Scenes from a Book Launch

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It is every author's dream to see his/her book published and promoted at an official book launch. My dream came true, but in a different language!

On June 16th, my novel БYPГАСКАТА АФЕРА (THE BURGAS AFFAIR) was presented at the main Ciela book store in Sofia. The book made its world premiere in the Bulgarian language, as it has not yet been published in English.

THE BURGAS AFFAIR is a fictional account of the aftermath of the terrorist attack at the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, in July 2012. In the book, a Bulgarian policeman is teamed up with an Israeli woman from the Mossad as they work a case involving international terrorists and local criminals in both Bulgaria and Israel, while confronting the traumas of their pasts.

Bound for Bulgaria to Promote My Novel

Official invitation to the book's launch in Sofia on June 15, 2016.

My wife and I are flying to Bulgaria this afternoon to promote my novel, БYPГАСКАТА АФЕРА (THE BURGAS AFFAIR), at tomorrow evening's book launch in Sofia.

During my stay in Bulgaria I will appear on two television programs and be interviewed by a few major newspapers and websites.

In addition, Jodie and I will have a bit of free time, and despite the high temperatures forecast for the weekend, we will explore the northern Bulgarian city of Ruse on the Danube River.

For those of you who don't read Bulgarian, I hope to launch my novel in English one day soon!

I Celebrate Ramadan! On My Own. In My Backyard.

Let me start out by stating that I am not a Muslim. I was born and circumcised after eight days on the planet; I read the Haftarah at my Bar Mitzvah; I was married under a chuppah in Israel - my home and homeland; and I completed the circle by seeing my own son become a Jewish man.

That said, I have always shown an openness to other religions. I have eagerly explored the Catholic cathedrals of Spain; I have visited the Vatican; and here in Israel, I am fascinated, but do not understand the Bahá'ís. Last December, my wife and I spent a weekend in the Druze town Daliat al-Carmel, where the best part of the visit was eating the local hummus, the tasty tehina.

Searching for the Original Dead Sea Scroll

When we first meet Moses Wilhelm Shapira, he has been found dead in a seedy Rotterdam hotel. The year is 1884 and Shapira’s suitcase is stuffed with old manuscripts. Shapira’s business card reads: “M.W. Shapira, Book Seller and Antiquarian, Agent of the British Museum, Jerusalem.”

Shapira, once a purveyor of valuable Biblical artifacts, some of them authentic and others allegedly forged, has put an end to his life as well as to the constant charges that he is the world’s greatest con man. His latest crime, his critics claim, is an attempt to sell a recently discovered scroll of the fifth and final book of the Five Books of Moses.

In The Lost Book of Moses (Ecco, April 2016) by Chanan Tigay we fall under the spell of this original Dead Sea scroll. “It was nothing less than a contemporary copy of the book of Deuteronomy written on parchment ... handwritten more than three thousand years earlier.” Yet this copy of the ancient book was quite different from that known for generations. The “narrow strip of leather tattooed in ancient script” was “rife with passages that were different – sometimes very different – from the traditional version.” The biggest deviation of all was the fact that this manuscript contained an eleventh commandment.