A good story is a story with a personality. The kind that stands its ground and doesn’t give in to the writer’s whims. “A World Without Selfie Sticks” is, to my mind, one of the best stories I’ve written. It managed to surprise me when I wrote it, and every time I read it onstage my voice trembles at a different part.

A good friend should also have a personality and should always tell you the truth, instead of just want you want to hear. Ira is without a doubt one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and it’s a friendship that has only improved with age. When such a good friend reads a story I so enjoyed writing, it makes for a special moment. And it’s all the more special because this reading coincides with the U.S. publication of the paperback edition of my latest book, Autocorrect.

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This week, instead of a story, I’m sharing with you a note that I wrote on my phone almost two years ago, right after my first meeting with survivors of the October 7 attacks. Back then, the war seemed like something that would be over in a few weeks. And now it feels as if the more time goes by, the hazier the signs of life around us grow. They’re still there, but having experienced over 700 days of captivity, starvation, displacement and death, we notice them less and less.

Now close your eyes and try to stop being angry. Try to stop raging at all those who deserve your righteous fury. Close your eyes and allow yourself, just for a moment, to simply feel the pain. To hesitate. To be confused. To feel sorrow. Remorse. You still have your whole life to spend persecuting, avenging, reckoning. But for now, just close your eyes and look inward, like a satellite hovering over a disaster zone, searching for signs of life. A lot has been taken away from you—but you’re still a human being. Wounded, bloodied, angry, hurting, frightened, drowning in sorrow, but still: human. Take a deep breath and try to remember the feeling. Because you know that a minute from now, when you open your eyes again, it’ll be gone.

Housekeeping Note:

As requested by readers, my English narration is followed by a bonus Hebrew narration.

Translated by Jessica Cohen

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My mother died six years and one day ago, on the day before Rosh Hashana Eve. The rabbi who conducted her funeral explained that my mom had chosen a very special day on which to rid herself of this world’s vanities: the death of one who departs on this particular day is known as a “death of the righteous,” and according to Jewish law, there is no obligation to sit shiva for them.

My mother was the most amazing, stirring person I’ve ever met: she was clever, original, and fearless. Erudite, beautiful, multi-talented, generous, hardworking, and fearless. (Yes, my mother was so extremely brave that I have to mention it at least twice.) It’s not that she wasn’t also kind and positive and eager to help anyone in need, and yet…“righteous” would not be the first adjective I’d use to describe her.

Either way, one thing’s for sure: if there is a God, he went a long way toward accommodating my mother when she died. Mom once explained to me that shiva, by definition, is a dream come true for nudniks: the mourners’ door is always open, and the entire family is trapped in the living room like sitting ducks. Shiva, as per my mother, is the finest hour of all those jabbering pests whom we spend our lives avoiding. With the bereaved at their weakest and most vulnerable, these people finally get their chance to swoop down, offer solace, and proceed to bore their captive audience to tears.

As a result of my mother’s impeccable timing, while my siblings and I sat around reminiscing about this incredible person, a woman blessed with the energy, passion and curiosity of a four-year-old and the life wisdom of a thousand-year-old, no one turned up to bug us. Both because we deadbolted the front door, and because none of the neighbors actually knew she’d died. The days we spent together after our mother died were extraordinary, intimate, and will stay with me forever. And I’m convinced they were also meaningful for Mom, because when she looked down at us from somewhere up above, she didn’t have to see even a single nudnik retelling a boring anecdote or leaving crumbs on her favorite armchair.

Whether my mother was a righteous soul or not—that’s for the heavenly court to decide. But what’s very clear is that, in her death as in her life, Mom did everything just the way she wanted to.

I only ever heard this story once. My parents had just come home from a wedding, and my mother was completely drunk. If she’d had one fewer drinks that night, I probably wouldn’t be able to share this story with you. It’s a little hazy in my imagination, but in the story, my grandmother holds my mom’s little hand while carrying Mom’s baby brother, and the three of them race up the stairs in their building. Mom can hear the footsteps of the people chasing them. When they get to the roof, my grandmother tells Mom to run as fast as she can and jump onto the adjacent rooftop, which is slightly lower. “Don’t be scared,” she says, “you can do it.” Mom waits, expecting her mother to say, “And I’ll be right behind you,” but she just stands there, out of breath from the run. “When will I see you again?” my mother asks, and her mother bends over so that their faces are very close, and says, “You’re going to run as fast as you can, and then jump as far as you can, and as soon as you land you’re going to keep running and not stop until you get to Daddy. After that, you will grow up into a woman, and you will meet a man and fall in love, and start a family with him, and in the end you’ll grow old and die. And right after you die, go up to the first angel you see and tell him: I’m going to see my mom. And he’ll know, because I’ll talk to him before you get there, and he’ll bring you to me.”

This is not where the story ends. After my mom jumped onto the other roof, she did not run as fast as she could, the way her mother had instructed her. Instead, she hid and watched the Nazi soldiers kill her mother and shatter her little brother’s head against a brick wall.

When she told me this, I could feel the heavy guilt engulfing her. But I also sensed how proud she was of her mother, who even in the last moments of her life refused to lie to her daughter. Forty-seven years after she told me the story that evening, my mother died. And the last words she said were, “I’m going to see my mom.”

Housekeeping Note:

As requested by readers, my narration of the story in English is followed by a bonus recording of the story in Hebrew.

Translated by Jessica Cohen

First published as part of the exhibition INSIDE OUT - ETGAR KERET at the Jewish Museum Berlin (21 Oct 2022 to 19 Mar 2023)

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Sophia and I talk about my latest story collection, ”Autocorrect”, and about art in general. Can we describe the world around us when it keeps changing so fast? And even if we can’t, do we have anything better to do than keep trying? That’s what happens when you throw two confused but very assertive people into one Zoom call.

Literary bonus - a link to me reading my very first story ,“Pipes”, and the story “Mesopotamian Hell” from “Autocorrect” which we mentioned in our talk:

Mesopotamian Hell

According to Mesopotamian faith, hell is identical to our world in every way except one: the dead are allowed to say anything they wish once they get there, but they can say each sentence, phrase, or word only once. Words glide out of their mouths like soap bubbles that take flight and then evaporate forever. Imagine a world in which you can say I love you or I’ve never felt this way about anyone only once in your lifetime. And not just the brief lifetime of a heavy smoker with bad genes who won’t make it past sixty anyway, but once in the truly eternal afterlife. Is it any surprise the Mesopotamians were so afraid of coming to a bad end? But forget compliments and loving murmurs. Just suppose that you could say please, sorry, stop, I don’t like that, or even no! one single time. Try to envision what a relationship might look like in such a world. No more than once a month, a pair of sinful, dead Mesopotamians living under this verbal austerity regime might allow themselves to waste a word—or, on birthdays and special occasions, a whole sentence—on each other. They’ll spend four whole weeks hugging, kissing, pinching, and spitting, only to close out the month with an “It’ll be fine,” knowing that’s the last “It’ll be fine” they’ll ever say.

After painstakingly meting out words over the course of several hellish millennia, each sinner is ultimately left with one final word, which they desperately cling to like a drowning person trying to grip the wreckage of a sinking boat. This last word is bound to be esoteric or redundant, because if it had been at all useful or relevant, it would have been uttered long ago. It might be pensioner, badminton, hybrid, or intermittently. And once it’s the only word left, it takes over the sinner’s world: it’s there to explain, to threaten, to flatter, to lament. To express the sinner’s every desire. But it’s no easy feat to give voice to one’s conflicted inner life by saying muffler, ostensibly, or rickets. Only a few are left at the end with the word that is most important, be it sorry, true, or maybe. The sinner might have needed the word countless times before, but opted to hurt loved ones and lose everything they believed in rather than squander this most precious of words: the word they would never dare say. It was some hell, those Mesopotamians had. It’s no wonder they came to a bitter end.

Translated by Jessica Cohen,

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I wrote my first short-story collection, Pipes, during my compulsory military service, and it was a lot more than just a book to me. My reality at the time felt arbitrary, harsh, and not always understandable. The stories I wrote were a sort of safe space, where I could regulate my breath and find a deeper understanding of what I yearned for and what I was afraid of.

In the thirty-three years since Pipes came out, I’ve published six more books for adults, all of which occupied a significant space in my life, yet they were written from a place of relative stability and normality.

Autocorrect, my new collection, which will be out soon from Riverhead in the U.S. (May 27, 2025), was written in a frightening period of strife and murderous violence in my region, as in much of the world. The more menacing and alienating things got, the more my writing resumed its original role: an emotional survival mechanism that seeks to decipher the world and my own soul, and tries to untangle the suffocating knot they’re tied into.

Writers always love their books, and I’m no exception to that rule. I love all of my books, but I love Autocorrect even more. Both because it supported me through some terrible times, and because it helped me understand that no matter where the future takes us, however dark our reality becomes, I can always exist in it just as I am: weak, defeated, and afraid, but still myself.

In honor of the new book's release, here's a sneak peak: "Strong Opinions on Burning Issues," a story that first appeared in Alphabet Soup.

STRONG OPINIONS ON BURNING ISSUES

It was small, stuck on the bottom of the obituaries page like a scared orphan hiding among the headstones. Do you have strong opinions on burning issues? the headline asked, and printed under it, instead of an answer, was: now you can make a lot of money from your opinions, all in black letters except for the words strong, burning, and money, which were bright red.

The job interview took place in a makeshift, windowless office on the parking level of a mall, with a pleasant‑faced woman who was short enough to be a dwarf.

“I bet you’re swamped with applicants, what with the recession and all.” Yinnon tried to sniff out the territory.

“Not really,” the dwarf said, “we didn’t get as many calls as we expected.”

“That has to be because of where the ad appeared,” Yinnon said. “The paper screwed you. Instead of putting it with the classifieds, they stuck it on the obituaries page.”

“‘Screwed you,’” the dwarf repeated Yinnon’s words with a smile. “Very nice. You see? You’ve already expressed a strongly critical opinion of the media.”

“I have a lot more opinions,” Yinnon said eagerly. “Really!”

“Wonderful,” the dwarf said. “Can you please give me some examples?”

Yinnon cleared his throat. “I think there is something after death, something very real and sad and lonely, even though we can’t put a name to it. I think children should respect their elders, even when their elders are wrong. I think fear causes people to make bad decisions. I think Israeli soccer players have no business in the top European leagues.”

“I’m not sure you’re the right person for us,” the dwarf said, lighting a long, thin cigarette.

“Why not?” Yinnon protested. “Because of what I said about children? I want you to know that deep inside, I’m a very warm and liberal . . .”

But the dwarf interrupted him: “The ad specifically said that the opinions have to be strong and about burning issues. And although respecting elders is all well and good, it’s far from being a topical issue.” “I think we should bring back the death penalty,” Yinnon blurted. “Why hang Eichmann and not Arabs? Just because he was German? That’s reverse discrimination. Discrimination against Europeans, that’s what I think.” And after a moment of silence, he banged on the table and added, “Chutzpah, that’s what it is.”

“Okay,” the dwarf said, “let me tell you more about the job.”

The dwarf sent Yinnon to be interviewed in street polls, for local channels at first, but she promised it would only be for a few months, so he could test his wings, and then he would move to national channels. If he proved himself in the polls, she said, he might even be promoted to being a panelist or analyst. The job was challenging and required Yinnon to express an opinion on every subject, one that would reflect public mood or anger listeners, preferably both. The first few times he spoke, the caption on the bottom of the screen read, Yinnon Menkin – Dental Technician. But the dwarf explained to him that it was temporary, just until he became better known, and soon enough the title changed to Yinnon Menkin – Opinion Holder.

People on the street began to recognize him. Their reactions were positive or indifferent, never negative. A girl named Ziva said to him in the supermarket, “I remember you! You’re the one who yelled on the news yesterday. What exactly was that about?” And that innocent question led to a conversation, the conversation to friendship, and later—on Rosh Hashanah, to be precise—the friendship led to consensual sex. On Yom Kippur eve, as they strolled along a Tel Aviv avenue, kids with buzz cuts sped past them on bicycles and e-scooters.

“I don’t think kids should ride bikes on Yom Kippur,” he said to Ziva. “It’s like spitting in the eye of tradition, and a nation that educates its children to disrespect its traditions and leaders is a nation that—”

“Time out,” Ziva said, smiling as she reached for his hand. And so they walked down the middle of the street without saying a word for an entire hour.

Later that week, he was a guest panelist on a political program. The woman on his left, an Arab, if he wasn’t mistaken, or a religious Jew, or any of those women who wear a piece of cloth on their head, kept yelling at the moderator that he should be ashamed of himself. When it was Yinnon’s turn to speak, even before he could get a word out, she muttered to herself and the microphone, “Privileged white guy.” Yinnon wanted to respond with something scathing but also uplifting, something about how love heals almost everything and how, since he met Ziva, she had brightened his life like a sun that paints reality in soft watercolors. But he knew none of that would go over well on TV, so instead, he shouted, “Lady, this isn’t Iran here! Get that rag off your head.” By that point, the audience was applauding ecstatically, and Yinnon knew he could go back to basking in his warm, pleasurable thoughts about Ziva and the discussion would keep going on its own.

After that show, the dwarf called him in for a talk and said she was worried, his screen presence wasn’t what it used to be, he seemed lost, weakened. Yinnon nodded and asked her to send him back to street interviews, but she said that was impossible because he was too well‑known, and after a few pathetic appearances as a panelist, he parted ways with her.

Less than a week later, he came across a succinct ad in the classifieds: wanted: people in love, and under it, with no syntactic logic, the word money appeared, followed by three exclamation points. Yinnon called. That job interview took place in the same mall, except this time, the interviewer was a fat guy with a goatee. He explained to Yinnon that he produced a game show called True Love, featuring couples in love. Each episode, one member of the couple is placed in a horrible situation and the other has to sacrifice something to save them. “In America, they did it with illegal immigrants, and it was a smash hit,” the fat guy said, “but here in Israel, people are more conservative.”

At first, Ziva didn’t want to compete, but when she understood how important it was to Yinnon, she agreed. On the first show, they made her lie down on a nest of flesh‑eating fire ants, and Yinnon had to feed them his left eyeball to save her. In the semifinals, Ziva was forced to do a sexy striptease to save Yinnon from the murderous fists of a violent Uzbek wrestler. On the final show, Yinnon had to drink a large quantity of his own urine through a straw to save Ziva from a series of fatal electric shocks.

Ziva and Yinnon won a lot of money, as well as a pure gold, diamond‑studded doorplate adorned with an arrow-pierced heart between their names. The host was shocked when, smiling shyly, the couple that had been willing to sacrifice so much in the name of love told him they weren’t living together yet. That was the last time they appeared on TV. On the way back from the studio, a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel veered out of his lane and rammed right into them. Yinnon had once been on a panel discussion about road fatalities, where he launched an unprecedented attack against Israeli drivers’ mentality, but that didn’t matter now. The accident was horrendous, and as the injured Ziva tried in vain to resuscitate him, Yinnon had already discovered that he’d been right, there really was something after death. Something sad and lonely. Something you couldn’t call by name.

Autocorrect is available for pre-order at your favorite indie bookstore, or here!

Translated by Sondra Silverston, intro translated by Jessica Cohen

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One of the highlights of this strange and unsettling year, for me, was the premiere of A Brief History of Us, an animated short film that has been screened at four international festivals so far. The film is based on my short story, “Evolution of a Breakup,” which appeared in my collection, Fly Already.

My artistic partner in the film, the gifted animator Ofra Kobliner, as well as the devoted film producers, Mateusz Michalak and Hamutal Gur, invested three years of hard work to make sure we completed this emotional and slightly loopy film. I wish I could share it with you, but as long as it’s on the festival circuit I can’t post it online. Meanwhile, here’s a preview of Molly Ringwald reading the story, from the film’s moving voiceover. I am grateful to Molly, who, with her characteristic enthusiasm and generosity, volunteered for the project and managed to make the story feel so alive.

I hope to be able to show you the film itself in a few months, but until then, big thanks to Ofra, Molly and all the other tenacious people who helped abate my loneliness through the most isolated years in history.

Housekeeping Note:

The Friday “Alphabet Soup” posts have traditionally been open to paying subscribers only. But given how incredible Molly’s narration is, I didn’t have the heart to prevent other readers from hearing it. Still, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that over the past several months I’ve written many new pieces that non-paying subscribers haven’t been able to read. I’m about to launch a new feature, “Alternative Fun Facts,” which is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve written in years, and if you’re not a paying subscriber, you’ll be missing out! So, if you have five bucks to spare, I’d be thrilled if you chose to risk it on a monthly subscription. I confess that I have two agendas here: first, to keep the newsletter running, and second, to reach more readers with all the new stuff I’m penning for my paying subscribers.

Translated by Jessica Cohen

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For me, a good story is one that manages to surprise me while I’m writing it, taking me to unexpected places. “A World Without Selfie Sticks,” which first appeared a year ago in McSweeney’s, is definitely one such story. When I sat down to write it, I was sure it was about relationships, but only when I got to the end did I realize it was about something else entirely.

This story has just relocated to Autocorrect, my forthcoming book.

Translated by Sondra Silverston, intro translated by Jessica Cohen

Afterword

Whenever someone asks about my religious identity, I like to say that I’m an “agnostic Jew.” If they demand to know what the hell that means, I explain that I don’t really believe in God, but I’m still scared shitless of Him. When I sat down to write “A World Without Selfie Sticks,” it was clear to me from the very first line that the story would not be set in Israel and its characters would be American. After each paragraph I wrote, I stopped and asked myself, “Why is this story taking place in New York and not in Tel Aviv?” When I couldn’t come up with an answer, I kept going to the next paragraph. Only when I reached the end did I finally realize that the story had to occur in New York, rather than Tel Aviv, if only so that I could end it in a church and not a synagogue. Because at the moment of truth, when you have to face God and tell Him he doesn’t exist, it’s a lot easier to do it in front of someone else’s God.

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“Pipes” is the first story I ever wrote. It was written during my compulsory military service, in an almost involuntary way. I was doing guard duty on my base, and at the end of a very long shift, there was the story. When I read it on the page, it seemed like a piece of advice from my unconscious, telling me how to emotionally survive the army for the next three years. Later, I realized it was more general advice: how to emotionally survive my life. And although it was written thirty-five years ago, I still find it helpful. In some ways, I feel that I owe this story everything. Or at least all the stories I've written since.

Translated by Jessica Cohen

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As a professional slacker who likes to sit and people-watch, there are almost a dozen benches in Tel Aviv that I used to regularly visit every week. I wrote this piece while sitting on my favorite one.

Starting next month, the “Alphabet Audio Soup” column will be available only to paid subscribers.

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