"Ten Minutes" - short story

When the sirens sounded at three in the morning, the five members of the Lutsky family jumped from their beds. This wasn’t the first time that the Houthis in Yemen had fired a missile at Israel, and it wasn’t the first time that their small moshav near Ramla was one of the areas alerted to the incoming attack, so the Lutskys were familiar with the drill. They ran downstairs to their safe room−a reinforced room on the ground floor that served as Natan’s office on the days he worked from home, and which would now provide protection for their family.

As she passed through the kitchen, five-year-old Miri glanced out the window. The sidewalk was lit by a streetlight; the Frenkels’ house next door was completely dark.

“Abba, there’s a man outside!” Miri said, stopping in her tracks.

“Hurry, Miri,” her mother Anat called from the doorway of the safe room. “We only have a minute to get in.”

The siren was still wailing, but Miri didn’t move. “That man doesn’t have a place to go! The rocket could hit him!”

“Which man?” Natan asked, joining his daughter in the kitchen. “I’m sure he’s okay,” he said, urging his youngest daughter to follow him to safety.

“He needs to come in!” Miri said. She brushed aside Matka, the family mutt, and said, “I’m opening the door.”

Read the rest of the story on Esoterica.

"Terms of Abandonment" - short story

The first time she saw him, her biological father refused to speak with her. She had been waiting at the corner coffee shop, as agreed, but when he showed up, he didn’t even cross the street and approach her table. She remained there for half an hour after he walked off, her cappuccino cold and forgotten.

What kind of father was he to have had no concern for her all these years? Admittedly, she had rarely given him a second thought until she packed up her mother’s belongings in the weeks following her death and discovered the box of her memories. A high school yearbook, report cards from grade school, a trophy from a running competition. Dried flowers inside a small book of poetry. Nothing worth saving. She would remember her mother for other things. And then, at the very bottom of the box, several envelopes, the address written in fading blue ink.

With shaking hands, she opened the first letter. It started out with ‘Dearest Marjorie’ and every other sentence contained words of endearment. ‘Love of my life’. ‘My Marjorie’. ‘Oh, my darling.’ Sweet nothings, Kitsch phrases for sure, yet they were words expressing passion, a connection that must have been just as strong for her mother.

His name was Emmanuel, but he signed his letters Manny. Even though everyone called her mother by her nickname, Marge, he addressed her as Marjorie, as if he was afraid of letting go of a single letter in her name.

Yet he had let her go. Shortly after her mother gave birth, Emanuel disappeared from her mother’s life and never had he appeared in hers. Whenever she asked her mother to tell her about her father, begging almost, the discussion had been taboo. She learned nothing at all and the subject was dropped.

Read the full story in In Parentheses Literary Magazine (Volume 9, Issue 2) Winter 2025. Available for purchase on MagCloud.

Review of "The Anatomy of Exile" by Zeeva Bukai

It's July 1967, one month after the Six Day War. Tamar Abadi and her husband, Salim, are relaxing on a Tel Aviv beach when a radio broadcasts news of what appears to be a terrorist attack. A woman has been killed by an Arab, and Salim is sure that his sister, Hadas, is the victim.

In the novel The Anatomy of Exile by Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books, January 14, 2025), we learn that Hadas had lived with Tamar and Salim in a mostly dilapidated Arab village on the outskirts of northern Tel Aviv. The Arab who killed Hadas, Daoud, was from that village. Only Tamar knows the full story of Hadas’s relationship with Daoud; she will keep this secret from Salim for years.

On the morning after the thirty-day period of mourning for his sister, Salim, whose very name is evidence of his dual identity as both Arab and Jew, announces to Tamar and their three children, "We're going to America, to New York City… Five years, that's all I need," he tells them. "I'm going to make so much money that when we return, we'll have enough to buy a car and a villa on the beach in Herzliya."

But the family’s stay in New York is becoming more permanent by the year. Their exile is painful for Tamar. “The hours you put in. For what?” she asks her husband. “Let’s go home.”

As she grows up, Tamar’s daughter Ruby forms a relationship with a Palestinian youth who has moved into the apartment upstairs. Remembering the tragic story of Hadas’s relationship with Daoud, Tamar is worried that history will repeat itself with her daughter. She is determined to keep Ruby and Faisal apart.

It’s hard to believe that Anatomy of an Exile is a debut novel, for the storytelling is rich with details and the author skillfully brings the characters to life with sentimentally charged dialogues. Every word that comes out of Ruby’s mouth is that of a typical teenager. Tamar’s longing and doubt are deeply felt by the reader. Even Salim’s reluctance to give up on his American dream is understandable, if not acceptable.

Readers will be captivated by this intimate journey of an Israeli family into their self-imposed exile, and by the struggles of Tamar to keep her daughter safe, her marriage intact, and to find the way to bring her family back to the country she knows as home.

Zeeva Bukai was born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her stories have been published in Carve Magazine, Pithead Chapel, the Lilith anthology Frankly Feminist: Stories by Jewish Women, December Magazine, Image Journal, Jewishfiction.net, Women's Quarterly Journal, and the Jewish Quarterly. She is the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

 

Originally posted on The Times of Israel.

A Story in Which Two Yeshiva Students Come to a Shtetl

Two yeshiva buchers went for a walk together and came to an unfamiliar village. It was Friday afternoon and Shabbos was swiftly approaching. As the sun began to set, the students realized they would need to remain in the village until the end of Shabbos. But where would they partake of their Shabbos meal? And where would they spend the night? They would need to ask the village rebbe for a solution to their predicament.

I take a deep breath and hold the pages at a distance. The story, recently sent back to me by the freelance Yiddish translator I found online, holds my attention. So simple and Chelm-like, it transports me backwards in time, to another world and another mindset.

I pick up the original handwritten pages from the table. Pages I had discovered in the attic in a box labeled ‘Father’s writings.’ The pages had not been written by my father, but rather by my paternal grandfather. I was emptying the attic because I was selling my parent’s house. Three months had passed since my father’s death, and it was time to put the past behind me. Proceeds from the house’s sale would be shared with my two sisters.

Read the rest of the story on OfTheBook.