The Hebrew-Speaking Bedouin I Met in the Middle of the Jordanian Desert

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I traveled to the stunning ancient Nabatean city of Petra in southern Jordan, across the border from the kibbutz where I had lived for seven years.

My wife and I were founding members of Kibbutz Yahel in Israel's Arava Valley, and we lived there starting in the late 1970s. Our home was near the border with Jordan, and even though it was a peaceful border, it was not one we could cross. Israel and Jordan were still technically at war. It was only in 1994 that Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty. The peace between the countries allowed Israelis to visit Jordan, and one of the sites I had longed to see for some time was Petra, capital of the Nabatean traders from the 3rd century BCE.

Beer Made from Hummus

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Imagine this. You walk into a Tel Aviv hummusiya, order hummus and pitot, and to drink, you select the most appropriate beverage to accompany the meal - beer made from hummus. This unique ale would perfectly compliment Israel's fast food, according to Bryan Meadan, brewer of the world's only chickpea ale.

And, hummus beer is gluten free, making it suitable to anyone with a restricted diet.

"One of the things I missed was beer," Meadan says, having been diagnosed with Celiac disease in 2006. A resident of Har Halutz who made aliyah from Montreal via California back in 1982, Meadan searched the Internet for information how to brew his own gluten-free beer. He began experimenting with different materials and finally honed in on buckwheat (kusemet in Hebrew), a plant grown for its grain-like seeds not related to regular wheat.

Life in the Wild, Wild, West Bank

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In Assaf Gavron's novel The Hilltop, an illegal settlement in the West Bank is home to Jewish settlers safe from the threat of evacuation thanks to a "hodgepodge of laws and conflicting authorities."

The settlement is called Maale Hermesh C, an extension of Maale Hermesh A and Maale Hermesh B which doesn't appear on official maps. Considered by the government to be illegal, and a thorn in Israel's relations with the United States, the outpost has so far escaped evacuation because the required resources in the defense establishment are occupied elsewhere.

This hilltop outpost has attracted a handful of colorful, very believable characters. Bearded veteran Othniel Assis has established a vegetable farm that may, or may not be situated on privately owned Palestinian land. Gavriel Nehustan and Roni Kupper, orphaned brothers who grew up on a kibbutz, have arrived at the outpost for completely different reasons - one has experienced a religious awakening and the other has become penniless after pursuing a career in Tel Aviv nightlife and New York finance. There are women settlers as well, including right-wing patriot Neta Hirschson and Russian-born math teacher Jenia Freud.

The outpost's residents raise families, celebrate the Jewish holidays, bring baked goods to the Israeli soldiers who guard their homes, remodel part of their kindergarten to be used as a synagogue, fall in love, and protest the occasional visit of Israeli politicians. In short, they live normal lives in what can be best described as an absurd, off-the-map place to live.

Reading in the Dark

"Lights out!"

When I was a young boy, this parental request meant an end to my nightly reading adventures, whether they be solving mysteries with the Hardy Boys or traveling 20,000 leagues under the sea with Jules Verne. In those days, I was obedient to a fault. The lights in my bedroom invariably went out at chapter's end. I never read books by flashlight because I could barely breathe under the covers.

Four decades later and my reading preferences and habits have changed. Now, the words "Lights out" declared in my conjugal bedroom signal a start to the night's literary activities. My wife and I fire up our tablets, turn off the lights, and start reading in the dark.

I teamed up with Maggie James, Bristol-based author of psychological novels including Sister, Psychopath, His Kidnapper's Shoes, and Guilty Innocence, to raise the question of what is better for late-night reading in the digital age. A dedicated e-reader or an all purpose tablet?

What is your preferred method of reading in the dark?

Read the rest of this article on Maggie James Fiction.

Would You Jump Off This Bridge If Someone Paid You?

As we crossed the picturesque bridge in Mostar, a young man in a bathing suit was resting on the rails. He waited patiently, as if he had all the time in the world. All that it would take to get him to dive into the waters of the Neretva River 24 meters below was 25 euros, but the tourists walking across the bridge didn't want to donate money to see his feat.

The bridge in Mostar, one of the most recognizable landmarks in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and this despite the fact that it's actually a reconstruction of a 16th century Ottoman bridge. The original Stari Most, as it is called, was destroyed in 1993 during the Bosnian War.

Read the rest of this article on The Huffington Post.

Searching for Identity Elsewhere

In his novel, Elsewhere, Israeli-Austrian writer Doron Rabinovici raises questions of identity and belonging, Europe and Israel.

Ethan Rosen, an Israeli-born lecturer at the Vienna Institute for Social Research, returns to Israel to attend the funeral of a long-time family friend, but declines an offer to write the friend's obituary. But when an obituary appears, written by Rudi Klausinger, a colleague up for the same professorship position at a prestigious Viennese university, Rosen is quick to compose an article disputing statements Klausinger included in the piece.

Except, the arguments to which Rosen objects are actually quotes from an article he had himself previously published. In essence, he engaged in a dispute with his own writing. And then a cassette arrives, stories and instructions from the dead friend relayed from beyond the grave. Rosen is called back to Israel once again when his father, an Auschwitz survivor, becomes ill, in desperate need for a kidney transplant. Klausinger shows up as well, in search for his biological father.

The First Time I Drank Rakia

My wife and I arrived in Sofia in early 2009 at the start of a two-year job relocation. We had never before lived in Europe, had never previously lived in a big city. We looked forward to the possibilities of travel and new experiences and were quite excited as we began our Bulgarian adventure.

A heavy snowfall greeted my wife when she flew into Sofia, and we realized our adventures would have to wait. We settled into a daily routine of working, shopping, laundry, cooking, and living ordinary lives in a strange and unfamiliar country. Still, we were eager to venture out from our apartment and begin our explorations.

Just around the corner from where we lived I discovered a very small chef's restaurant, called The Golden Apple. On my way home at the end of one of our first work weeks, I stopped in and made dinner reservations. It was Friday night and it would be good to go out.

The waiter brought menus to our table, and we asked for the English version. Realizing that we were newcomers to the country, the waiter asked, "Have you ever tried rakia?"

Read the rest of this article on Eat Stay Love Bulgaria.

The Radicalism That Threatens Israel

In The War on Women in Israel, Dr. Elana Maryles Sztokman asks why Israel's government has constantly sided with an extreme version of Judaism.

An outsider reading this extensively researched review of the way women are treated in the modern Jewish State might think that the author was describing Alabama of the 1950s. With women segregated to the back of certain public bus lines; prevented from singing in the Knesset and banned from some official ceremonies; and forbidden to pray according to their beliefs at Judaism's holiest site; it would seem that Israeli society is suffering from a severe case of gender discrimination.

"The cold, hard reality facing woman in Israel today is that while Israel has made certain strides for women's rights, it has not achieved the mission for which it was created. It is not equal for all, regardless of gender," Sztokman says. But what is more alarming, in her opinion, is that "there is a growing faction of Israelis who are threatening not only equal rights for women, but also their fundamental freedoms and their presence in society."

What follows is a report from the battlefield, detailing the war against women in the Israeli army, on the buses, in the courts, and on the streets of the country. The combatants on one side of the conflict are, initially, religious feminists. Their enemy is not just the ultra-Orthodox extremists who abuse them verbally and physically; the problem, the author states, is much greater.  Sztokman's book sets out to tell how these feminists, and their allies, are "protecting the world from the spread of religious extremism."