Currently Browsing: Fiction 15 articles
The Scream in Kiev
Alex Gordon presents an original story. My grandfather Ilya Gordon was an assistant pharmacist in a Kiev pharmacy. He made and sold medicines, weighed portions of medicines on scales, and was always accurate in his work. He was allowed to settle outside the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia and move from the shtetl […]
Mixed
Tamar Hodes shares her thoughts about her new book. I first had the idea of writing a novel called Mixed many years ago, when I attended a talk at Menorah Synagogue, where I was a member. The session was entitled Mixed Marriages and I assumed that it would focus on partnerships, like my own, of […]
Keeping Kosher
A new story by MJ Popplewell. Joseph struggled upstairs and into the apartment with his bags. He laid them on the kitchen table and took out a selection of pans: small for milk, medium for vegetables and a large one for meat. He had also bought some cutlery: knives, forks, spoons and so forth, and […]
The Unloved Grandson in Beloved Kiev
Alex Gordon THE UNLOVED GRANDSON IN BELOVED KIEV At school in Kiev I had absolutely no ability to write compositions in Russian with their introduction, main part, and conclusion. I got a “C” on my school-leaving certificate in Russian literature because of an unsuccessful composition I wrote on my final exam. This was not […]
The Tiger
A new short story by Ellis Shuman. “There’s a tiger in the playground!” “That’s nice, Shmuel.” “No really, Imma. It was coming toward me, but I didn’t run. I wasn’t scared at all!” “That sounds very exciting! You’re so brave! Now, go wash up and call your brothers. It’s almost time for Havdalah.” The tiger […]
The Rabbi’s Revenge
A short story by Elliot B. Gertel. The young rabbi looked forward to the class. Fresh out of the seminary, in his first congregation, he anticipated, more than anything else, the opportunity to teach the children. After all, “And thou shalt teach them unto thy children,” is a cardinal commandment in Judaism. The teacher of […]
No Leaf Is Perfect
Eran Hornick is inspired by Shai Afsai’s poem ‘Forty-four’. In June of last year, my friend Dan and I drove to Maine to hike the renowned Mahoosuc Notch. It is famed by some to be ‘the hardest mile of the AT’ — the Appalachian Trail — and since it was within a four hours’ drive […]
Dear Mandy: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In the second of these paired posts, Abda responds to Mandy‘s letter published yesterday. Dear Mandy Thank you for your insightful letter. I never imagined when we met that such a wonderful friendship would bloom, not only with you but with so many remarkable women. Nisa Nashim book club is so much more than a […]
Dear Abda: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In these paired posts, Abda and Mandy, members of the Nisa-Nashim West Midlands Book Group, reflect on learning from reading Jewish and Muslim books, and from each other. Dear Abda, Over twenty years ago, my Jewish reading group started, reading Jewish writers – mostly fiction, poetry, and memoir. We are reading our brothers, fathers, and […]
John le Carré’s Jews
To mark the passing of the legendary spy author, Phyllis Lassner reflects on his questioning Jewish characters. John le Carré, who died on December 12, at the age of 89, relished the ambivalences, suspicions, and deceptions that mapped his fictional spyscapes. Like his life story, in the end, they remain riddled with unanswered questions. What […]