השתקן

Shimshon Shtil, who sold non-kosher deli food in a small southern town, was a man of few words and constant bad temper who hated anything religious. Growing up in Ofakim in the late 1970s, his son Simcha was taunted as a gentile, because Shimshon never had him circumcised and would not allow a bar mitzvah, insisting the family was not Jewish. When the father dies, Simcha comes across a box holding a pair of rolled-up papers held together by a swastika pin, and leaves them unread for years. A chance encounter with a lovely Haredi woman on a train finally leads him to open them. Inside is a Yiddish diary: two brothers caught in the destruction of the Second World War, a fight to stay alive in which allowed and forbidden merge, and a tormented man's love for a woman whom birds from everywhere seek out. A made-up historian frames it with a self-important preface and nitpicking notes.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

247 pages in the original

Genres

Family, War, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Israel

First published

2022 by Achuzat Bayit

Author's age

52 when first published

ISBN

9789655561098 (original)