and asks him where we’re coming from. “Who cares where we’re coming from,” he winks at me, “the main thing is that we’re on our way home.”

A few hours later, when I get on the small, crowded replacement plane that will take me to Rome on my way to Sicily, I’ll walk down the aisle and notice that the skinny guy isn’t there. Throughout the flight, I’ll picture him on the beach in Tel Aviv building sandcastles with his wife and daughter, and I’ll be jealous.

I also have a wife and little boy waiting for me in Tel Aviv. From the start, this trip was really inconvenient for me too, and it’s becoming less desirable with every minute of delay. On Saturday evening I’m supposed to take part in an event at the small Sicilian book festival in the town of Taormina. When the organizers invited me, I agreed to go because I thought I could take my family with me, but a few weeks ago, my wife realized that she had a prior work commitment, and I was stuck with my own promise to attend the festival. The trip, originally planned for a week, would be shortened to two days, and now it turns out that, due to the supernatural powers of a skinny young guy who wanted to play in the sand with his kid, half of those two days would be wasted in airports.

Because of the delay, I miss my connecting flight from Rome to Catania, in Sicily. When I finally make it to the island, it’s another long ride to Taormina, and by the time I arrive at the hotel, it’s already dark. A mustached reception clerk gives me the key to my room. Lying asleep on a small couch in the lobby is a cute little boy, about 7, who looks just like the reception clerk, minus the mustache. I climb into bed with all my clothes on and fall asleep.

The night goes by in a long, dark, dreamless instant, but the morning makes up for it. I open the window to find that I’m in a dream: Stretched out before me is a gorgeous landscape of beach and stone houses. A long walk and a few conversations in broken English punctuated with a lot of enthusiastic arm-waving reinforce the unreal feel of the place. After all, I know this sea very well: It’s the same Mediterranean that’s only a five-minute walk from my house in Tel Aviv, but the peace and tranquility projected by the locals here is something I have never encountered before. The same sea, but without the frightening, black, existential cloud I’m used to seeing hanging over it. Maybe this is what Shimon Peres meant back in those innocent days when he talked about “the new Middle East.”

This is Taormina’s first book festival. The people on the organizing team are extremely nice, and the atmosphere is relaxed; this festival seems to have everything but an audience at the events. Not that I’m passing judgment on the city’s residents: When you’re in the heart of a paradise like this, in the middle of a hot July, would you rather spend the day at one of the most beautiful beaches in the world or in a mosquito-riddled public garden having your mind numbed by a wild-haired writer speaking strangely accented English?

But in the harmonious atmosphere of Taormina, even a small audience isn’t considered a failure. I think that these pleasant people, who speak such a lovely, melodious Italian and live in such gorgeous surroundings, would accept even boils and plagues with an understanding smile. After the event, the mild-mannered English translator points to the dark sea and tells me that during the day you can see the Italian mainland from here. “You see those lights there?” he asks, pointing toward a few flickering pinpoints. “That’s Reggio Calabria, the southernmost city in Italy.”

When I was a kid, my parents used to tell me bedtime stories. They’re both Holocaust survivors, and during the war, the stories they were told by their parents were never read from books because there were no books to be had, so they made up stories. As parents themselves, they continued that tradition and, from a very young age, I felt a special pride because the bedtime stories I heard every night couldn’t be bought in any store; they were mine alone. My mother’s stories were always about dwarves and fairies, while my father’s were about the time he lived in southern Italy, from 1946 to 1948.

His fellow members of the Irgun wanted him to try to buy weapons for them, and after asking around and pulling a few strings, my father found himself at the southernmost tip of Italy, from which you can see the Sicilian coast—Reggio Calabria. There he rubbed shoulders with the local Mafia and, in the end, persuaded them to sell him rifles for the Irgun to use to fight the British. Since he had no money to rent an apartment, the local Mafia offered him free lodgings in a whorehouse they owned there, and that, it seems, was the best time of his life.

The heroes of my father’s bedtime stories were always drunks and prostitutes, and as a child, I loved them very much. I didn’t know yet what a drunk and a prostitute were, but I did recognize magic, and my father’s bedtime stories were filled with magic and compassion. And now, 40 years later, here I am, not far from the world of my childhood stories. I try to imagine my father coming here after the war, 19 years old at the time, to this place that, despite its many troubles and dark alleys, projects such a sense of peace and tranquility. Compared to the horrors and cruelty he witnessed during the war, it’s easy to imagine how his new acquaintances from the underworld must have appeared to him: happy, even compassionate. He walks down the street, smiling faces wish him a good day in mellifluous Italian, and for the first time in his adult life, he doesn’t have to be afraid or hide the fact that he’s a Jew.

When I try to reconstruct those bedtime stories my father told me years ago, I realize that beyond their fascinating plots, they were meant to teach me something. Something about the almost desperate human need to find the good in the least likely places. Something about the desire not to beautify reality, but to persist in searching for an angle that would put ugliness in a better light and create affection and empathy for every wart and wrinkle on its scarred face. And here, in Sicily, 63 years after my father left it, facing a few dozen pairs of riveted eyes and a lot of empty plastic chairs, that mission suddenly seems more possible than ever.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

Here’s an interesting fact about my screwed-up personality that I’ve learned over the years: When it comes to taking on a commitment, there’s a direct, inverse correlation between the proximity of the request in terms of time and my willingness to commit to it. So, for example, I might politely refuse my wife’s modest request to make her a cup of tea today, but I will generously agree to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I have no problem saying that I will volunteer, in a month’s time, to help some distant relative move to a new apartment; and if we’re talking about six months from now, I’d even offer to wrestle a polar bear naked. The only significant problem with this character trait is that time keeps moving forward and in the end, when you find yourself shaking with cold on some frozen Arctic tundra facing a white-furred bear with bared teeth, you can’t help but ask yourself if it might not have been better to just say no half a year earlier.

On my last trip to Zagreb, Croatia, to participate in a writers’ festival, I didn’t find myself wrestling with any polar bears, but I got close enough. On the way to the hotel, while I was going over the schedule of events with Roman, the organizer of the festival, he nonchalantly tossed the following comment my way: “And I hope you didn’t forget that you agreed to take part in a cultural project of ours and spend tonight in a local museum.” In fact, I’d completely forgotten, or more precisely, I’d totally repressed the recollection. But later, at the hotel, I saw that I’d received an email seven months earlier asking if, during the festival, I’d be willing to spend a night in the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art and then write about the experience. My reply had consisted of two words: Why not?

But as I sat in my pleasant, comfortable hotel room in Zagreb, I pictured myself in a locked, dark museum sprawled on a rusty, bumpy metal sculpture called something like “Yugoslavia, a Country Divided,” covered by a tattered curtain I’ve pulled off the entrance to the coatroom, the opposite question came to mind: Why yes?

***

After the literary event, I’m sitting with the other participants around a wooden table in a local bar. It’s almost midnight when Carla, Roman’s assistant, says that it’s time to say goodnight to everyone. I need to go to the museum. The writers, some slightly drunk, get up and bid me a rather dramatic farewell. The brawny Basque writer hugs me tightly and says, “Hope to see you tomorrow”; a German translator wipes away a tear after shaking my hand, or maybe she was readjusting a contact lens.

The night guard at the museum doesn’t know a word of English, let alone Hebrew. He leads me through a series of dark halls to a side elevator that takes us up one floor to a beautiful, spacious room with a neatly made bed in the middle. He makes a gesture that I take to mean I should feel free to wander around the museum. I thank him with a nod.

As soon as the guard leaves, I get into bed and try to go to sleep. I still haven’t recovered from the early morning flight, and the beers after the event haven’t done much to keep me alert. My eyes begin to close, but another part of my brain refuses to submit. How many times in my life will I have the opportunity to wander around an empty museum? It would be a waste not to take a short stroll. I get up, put on my shoes, and take the elevator downstairs. The museum isn’t huge, but in the near-darkness, it’s hard to find my way around. I walk past paintings and sculptures and try to remember them so I can use them as landmarks to help me find my way to the elevator that will take me back to my comfortable bed. In a few minutes, the fear and tiredness fade a little, and I’m able to see the exhibited work not only as landmarks but also as pieces of art. I find myself walking circles through the halls. I always return to the same place. I sit down on the floor in front of a huge photograph of a gorgeous girl whose eyes seem to bore right into me. The text scrawled across the photo quotes graffiti sprayed on by an unknown Dutch soldier who was part of the U.N. Protection Force sent to Bosnia in 1994:

No Teeth…?
A Mustache…?
Smel Like Shit…?
A Bosnian Girl!

That powerful work reminds me of something I’d heard that afternoon in Zagreb in a side-street café. A waiter there told me that during the war, people who came into the place had a hard time choosing the right word when they wanted to order coffee. The word “coffee,” he’d explained, is different in Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian, and every innocent word choice was fraught with threatening political connotations. “To avoid trouble,” he’d said, “people started ordering espresso, which is a neutral Italian word, and overnight, we stopped serving coffee here and served only espresso.”

As I sit in front of the painting and think about words, about xenophobia and hatred in the place I come from and the place I’m in now, I notice that the sun is beginning to rise. The night is over, and I never got to enjoy the luxury of the soft bed the guard had made up for me.

I get up from where I’ve been sitting in a corner of the room and say goodbye to the beautiful girl in the picture. In daylight, she’s even more beautiful. It’s already 8 a.m.; soon the first visitors will be entering the museum. I start walking toward the exit. Maybe it isn’t always bad that I tend to commit myself in advance without thinking about the things that might happen in the distant future.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

The argument started after Skinny left. She said it was crazy to bring a cabbie you barely know into the house to use the bathroom. I said it was mean not to. After all, the entire field of taxi transportation is based on consideration of the passengers’ feelings. Those cabbies drive around the streets all day without toilets on board, so where did she expect them to relieve themselves, in the trunk? As long we focused on her claim that I was crazy, the discussion was quite civilized. But the minute I brought up the opposing hypothesis—that maybe most of humanity invites cab drivers to use their bathroom, and only the bad people among us, like her, for example, think it’s weird—the decibel level began to rise.

It ended with our making a list of six mutual friends who we would ask the same question: Did you ever invite a cab driver to come up to your apartment to use your bathroom? If the majority said yes, I could keep on inviting cabbies into our home. If the majority said no, I’d stop. And in case of a tie, I could keep on inviting them up, but I’d have to apologize to my wife for saying she’s a bad person and give her a foot massage every day for a week.

We asked our six friends. They were all on her side. But what do you do if you’re in a cab with a driver who really, really needs to go to the bathroom, I asked each of them. You just look the other way? You pay him and say, “Keep the change, man, and keep driving till you find yourself sitting in the middle of a little puddle”? It was only then that I realized that I was endowed with the unique and absolutely insignificant power to sense when people need to go to the bathroom. It turned out that to me, things like that were as transparent as those glass doors of the bank my wife keeps crashing into, while the rest of the human race is totally insensitive to the status of other people’s bladders.

This happened 11 years ago, but last Friday, driving to Amnon’s wedding at Kibbutz Shefayim, I remembered it. Amnon and I work out at the same gym. The only reason I know that his name is Amnon is because the first time I met him, the gym owner said to him, “Hey, Amnon, how about trying a little deodorant?” And after a second’s pause, he added, “Tell me, Etgar, that smell, isn’t it criminal?” I told the gym owner that I didn’t smell anything, and ever since, Amnon and I have been sort of friends. The truth is that when he gave me an invitation the last time I bumped into him, I was a little surprised. But it’s like a subpoena—the minute the envelope touches your hand, you know you have to show up. That’s the thing about wedding invitations—the less you know the person inviting you, the more obligated you feel to go. If you don’t show up at your brother’s wedding and say, “I couldn’t come because the kid had chest pains and I took him to the E.R.,” he’ll believe you because he knows there’s nothing you want more than to be there with him on his big day, but if it’s an Amnon you hardly know, he’ll realize right away that it’s an excuse.

“I’m not going to the wedding of some smelly guy from your gym,” my wife said, her tone determined.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll go alone. But next time we argue and I tell you that—”

“Don’t say I’m a bad person again,” she warned me. “I hate it when you do that.”

So, I don’t say it, but I think it, all the way to the wedding at Kibbutz Shefayim. I won’t be able to stay for very long. The invitation said the chuppah would be at 12 and at 1 p.m. there’s going to be a screening of my former student’s film at the Cinematheque in Tel Aviv.

With the usually light Friday noon traffic, Shefayim-Tel Aviv takes half an hour, tops, so I’m sure I’ll be covered. Except that it’s already 12:30 and the chuppah is showing no signs of starting. The student who directed the film has called three times to ask when I’d be there. More accurately, he called twice and his older brother, who I don’t even know, called the third time to thank me for agreeing to come. “He didn’t invite any of his other teachers to this screening,” he told me, “just family, friends, and you.” I decide to cut out. After all, Amnon saw me here, and I’ve already given a check.

As I get into the cab, I text Gilad that I might be a few minutes late. He texts me back that it’s OK. They have some technical problems, and the screening will be delayed at least an hour. I ask the cab driver to make a U-turn and go back to the wedding hall. The chuppah has just ended. I go over to Amnon and his bride and congratulate them. He hugs me, looking really happy. It wasn’t nice for my wife to say he’s “smelly”; he’s a great person with feelings and all that, but the truth is that he does have strong body odor.

During the screening, I get a text message from my wife. “Where are you? The Druckers are waiting. Shabbat starts soon and they have to make it back to Jerusalem.” The Druckers are friends who have become religious. Years ago, we used to smoke together. Today we mostly talk about kids. They have so many. And all of them, thank God, are healthy and sweet. I sidle toward the exit. Gilad saw me come in. That’s enough. In an hour, I’ll text him that it was great, that I had to take off after the screening. Sitting near the exit door is Gilad’s brother. He looks at me as I leave. His eyes are wet with tears. He isn’t crying because of me; he’s crying because of the film. With all that pressure, I didn’t notice that they were screening one. If he’s crying, it must be really good.

On the cab ride home, the driver talks constantly about the riots in Syria. He admits that he doesn’t know who’s against whom there, but he’s excited about all the action. He talks and talks and talks, and the only thing I’m really listening to is his body. The guy’s dying to pee. When we get to my house, the meter shows 28 shekels. I give him 30 and tell him to keep the change. From the street, I can see my wife on the balcony laughing with Dror and Rakefet Drucker. She’s not a bad person.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

The truth is that I did try yoga a few years ago. At the end of my first beginners’ class, the pale, skinny teacher came over to me and in a soft but firm voice explained that I wasn’t ready yet to work with the beginners and I should first join a “special” group. The special group turned out to be a bunch of women in advanced stages of pregnancy. It was actually quite nice, the first time in a long while that I was the one with the smallest belly in the room. The women working out were very slow, and they would pant and sweat even when they were asked to perform simple, basic actions, just like me. I was sure that I had finally found my place in the cruel world of physical activity. But the group grew steadily smaller: Like on a reality show, each week another woman was eliminated and her excited friends would say in trembling voices that she had given birth.

About three months after I joined the class, all the members had given birth except me, and the teacher with the soft but firm voice told me before turning out the lights in the studio for the last time that she’d bought a one-way ticket to India and didn’t know whether she’d come back. Meanwhile, she recommended that I take on something “a little less challenging than yoga.” Since she didn’t offer details, I infused her enigmatic remark with the familiar aroma of basil and went back to eating whole trays of pizza.

So, when the recent wave of cramped muscles weakened a little, I decided to be proactive and wrote down a list of potential physical activities, then crossed out all those that I knew my body would not withstand. Running and working out in a gym were the first to go, joined by aerobics and spinning (given a choice between listening to Britney Spears and having a blocked aorta, I’d pick the latter), and kickboxing and Krav Maga (in my childhood neighborhood, I’d been hit so much for free that I couldn’t imagine paying for the privilege). The only line remaining on the page after the series of crossings-out was fast walking. I quickly crossed out the word “fast” and added a question mark after “walking.”

Reading the page, my wife didn’t seem excited about the walking-with-a-question-mark option. “There are a million other things that even someone as lazy and atrophied as you can do,” she claimed.

“Name one,” I said.

“Pilates,” she said, munching on a wheat sprout or whatever that smelly thing in her hand was. A bit of quick research on Pilates turned up a few of its more attractive aspects: Even though it was officially defined as “physical activity,” there was no danger you’d sweat while doing it; as most of the activity takes place while you’re lying on your back. And also, the man who invented Pilates used the technique during World War I to rehabilitate wounded soldiers. Which meant that even if I didn’t find a group of pregnant women to join, there was a chance I might meet the criteria for acceptance into a class.

At my first lesson, I learned a few more facts about this wonderful sport. In Pilates, you work on mainly internal muscles, which means that anyone watching you has no way of knowing whether you’re really exercising your deep pelvis muscle, contracting your striated muscles, or just dozing on the mattress. Here in Israel, the classes are particularly small and made up mainly of injured ballet dancers. Which means that the studio abounds with such high levels of refinement, injuries, and empathy that there is no better place in the galaxy to complain about a pulled muscle and get a compassionate massage. I don’t know when you last had five lame ballet dancers help you relax your hamstring, but if it’s too long ago, I recommend heading straight for the nearest Pilates studio and trying it.

It’s been only two weeks since I started doing Pilates. I still can’t open pickle jars with my striated muscles and when I raise my hand to scratch my head the pain in my shoulder is still unbearable, but I do have my own locker, sweatpants with a gold stripe down each leg just like David Beckham, and a soft new mattress that I can lie down on twice a week for a whole hour and think about whatever I want as I stare at shapely, stoic-faced ballerinas perched on giant, brightly colored rubber balls.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

Unlike the recent and much talked-about moral conduct of Gen. Yoav Galant—a former candidate for the position of IDF chief of staff who was found to have taken public land for his own use and lied at least twice in court documents about it—this trivial episode required no governmental investigation committee or an opinion from the attorney general. Anyone who served in the army can recount many such moments. I don’t know a single soldier who didn’t have to lie and cut corners during his service, to cover for himself or for a friend or, more commonly, to cover for a commander who had to be kept happy. I must admit that the three years of my military service were the three years during which I told the most lies of my life.

So, if one thing surprised me about the recent revelations in the Galant affair, which led to his dismissal, it was not so much his lies as the total surprise and shock displayed by most commentators in the media. In a country where a president has been convicted of rape and a prime minister is mired in a chilling corruption trial, the iniquities of our civic systems are taken for granted. But for the candidate for chief of staff to lie? The man about to take charge of the army we Israelis so love to call the most moral in the world? Now, that is unfathomable. Perhaps this is the time to mention that the title of “most moral army in the world” is, to my ears, akin to being lauded as “man with least facial hair in the Hezbollah leadership.” Because, after all, an army’s purpose is not to feed the hungry or act as a crutch for the crippled and maimed but rather to fight and exact casualties from its enemies. Still, a myth is a myth. The IDF’s image as a scrupulous and unfailingly just military has always been Israel’s sacred cow, and it refuses to die no matter how many times you take a slaughterer’s knife to its neck.

A short perusal of the code of ethics proudly adopted by the IDF 16 years ago, written by a committee that comprised a general and a leading Israeli scholar on moral philosophy, reveals the 10 values that define “the IDF spirit.” The first is perseverance; that is, striving for victory. “This value,” the code notes, “appears first in order to emphasize its centrality.” The second value is “responsibility.” “Trustworthiness” is only third on the list.

It is very possible that a military system cannot be managed any other way—I don’t profess to understand anything about how to run an army. But what is absolutely clear to me when I see the surprised, hurt look on Galant’s face, or on the faces of Brig. Gens. Imad Fares and Moshe Tamir, who were both caught lying about minor personal issues and forced to leave the army, is that they are not a few bad apples in the general staff’s unblemished bushel but rather graduates of the army apparatus who learned the system only too well. They always persevered and strove for victory, and, as long as it didn’t mean contradicting those principles, they also told the truth. They did these things while protecting their country and fighting its enemies, and they kept doing them when they wanted to build an addition without a permit or cover up a questionable motor accident. Only when it came time for their hazing in the town square did they discover that the patterns that had served them so well when they were busy cutting corners in the army don’t really work in civilian life. Harsh as it is, dismissing these kinds of commanders is completely appropriate in my opinion. Somewhat less appropriate is the sanctimonious way several commentators and politicians have exploited such episodes to prop up the hobbled myth of the IDF as a pure, untarnished, unimpeachable organization.

When the state comptroller published a report about three weeks ago discrediting Galant, a military trial came to a close slightly further away from the limelight. It was the trial of Lt. Col. Omri Borberg, a regimental commander from the armored corps implicated in the shooting of a handcuffed protester in Na’alin, a town in the West Bank, and of Leonardo Korea, the soldier who actually pulled the trigger. Koria had argued that Borberg had ordered him three consecutive times to shoot the handcuffed protester with a rubber bullet. Neither man was sentenced to any time, and the colonel was allowed to keep his stripes. During the trial, Borberg maintained that he had not asked the solider to shoot and that it was a tragic misunderstanding. After the verdict was read, Borberg burst into tears of relief and said he wanted to go back to the army and continue serving his country. One day, if fate and his commanders are willing, he too will be an officer in the upper echelons of the IDF, and someone had better warn him right now that what works when you’re talking about shooting a handcuffed protester isn’t quite so palatable when it comes to illegal construction or seizing lands you don’t own.

Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen.

It was an ordinary Saturday morning when she told us that that her grandson had asked her to play a special game with him, a game you can only play on Mom’s phone. It’s really easy: All you have to do is shoot birds out of slingshot so they can destroy buildings where green pigs live.

“Ah, Angry Birds,” my wife and I said together, “Our favorite game.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” my mother said.

“You are probably the only one,” my wife said. “I  think there are more Japanese soldiers hiding in the forests, not knowing that World War II is over, than people on this planet who don’t know this game. It is probably the most popular iPhone game ever.”

“And I thought your favorite game was Go Fish with the cards of flowers of Israel,” my mother said, offended.

“Not anymore,” my wife said. “How many times can you ask someone without yawning whether they have a squill?”

“But that game,” my mother said, “even though I watched it without my glasses, it looked like when those birds hit their targets, they die.”

“They sacrifice themselves to achieve a greater goal,” I said quickly. “It’s a game that teaches values.”

“Yes,” my mother said. “But that goal is just to collapse buildings on the heads of those sweet little piglets that never did them any harm.”

“They stole our eggs,” my wife insisted.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s actually an educational game that teaches you not to steal.”

“Or, more accurately,” my mother said, “it teaches you to kill anyone who steals from you and to sacrifice your life doing it.”

“They shouldn’t have stolen the eggs,” my wife said in the tear-choked voice that appears when she knows she’s about to lose an argument.

“I don’t understand,” my mother said. “Did those infant piglets themselves steal your eggs, or are we talking about collective punishment here?”

“Coffee, anyone?” I asked.

After coffee, our family broke its Angry Birds record when the teamwork between my son, an expert in shooting cluster birds that hit multiple targets, and my wife, an expert in launching birds with square-shaped iron heads that can penetrate anything, succeeded in collapsing an especially well-fortified, beehive-shaped structure on the swollen green head of the mustached prince of pigs who said his last “Ho-la” and then was silenced forever.

While we ate cookies to celebrate our moral victory over the evil pigs, my mother started hassling us again. “What is it about that game that makes you love it so much?” she asked.

“I love the weird sounds the birds make when they crash into things,” Lev giggled.

“I love the physical-geometrical aspect of it,” I said, shrugging. “That whole business of calculating angles.”

“I love killing things,” my wife whispered in a shaky voice. “Destroying buildings and killing things. It’s so much fun.”

“And it really improves coordination,” I said, still trying to soften the effect.

“Seeing those pigs exploding into pieces and their houses collapsing,” my wife continued, her green eyes staring into infinity.

“More coffee, anyone?” I asked, resorting again to the only effective weapon left in my arsenal.

My wife was the only one in the family who really hit the nail on the head. Angry Birds is so popular in our home and in others because we truly love to kill and breaks things. So, it’s true that the pigs stole our eggs in the short opener of the game, but between you and me, that’s only an excuse for us to channel some good old rage in their direction. The more time I spend thinking about that game, the more clearly I understand something:

Under the adorable surface of the funny animals and their sweet voices, Angry Birds is actually a game that is consistent with the spirit of religious fundamentalist terrorists.

I know that Steve Jobs and his successor won’t appreciate that last sentence, and it isn’t really politically correct either. But how else to explain a game in which you are prepared to sacrifice your life just so you can destroy the houses of unarmed enemies with their wives and children inside, causing their deaths? And that’s before I got into the business of the pigs: a filthy animal that, in fanatic Muslim rhetoric, is often used to symbolize heretical races whose fate is death. After all, cows and sheep could just as easily have stolen our eggs, but the game planners still deliberately chose fat, dollar-green capitalist pigs.

By the way, I’m not saying that this is necessarily bad. I guess launching square-headed birds into stone walls is as close as I’ll ever get to a suicide mission in this incarnation. So, this might be a fun, controlled way of learning that not only birds or terrorists get angry, but so do I, and all I need is the right and relatively harmless context in which to recognize that anger and let it run wild for a while.

A few days after that odd conversation with my mother, she and my father appeared at our door holding a rectangular gift wrapped in flowered paper. Lev opened it excitedly and found a board game inside, on which pictures of dollar bills were prominently featured.

“You said you were bored by Go Fish,” my mother said, “so we decided to buy you Monopoly.”

“What do you have to do in this game?” Lev asked suspiciously.

“Make money,” my mother said. “Lots of money! You take all your parents’ money till you’re filthy rich and they’re left with nothing.”

“Great!” Lev said happily. “How do you play?”

And from that day on, the green pigs have been living in peace and quiet. True, we haven’t been to their neighborhoods on Mom’s iPhone, but I’m sure that if we dropped in for a quick visit, we’d find them squealing contentedly after closing off a balcony or digging a burrow for their little ones. My wife and I, on the other hand, find our situation deteriorating. Every evening, after Lev goes to sleep, we sit in the kitchen and calculate our new debts to our greedy little scion, who holds more than 90 percent of the Monopoly real estate, including cross-ownership of construction and infrastructure companies. After we finish calculating our multi-digit debts, we go to bed. I close my eyes, trying not to think about the chubby, cold-hearted issue of our loins who, in the near future, is going to strip my wife and me of the torn carton we’re presently living in on the game board, till blessed sleep finally arrives, and with it, dreams. Once again I’m a bird, flying across the blue skies, cutting through the clouds in a breathtaking arch only to crush my square head in a delirium of vengeance on the heads of green, mustached, egg-eating pigs. Ho-la!

Translated by Sondra Silverston

The candle lighting was a resounding success. Lev then suggested in the holiday spirit that he also light the curtains in the living room and the bedspread in the bedroom, triggering another urgent discussion between the wife and me on the balcony.

“We’ll tell him that it’s dangerous and that’s that,” the wife said. “We have to be firm with him.”

“Ya’allah,” I said. “Let’s go for it.”

When Lev heard that he couldn’t burn the curtain, he burst into tears and claimed that in kindergarten, they said that every day you have to light a curtain and eat eight jelly doughnuts. My wife still tried to argue that the only things that gets lit are candles and the exact number of jelly doughnuts to be eaten isn’t specified in the holiday manual. But her flimsy arguments shattered on the armor of our pyromaniac son’s terrifying determination.

As the front got increasingly hotter, I realized that responsibility for resolving the situation rested on my broad shoulders. So I chose to apply the strategy I had developed in past conflicts, a method that never ceased to prove itself: bribery. “If you give up on the curtains,” I said to Lev, mustering the most soothing voice I could find, “you’ll get—”

“But Daddy,” Lev said, “I don’t want to give it up. I want to kill Greeks and burn things like the Maccabees.”

I tried to calm him down. “When you get older you’ll have lots of chances to kill Greeks and burn things,” I said. “But until then you’ll have to wait, and as a reward for your patience, you’ll get—”

“Eight jelly doughnuts, a jug of oil, and a rifle that shoots top-like bullets like the one Ronni Cooperman has?” Lev asked excitedly.

“No,” I said. “But you’ll get an amazing bedtime story that Daddy will make up just for you about the best kindergarten in the whole solar system.”

Lev lay beside me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he loves my stories, but on the other, with all due respect to the world of imagination, a story, however funny, surprising, and thrilling, still isn’t eight doughnuts full of strawberry jelly or a made-in-China dreidel-launcher sold under the counter by a scar-faced salesman in the mall toy store. He listens attentively, though somewhat suspiciously, to my story about the Nice-Kids kindergarten.

After I spend a few minutes introducing the kids—Marty-Smarty, Dwight-faster-than-the-speed-of-light, and Matt the mind-reading cat—Lev asks me who their enemies were. I tell him that they were just kindergarten kids and didn’t have any real enemies. But Lev persists. “Come on, what’s the name of kindergarten where the bad kids go, the ones who fight them?” he asks. I hesitate. Then I tell him that the kindergarten is called the Nasties Kindergarten.

“The Nasties Kindergarten,” Lev says, smiling happily. “And how do the Nasties want to destroy the earth and the planet of the mind-reading cats Matt comes from?”

An uneasy silence filled the room. “Lev,” I say, “are you sure that’s what the Nasties want to do?”

“That’s how it is with Nasties,” Lev says, shrugging.

The wife comes into Lev’s room with a warm down blanket just as I am telling him how Nick-Karate-Kick landed a blow on the terrifying robot dog that threatened to devour the Nice-Kids Kindergarten while Paul-Walk-Through-Walls is breaking the tail of the Nasties’ spaceship, which is about to crash into the yoga and educational-game corner of the Nice-Kids playground, just as Fred-Iron-Head is shattering the wall of the Nasties’ kindergarten in a retaliatory attack. The look on her face makes it clear that an educational talk awaits me in the living room.

That night, I dream I’m sitting at a small plastic table with Benyamin Netanyahu sipping chocolate milk. “The Americans don’t want to play with me,” he complains, “because I sent Nick-Karate-Kick and Fred-Iron-Head to Dubai to beat up a kid from the Nasties’ Kindergarten.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked. “Was he a threat?”

“No,” Bibi shrugs. “But the kid wanted us to do it.”

“What kid?” I ask.

“Yours,” Bibi says. “He said that either we do that or it’s eight jelly doughnuts. And where does that little turd expect me to dig up eight jelly doughnuts, what with the economic crisis and all?”

“So what you’re actually saying,” I rebuke Bibi, “is that this whole conflict is because of my son, a 5-year-old kid?”

“Not just because of him,” Bibi admits. “Smash-’em-Now Lieberman and another couple of Nasties from the party asked for it too.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I just can’t accept, that you, the prime minister of Israel, are evading responsibility and trying to shift the blame on a 5-year-old.”

“Prepare for action,” Bibi interrupts me in the middle of my dream. “A huge, nasty robot dog at 12 o’clock is trying to devour our slide.” And then I woke up, I think, or maybe I was just watching the news.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

Watching the Israeli reality TV series Connected, I can’t help recalling those sumptuous meals in my brother’s hole-in-the-wall kitchen. On paper, Connected looks like just another reality show for commercial TV, but the nearly megalomaniacal artistic ambitions of its exploding-with-talent creators and participants have produced something different. They have managed to take the shallow mush doled out by standard reality shows, and, while not eliminating the mush, they have placed it in a much more complex, clever, and reflexive concept. Similar to the food in my brother’s kitchen, I can’t claim that it’s the best television I’ve ever tasted, but it is definitely a unique blend of reality TV—in my view, the most insincere and artificial television genre there is—and a genuine, impressive attempt by the creators and participants to offer up some kind of truth, not only about themselves, but about humanity in general.

The show’s concept is far from original: Five participants document their lives by filming and narrating with the utmost honesty the most intimate events they experience. In Connected’s second season, the men are between the ages of 18 and 45. The show has been a smash hit not only because of the participants’ impressive storytelling abilities and their off-beat stories but because they, unlike in other shows such as Survivor and Big Brother, live in their natural surroundings and not in an isolated environment, and because the episodes are aired almost immediately after they’re filmed. This creates multilayered reflexivity, a sort of rich, sometimes nauseating layer cake of reality in which the participants in each episode have already seen the previous installment—and reacted to it.

Connected’s creators, Doron Tsabari and Ram Landes, are somewhat atypical to the Israeli television scene. Tsabari is one of the country’s most gifted and crusading makers of social documentaries. His last film, Guide to Revolution, is a brilliant record of his uncompromising, years-long fight against the politicization of Israeli public television. Landes was, for years, the editor of commercial television’s major nightly news broadcast, until he left to create a soap opera called Hasufim (“Exposed”), about TV news shows and their manipulative methods. If there is a common denominator in the work of these two essentially different, creative people, it is that they both deal with the same issue: the exploitative use of television and the possibility of striving for truth within the medium’s limitations.

Four out of the five subjects the creators hired for this season of Connected are no strangers to media exposure. Shai Golden, a 40-year-old former TV critic, is the editor of the weekly magazine supplement to Haaretz; Ron Sarig, also 40, writes the most successful sitcom in Israel, Ramzor (“Stop Light”); Dudu Busi, 45, who flirted with the medium in the past as an actor, is an established and well-respected writer; and Ishai Green is a 30-year-old tech whiz who retired with millions at 25 only to discover two years later that he’d spent all his money. He has now put together a thriving new startup. In Andy Warhol terms, those four have already had their 15 minutes of fame. They are very savvy, atypical reality stars.

Watching the program, you have a strong sense that the five documenters feel they are engaged in a sacred mission. Their need to be honest and open seems almost pathological.

This pathology seems heightened by the show’s immediacy. Because the episodes have such a quick turnaround, it is possible to see one of the participants lie his way out of a family dinner only to hear, in the next episode, his mother’s reaction when her friends called to tell her that they saw her son lying on TV. In another episode, the participants and their wives and girlfriends reacted to viewers who commented online about their relationship. The fact that hundreds of people plead online for Ishai, the broke tech millionaire, to leave his wife develops into a marital crisis, when the wife accuses Ishai of putting her in a bad light in his self-documentary. In another surprising moment, the sitcom writer’s mother confesses that although she is suffering because of the show and the exposure, it has also caused her son, hungry for a bit of conflict and drama in his drab life, to visit her more often.

The show’s intervention in the lives of the characters can have a curative effect as well. The youngest participant in the show, Louis Edry, 18, who has a difficult relationship with his father, uses the camera to drag his dad into soul-searching conversations. In one such conversation, which would probably not have occurred under other circumstances, Louis realizes that he has never really understood his father’s ambitions for him. This discovery brings about a reconciliation and a significant change in their lives. On the other hand, Ron uses the camera in a selfish and aggressive manner, to confess how frustrated he is in his marriage and, later, to make the viewers privy to his infidelity, which of course leads to the painful destruction of the marriage.

And so this extreme reflexivity creates the effect of an Escher painting. Sometimes the painting is the hand painting itself and sometimes, as in Ron’s case, of the snake swallowing its tail. At any rate, the very narcissistic and disturbing result is also touching and poignant, reflecting the creators’ boundless ambition to leave a piece of raw, bleeding honesty on the viewer’s plate.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

He thought the idea of managing a resort in the New Caledonian Islands sounded cool. It wasn’t till he got there that he realized what a hole-in-the-wall the place was. The air conditioners in the rooms didn’t work, and there were insurgents in the nearby mountains who tended not to bother anyone but for some inexplicable reason, probably boredom, liked to scare hotel guests who went out walking. The cleaning women categorically refused to go anywhere near the hotel’s industrial washing machine, which they claimed was haunted. They insisted on washing the sheets in the river instead. In short, the resort looked nothing like its brochure.

He’d been on the job for a month when a rich American couple arrived. From the minute they entered the small lobby, he had a feeling they were going to be trouble. They had that look of a typical unsatisfied customer, the kind that comes to the reception desk to complain about the temperature of the water in the pool. The Swiss guy sat behind the reception desk, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and waited for the couple’s irate call. It came in less than 15 minutes. “There’s a lizard in the bathroom,” shouted the hoarse voice on the other end of the line. “There are a lot of lizards on the island, sir,” the Swiss guy said politely. “That’s part of the charm of the place.”

“The charm of the place?” the American yelled. “The charm of the place? My wife and I are not charmed. I want someone up here to get that lizard out of our room, do you hear me?”

“Sir,” the Swiss guy said, “removing that particular lizard won’t help. The area is full of lizards. There’s a good chance that, by tomorrow morning, you’ll find another few like it in your room, maybe even in your bed. But it’s not that bad because—”

The Swiss guy didn’t get to finish his sentence. The American had already slammed down the receiver. Here it comes, the Swiss guy thought as he gulped down the remains of his whiskey. In another minute they’d be at the reception desk yelling at him. With his luck, they probably know some higher-up in the resort chain, and he’ll be screwed.

He got up tiredly from behind the reception desk, having decided to take action: He’d get a bottle of champagne and bring it to them himself. He’d suck up to them the way they’d taught him in school and get himself out of this mess. It’s no fun, but it’s the right thing to do. Halfway to their room, he saw the Americans’ car speeding toward him. It zipped past him, almost running him over, and continued in the direction of the main road. He tried to wave goodbye but the car didn’t slow down.

He went to their room. They left the door open. Their bags were gone. He opened the door to the bathroom and saw the lizard. The lizard saw him too. They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. It was about five feet long, the lizard, and it had claws. He’d seen one like it once, in some nature film; he didn’t remember exactly what the film had to say about them, only that they were very scary, unpleasant things. Now he understood why the Americans had taken off like that. The image of one of those cuties in bed with them had sent them packing.

“And that’s the end of the story,” the Swiss guy said. It turns out that those Americans really did write a letter, and a week later, he was fired. He’s been traveling around ever since. In November, he’ll be going back to Switzerland to see if he can make it in his brother’s business.

When I ask him if he thinks there’s a moral to his story, he says he’s sure there must be, but he doesn’t know exactly what it is. “Maybe,” he says after a short pause, “it’s that this world is full of lizards and even though there’s nothing we can do about it, we should always try to find out how big they are.”

The Swiss guy asks me where I’m from. Israel, I tell him, and I had a hell of a time getting to this writers’ festival. My parents didn’t want me to come. They were afraid I’d be kidnapped here, or killed. After all, Indonesia is a Muslim country, and very anti-Israel, even anti-Semitic, some say. I tried to calm them down by sending them a link to a Wikipedia page that said Bali has a vast Hindu majority. It didn’t help. Dad insisted that you don’t need a majority vote to put a bullet in my head. Once Israeli flags were burned in front of the Israeli Embassy in Jakarta, but since diplomatic relations were broken off, those flags have to be burned in front of the American Embassy. A living, breathing Israeli could really make their day.

Getting a visa was a hassle, too—I had to wait five days in Bangkok, and I would’ve had to go back to Israel if the festival director hadn’t managed to get to a senior official in the Indonesian Foreign Ministry through his Facebook page and become his Facebook friend. I tell the Swiss guy that in a little while, I’ll be reading at the opening event in the Bali palace in front of the governor of the island and representatives of the royal family, and if he’s able to stand on his feet by then, he’s invited. The Swiss guy really likes the idea. I have to help him stand up, but after the first step, he manages to walk without any help.

There are more than 500 people at the event. The governor and representatives of the royal family are sitting in the first row. They look at me while I read. I can’t really decipher their expressions, but they look very focused. I’m the first Israeli writer ever to come to Bali. I might even be the first Israeli, maybe even the first Jew, some members of the audience have ever seen. What do they see when they look at me? Probably a lizard, and from the smiles slowly spreading across their faces, this lizard is a lot smaller and more sociable than they expected.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

I have to admit that the jetlag this time was way beyond physical and made the return to Israel especially difficult. After three weeks in Urbana, Illinois, with my wife and son, the American Midwest had penetrated deep into our bones through the grease in the food, the bagel-shaped billboards, and the ubiquitous supermarket specials (otherwise it’s hard to explain why Lev, my five-year-old, insists on presenting himself as “only $4.99”).

My wife’s jetlag manifests itself in the new daily routine she developed in consultation with the unusually sticky menu of the Urbana IHOP. Back in Tel Aviv, she continues to begin her morning with pancakes and strawberries, goes on to a lunch of French toast slathered in butter, and rolls up to a dinner of Nutella crepes topped with whipped cream and a side of onion rings. If she lumbers in at this rate, very soon Lev and I will be able to leave our apartment and go to live inside her.

My son’s tough return to Tel Aviv has mostly taken the form of heartbreaking monologues about “our home in Urbana.” He’s constantly telling anyone who will listen how much he misses the safe we had in our hotel room and how much he wants to go back to the LL floor, “my favorite floor in the whole world,” as he loves to say in a pathos-filled voice. LL was where he was free any hour of the day to bowl and to choose from an array of alluring snacks and neon-colored energy drinks on display in the glittering, greedy vending machines.

And I, like the rest of my battered family, also got hit square in the stomach. My addiction was to doughnuts. Surprisingly, I discovered that the combination of the sugar high, the doughy softness, and the unsaturated-fat poisoning my body caused psychedelic hallucinations. After three doughnuts, the sky turned purple, and after five, I believed that the shanah tova card I got from the American Embassy was actually a three-dimensional hologram of a huge doughnut out of which Chelsea Clinton leapt, topless.

And burdened by all that baggage, we’re supposed to deal with Yom Kippur. I don’t want to complain, but you have to admit that diving into that fast while a 3-D hallucination of Chelsea Clinton jumping out of a huge sugar-coated confection rolls around my brain is a bit Job-like. Except that your faithful servant, unlike that cursed biblical figure, didn’t just sit on his backside and scratch himself, but decided while still in Urbana to prepare for resisting culinary temptation on the coming Day of Atonement. At night, when my sweet family was sound asleep and dreaming of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I was busy recording 60 straight minutes of fast-food commercials in our hotel room. The kind of ads where the announcer, with the jaded tone of someone who’s already seen and swallowed everything, promises you a 4-foot-long sandwich and a gallon bottle of Coke for under five dollars (maybe that’s where my son got it) or a free vat of fries with every sizzling 9-pound steak topped with bubbling cheese. And so, for the entire hour of my recording, the screen is filled with horrifying shots: a frenzied dolly zoom of a monster-sized hamburger bleeding ketchup; a giant pizza spinning wildly around your head, threatening to destroy the world with an artillery shelling of extra spicy pepperoni; and a waffle the size of the U.S. national debt sinking slowly into an endless swamp of chocolate chip ice cream in a calorie-rich homage to the Titanic.

Since we’ve been back in Tel Aviv, that disk has been sitting innocently in the inner pocket of my suitcase. And when the right moment comes, exactly one hour before the fast begins this evening, I’ll innocently invite my nuclear family into the living room, shove the doomsday disc into the kishkes of the DVD, and make us all watch it straight through to the end, extra-crunchy, jalapeno-coated Buffalo wings commercial included, no exemptions or bathroom breaks. And if that disgusting commercial diet fails to keep us food free for the next 24 hours, I’ll have no choice but to submissively accept any flood God sends my way. Although if it turns out that we have a say in the matter, my wife would strongly prefer a maple syrup one.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

I am now apparently in hell. Or it’s just August in Tel Aviv. A child’s vacation from school, the unbearable temperature and humidity, the thousands of loud French tourists who fill every public space that doesn’t have a locked door: They all create a critical mass that sucks every drop of the will to live right out of you.

Lev, my 4-and-a-half-year-old son, feels pretty much at home in the depths of hell. He wanders around our house nervously with his blue eyes and a white tank top shirt covered with a huge sweat stain, looking like he’s either about to slap someone or yell out, “Stella!” but he does neither. Instead, he just comes up to me every 10 minutes and asks, “What’s the plan for today?” I don’t answer right away. Stalling for time. The concept “plan for today” usually leads to one of the following three possibilities:

1. Unpleasant rubbing up against 100 kids in the roped off one-meter-square play area in the mall. (At least it’s air conditioned.)

2. Splashing around in the murky liquid of the neighborhood kiddie pool that’s the temperature of urine and smells even worse. (“But Daddy, I didn’t bite. We were just playing dolphin and shark.”)

3. Watching a stupid 3-D movie. (Idea for a startup: inventing glasses that give the plot some depth when you put them on.)

I decide to rebel against my fate and say to Lev, “Today we’re just going to stay home and have fun.” The idea of “having fun” is vague enough to challenge the child.

“How can you have fun at home?” he asks. “That’s a riddle,” I say in a didactic tone, “and you have to guess the right answer.”

Lev thinks for a minute and suggests a solution. “Ambush Mommy with a water gun?” I shake my head. “Play vase soccer again?” I signal that this answer isn’t the right one either. Lev gives it one more try, “Then maybe to dig a giant hole in the living room and cover it with the rug, and when Uncle Ram falls into it, we’ll dance around him and sing ‘We caught a ram!’ ” When that effort doesn’t succeed either, he gives up.

“When I said ‘have fun,’ ” I explain, “I meant that we’d sit together here on the rug, just the two of us, drink lemonade, and talk to each other.” “Talk to Daddy?” Lev says contemptuously. “Talk to Daddy? That doesn’t sound like much fun.” “You say that,” I argue, “because you never did it. Let’s try it for a minute and see.”

Lev likes the lemonade I made. That’s already a good start.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask him as we sip together. “The Ten Commandments,” Lev suggests. “A good subject,” I nod admiringly. “What do you want to say about the Ten Commandments?” “That Mommy’s silly and makes up a whole bunch of weird commandments that aren’t there,” Lev says. “What commandments, for instance, did she make up?” I ask. “You mustn’t kill,” Lev says. “But she’s right,” I tell Lev. “There really is a commandment like that.” “Daddy’s silly too,” Lev giggles. “There’s no commandment like that.” “Sure there is,” I insist. “It’s the most important one.” “Then how come” Lev asks, still smiling condescendingly, “every time we turn on the TV, they’re always talking about people killing each other?”

I momentarily consider entering into a profound philosophical discussion about the human psyche, but it’s too hot for that. Instead of answering, I shout, “Who wants to see Wonderpets?” and turn on the TV. It’s a shame that you have to go through the news broadcast to get to the kids’ programs, and before I can switch channels, we hear a report about an Israeli who’s been arrested in the United States as a suspected racially motivated serial killer.

“You mustn’t kill,” Lev bellows, laughing, as I zap to the safe haven of the kids’ channel. “Daddy’s silly,” I say, ruffling his hair as the door bell rings. Standing in the doorway is Uncle Ram. He’s holding a 640-page typed manuscript of his life story in rhyme. He’s come all the way from Nahariya to bring me a copy to read. It would’ve been a lot more fun if, instead of talking, we’d dug that hole in the living room.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

As a veteran Israeli World Cup watcher, I can’t remember any previous international tournament that plunged the people around me into such fanaticism and ecstasy. Even the straitlaced mothers from my son’s kindergarten, who normally don’t even know the meaning of the word “offside” walked around our sleepy neighborhood these past weeks armed with vuvuzelas and draped in Argentinian or Brazilian flags—the more despondent they felt, the more they identified. And in this World Cup, I saw increasing numbers of despondent people who embraced this much-loved, sweaty, and extremely unrefined sport not out of deep affection but out of the profound fear of being stuck with the unpleasant alternative—the world we live in.

World Cup month is always unofficially considered a hiatus from the troubles served up around us, and it’s a hiatus that exists on two levels. The first is the personal level: We are free to avoid thinking about the unbearable July khamsins, the desert winds; our sweaty country’s isolation in the world after the attack on the Turkish flotilla; our foreign minister’s refusal to wipe the beads of sweat from his brow for ideological reasons (khamsins are nothing but an anti-Israel plot with only one purpose—to make us sweat), along with his reassurances that there’s no reason to worry about isolation now because everyone hated us before anyway; that same foreign minister’s fat-cat government, which last week rejected a proposed law to raise the minimum wage and provide a little help for the weakest economic sector of the population; and the depressing reports from the criminal trial of the man who stood at the head of the previous fat-cat government, Ehud Olmert. In short, everything.

The second level is that of reality itself, which also decided to take a short break in honor of the World Cup festivities: The IDF’s latest reports show that the number of attempted terrorist attacks by the Hamas and border clashes with the Palestinians in general has dropped drastically over the last few weeks; another item in the papers told us that the committee investigating the Turkish flotilla incident postponed announcing its conclusions to the day after the World Cup; and it seems that even the murderers and rapists stayed home this last month glued to their TV screens.

Thinking about it on the macro level, the only disadvantage of the World Cup is, in fact, that it ends. Maybe if it could somehow be spread over four full years, so there would be no dead time between one World Cup and the next, we could solve all the world’s problems: The hungry would forget their hunger; the occupiers that they’re occupiers; the oppressed that they’re oppressed. And we could all simply concentrate on staring at that harmless game that, on the face of it, has managed to neutralize all our negative feelings. That idea could easily be translated into a petition, maybe even into a radical political movement, if not for the edifying story of Paul the Octopus.

The octopus that answers to the name of Paul, who lives in an aquarium in the little-known city of Oberhausen, Germany, was first discovered to have remarkable soccer-predictive powers during the 2008 Euro Championship. Before each game, his caretakers placed two transparent plastic containers into his tank, each filled with plump little Paul’s favorite food. The German flag was painted on one of the containers, its opponent’s flag on the other. When Paul chose to open and go into one of the receptacles, he was actually choosing the winning team. At the beginning of the present World Cup, Paul predicted the German team’s progress from one stage to the next (including the surprise loss to Serbia), and, contrary to many commentators, he believed in that young, inexperienced team’s ability to demolish the strong Argentinians. The problems began when the multilimbed prophet rightly predicted that the Germans would lose to the Spanish team. As soon as the game ended with Germany being ousted from the tournament, threats against the life of the poor creature began to appear. Various German blogs started publishing octopus recipes; others called for the oracle to be tossed into a tank of hungry sharks. And so the gifted octopus was instantly transformed from local hero to public enemy No. 1.

The conclusion I draw from Paul’s story is that while it is possible to escape from the violent, ugly reality we have created to a nicer, more innocent one, as long as we remain what we are violence and hatred will always find their way back to the center of things. So, all we actually have to do to make the seemingly impossible connection between the naïve green fields of the World Cup and this paranoid, violent world of ours is to paint the Israeli flag on one of Paul’s food containers and the Palestinian flag on the other, if only to discover once and for all whether that slippery German mollusk is a closet anti-Semite or just another Arab-hater.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

At the beginning of every June, my sister, brother, and I would walk with our parents to the central square in Ramat Gan where dozens of tables covered in books were set up. Each of us would choose five books. Sometimes the writer of one of those books would be at the table and would write a dedication in it. My sister really liked that. I personally found it a little annoying. Even if someone writes a book, it doesn’t give him the right to scribble in my own private copy—especially if his handwriting is ugly, like a pharmacist’s, and he insists on using hard words you have to look up in the dictionary only to discover that all they really meant was “enjoy.”

Years have passed, and even though I’m not a kid anymore, I still get just as excited during Book Week. But now the experience is a little different and lot more stressful, because today I’m the one on the other side of the table scribbling in other people’s new books. And yet, even after 18 straight years of sitting on the other side of the table, I feel really uncomfortable about writing a dedication in a stranger’s copy of my book.

Before I started publishing books, I wrote dedications only in the ones I bought to give as gifts to people I knew. Then one day I suddenly found myself signing books for people who’d bought them themselves, people I’d never met before. What can you write in the book of a total stranger who might be anything from a serial killer to a Righteous Gentile? “In Friendship,” borders on falsehood; “With Admiration,” doesn’t hold water; “Best Wishes” sounds too avuncular; and “Hope you enjoy my book!” oozes smarm from the capital H to the final exclamation point. So, exactly 18 years ago, on the last night of my first Book Week, I created my own genre: fictitious book dedications. If the books themselves are pure fiction, why should the dedications be true?

“To Danny, who saved my life in the Litani. If you hadn’t tied that tourniquet, there’d be no me and no book.”

“To Mickey. Your mother called. I hung up on her. Don’t you dare show your face around here anymore.”

“To Sinai. I’ll be home late tonight, but I left some cholent in the fridge.”

“To Feige. Where’s that tenner I lent you? You said two days and it’s a month already. I’m still waiting.”

“To Tziki. I admit that I acted like a shit. But if your sister can forgive me, so can you.”

“To Avram. I don’t care what the lab tests show. For me, you’ll always be my dad.”

In retrospect, and after the slap in the face I got for writing that last one, I suppose I shouldn’t have written what I did for that tall guy with the Marine buzz cut who bought a book for his girlfriend.

“Bosmat, though you’re with another guy now, we both know you’ll come back to me in the end.”

The tall guy could have made a civil remark instead of getting physical. In any case, I learned my lesson, however painfully, and since then, during every Book Week, no matter how much my hand itches to write in the books bought by some Dudi or Shlomi that the next time he sees anything from me on paper it’ll be a lawyer’s letter, I take a deep breath and scribble “Best Wishes” instead. Boring maybe, but much easier on the face.

So, if that tall guy and Bosmat are reading this, I want them to know that I am truly repentant and would like to offer my belated apologies. And if by chance you’re reading this, Feige, I’m still waiting for the tenner.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

After a few minutes of staring at that monster-size portion and listening to the commentary, I was able to share some bizarre information with my child: For the past two years, there has been a war going on between Israel and Lebanon to secure the Guinness record for the largest plate of hummus in the world. During those two years, the record changed hands four times, and now the Lebanese had snatched it back from us with a plate of hummus that weighed 10,452 kilograms, more than 22,000 pounds. Lev listened attentively to my learned explanation, and when I finished, he insisted on asking two more questions: First, what’s a “record”? And second, did I really mean to say that the people who made all that hummus weren’t even hungry?

“A record is something you do better than anyone else,” I explained. “Like running faster or jumping higher or remembering things by heart.”

“But making hummus isn’t something like that.” Lev persisted. “They didn’t make anything the fastest or the highest. They just made a lot of hummus.”

“That’s right.” I said, “But even people who don’t know how to do things the fastest or the highest want to break records, so Guinness added other, special records for them to break.”

“So they wouldn’t be sad?” Lev asked.

“Yes,” I said.

That answer satisfied Lev enough for him to agree to turn back to Margalit the Duck Detective. I took advantage of that quality time to do a little Internet surfing and find out exactly what was behind those world records. The culinary battle between Israel and Lebanon, it turns out, is not restricted to the hummus sector. Another no-less-colossal oil-soaked battle was taking place that very moment on, of course, the falafel front. There too the Lebanese had broken the Israeli record for making the most falafel balls in one place and cheated us out of our birthright.

Even more amazing than that idiotic battle were the Israeli commenters online. Some called for a boycott of restaurants that served Lebanese hummus. “Now that Lebanon has shown its true intentions we have to respond unequivocally and send a clear message,” one of them wrote. Others blamed Israel and the government for incomprehensible wishy-washiness. That argument held that we should have been ready for a two-pronged attack of this kind when Israel broke the previous record in January. And one commenter auspiciously calling himself “Someone in the Know,” promised a quick Israeli counter-attack. Rereading all the comments, I sank into a bizarre world, surrounded by anger and pride and precious little irony. Nearly everything was written in earnest. Then the music marking the end of Lev’s television show filtered into the room, returning me to reality.

Lev, who was nearly ready for bed, went to the bathroom. Instead of flushing the toilet, though, he invited me in for a short visit. “Look at my caca,” he said. “Doesn’t it look big?”

“Gigantic,” I said politely.

“A record gigantic?” he asked.

“Could be,” I said, flustered.

“We should call those people with the measuring tape to check it,” Lev said, trying to stop me from flushing.

To my son’s great unhappiness, the Guinness Records Committee wasn’t there when the water swirled down the bowl, but after some tears and a successful bribery attempt in the form of a bottle of chocolate milk with a special sports cap, he calmed down, and the world’s unofficial defecation champion agreed to go to sleep. I, of course, went back to my obsessive Internet search into the world of hummus and falafel record holders.

Turns out that “Someone in the Know” really did know. While I was sabotaging my son’s efforts at immortality, Israel, with America’s unexpected help, had broken the record for the world’s largest falafel ball. A 24-pound ball had been made in New York for a pro-Israel event, which was attended by Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the NBA. Here too, the comments, befitting the importance of the occasion, were patriotic and impassioned. Some warned against complacency and called for Israel to prepare itself for some down-and-dirty Lebanese retaliation.

And that’s when it hit me: These food wars, which, until that moment, had seemed to be the stupidest thing in the world, were actually a brilliant way of bringing peace to the Middle East. Because it was clear that as long as we and our enemies continue to be stressed out, righteous, revenge-seeking people, our sacred national angers will keep burning and igniting bloody battles. We could channel all that negative energy into the culinary arena instead. Then we could finally turn our ploughshares into forks and our spears into chickpea mashers, and, rather than boasting that our army is the strongest one in the world, we could become the proprietors of its greatest kitchen. And if that works, 14 years from now, when my son is drafted, instead of joining a tank crew he could be assigned to a secret army lab in the Negev where he can help create a monstrous pan of shakshuka, made of a trillion eggs, that will break the existing record and smite the rulers of the north African countries.

When all the terrible wars disappear from the region, along with the real threat to our existence, and are replaced by a monument in the shape of a huge piece of pita, we can finally start following the example of all the other civilized peoples in the word and die of an excess of cholesterol.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

“I advise you not to show this card to anyone,” she said.

“Why not?” I argued. “This card makes me a member of an exclusive club.”

“Yes,” my wife said, smiling that jackal smile of hers. “The exclusive club of people who have no life.”

So, OK. In the discreet, intimate confines of this column, I am willing to make a partial admission that I don’t have a life, at least not in the traditional, everyday sense of the word. And I admit that more than once in the past year I have had to read the stub of my plane ticket, which was nestled peacefully among the pages of my stamp-tattooed passport, to find out what country I was in. And I also admit that during those trips, which often followed a 15-hour flight, I found myself reading to a very small group of people who, after listening to me for an hour, could offer me only a consoling pat on the back and the hopeful observation that in Hebrew those stories of mine probably make sense. But I love it. I love reading to people: When they enjoy it, I enjoy it with them, and when they suffer, I figure it’s probably coming to them.

The truth, now that I’ve launched into an inexplicable outburst of sincerity, is that I’m willing to confess I also love the flights themselves. Not the security checks before them or the sour-faced airline employees at the check-in counter who explain to me that the last empty seat left on the plane is between two flatulent, Japanese sumo wrestlers. And I’m not really crazy about the endless waiting for luggage after landing, or the jetlag that digs a trans-Atlantic tunnel through your skull with a particularly dull teaspoon. It’s the middle I love, that part when you’re closed up in a tin box that’s floating between heaven and earth. A tin box that is totally cut off from the world, and inside it there’s no real time or real weather, just a juicy slice of limbo that lasts from take-off till landing.

And strangely enough, for me, those flights don’t just mean eating the heated-up TV dinner that the sardonic copywriter for the airlines decided to call a “High Altitude Delight.” They’re a kind of meditative disengagement from the world. Flights are expansive moments when the phone doesn’t ring and the Internet doesn’t work. The maxim that flying time is wasted time liberates me from my anxieties and guilt feelings, and it strips me of all ambitions, leaving room for a different sort of existence. A happy, idiotic existence, the kind that doesn’t try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it.

The “I” who exists between take-off and landing is a completely different person: The in-flight “I” is addicted to tomato juice, a drink I wouldn’t think of touching when my feet are on the ground. In the air, that “I” avidly watches mind-numbing Hollywood comedies on a screen the size of a hemorrhoid and delves into the pages of the product catalog kept in the pocket of the seat in front of me as if it were an updated, upgraded version of the Old Testament.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the wallet made of rust-resistant steel fibers, material developed by NASA that guarantees that the bills in it will remain fresh a long time after our planet has been destroyed. Or the cat toilet that sucks out the smells and is camouflaged in a plant, providing your cat with full privacy while it’s doing its thing and preventing unpleasantness for household members and their guests. Or the microprocessor-controlled antiseptic device that inserts anti-microbial silver ions to the tissue where you have a budding infection in order to avert the disaster of an open sore. I’ve not only heard of all of these inventions but can also quote from memory the exact descriptions of each of those products, including the various colors they come in, as if they were verses from Ecclesiastes. After all, they didn’t send me that Gold Card for nothing.

The truth is that I’m writing this column during a flight from San Francisco to New York, and I’m doing it with very uncharacteristic speed so that, in another few lines, when it’s finished, I can get comfortable in my seat again and browse through the in-flight magazine a little longer for an update on how many new destinations Continental will be flying to soon. Then maybe I can catch the last 15 minutes of The Blind Side, or I might go for some mingling on the line to the bathroom at the back of the plane. I have another hour and 14 minutes till we land, and I want to make the most of them. Later, when I leave the terminal, I’ll turn back into a normal, stressed-out person, but until then, I plan to lower the back of my seat and feast on the nirvana of thin air and salty pretzels.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

When I was 5, I had a 12-year-old brother who found God and went to a religious boarding school, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up I’d be just like him. He used to talk to me about religion a lot. And I thought that the midrashim he told me were the coolest things in the world. He was the youngest pupil in the school—because of all that grade-skipping he did—but everyone admired him. Not because he was so smart—somehow, that was less important in the boarding school—but because he was so good-natured and helpful. I remember visiting one Purim, and every pupil we met thanked him for something else: one for helping him study for a test, another for fixing a transistor so he could listen secretly to heavy metal, still another for lending him a pair of sneakers before an important soccer game. He walked around that place like a king who was so modest and dreamy that he didn’t even know he was regal, and I followed in his wake like a prince all too aware of his royalty. I remember thinking then that the whole business of believing in God would be part of my future too. After all, my brother knew everything, and if he believed in the Creator, then there had to be one.

When I was 8, I had a 15-year-old brother who left religion and went to college to study mathematics and computer science, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up I’d be just like him. He lived in an apartment with his bespectacled girlfriend, who was 24, an age which, from my childish perspective, seemed ancient. They used to kiss and drink beer and smoke cigarettes, and I was always sure that if I played my cards right, in another seven years, I’d be there. I’d sit on the grass at Bar Ilan University and eat grilled cheese sandwiches from the cafeteria. I’d have a bespectacled girlfriend too, and she’d kiss me, tongue and all. What could be better than that?

When I was 14, I had a 21 -year-old brother who fought in the Lebanon War. Lots of my classmates had brothers who fought in that war. But mine was the only one I knew who wasn’t in favor of it. Even though he was a soldier, he never thrilled to the idea of shooting guns and throwing grenades, and especially not to the need to kill the enemy. Most of the time, he did what he was told, and the rest of the time he spent in military courts. When he was tried and found guilty of “behavior unbecoming an IDF soldier” after he turned an aerial antenna into a giant totem pole with a head and eagle’s wings, my sister and I sneaked into the remote base in the Negev where he was confined. We spent hours playing cards with him and another soldier, Mosco, who was also confined, but for slightly less creative reasons. And as I watched my brother in his army pants, his torso bare, paint a water-color picture of the wadi that ran below the base, I knew that that’s just what I wanted to be when I grew up: a soldier who, even in uniform, never forgets his free spirit.

Years have passed since I sneaked onto my brother’s base. In that time, he managed to get married and divorced, and married again. He also managed to work at successful high-tech companies and leave them so he could dedicate himself, together with his second wife, to the kinds of social and political activities that reporters like to call “radical”—things like fighting against biometric records and police brutality and for human rights and legalizing marijuana. In that time, I also managed to grow and change so that, apart from the love we’ve always felt for each other, the only constant in our relationship has been the seven-year difference between us. Throughout that long journey, I never got to be more than just a little of what my brother was, and at some point I guess I even stopped trying. Partly because my brother’s strange route was a very difficult one to follow and partly because I’ve had my own personal crises and confusions to deal with.

For the past five years, my big brother and his wife have lived in Thailand. They build Internet sites for Israeli and international organizations that are tying to make our world a little bit better, and with the modest fee they get for their work, they manage to live very well in their cozy apartment in the town of Trat. They don’t have an air conditioner, a bathtub, or a toilet with running water, but they have lots of good friends and neighbors who make the most delicious food in the world and are always happy to visit or host them. Four weeks ago, my wife, our 4-year-old son, and I flew to see their new home. While we were there, we took an elephant tour, and on it my brother’s elephant was a few steps in front of mine. Both were being driven by experienced Thais. After we had gone a few hundred yards, I saw my brother’s driver signal that my brother should take over leading their animal. The Thai man moved to sit to the rear of the elephant and my brother began taking charge. He didn’t yell at it or kick it lightly the way the local driver had. He just bent forward and whispered something in the elephant’s ear. From where I was sitting, it looked as if the elephant nodded and turned in the direction my brother wanted. And at that moment it came back to me—the feeling I’d had throughout my childhood and teenage years. That pride in my big brother and the hope that when I grew up, I’d be a little bit like him, able to drive elephants through virgin forests without ever having to raise my voice.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

“The thing is that just a minute ago I fell into a hole and injured my forehead and my foot, so this isn’t really the ideal time,” I explain.

“I understand,” Devora says. “So when do you think it’ll be a good time to talk? An hour?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “My ankle must have broken when I fell, and the hole is pretty deep and I don’t think I’ll be able to climb out of it without help. So it pretty much depends on how quickly the rescue team gets here and whether they have to put my foot in a cast or not.”

“So maybe I should call tomorrow?” she suggests, unruffled.

“Yes,” I groan. “Tomorrow sounds great.”

“What’s all that business with the hole?” my wife, next to me in a taxi, rebukes after hearing my evasive tactics. “Why can’t you just say ‘Thanks, but I’m not interested in buying, renting, or borrowing whatever it is you’re selling, so please don’t call me again, not in this life, and if possible, not in the next one either.’ Then pause briefly and say, ‘Have a nice day.’ And hang up, like everyone else.”

I don’t think that everyone else is as firm and nasty to Devora and her ilk as my wife is, but I must admit that she has a point. In the Middle East, people feel their mortality more than people in other places on the planet, which causes most of the population to develop aggressive tendencies towards strangers who try to waste the little time they have left on earth. And though I guard my time just as jealously, I have a real problem saying no to strangers on the phone. I have no trouble shaking off vendors in the outdoor market or saying no to someone I know who offers me something on the phone. But the unholy combination of a request plus a stranger paralyzes me, and in less than a second, I’m imagining the scarred face of the person on the other end who has led a life of suffering and humiliation. I picture him standing on the window ledge of his 114th-floor office talking to me on a cordless phone in a calm voice, but he’s already made up his mind: “One more asshole says no to me and I jump!” And when it comes down to deciding between a person’s life and getting hooked up to the “Balloon Sculpture: Endless Fun for the Whole Family” channel for only 9.99 shekels a month, I choose life, or at least I did until my wife and my financial advisor politely asked me to stop.

And that’s when I began to develop the “Grandma Strategy,” which invokes a woman, may she rest in peace, for whom I’ve arranged dozens of virtual burials in order to get out of futile conversations. But since I’d already dug myself a hole and fallen into it for Devora of the satellite TV concern, I could actually let Grandma Shoshana rest in peace this time.

“Good morning, Mr. Keret,” Devora says the next day. “I hope this is a better time for you.”

“The truth is that there were a few complications with my foot,” I mumble. “I don’t know how, but gangrene developed. And you’ve caught me right before the amputation.”

“It’ll just take a minute,” she gamely tries.

“I’m sorry,” I insist. “They already gave me a sedative and the doctor is signaling for me to close my cell phone. He says it isn’t sterilized.”

“So I’ll try tomorrow,” Devora says. “Good luck with the amputation.”

Most telemarketers give up after one call. Phone pollsters and internet-surfing-package sellers might call back for another round. But Devora from the satellite TV company is more persistent than any of them.

“Hello, Mr. Keret,” she says when I take the next call, unprepared. “How are you?” And before I can reply, she goes on. “Since your new medical condition will probably keep you at home, I thought I’d offer you our Extreme Sport package. Four channels that include all the various extreme sports in the world, from the dwarf-hurling world championship games to the Australian glass-eating matches.”

“Do you want Etgar?” I whisper.

“Yes,” Devora says.

“He died,” I say and pause before continuing to whisper. “Such a tragedy. An intern finished him off on the operating table. We’re thinking about suing.”

“So who am I talking to?” Devora asks.

“Michael, his younger brother,” I improvise. “But I can’t talk now, I’m at the funeral.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Devora says in a shaky voice. “I didn’t get to speak with him a lot, but he sounded like a lovely person.”

“Thank you,” I keep whispering. “I have to hang up. I have to say Kaddish now.”

“Of course,” Devora says, “I’ll call later. I have a consolation deal that’s just perfect for you.”

Translated by Sondra Silverston

Ehud Olmert, cat.
CREDIT: Sarah Lazarovic

In preparation for the meeting with Lev’s preschool teacher, I shaved and took my good suit out of the closet.

“It’s a ten-in-the-morning meeting,” my wife laughed. “The teacher will probably be wearing sweat pants. And with that white shirt and jacket, you’ll look like a groom.”

“Like a lawyer,” I corrected her. “And when the meeting’s over, you’ll thank me for dressing up.”

“Why are you acting like she wants to talk to us because Lev did something bad?” my wife protested. “Maybe she just wants to tell us that Lev is a good kid who helps the other kids in his group?”

I tried to picture our Lev in the preschool yard generously sharing his sandwich with a scrawny, grateful classmate who forgot to bring a snack that day. The incredible strain of trying to conjure up that image almost gave me a stroke. “Do you really think they asked us to come to hear about something nice Lev did?” I decided to abandon my rather limited imagination and focus instead on my wife’s surprising optimism.

“No,” she admitted sadly. “I just like arguing with you.”

The teacher was actually wearing sweat pants, but she really liked my suit and enjoyed hearing that it was the same suit I wore to my wedding.

“But then he could still wear it without having to hold in his stomach,” my wife said, and she and the teacher exchanged the empathetic smiles of women stuck with men who have three pizzerias on speed dial but have never seen the inside of a gym.

“Actually,” the teacher said, “the reason I asked you to come does have something to do with food.”

The teacher told us that little Lev had forged a secret pact with the school cook, that she was bringing him chocolate on a regular basis, even though the board of education had strictly prohibited children from eating sweets on school grounds. “He goes to the bathroom and comes back with five chocolate bars,” the teacher explained. “Yesterday, he sat in a corner and kept eating until streams of chocolate started running out of his nose.”

“But why don’t you talk to the cook about it?” my wife asked.

“I’ve already done that,” the teacher sighed. “But she says Lev is so manipulative that she just can’t help it.”

“And you think it’s possible,” my wife continued, “that a 4-year-old can control an adult and force her to—”

“Don’t pay attention to her,” I whispered to the teacher. “She knows it’s possible. She just likes to argue.”

In the afternoon, I took advantage of a friendly soccer game with Lev to have a heart-to-heart. “You know what Ricki, your teacher, told me today?” I asked.

“That even though I water her computer every morning, it doesn’t help and the screen will always stay a midget?” Lev asked.

“No,” I said. “She told me that Mari the cook brings you chocolate every morning.”

“Yes,” Lev said happily. “Lots and lots and lots of chocolate.”

“Your teacher also said that you eat all the chocolate yourself and won’t share it with the other kids.” I added.

“Yes,” Lev agreed quickly. “But I always explain to them that I can’t give them any because kids aren’t allowed to eat sweets in school.”

“Very good,” I said. “But if kids aren’t allowed to eat sweets in school, why do you think you can?”

“Because I’m not a kid,” Lev smiled a pudgy, sneaky smile. “I’m a cat.”

“You’re what?”

“Meow,” Lev answered in a soft, purry voice. “Meow, meow, meow.”

The next morning, I was drinking coffee in the kitchen and reading the papers. The coach of the Israeli national soccer team was caught by customs smuggling more than $25,000 worth of cigars into the country. A Knesset member from the Shas party bought a restaurant and forced his parliamentary aide, paid out of the Knesset budget, to work there. Basketball coaches for Maccabi Tel Aviv, the country’s star team, are facing charges of income tax evasion. Then, while I ate breakfast, I read a little about the trial of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, accused of graft, and topped it all off with a short item stating that former Finance Minister Avraham Hirshson, presently incarcerated for embezzlement, has been called “a model prisoner” by his fellow inmates.

For years I’ve struggled in vain to understand why such well-heeled, successful people choose to break the law, risking punishment and scorn, when they already have everything. Olmert, after all, was not living in abject poverty when he forged flight expenses so he could squeeze another thousand dollars out of Yad Vashem. And Hirshson wasn’t exactly starving when he embezzled money from the organization for which he was working. But then, after that heart-to-heart with Lev, it all suddenly became clear. Those men, just like my son, cheat and steal and lie only because they are sure they are cats. And as adorable, furry, cream-loving creatures, they don’t have to abide by the same rules and laws all those sweaty two-legged creatures around them have to obey. With that in mind, it’s easy to predict the former prime minister’s line of defense:

Prosecutor: Mr. Olmert, are you aware of the fact that forgery and fraud are against the law?

Olmert: Of course. As a moral, law-abiding former prime minister, I am completely aware that they are against the law for all the citizens of the country. But if you read the country’s laws carefully, you will see that they don’t apply to cats! And I, sir, have been well-known throughout the world as a lazy fat cat.

Prosecutor (flabbergasted): Mr. Olmert, certainly you do not expect the court to take your last remark seriously.

Olmert (licking the cuffs of his Armani suit): Meow, meow. meow.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

From the day you were born in Israel, you’ve been taught that what happened in Europe over the past few centuries was nothing but a series of persecutions and pogroms, and despite the dictates of common sense, the lessons of that education continue to fester somewhere in your gut. It’s an unpleasant feeling somehow always affirmed by reality. Nothing grandiose happens, as I was reminded last week during a trip to Eastern Europe; a Cossack doesn’t rape your mother or your sister. It can be a seemingly innocent comment on the street, graffiti of a Star of David and some unclear slogan on a crumbling wall, the way the light reflects off the cross of the church opposite your hotel window, or the way a conversation between a couple of German tourists resonates against the background of the misty Polish countryside.

Then the questions begin: is this truth or phobia? Are those semi-anti-Semitic events insinuating themselves into your mind because you anticipate them? My wife, for example, insists that I have superhuman power when it comes to detecting swastikas. It doesn’t matter where we are—Melbourne, Berlin, or Zagreb—I can spot a swastika in the area in less than 10 minutes.

And here’s a little story about my first trip to Germany as a writer, exactly 15 years ago. The local publisher invited me to an excellent Bavarian restaurant (I admit that sounds like an oxymoron), and just as our main course arrived, a tall, strapping German about 60 years old walked in and began to speak in a loud voice. His face was red and he looked drunk. From the jumble of German words he tossed into the air, I recognized only the two he kept repeating: “Juden raus!”I went over to the guy and said in English in a tone that tried to sound calm: I’m a Jew. You want to take me out of here? Come on, do it, take me out. The German, who didn’t understand a word of English, kept shouting in German, and in no time at all, we were in a shoving match. My publisher tried to intervene and asked me to go back and sit down. “You don’t understand,” he tried to say. But I persisted. I thought I understood very well. As a second-generation Holocaust survivor, I felt that I understood what was going on there better than any of the restaurant’s calm patrons. At some point, the waiters pulled us apart, and the angry drunk was thrown out. I went back to the table. My food was cold, but I wasn’t hungry anymore anyway. While we were waiting for the check, my publisher explained in a deep, quiet voice that the furious drunk had been complaining that one of the diners’ cars was blocking his vehicle. The words that had sounded to me like “Juden raus” were actually “jeden raus,” which translates roughly to “outside next to.” When the check came, I insisted on paying. Reparations to a different Germany, if you will. What can I do? Even today, every other word of the German language puts me on the defensive.

But, as they say, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.” During the 20 years I’ve been traveling the world, I’ve collected a number of genuine anti-Semitic experiences that can’t be explained away by a mistake in pronunciation.

There was, for instance, a Hungarian guy who met me in a local bar after a literary event in Budapest and insisted on showing me the giant German eagle tattooed on his back. He said that his grandfather killed 300 Jews in the Holocaust, and he himself hoped to someday boast about a similar number.

In a small, peaceful East German town, a tipsy actor who had read some of my stories two hours earlier explained to me that anti-Semitism is a terrible thing, but you can’t deny that the intolerable behavior of the Jews throughout history helped fan the flames.

A clerk in a French hotel told me and the Arab Israeli writer Sayed Kashua that if it were up to him, that hotel wouldn’t accept Jews. I spent the rest of the evening listening to Sayed’s grumbling that on top of 42 years of the Zionist occupation, he also has to bear the insult of being taken for a Jew.

And only a week ago, at a literary festival in Poland, someone in the audience asked me if I was ashamed to be a Jew. I gave him a logical, well-reasoned answer that wasn’t the slightest bit emotional. The audience, which had listened attentively, applauded. But later, in my hotel room, I had a hard time falling asleep.

There’s nothing like a couple of good November khamsins to put the Jew in you back in its place. The direct Middle Eastern sunlight burns all traces of the Diaspora right out of you. My friend Uzi and I are sitting on the Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv. Sitting next to him are Krista and Renate. “Don’t tell me,” Uzi says, trying to cover up his ballooning horniness with some unsuccessful telepathy. “You’re both from Sweden.”

“No,” Renate laughs, “we’re from Düsseldorf. Germany. You know Germany?”

“Sure,” Uzi nods enthusiastically, “Kraftwerk, Modern Talking, Nietzsche, B.M.W., Bayren Munchen…” He forages round in his brain for a few more German associations, to no avail. “Hey, Bro,” he says to me, “why did we send you to college for all those years? How about contributing a little something to the conversation.”

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

The first, will-he-look-like-his-mom-or-his-dad, was resolved quickly and unequivocally at his birth: he was beautiful. Or, as my dear wife so aptly puts it, “The only thing he inherited from you is the hair on his back.”

And the second issue, what-will-he-be-when-he-grows-up, was of concern for the first three years of his life. His bad temper qualified him to be a taxi driver; his phenomenal ability to make excuses indicated that he might do well in the legal profession; and his consistent mastery over others showed his potential to be a high-ranking member of one totalitarian government or another. But during the past few months the fog surrounding our son’s plump and rosy future has begun to lift. He’ll probably be a milkman, because otherwise, his rare ability to wake up every morning at 5:30 and insist on waking us too would go completely to waste.

One Wednesday, two weeks ago, our routine of being awakened at 5:30 a.m. was preempted by the doorbell. In my pajama bottoms, I opened the door and saw my best friend, Uzi, standing there, white as a sheet. On the balcony, he smoked nervously and told me that he’d had dinner with S., a crazy kid who’d gone to elementary school with us and had become, of course, a crazy high-ranking military officer. Around dessert, after Uzi finished bragging about a dubious real estate deal he’d just closed, S. told him about a secret dossier that had reached his desk. It dealt with the psychological makeup of the Iranian president. According to the dossier, which originated in foreign-intelligence agencies, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of the only living leaders in the world whose real views, aired only behind closed doors, are even more fanatical than the ones aired in public.

“It’s almost always the opposite,” S. had explained. “World leaders are barking dogs who don’t bite. But with him, it seems, his desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth is really a lot stronger than he actually says. And, as you know, he says quite a bit.”

“Do you get it?” Uzi, covered in sweat, asked me. “That crazy Iranian is prepared to destroy Israel even if it means the total annihilation of Iran, because from a pan-Islamic perspective, he sees that as a victory. And in a few months, that guy is going to have a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb! Do you understand what a disaster it’ll be for me if he drops it on Tel Aviv? I rent out 14 apartments here. Did you ever hear of a radioactive mutation who pays his rent on time?”

“Get hold of yourself, Uzi,” I said. “You’re not the only one who’ll suffer if we get bombed. I mean, we have a kid here and—”

“A kid doesn’t pay rent,” Uzi yelled. “A kid doesn’t sign a lease with you that he’ll break without a second thought the minute he grows a third eye.” At that point in the conversation, I lit a cigarette too.

The next day, when my wife asked me to call in a plumber to check a wet spot on the bedroom ceiling, I told her about my conversation with Uzi. “If S. is right,” I said, “it would be a waste of our time and money. Why fix anything if the whole city is going to be wiped out in two months?” I suggested that maybe we should give it half a year, and if we’re still here in one piece in March, we’ll repair the ceiling then. My wife didn’t say anything, but from her look I could tell that she hadn’t realized the seriousness of the current geopolitical situation. “So if I understand you correctly, you probably want to postpone the work on the garden too?” she asked. I nodded. Why waste the citrus tree saplings and the violets we’d plant? According to the internet, they’re particularly sensitive to radiation.

Aided by Uzi’s intelligence, I managed to save us from quite a few chores. The only home-repair job I agreed to take part in was roach extermination, because even radioactive fallout won’t stop those pests. Gradually, my wife also began to realize the advantages of our shabby existence. After she found a not exactly reliable news site warning that Iran might already have nuclear weapons, she decided it was time to stop washing dishes. “There’s nothing more frustrating than getting nuked while you’re putting the soap in the dishwasher,” she explained. “From now on, we only wash the dishes on an immediate-need basis, a second before we eat.”

This if-I’m-going-up-in-flames-anyway-then-I-won’t-go-as-a-sucker philosophy extended well beyond the dishwasher edict. We quickly stopped unnecessary floor-mopping and garbage removal. At my wife’s cunning suggestion, we went straight to the bank to apply for a huge loan, figuring that if we take out the money fast enough, we can screw the system. “Let them come looking for us to pay it back when this country turns into a giant hole in the ground,” we laughed as we sat in our filthy living room watching our enormous new plasma TV. It would be nice if only once in our short lives we could really put one over on the bank.

And then I had a nightmare in which Ahmadinejad came over to me on the street, hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks and said in fluent Yiddish, “Ich hub dir lieb,” “My brother, I love you.” I woke my wife. Her face was covered in plaster. The problem of the wet spot on the ceiling over our bed was worse than we had thought. “What’s wrong?” she asked, frightened. “Is it the Iranians?”

I nodded, but quickly reassured her that it was only in a dream.

“That they annihilated us?” she asked, stroking my cheek. “I have one of those every night.”

“Even worse,” I said. “I dreamed we were making peace with them.”

That hit her really hard. “Maybe S. was wrong,” she whispered in terror. “Maybe the Iranians won’t attack. And we’ll be stuck with this filthy, rundown apartment, with the debts and your students, whose papers you promised to give back by January and haven’t even started to mark. And with those nudnik relatives of yours in Eilat we promised to visit for Pesach because we were sure that by then—”

“It was just a dream,” I tried to cheer her up. “He’s a lunatic, you can see it in his eyes.” But that was too little, too late. I hugged her as hard as I could, letting her tears flow onto my neck, and whispered, “Don’t worry, honey. We’re both survivors. We’ve already survived quite a bit together—illnesses, wars, terrorist attacks, and, if peace is what fate has in store, we’ll survive it too.” So it was that in the middle of an autumn night, we found ourselves sweeping the living room in tense silence. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m calling a plumber.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

The absurd report received a no less absurd response from the Israeli government, which demanded that the Swedish prime minister apologize for the story. The Swedes, of course, refused, claiming freedom of the press, even if in this specific case, the press was not of particularly high quality. And Israel responded immediately with the unconventional weapon it keeps hidden away for conflicts of just such magnitude: a consumer boycott of Ikea. In the midst of this hyperventilated political storm, yours truly found himself spending Rosh Hashanah with an audience of polite Swedish readers who thanked him generously for his stories and were even more grateful that he didn’t take advantage of the moment he autographed their books to snatch a kidney or two.

But my real Swedish drama began when I realized there was a danger that I might not get back to Israel before Yom Kippur. Over the past few years, I’ve spent quite a few holidays outside of Israel, and despite the self-pitying, whiny face I always present to the people around me, I have to admit that I’ve often felt somewhat relieved to spend an Independence Day without an aerial demonstration of Air Force planes flying right over my head, or a Shavuot eve minus aunts and uncles who are insulted because I’ve refused their invitations to a holiday dinner. But I always did everything I could to be in Israel on Yom Kippur. All these years, all my life.

The night after the problem of my flight back was solved—with the help of my host’s savvy travel agent—I invited everyone to celebrate our success at a local Swedish restaurant called, for some reason, Cracow, which is famous, of course, for its huge selection of Czech beers. “Now that it all worked out, maybe you can explain to us what the hell is so special about that holiday,” my young Swedish publisher asked. And so I found myself, with a stomach full of cold potato salad and Czech beer, trying to explain to a few half-drunk, literary Swedes what Yom Kippur is.

The Swedes listened and were fascinated. The thought of a day on which no motorized vehicles drive through the cities, people walk around without their wallets and all the stores are closed, a day on which there are no TV broadcasts or even updates on websites—all sounded to them like an innovative Naomi Klein concept and not like an ancient Jewish holiday. The fact that it was also a day on which you’re supposed to ask others for forgiveness and do moral stocktaking upgraded the anti-consumerist angle with a welcome touch of ’60s hippiedom. And the fasting bit sounded like an extreme version of the fashionable low-carb diet they’d talked to me about in such glowing terms just that morning. And so I began the evening trying to explain the ancient Hebrew ritual in my broken English, and found myself doing PR for the coolest, most sought after holiday in the universe, the iPhone of all festivals.

At that point, the amazed Swedes were consumed by envy of me for having been born into such a wonderful religion. Their eyes darted around the restaurant, looking at the patrons as if they were searching for a mohel who would cut them a deal to join up.

Twenty-six hours later, I was strolling with my wife down the center lane of one of Tel Aviv’s busiest thoroughfares, our little son riding his bike with the training wheels behind us. Above us, birds were chirping their morning birdsong. I’ve spent my whole life on that street, but I only get to hear the birds on Yom Kippur.

“Daddy,” my son asked as he pedaled and panted, “tomorrow’s Yom Kippur too, right?”

“No, son,” I said, “tomorrow’s a regular day.”

He burst into tears.

“Don’t cry, honey,” my wife tried to comfort him, “in less than a week it’ll be Sukkot.”

That didn’t help at all. The kid was right. There’s nothing like Yom Kippur. Everyone knows it. Even the Swedes.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

The first time I had that dream was five years ago. In the middle of the night, when I got out of bed, covered in perspiration, I made do with a glass of iced tea and watched an episode of The Wire. It’s not that I’d never had a bad dream before, but when I saw this one start to make itself at home in my unconscious, I knew I had a problem, one that even the winning combination of iced tea and Officer Jimmy McNulty couldn’t solve.

My best friend Uzi, a well-known dream-and-hot dog buff, worked out its meaning in no time. “You’re a second generation Holocaust survivor,” he said. “Your parents were forced to leave their country, their home, their natural social environment overnight. That unsettling experience filtered down from your parents’ unsettled consciousness to yours, which was unsettled to begin with. On top of which there’s the unstable reality of our lives in the Middle East. Stir it all up and what do you get? A dream that includes all of those fears: of being uprooted, of arriving in a strange, alien place, of being forced to work at something unfamiliar or unsuitable. You’ve got it all.”

“That makes sense,” I told Uzi. “But what do I do to make sure that that nightmare doesn’t come back—see a psychologist?”

“That won’t do you any good,” he interrupted. “What’s the therapist going to tell you? That your parents weren’t actually persecuted by Nazis, that there’s no chance of Israel being destroyed, leaving you a refugee? That even with your lousy coordination you can do a good job selling hot dogs? What you need isn’t a bunch of lies from a Ph.D. in clinical psych. You need a real solution: a nest-egg in a foreign bank account. Everybody’s doing it. I just read in the paper that foreign accounts, foreign passports, and four wheel drives are the three official trends this summer.”

“And that will work?” I asked.

“Like a charm,” Uzi promised. “It’ll help the dream and the reality. It’s not going to keep you from becoming a refugee or anything, but at least you’ll be a refugee with a bundle. The kind who even if he winds up with a hot dog stand at a train station in Japa-Germany has enough cash to hire another refugee with even lousier luck to stand there and stuff the sauerkraut.”

Taking advantage of refugees wasn’t an idea that appealed to me at first, but after a few more nocturnal visits to the hot dog stand I decided to go for it. On the Internet, I managed to find a nice website of an Australian bank, with a promotional video that showed not only breathtaking landscapes but a smiling teller, who looked like Julia Roberts’s even-nicer sister and urged me to deposit my money with them.

Uzi nixed the idea straight away. “Ten years from now Australia won’t even be there. If the hole in the ozone layer doesn’t get to them, the Chinese takeover will. It’s a sure thing. My cousin works in the Mossad, Pacific Division. Go for Europe. Any place except Russia and Switzerland.”

“What’s the problem there?”

“The Russian economy is unstable,” Uzi explained, taking a big bite of falafel. “And the Swiss… I dunno. I don’t like them. They’re kind of cold, if you know what I mean.”

Eventually I found a nice bank in the Channel Islands. Truth is that before I started looking for a bank I didn’t even know there were islands in the Channel. And it may well be that even in the worst-case scenario of a world war, the bad guys who’ll conquer the world won’t realize there are islands there either, and that even under global occupation, my bank will stay free. The guy at the bank who agreed to take my money was named Jeffrey but he insisted that I call him Jeff. A year later he was replaced by someone named John or Joe and then there was a very nice new guy named Jack. All of them were pleasant and polite and when they talked about my stocks and bonds and their secure future they made sure to use the present perfect tense correctly, something that Uzi and I never managed to do. Which only reassured me even more.

All around me, squabbles in the Middle East were growing more aggressive. Hezbollah’s Grad missiles were hitting Haifa, and Hamas rockets were thrashing buildings in Ashdod. But despite the deafening explosions, I slept like a baby. And it wasn’t that I didn’t have any dreams, but what I dreamt about was the pastoral setting of a bank, surrounded by water, and Jeffrey or John or Jack taking me there in a gondola. The view from the gondola was dazzling, and flying fish swam along with us, singing to me in a human voice that sounded a bit like Dido’s about the splendor and beauty of my investment portfolio, which was growing by the minute. According to Uzi’s Excel charts, it had grown to the point where I could open at least two hot dog stands or, if I preferred, one roofed kiosk.

And then came October 2008, and the fish in my dream stopped singing. After the market crashed, I called Jason, who had replaced the last J on the list, and asked him if he thought I ought to sell. He said I’d do better to wait. I don’t remember just how he said it, except that he too, like all the J’s before him, made very correct use of the present perfect. Two weeks later, my money was worth another 30 percent less. In my dreams, the bank still looked the same, but the gondola had begun capsizing and the flying fish, which didn’t look the least bit friendly anymore, started talking to me in the same familiar Japo-German dialect. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have bribed them with a good hot dog. Uzi’s Excel charts left no doubt that I hadn’t enough money left for a stand. I kept phoning the bank. In our first few conversations, Jason sounded optimistic. Then he began getting defensive, and from a certain point on, simply indifferent. When I asked him if he was looking at my investments and trying to do something to salvage what was left of them, he explained the bank’s policy: proactive management began with portfolios of one million dollars and up. I knew then we’d never again take a gondola trip together.

“Look at the bright side,” Uzi said, and pointed at the picture of a friendly looking man in the newspaper’s financial supplement. “At least you didn’t invest your money with Madoff.” As for Uzi, he made it through the crisis unscathed; he gambled all his money on wheat crops in India or weapons in Angola or vaccines in China. Before that conversation, I’d never heard of Madoff, but now I know all about Bernie and Ruth. Looking back, apart from the bit about the rip-off, we have a lot in common: two restless Jews who love to make up stories and have been sailing along for years in a gondola with a hole in the bottom. Did he too, once, years ago, dream he was selling hot dogs at the train station? Maybe he also had some true friend, like Uzi, who never stopped giving bum advice?

The guy on the news just announced a state of alert in the middle of the country and that there were roadblocks on some of the highways. There are rumors about a soldier being abducted. On my way home I bought two bottles of green tea and stopped at the video store to pick up the first few episodes of the last season of The Wire. Just to be on the safe side.

Translated by Miriam Shlesinger.

As “the father,” I can take an active part in conversations on a wide variety of subjects that until recently were alien to me, and I can expand my knowledge of such fascinating topics as nursing, breast pumps, and the relative merits of cloth diapers vs. their disposable counterparts. There is something almost perversely soothing about discussing such things. As a second-generation Holocaust survivor who considers his momentary survival to be exceptional and not the least bit trivial, and whose daily Google Alerts are confined to the narrow territory between “iranian nuclear development” and “jews+genocide,” there is nothing more enjoyable than a few tranquil hours spent discussing sterilizing bottles with organic soap and the red-pink rashes on a baby’s bottom. But this week, the magic ended and political reality crept its way stealthily into my private paradise.

“Tell me something,” Orit, mother of three-year-old Ron, asked innocently. “Will Lev go to the army when he grows up?” The question caught me totally off guard. Over the last three-and-a-half years, I have had to deal with quite a few speculative questions about my son’s future, but most were of the annoying but non-threatening would-you-advise-him-to-be-an-artist-even-though-from-the-way-you’re-dressed-there-can’t-be-much-money-in-it kind. But that question about the army thrust me into a different, surreal world in which I saw dozens of sturdy babies swathed in environmentally friendly cloth diapers sweeping down from the mountains on miniature ponies, weapons brandished in their pink hands, shouting murderous battle cries. And facing them, alone, stands chubby little Lev, wearing scruffy fatigues and an army vest. A green steel helmet, slightly too large, slides over his eyes, and he clutches a bayoneted rifle in his tiny hands. The first wave of diapered riders has almost reached him. He presses the rifle against his shoulder and closes one eye to aim….

“So what do you say?” Orit awakened me from my unpleasant reverie. “Are you going to let him serve in the army or not? Don’t tell me you haven’t talked about it yet.” There was something accusing in her tone. As if the fact that my wife and I haven’t discussed our baby’s military future is on the same scale as skipping his measles vaccination. I refused to give in to the guilt feelings that come so naturally to me and replied unhesitatingly, “No, we haven’t talked about it. We still have time. He’s three-and-a-half years old.”

“If you feel that you still have time, then take it,” Orit snapped back sarcastically. “Reuven and I have already made up our minds about Ron. He’s not going into the army.”

That night, sitting in front of the TV news, I told my wife about the strange incident in Ezekiel Park. “Isn’t that weird,” I said, “talking about recruiting a kid who still can’t put on his underpants by himself?”

“It’s not weird at all,” my wife replied. “It’s natural. All the mothers in the park talk to me about it.”

“So how come they haven’t said anything to me about it till now?”

“Because you’re a man.”

“So what if I’m a man,” I argue. “They have no problem talking to me about nursing.”

“Because they know you’ll be understanding and empathetic about nursing, but you’ll just be snide when it comes to serving in the army.”

“I wasn’t snide,” I defended myself. “I just said that it’s a strange subject to be dealing with when the kid’s so young.”

“I’ve been dealing with it from the day Lev was born,” my wife confessed. “And if we’re already discussing it now, I don’t want him to go into the army.”

I was silent. Experience has taught me that there are some situations in which it’s better to keep quiet. That is, I tried to keep quiet. Life gives me good advice, but sometimes I refuse to take it. “I think it’s very controlling to say something like that,” I finally said. “After all, in the end, he’ll have to decide those things by himself.”

“I’d rather be controlling,” my wife answered, “than have to take part in a military funeral on the Mount of Olives 15 years from now. If it’s controlling to keep your son from putting his life at risk, then that’s exactly what I am.”

At that point, the argument heated up and I turned off the TV. “Listen to yourself,” I said. “You’re talking as if serving in the army is an extreme sport. But what can we do? We live in a part of the world where our lives depend on it. So what you’re actually saying is that you’d rather have other people’s children go into the army and sacrifice their lives, while Lev enjoys his life here without taking any risks or shouldering the obligations the situation calls for.”

“No,” said my wife responded. “I’m saying that we could have reached a peaceful solution a long time ago, and we still can. And that our leaders allow themselves not to do that because they know that most people are like you: they won’t hesitate to put their children’s lives into the government’s irresponsible hands.”

I was about to answer her when I sensed another pair of huge eyes watching me. Lev was standing at the entrance to the living room. “Daddy,” he asked, “why are you and Mommy fighting?”

Since that conversation with Orit, none of the mothers in the park have spoken to me again about Lev’s military service. But I still can’t get that image of him in uniform, armed with a rifle, out of my mind. Just yesterday, in the sandbox, I saw him push Orit’s peacenik son Ron, and later, on the way home, he chased a cat with a stick. “Start saving, Daddy,” I tell myself. “Start saving for a defense attorney. You’re not raising just a soldier here, but a potential war criminal.” I’d be happy to share those thoughts with my wife, but after we barely survived that last clash, I don’t want to start a new one.

We managed to end our argument with an agreement of sorts. First, I suggested what sounded like a fair settlement: when the kid is 18, we’ll let him decide for himself. But my wife rejected that out of hand, claiming he would never be able to make a really free choice with all the social pressure around him. In the end, out of exhaustion, and in the absence of any other solution, we decided to compromise on the only principle we both truly agreed on: to spend the next 14 years working towards family and regional peace.

Translated by Sondra Silverston.

How did Labor fall so far? What’s its future? These questions have gnawed at me in the months since the election as I’ve tried to find a silver lining to Labor’s defeat.

In Israel’s 17 national elections nearly every party other than the two biggest has been parochial, claiming to represent specific cohorts of the Israeli public: the ultra-Orthodox, the elderly, traditional Sephardim, and the National Religious. Suddenly, this year, the most significant party in Israel’s history found itself the size of a sectarian party. But worse, it lacks even a parochial party’s focus: Who does it represent? Kibbutzniks? Ashkenazis? Workers? A profile of Labor party voters, just like its platform, is very fuzzy. And after a non-exhaustive check of my friends and acquaintances, I could only conclude that most of the people who voted Labor did so out of a years-long habit or through a process of elimination and with very little enthusiasm, purely out of fear of other, even less deserving alternatives.

There are many reasons for the collapse of Labor, but the major one is that it no longer knows what it stands for. If the word “labor” once meant a clear, left-wing socialist ideology, a party that professed to be concerned with the weaker sectors of society and sought peace with our neighbors, today it has become a group of elected officials unable to agree on any consistent platform. Can Ehud Barak, the millionaire who lives in a luxurious apartment, in any way represent social solidarity with the working class? Can the same Barak who was defense minister during the war in Gaza really be a viable alternative left of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, for example, who was supposed to represent—at least on paper—a more hawkish view than his? And if Labor does not represent a moderate, social-democrat leftist ideology, what is its raison d’etre? After all, if there is no problem picturing its leader running for the Knesset on the Likud or Kadima ticket, then why vote for such a nebulous entity as the Labor Party when you can vote for the real thing?

In the many interviews Barak gave after stepping down as prime minister, he mentioned that, in the 2001 Taba peace talks, it became clear to him that the Palestinian leadership was not really interested in a comprehensive peace agreement and that all attempts to negotiate with them were futile. Disappointed in the peace process and what he saw as the absence of a genuine partner on the other side of the table, Barak changed his views radically and should have left the Labor party to embark on a different political path. Instead, he went back to Labor and led it into a united nationalist government headed by parties ostensibly to its right in the political spectrum, where he fits in naturally and completely.

But the personal change Barak underwent does not explain why members of Labor chose to hand him the reins. The last time Barak was elected to lead Labor, his opponent was Ami Ayalon, former commander-in-chief of the Navy and a supporter of the Geneva Accord. Ayalon was an inexperienced politician but one who clearly represented Labor’s historical ideology. Always perceived as a man with a modest lifestyle, Ayalon was a more natural choice to follow in the footsteps of Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin, both also known for their modesty, than the arrogant Barak. Nonetheless, Ayalon lost that race, a fact that indicates a deeper crisis than the one Labor experienced: the party’s members opted not to elect the candidate who carries the party’s spirit. Instead, they chose Barak, who has come to symbolize the ambiguous and unclear future of the Left.

When Palestinians in the territories elected Hamas in 2006, most supporters of the Zionist left found themselves up against a wall. The previous decade had showed that with every Israeli concession, the situation in the region deteriorated. Many believed that the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, particularly the way it was carried out, led to the Second Intifada and the strengthening of Hezbollah. Others believed that the unilateral disengagement from the territories caused the Hamas victory in the Gaza elections. While the radical left continued to claim that the efforts failed because Israel wasn’t prepared to give enough, the mainstream Zionist left was trapped. On the one hand, it wasn’t ready for greater concessions or direct contacts with the fanatical Hamas, but on the other hand, given the situation, it could not offer a political alternative to the total reliance on military solutions proposed by the right. And so, under the circumstances, the Zionist left has become a passive group devoid of pragmatic vision. When a political entity is unable to propose initiatives and settles for passive responses to the existing situation, it’s no wonder that it loses its authority to other parties that project a clearer and often more impassioned view.

Some people see the Labor Party’s entry into Netanyahu’s government as the final nail in its coffin. Many will gloat when it finally vanishes. Enemies on the right will feel that its demise delegitimizes the left. Enemies on the left will consider it proof that Labor’s existence was always based on lies. I believe that this wretched year will lead to positive changes in the party and in the end, we’ll see a new party that will leap into the existing vacuum. It will call itself Labor or some other name, and pledge itself, first of all, to champion social justice and commit itself to working for the weaker sectors of the population: the elderly, minorities, foreign workers, and others. And it will be forced to create a new, pragmatic ideology that may not please all of us, but at the same, will also make it difficult for our neighbors to mire themselves in their isolationist and militant positions.

I can already identify the potential leader of that new party among the sparse rows of Labor’s Knesset members, and he—how ironic—is the man who succeeded in mediating between Barak and Netanyahu during the last coalition negotiations that unsuccessfully attempted to bring the Labor Party into the Likud government, inadvertently bringing about the end of an era. This man isn’t a general and still hasn’t accumulated a private fortune. He is Sephardic, counter to the leftist, Ashkenazic stereotype that the right has exploited in every election campaign. His name is Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut Labor Federation, a man who, in contrast to his predecessors, has rarely appeared in the media, but has done an impressive job of representing Israel’s workers. He is discreet, seemingly ego-less, and has won the respect of party leaders on all sides, unusual insofar as union chiefs are typically despised by politicians. With almost no strikes or threats, but with admirable determination, Eini has managed to achieve goals—a stable labor agreement in one of the most difficult economic periods in the life of the country. And who knows, maybe the same down-to-earth pragmatism that solved most of the labor-management negotiation problems will succeed in the regional arena as well, exactly where Barak’s ideology and arrogance failed.

Etgar Keret is Tablet Magazine’s columnist in Israel.

Translated by Sondra Silverston

I don’t remember exactly what I read that evening, only that throughout the reading, it was her story reverberating in my mind. In that story, a father speaks to his children, who are spending their summer vacation torturing animals. He tells them that there is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and no matter how hard it is, that line must never be crossed.

Such is the way of the world. The writer didn’t create it, but he’s here to say what needs to be said. There is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and even if the writer has crossed it during his life, he still has to point it out. The writer is neither saint nor tzaddik nor prophet standing at the gate; he’s just another sinner with a somewhat sharper awareness and slightly more precise language to use in describing the inconceivable reality of our world. He doesn’t invent a single feeling or thought—they all existed long before him. He’s not the least bit better than his readers—sometimes he’s a lot worse—and so it should be. If the writer were an angel, the abyss that separates him from us would be so great that his writing couldn’t get close enough to touch us. But because he’s here, at our side, buried up to his neck in mud and filth, he’s the one who, more than anyone else, can share with us everything that’s going on in his mind, in the lit-up areas and especially in the dark recesses. He won’t take us to the promised land, he won’t bring peace to the world or heal the sick. But if he does his work right, a few more virtual frogs will get to live. The bugs, I’m sorry to say, will have to manage on their own.

From the day I began writing, I knew that truth. I knew it firmly and clearly. But at that reading, when I came face to face with a real lion in the MacDowell Artists’ Colony in the heart of New Hampshire and felt that fear for a second, I realized that even the sharpest knowledge we all possess can become blunted. Someone who creates without support or reinforcement, who can write only after working hours, surrounded by people who aren’t even sure he has talent, will always remember that truth. The world around him just won’t let him forget it. The only kind of writer who can forget it is a successful one, the kind who doesn’t write against the stream of his life, but with it, and every insight that flows from his pen not only enhances the text and makes him happy, but also delights his agents and his publisher. Damn it, I forgot it. That is, I remembered that there’s a line between one thing and another, it’s just that lately, it has somehow turned into a line between success and failure, acceptance and rejection, appreciation and scorn.

That night, after the reading, I went back to my room and straight to bed. Through all the windows I could see huge pine trees and a clear night sky and I could hear frogs croaking in the woods. That was the first time since I’d come there that the frogs felt safe enough to croak. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep, for silence. But the croaking didn’t stop. At two in the morning, I got out of bed, went to the computer and started to write.

Uzi and I are sitting in the hummus place near my house. I’m scooping up the hummus with pita, Uzi’s eating it with a fork. He’s on a diet now, and pita, along with chocolate, beer, and a million other things, are on his blacklist. That’s how it is when you weigh 265 pounds. When it comes time to pay for all those years gorging yourself on hamburgers and pizza, the price is high and painful. When he’s not eating the hummus, Uzi stabs it on the plate with the sharp prongs of his fork. Venting his diet rage on the poor plate.

“What you do,” Uzi begins again, “that business of tapping out words on your computer, then sending them to people and claiming they’re art, that’s—”

“Okay,” I interrupt. “Let’s say we’ve already done that bit when you insult me and say I’m a good-for-nothing who does unimportant things and pretends it’s a profession and get to the point.”

“Insulting?” Uzi says and stops stabbing the hummus in his plate as if he’s just finished confirming its death. “Calling me a bald tub of lard, for example, is insulting. But saying that up to now you’ve managed to make money from something that is the opposite of a profession, that’s the opposite of insulting. It’s a compliment.”

“Okay,” I say, “okay, you bald tub of lard, then thanks a whole lot for the compliment, and let’s get back to the point. Do you have some specific idea in your head, or are we just splashing around in this especially murky puddle of small talk for no reason?”

“I don’t believe you called me a tub of lard,” Uzi protests, “me, your best friend from kindergarten. You wounded me, that’s exactly what you just did, you wounded me. You wounded a person with a weight problem who, with tremendous courage and determination, is trying to dig a tunnel with a tiny fork through the thick wall of calories to escape to freedom from the pudgy cell he’s trapped in. You wounded me, and it’s no simple wound, it’s a fatal blow. If my diet fails now—and that’s a possibility I’m not discounting—all the responsibility, and I mean all of it, will rest on your skinny shoulders.”

“Come on, Uzi,” I say, “I know that hidden behind this whole pointless conversation is a shady business proposal, so for the sake of our beautiful, long friendship, will you stop bleeding for a minute and tell me what it’s all about?”

“A restaurant,” Uzi says, his eyes filling with light. “You and I open a restaurant together.”

“But you don’t know how to cook,” I say, “and neither do I.”

“What does that have to do with anything? My cousin Ziv has a Mazda dealership and he doesn’t even know how to drive.”

“I know Ziv,” I say, “and maybe he doesn’t drive, but he knows cars.”

“And you and I don’t know food, right? That’s what you’re trying to say?” Uzi says, getting huffy.

“Considering that before I got married I didn’t have a stove in my apartment and my kitchen utensils consisted entirely of a spoon, a can opener, and lots of Heinz beans, I think I have a case here.”

“Okay,” Uzi says, “you know what? Against my natural inclinations, I won’t even argue with you, and you know why? Because I know you’re right.”

“That never stopped you before.”

“True,” Uzi continues. “Except this time I don’t have to. Because my brain has attacked the subject of this restaurant the way a Japanese judoist attacks his opponent. And I built a concept that will turn our weakness into an advantage.”

“Explain.”

“Of course,” Uzi says, then sips his Coke Zero and takes a deep breath. “Picture an army base mess hall. Long tables, uncomfortable plastic chairs, red and blue plastic plates that look faded from use, fluorescent lighting.”

“I’m picturing it,” I say after a short silence, when I realize that he’s waiting for my response.

“Great,” Uzi says. “So at this very moment you are picturing our restaurant. ‘Home Base: army food at civilian prices.’”

“But why would anyone want to eat in a restaurant like that? Everyone knows how awful army food is.”

“Maybe,” Uzi says, “but the memories connected to it, on the other hand, are wonderful. Think for a minute. What does army food conjure up: eighteen years old, hair on our heads, normal weight, girl soldiers willing to go out with us. Everything we don’t have now. People don’t go to a restaurant to eat food, they go to be reminded of a better time, a time when they were young. The Americans have the Hard Rock Cafe and we’ll have Home Base, complete with a sergeant walking around and yelling at anyone who isn’t shaved.”

I’m quiet for a second. When Uzi’s ideas are bad, I love to put them down, but when they’re as pathetic as this one, even the cruelest part of me only wants to kneel down and pet them or the bald head that owns them as if they were a sad little dog.

“Think about it,” Uzi says. “Semolina cereal and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast. Doesn’t that flood you with memories? You can’t imagine how much it turns me on.”

“Even so,” I say, “I think I’ll take a pass on this business opportunity.”

“But you have a kid to feed,” Uzi says. “You have to do something to support him.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write a column, something for the Internet.”

“Okay,” Uzi says, “I personally think that this whole Internet thing is just a fad, but let’s say I go with you on the idea. What’ll you write about?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug, and signal the waiter to bring the bill. “I’ll think of something.”

“Maybe he’ll be a restaurant critic,” my wife suggests, trying to dispel the heavy cloud hanging over us.

“A restaurant critic?” I say disdainfully. “Do you remember what he said after he took a sip of ink from the printer cartridge? ‘Yummy.’ The kid is no gourmet.”

Israel’s next president?

But my wife refuses to lose hope. “Maybe he can be a quality controller of mattresses for dwarves?” she asks excitedly. “After all, he really does love to sleep.”

“That is a very, very specific field,” I say, trying to cool her enthusiasm. “Without connections in bedroom-furniture-for-the-height-challenged circles—which I’m sorry to say neither of us actually has—it’ll be hard for him to break into the business.”

A depressing silence fills our dark living room, broken only by the phony “Bye-byes!” little Lev is calling out to the passersby on the street. My wife is on the verge of crying, and if my military past hadn’t toughened me, I would shed a tear too. What could a pair of brave parents hope for after discovering at such an early stage that their baby is a good-for-nothing?

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a ray of sun breaks through the clouds, bringing with it an epiphany. “President,” I shout happily to my wife, “our Lev will be president.” She hesitates for a moment, but I don’t let that deflate me. “It’s crystal clear,” I explain to her. “With all the investigations of Katsav and the coming impeachment, they’ll be starting to look for a new president in a few weeks, and our Lev has everything it takes to do the job: he looks like a statesman; he loves to wave to people; he doesn’t have a left-wing past that could raise right-wing opposition; and he barely knows how to talk, so there’s almost no chance he’ll make politically incorrect remarks. He’s the perfect candidate, just think about it: my parents are from Poland, your grandmother’s from Syria. If we play our cards right, the little guy’ll get wall-to-wall support.”

“But,” my wife notes skeptically, “he doesn’t know English. How will he make speeches or talk to other world leaders?”

“With waves and smiles,” I reply to calm her down, “just like Katsav.”

“But he still shits in his diapers,” my wife says, still doubtful.

“So what?” I ask, waving my hand dismissively. “No one’s perfect. Compared to his predecessors, his virtues—and there are many—definitely outweigh his vices. Our Lev is as straight as an arrow and he doesn’t have a criminal record or skeletons in the closet…”

“He touches his peenie,” my wife blurts out. “You leave him alone naked for a minute and he’s touching his peenie . . .”

“Better a president who touches himself and not others,” I say, quick to see the half-full glass.

“I’m still not convinced,” my wife persists.

“Shira,” I take her hand and look hard into her eyes, “Face it. Either president or quality controller of mattresses for dwarves. There is no third option. Now you tell me—where do you think Lev has a better chance?”

“President,” she says with a nod after a second’s hesitation. “‘Lev Keret’ definitely sounds like a president’s name.”

Since that conversation, my wife and I have been working constantly on Lev’s presidential campaign. We already have one good slogan: “The People Love Lev.” And “Small Countries Need Compact Presidents” might work pretty well as a bumper sticker. We’re not complacent; we’re well aware that a few other people in the country know how to say “Bye-bye” and wave to passersby from the window. So it’s going to be a tough battle, but in the end, when the smoke clears, the last man standing will be the shortest and the chubbiest. And if you, like us, want Israel to have a president with a clean past and a dirty behind, don’t hesitate to send in your endorsements. All moral support and offers to baby-sit the president-elect will be gratefully accepted.

I don’t know where my wall-eyed taxi driver got that plan about a safari in Rabin Square. The city, in any case, issued a sweeping denial. What it didn’t deny, however, was that at the end of that tsunami of renovation, Rabin Square, which has known some of the brightest and darkest moments in the history of Israeli democracy, will be wiped off the face of the earth, replaced by a huge, high-rise parking lot.

Almost 25 years ago, when I was a teenager and that “dingy, depressing square” was still called Malchei Israel Square, 400,000 people, about 10 percent of the population of the country at the time, gathered there to demand the dismissal of the then-Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, architect of the bloody Lebanese war. That demonstration reminded anyone who had managed to forget in those difficult days that the government of a democratic country represents the will of its citizens, and when those citizens have had their fill of war and killing, they can gather in the city square, protest, and affect the fate of their country.

In the 25 years that have passed since those 400,000 people protested, the Square has known many other demonstrations. Tens of thousands of people have gathered there to support or attack every historical decision made in our country, from the Oslo Accords, to the Gaza Strip disengagement, to the recent Lebanese War. The demonstrations have remained large, but anyone keeping track of the numbers can see that they have been diminishing. The growing hopelessness, the heart-hardening cynicism, and the absence of an alternate leadership to guide us through these dismal times has kept people at home.

Anyone looking for the turning point, the moment when the Square began to lose its power, will find it on that dark November night 11 years ago when, during one of the largest demonstrations ever held there, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing activist who showed us all how one man, armed with malicious intentions and a gun, could affect history more than hundreds of thousands of peace seekers with paper placards and naïve slogans. Since that assassination, the Peace Guard, a group that sings songs and has vowed to take up Rabin’s legacy, meets at the Square every Friday. The last time I visited the Square, almost a week after I found out about the plan to demolish it, I was surprised to see how few people had come to the weekly event that had drawn thousands in the past. The ones who did come, most of them elderly, crowded around the monument to Rabin’s memory and sang peace songs. The iron barricades the police and the building contractors had set up encircled them, making them look like endangered animals in a cage. Thousands of young people walked past them on the dusty sidewalk, talking into their shiny new cell phones and carrying shopping bags from the leading fashion shops. Not a single one slowed down or even glanced at the Peace Guards.

The city said that tearing down Rabin Square was an attempt “to solve the unbearable parking problem and would be of great benefit to the area’s residents.” When the project is finished, those residents who want to gather for protest rallies will no longer have a place to do it in. Parking, on the other hand, will be abundantly available. That Square, which stirs so much emotion, the site of so many of the ideological conflicts Israel has known throughout its history, will soon be a site for SUVs and luxury cars. And the Peace Guard, whose numbers are diminishing anyway, will be forced to sing their songs of hope for a better future deep inside the bowels of a dark, concrete parking lot. But their resonating song might still find its way through the lot’s ventilation ducts to the ears of our incompetent leaders who, now that they’ve finally managed to solve the country’s worst problem—parking—will have the time to deal with such marginal issues as achieving real peace in the area, helping the needy, and fighting public corruption. And if these gloomy issues don’t catch their interest, they can always reconsider the safari option.

My father was 29 then and worked installing electrical infrastructures in buildings. Every time he finished a project, he’d go out and spend his wages carousing for two weeks, after which he’d stay in bed for two days to recuperate, and then go to work on a new project. On one of his sprees, he went to a Romanian restaurant on the Tel Aviv beach with a few friends. The food wasn’t great, but the liquor was okay and the gypsy troupe that played was fantastic. My father stayed to listen to the musicians and their plaintive melodies long after his friends had collapsed and were taken home. Even after the last of the diners had gone and the elderly owner insisted on closing, my father refused to part from the troupe and with the help of a few compliments and some money, he managed to convince the gypsies to become his personal orchestra for the night. They walked down the beach promenade with him, playing magnificently. At one point, my drunk father had the uncontrollable urge to urinate, so he asked his private group to play a snappy tune suitable for such osmotic events. He then proceeded to do what people do after excessive drinking against a nearby wall. “Everything was just perfect,” he said, smiling between his squirrel cheeks, “the music, the scenery, the light sea breeze.”

A few minutes later, the euphoria was interrupted by a police car that had been called to arrest my father for disturbing the peace and demonstrating without a permit. It turned out that the wall he’d chosen to urinate on was the western wall of the French Embassy, and the security guards thought that the man urinating to the accompaniment of a cheery band of gypsy musicians was staging a creative political protest. They lost no time in calling the police. The policemen pushed my father, who was cooperating happily, into the back seat of the car. The seat was soft and comfortable, and after a long night my father was glad for a chance to take a little snooze. Unlike my father, the gypsies were sober and resisted arrest, protesting vehemently that they hadn’t done anything illegal. The police tried to shove them into the car, and in the struggle one musician’s pet monkey bit the officer in charge. He responded with a loud yell that woke my father who, like any curious person, got right out of the car to find out what was going on. Outside the car he saw policemen and gypsies fighting in a slightly comic battle, and behind them a few curious passersby who had stopped to watch the unusual show. Among them stood a beautiful redhead. Even through the alcohol haze, my father could tell that she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. He took his electrician’s pad out of his pocket, grabbed the pencil he kept behind his right ear, always ready for action, went over to my mother, introduced himself as Inspector Ephraim, and asked if she had been a witness to the incident. Frightened, my mother said she’d only just gotten there, but Dad insisted that he had to take her details so he could question her later. She gave him her address, and before Inspector Ephraim could say anything else, two furious policemen jumped him, cuffed him, and dragged him to the car. “We’ll be in touch,” he yelled to Mom from the moving car with characteristic optimism. Mom went home quaking in fear and told her flatmate that a serial killer had cunningly managed to wheedle her address out of her. The next day, Dad arrived at my mother’s doorstep, sober and carrying a bouquet of flowers. She refused to open the door. A week later, they went to a movie, and a year after that they were married.

Fifty years have passed. Inspector Ephraim isn’t in the electricity business anymore and my mother hasn’t had a flatmate for a long time. But on special occasions like anniversaries, my father still pulls a special bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet, the same whiskey they served in the long-defunct Romanian restaurant, and pours everyone a shot. “When the doctor said only liquids for the first week, she meant soup, not that,” Mom whispers to me as we all clink glasses. “I hear everything,” Dad says, filling the space between his swollen cheeks with a sip of whiskey. “Watch out, Mamele. In another ten days, I’ll be allowed to bite again.”

When I got home, I Googled for more information on this revolution that had taken place behind my back while I was distracted by the Lebanese War and other urgent problems, and saw that the man from the pediatrician’s waiting room was right, Pluto was no longer a planet. The astronomers, it seems, had changed the definition of the word “planet” so that a new heavenly body discovered in the solar system wouldn’t be granted the sought-after title, and our Pluto—which hadn’t actually been part of the initial debate—paid the price. From now on, Pluto would be just an ordinary rock, and in another few decades, would probably sink into relative anonymity while the glory of Venus and Saturn, its old friends, would be preserved by high school astronomy clubs.

That’s just how it is. Sometimes the name given to an object is no less important that its actual existence in the world. When I was in Australia a few years ago, an amiable local drunk told me about the Tasmanian tiger, an indigenous animal that had become extinct. The main reason for its extinction, according to the drunk, was the fact that it was called a tiger. “Everyone wants to catch himself a tiger,” he explained. “That’s how this not very scary animal found itself being hunted by all kinds of people who wanted a dead tiger on their résumé. Imagine for a minute that someone had called it a ‘Tasmanian cat’ instead, which, in zoological terms, is no less exact. I bet it would still be living here with us.”

Which leads me to another object whose designation has somehow changed over the last few months, with far-reaching consequences. Up until June, the Israeli army was known as “the strongest army in the world,” and suddenly it seems absolutely unworthy of the title. This designation was invalidated right before our eyes, and just as in the case of the Tasmanian tiger, this fact is also of utmost importance in terms of survival. Such a change in status—from an omnipotent, invincible army to one suffering from intelligence and organizational defects—could be the difference between an attacking Syrian or Iranian army and one that stays put. But this change is important not only for Israel’s enemies; it could be even more important for the citizens of Israel itself. It might lead to a perceptual change from the belief that Israel can solve every future conflict with force to the idea that maybe, when all is said and done, there is only one real way we can ever feel safe in this region—through negotiation.

Which brings us to a concept with a dubious definition in our painful Mideast reality: the concept of peace. Can this concept also change its meaning? Can a quixotic, euphoric pursuit of harmony and brotherhood become a pragmatic agreement devoid of mutual affection, but terribly practical as far as avoiding war is concerned? On paper, the chances are very slim, but they’re apparently slightly greater than the chances that a planet which has been sailing round the solar system for millions of years can stop being a planet overnight. So who knows? Maybe despite everything, there’s still hope.

“Someone from the editing room called to say that the light on the wide shot doesn’t match the rest of the scene,” my wife tells me while little Lev and I are sitting in the bath playing my favorite game, Daddy Desert Island. “And the Korean Embassy called. The Ambassador invited you and several other Israeli writers to his home for dinner to discuss the future of Korean literature in Hebrew.”

I nod. I have an answer slightly more complicated than a nod, but if I choose to say it now, I’ll be forced to give away the fact that Daddy isn’t really a desert island. True, I can always claim later that Daddy’s a Talking Desert Island. But I’m not sure that, even at the tender age of five months, little Lev will buy that.

At midnight, I go to put my email to sleep. Sixteen new emails are waiting for me, and of the twelve that don’t think I have to enlarge my penis, three are excited invitations to literary events that I cannot, simply cannot, afford to miss. Two others are from the university about a research proposal I forgot to hand in, and another polite email reminds me gently of the long-elapsed deadline for sending in my column to a Jewish book site that shall remain nameless. The last email I open before going to sleep starts like this:

Dear Alumni,

The State Alumni website invites you to participate in an online Q&A live web chat with Expedition 13 Commander, Pavel Vinogradov, and Flight Engineer and NASA Science Officer, Jeffrey Williams, onboard the International Space Station. They will join State Alumni live to answer alumni questions Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 1:15 pm EDT (17:15 GMT).

I turn off the computer and go to bed. Before I fall asleep for my usual four hours, I imagine myself and Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov chatting. In my mind, I ask him how he manages his time with a full staff to worry about, how many times a day he checks his email out there in space, and whether he sends form letters to people or whether each and every email he sends is personal and authentic. Also present in my fantasy is Flight Engineer and NASA Science Officer, Jeffrey Williams, who’s trying to get into the conversation, but for some uncertain reason, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and I insist on ignoring him, and when I show Pavel Lev’s picture on my cell, I don’t pass it on to the Flight Engineer and NASA Science Officer. That’s more or less the point in the dream when Jeffrey starts crying. I get up and go to little Lev’s crib. He has a fever. I’m worried, but at the same time, I feel slightly relieved that I haven’t actually taken part in the planned humiliation of a Flight Engineer and NASA Science Officer, who never did anything to me.

By morning, Lev’s temperature reaches 103. They’re calling from the editing room every ten minutes. “The movie’s also a kind of baby,” Etti, the postproduction manager, philosophizes, “and it needs you too.”

The doctor says that Lev has a virus. His temperature should be normal in another three days, exactly by the date I have to screen a version of my other—and at the moment—less developed baby for the movie’s producers, and there are still quite a few problems with it. For a moment, I try to get into the postproduction manager’s slightly manipulative image. If there’s anything that Lev and my metaphoric movie baby have in common, it’s that both of them love to crap on Daddy.

In a minute, I’ll leave the computer and get into the bath with Lev. A lukewarm bath, the doctor said, is very good for lowering a temperature. Later, when he falls asleep, I’ll go to the editing room. The editor has agreed to work with me till six in the morning. “Are you coming?” my wife asks, entering my workroom. “In a minute,” I tell her. “We have to get him into the bath fast,” she says. “He’s starting to lose patience.”

I try to type another few sentences quickly before Lev bursts into his famous, heartrending tears.

“Did you write and tell them that you won’t be doing the column for a while?” she asks, undressing the baby. “Now,” I tell her, “I’m just doing it now.”

“To tell you the truth,” Uzi, stretched out on the sand, says to me, “It’s better this way. Keeping a low profile. If people find out we set up a country here, you know what kind of a mess we’re in? Refugees start coming. The UN condemns us. Who knows, maybe even some jerk declares war on us.”

The borders of Beachland are the sea on the west and the concrete promenade on the east. Its northern border is the lifeguard’s station on Gordon Beach and the southern border is the kiosk that sells overpriced natural juices in cans. Its population numbers only a few dozen, the rest are tourists. Beachland’s permanent residents make their living mainly from…the truth is, most of them don’t actually make a living, but their favorite occupations are swimming, playing paddleball and “hunting,” which is code for their dismal, half-desperate attempts to hit on French tourists sunbathing topless. Beachland’s natural resources consist of bottles of mineral water the locals fill from the fountain, peeled fruit in plastic bags, and cream cheese sandwiches.

“Beachland’s people don’t need much,” Motti-Falafel explains, “And that’s where we’re lucky. Because if we had a lot of needs, we’d be in deep trouble.”

Its inhabitants don’t even need last names. The words that follow their first names provide information about the work they do, if any. But even those who haven’t actually managed to hold a job have something to describe them: Saul-Baritone, Honi-Donut, Alon-Forecaster, who’s always predicting good weather and good vibes, and of course, Go-Getter, the man who says he’s reached the ripe old age of 40 without having worked a day in his life. All are pillars of the community you can find on the beach from early morning. The others join them after work, which they try to leave as early as possible. There’s only one thing this mishmash of academicians, metrosexuals, welfare cases, computer whizzes, and shell-shocked former soldiers has in common—they all feel at home there.

The first time I crossed the border into Beachland was purely accidental. I went there with a friend who wanted to see the “weirdos’ beach,” and ever since, I’ve been going to Beachland, which very quickly started to feel like home. The “weirdos” in Beachland, by the way, never seemed weird to me, and according to the friend who took me there the first time, that’s because I’m a weirdo too. It’s a question of perspective, I guess. The real weirdos, Honi-Donut always says, are the people who spend most of their lives in traffic jams.

One of Beachland’s basic laws is that you have to strip down to your bathing suit or underpants before you enter its sandy territory. This rule has helped Beachland to create true equality because when the broker takes off his suit and the guy who sells falafel takes off his jeans, the only differences between them are the height of their tan lines and their skill at paddleball. Even the two Border Patrol soldiers, permanent residents of Beachland, divest themselves of some of their prejudices along with their green uniforms and lose no time asking for tips about female tourists from a veteran hunter, an Arab from Jaffa.

But it isn’t only taking off clothes that helps create that little island of sanity, it’s also the presence of the sea. The enormous sea always puts into perspective every heated political discussion that develops in Beachland. One look at that vast, infinite blue and concepts like historical justice, flag, and nation suddenly seem smaller and less crucial.

Local legend has it that no bomb will ever explode on the coast because Beachland is extraterritorial and has no part in the Middle East conflict. Once, the old-timers in Beachland recount, terrorists put a bomb there, but a drug addict who needed money for a fix mistakenly stole the bag with the bomb in it. When he saw what he’d stolen, he handed it over to the police bomb squad, which neutralized it.

“There’s been more than one terrorist attack on the promenade,” Yoni-Shutters says. “But here? Never. Even God or Allah or whatever you want to call him knows we’re not part of the deal.”

After I voted on Election Day last week, I went down to Beachland. It was more crowded than usual. Saul-Baritone was arguing with Honi-Donut again about beach chairs. Copacabana-Hunter had fallen desperately in love with a plump German girl who was lying on the beach reading Robin Sharma.

“As a person who’s been fantasizing about retirement since I was 20, my heart was with the Pensioners Party,” Yoni-Shutters admits. “But I just didn’t have the energy to go and vote. I said to myself, what do those people have to do with me? It’d be a different story if we were voting for the Beachland Parliament.”

“And who would you vote for?” Uzi-Computers asks suspiciously.

“For you, baby, just for you. And I wouldn’t be the only one. We all would,” Yoni-Shutters reassures him.

“And we’d vote for Etgar-Books too,” Avi-Phone-Company says, trying to be polite.

“For Books?” Yoni-Shutters asks, giving me a smile that doesn’t show many teeth. “Never. That Etgar hardly ever comes here, maybe once every two weeks. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t have enough seniority for me to even consider him a resident.”

When I got home, I saw one of the workers already checking out the designated victim with the tired eyes of an experienced butcher. As I always do at times of distress, I pulled a pad and pen out of my pocket and tried to look like an investigative reporter. I said hello to the tree butcher and inquired whether I might ask his name and the purpose of his visit to the neighborhood. “My name’s Eli and I work with the Electric Company,” the butcher muttered with practiced indifference. “May I ask what your surname is?” I wondered out loud. “No,” Eli replied with surprising honesty, “now scram.” “I am not scramming,” I replied, trying to sound threatening and even wrote on my pad, “Answers rudely.” And I underlined it. Already as a child, I understood that there were kids who threatened to bring their big brothers and there were others who had no big brothers or had completely non-scary big brothers, like mine. Those were the kids who had to make do with a weenie threat like they’d snitch, and they were the ones who, when they get older, like me, turn into the type that threatens to write about it in the papers. “Do whatever you want,” Eli kept mumbling at me, “For me, you’re nuthin’, you hear? Just air.” Eli was not the first person in my life to say that for them, I was just air. There had already been a platoon sergeant, a neighbor in Ramat Gan, and even a girl who once went out with me for two months and then dumped me. In fact, she didn’t even dump me. She just left me on the sidewalk and never came back to get me. But none of them threatened to kill the only Tree that ever came close to being a friend.

But luckily for me, who should show up then but a guy named Kobi, Eli’s tree-sawing partner and for our purposes, the good cop. He wouldn’t give me his surname either, but he was happy to tell me that he and Eli had come into my life from Ashkelon Mining Inc., and that they weren’t exactly the Electric Company, but in a minute, someone who was would come by to pull the plug because it was dangerous to saw branches like that, so close to the high-power lines. “We’re not gonna kill the tree,” Kobi from Ashkelon Mining Inc., reassured me, “we’re only gonna rough it up a little.” He was quick to explain that some woman in the neighborhood had called them to come, saying that the tree bothered her very much, and was dangerous too, because some of its branches had rotted and might fall on passersby or on the power lines. “And those are the only branches you’re going to cut down?” I tried slyly to wheedle a promise out of him. “Not only. We’ll cut down all kinds of branches.” He patted my shoulder affectionately, “You know, so the tree should be balanced and the leaves don’t make the street dirty.”

On the way to a work meeting, I got an editor from a local weekly, Ha-Ir, on the phone and offered to write him a short piece about The Tree A. Hillel had planted on my street that was about to get butchered. “Hey, what’re you writing about trees for?” the skinny cab driver interrupted my conversation, “you think anybody’s interested? I’ll give you an idea right here and now. A real hot one.” I waited expectantly while the driver took himself a dramatic pause. “Write somethin’ about the transmission on the Mercedes,” he finally said as if he were telling a secret. “The transmission on the Mercedes?” I asked. “Yeah,” the driver was getting excited, “write about how the transmission in a two-hundred-thousand-shekel car goes on you after eighty thousand kilometers. And that’s not just with me. There are at least six drivers at Castel Cabs and maybe another four at Paladin Cabs. I’m tellin’ you, you write about that and you’re on a roll.” “A roll?” I echoed, trying desperately to communicate. “Yeah.” The driver banged his leather-lined steering wheel assertively, “Listen, you write somethin’ like this, the whole cab drivers’ union is behind you. You write about a tree, who’ll back you up except a bunch of birds?”

When I got out of the cab, I thanked him politely and he cheated me out of fifty shekels change, payment for his advice. In front of my house, The Tree was waiting for me, completely bare except for a little yarmulke of leaves on the very top. Kobi Ashkelon Mining Inc. was standing next to the pile of felled branches having a lively discussion with a few angry tenants. Eli Ashkelon Mining Inc. was consistent, and even though he didn’t tell anyone to scram, he acted as if they were just air too. “A. Hillel’s granddaughter came by when we were sawing,” Kobi Ashkelon Mining Inc. said, invoking a higher authority, “and EVEN SHE said it was better like this.” “To hell with A. Hillel’s granddaughter, she doesn’t live here,” said a frantic skinny man who lived across the street, “I do.” “Okay,” Kobi nodded, sounding insulted that his reference to A. Hillel didn’t get the same respect as everyone else’s. “Okay, no need to get rude.”

The period when my sister was discovering religion was just about the most depressing time in the history of Israeli pop. The Lebanon War had just ended, and nobody was in the mood for upbeat tunes. But then again, all those ballads to handsome young soldiers who’d died in their prime were getting on our nerves too. People wanted sad songs, but not the kind that carried on about some crummy unheroic war that everyone was trying to forget. Which is how a new genre came into being all of a sudden: the dirge for a friend who’s gone religious. Those songs always described a close buddy or a beautiful, sexy girl who’d been the singer’s reason for living, when out of the blue something terrible had happened and they’d turned Orthodox. The buddy was growing a beard and praying a lot, the beautiful girl was covered from head to toe and wouldn’t do it with the morose singer any more. Young people would listen to those songs and nod grimly. The War in Lebanon had taken so many of their buddies that the last thing anyone wanted was to see the others just disappear forever into some yeshiva in the armpit of Jerusalem.

It wasn’t only the music world that was discovering born-again Jews. They were hot stuff all over the media. Every talk show had a regular seat for a newly religious ex-celeb who made a point of telling everyone how he didn’t miss his wanton ways in the least, or the former friend of a well-known born-again who’d reveal how much the friend had changed since turning religious and how you couldn’t even talk to him any more. Me too. From the moment my sister crossed the lines in the direction of Divine Providence, I became a kind of local celebrity. Neighbors who’d never given me the time of day would stop, just to offer me a firm handshake and pay their condolences. Hipster twelfth-graders, all dressed in black, would give me a friendly high five just before getting into the cab that would take them to some dance club in Tel Aviv. And then they’d roll down the window and shout to me how broken up they were about my sister. If the rabbis had taken someone ugly, they could’ve handled it; but grabbing someone with her looks—what a waste!

Meanwhile, my lamented sister was studying at some women’s seminary in Jerusalem. She’d come visit us almost every week, and she seemed happy. If there was a week when she couldn’t come, we’d go visit her. I was fifteen at the time, and I missed her terribly. When she’d been in the army, before going religious, serving as an artillery instructor in the south, I didn’t see much of her either, but somehow I missed her less back then.

Whenever we met, I’d study her closely, trying to figure out how she’d changed. Had they replaced the look in her eyes, her smile? We’d talk the way we always did. She still told me funny stories she’d made up specially for me, and helped me with my math homework. But my cousin Gili, who belonged to the youth section of the Movement Against Religious Coercion and knew a lot about rabbis and stuff, told me it was just a matter of time. They hadn’t finished brainwashing her yet, but as soon as they did, she’d begin talking Yiddish, and they’d shave her head and she’d marry some sweaty, flabby, repulsive guy who’d forbid her to see me any more. It could take another year or two, but I might as well brace myself, because once she was married she might continue breathing, but from our point of view, it would be just as if she’d died.

Nineteen years ago, in a small wedding hall in Bnei Brak, my older sister died, and she now lives in the most Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. She has a husband, a yeshiva student, just like Gili promised. He isn’t sweaty or flabby or repulsive, and he actually seems pleased whenever my brother or I come to visit. Gili also promised me at the time, about 20 years ago, that my sister would have hordes of children and that every time I’d hear them talking Yiddish like they were living in some godforsaken shtetl in Eastern Europe, I’d feel like crying. On that subject too he was only half right, because she really does have lots of children, one cuter than the other, but when they talk Yiddish it just makes me smile.

As I walk into my sister’s house, less than an hour before Shabbat, the children greet me in unison with their “What’s my name?”, a tradition that began after I once got them mixed up. Considering that my sister has eleven, and that each of them has a double-barreled name, the way the Hasidim usually do, my mistake was certainly forgivable. The fact that all the boys are dressed the same way and decked out with identical sets of sidelocks provides some pretty strong mitigating arguments. But all of them, from Shlomo-Nachman on down, still want to make sure that their peculiar uncle is focused enough, and gives the right present to the right nephew. Only a few weeks ago, my mother said she’d been talking to my sister, and she suspects it’s not over yet, so that in a year or two, God willing, there’ll be another double-barreled name for me to memorize.

Once I’d passed the rollcall test with flying colors, I was treated to a strictly kosher glass of cola as my sister, who hadn’t seen me in a long time, took her place on the other side of the living-room and said she wanted to know what I’d been up to. She loves it when I tell her I’m doing well and that I’m happy, but since the world I live in is to her one of frivolities, she isn’t really interested in the details. The fact that my sister will never read a single story of mine upsets me, I admit, but the fact that I don’t observe the Sabbath or keep kosher upsets her even more.

I once wrote a children’s book and dedicated it to my nephew. In the contract, the publishing house agreed that the illustrator would prepare one special copy where all the men would have yarmulkes and sidelocks, and the women’s skirts and sleeves would be long enough to be considered modest. But in the end even

that version was rejected by my sister’s rabbi, the one she consults on matters of religious convention. The children’s story described a father who runs off with the circus. The rabbi must have considered this too reckless, and I had to take the “kosher” version of the book—the one the illustrator had worked on so skillfully for many hours—back to Tel Aviv.

Until recently, when I finally got married, the toughest part of our relationship was that my girlfriend couldn’t come with me when I went to visit my sister. To be completely honest, I ought to mention that in the nine years we’ve been living together, we’ve gotten married dozens of times in all sorts of ceremonies that we made up ourselves: with a kiss on the nose at a fish restaurant in Jaffa, exchanging hugs in a dilapidated hotel in Warsaw, skinny-dipping on the beach in Haifa, or even sharing a Kinder egg on a train from Amsterdam to Berlin. Except that none of these ceremonies is recognized, unfortunately, by the rabbis or by the state. So that when I would go to visit my sister and her family, my girlfriend always had to wait for me at a nearby cafe or park. At first I was embarrassed to ask her to do that, but she understood the situation and accepted it. As for me, well, I accepted it—what choice did I have?—but I can’t really say I understand.

Nineteen years ago, in a small wedding hall in Bnei Brak, my older sister died, and she now lives in the most Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. Back then there was a girl that I loved to death but who didn’t love me. I remember how two weeks after the wedding I went to visit my sister in Jerusalem. I wanted her to pray for that girl and me to be together. That’s how desperate I was. My sister was quiet for a minute and then explained that she couldn’t do it. Because if she prayed and then that girl and I got together and our togetherness turned out to be hell, she’d feel terrible. “I’ll pray for you to meet someone that you’ll be happy with instead,” she said and gave me a smile that tried to be comforting. “I’ll pray for you every day. I promise.” I could see she wanted to give me a hug and was sorry she wasn’t allowed to, or maybe I was just imagining it. Ten years later I met my wife, and being with her really did make me happy. Who said that prayers aren’t answered?

Translated by Miriam Shlesinger.