Our Collection – The Short Story Project

Israel

It was difficult to explain the true nature of her journey. After some deliberation, she decided to mention it only in passing: for her fortieth birthday, she would take a kind of pilgrimage in Sigmund Freud’s...

Sigmund Freud Slept Here

Orna Reuven

14 min

Israel

1. I loved the subject very much. What made me love it even more was Mr. Emad, the teacher. He would laugh with us and tell us many stories that made us love the lesson. And...

My Head and The Globe

Nader Abu Tamer

1 min

Israel

A pregnant woman lays naked in a bathtub filled with amber water. She has a serene yet intense expression, with her eyes slightly open and her head tilted back. The lighting is warm and moody. It...

By the Water with Friends

Danielle Zilberberg

7 min

Israel

“He’s alive!” Member Ma`ayan entered the room at a run. “He’s healthy, I heard him cry. It’s a Harvest Festival miracle. Didn’t you see the texts?” The faces of the five members of the Committee who...

Harvest

Nadav Neuman

12 min

Israel

My father believed in Marxist karma as a thrilling destiny that was tailored to the measurements of his short, solid body. He viewed the world through defiant, eroding eyes, as if endowed with the ability to...

The First Of May

Iftach Alony

3 min

Israel

I knew that Hertz and his wife could not possibly be home at this hour. I even had a note ready in my purse: “Came by but found you were out. So sorry. Shoshana”. It was...

A Duty Call

Lea Goldberg

4 min

Israel

The summer I fell in love with AI was also the summer I fell in love with N, and the two weren’t unrelated. Early that summer, a machine N had built kept popping up in my...

Perpetuum Mobile

Zohar Elmakias

4 min

Israel

Sometimes strangers come visit, friends of yours, parents themselves. I don’t have any problem with that, let them come, you have every right to invite them. But as long as they do, why do they have...

It was nice not to meet you

Ofir Oz

4 min

Israel

To Tami Berger In the corner café that had recently changed owners stood a parrot’s cage. A green cage with a domed top, a swing fixed inside it, and a slot and small drawer at the...

A Girl in the Café

Ronit Matalon

30 min

Israel

Once I ran away. It was in kindergarten. I had known for some time that the fence between the schoolyard and the adjoining public park had fallen over. A thicket of oleander grew behind it. One...

A Break in the Fence

Ariel Hirschfeld

5 min

Israel

In the summer of 1977, you moved to 90 Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv for one month. The summer was a real summer. There was no air-conditioning in 90 Ahad Ha’am. The entrance to the...

90 Ahad Ha’am

Yotam Reuveni

11 min

Israel

That summer was hotter than usual. The fan shook its head ‘no’ all day, and was of little use. Her mother was locked up in that place, her father was at his other home (which she...

Summer

Esty G. Haim

13 min

Israel

It was the last summer before they gave the Sinai back to Egypt. I was thirteen and I drove with my parents and their friends down to Ras Burka. I think that must have been our...

Flies

Eshkol Nevo

10 min

Israel

“Did you hear about the girl?” the Candyland cashier, who resembled a human gummy bear, asked me. “You didn’t hear? She was brought to the emergency room early this morning. The orderlies are calling her ‘The...

S&M in the Holy Land

Roy Chen

17 min

Israel

“Ana bahib al-bahar”, I love the sea, the girl said. They were walking, stumbling along on the sand, four children and one grown woman. Backs, shoulders and hands were laden with backpacks and bags, the woman’s...

Seeing them see the sea

Ilana Hammerman

8 min

A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company

Israel

While I was waiting for Eriksson, I decided to get rid of all my meds. I packed them in clear garbage bags and went downstairs to the trashcan, my hands full of Lomotil, Hismanal, Diazepam, Ampicillin,...

A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company

Esty G. Haim

14 min

Israel

When everything in the house is upside down and all mixed up, it means only one thing: we’ve got company. It doesn’t matter how many guests there are — one or thirty-one — before their arrival,...

Being Frosya Shneerson (Chapter 6)

Tasha Karluka

8 min

Israel

“The invention of the soul allows us to conceive of the body as a parasite. Hands can be objects that are devoid of feeling during the day but soft and tender at night. These actions do...

The Smuggler

Iftach Alony

7 min

It Will All Be Over by Next Rosh Hashanah

Israel

An old woman cleans my house. She sends the money she earns to her children and grandchildren – maybe her great-grandchildren too. They all live in a nice house in some evergreen part of Europe, by...

It Will All Be Over by Next Rosh Hashanah

Vered Singer

8 min

Israel

Like at other periods of metaphysical ardor, at this time too, the body (that of a woman, to be sure) wasn’t taken very seriously. This may be why even the dockworkers in the port that day...

Madame Bovary from Neveh Tsedek

Nurit Zarchi

10 min

Israel

Hilik arrives at about 12. “Am I interrupting you?” he asks. I gesture for him to come in, but he still hesitates on the threshold. “If you’re busy working,” he says, “I’ll come back later. I...

Fifty Pages, Tops

Etgar Keret

3 min

Israel

The day I moved from the city to the country my dog returned his spirit to the God who gave it. I do not know whether it was the shock of the move or just a...

Taqsim Hyena

Nir Soffer-Dudek

4 min

Israel

This city — this city is so fucking expensive that I can’t bear it. And it’s so fabulous that sometimes I can’t bear it. Expensive and horrible — that would be better. To enjoy it, you...

And Then — Nina Simone Began to Sing

Tasha Karluka

4 min

Israel

He played his role well. He showed no sign that he knew what was going on behind his back. He could be truly satisfied with himself. And when Bennet and Yossi Cohen told him why they...

The Opportunity

Iftach Alony

15 min

Israel

I had headed out to buy a pack of cigarettes and a few tomatoes, and there was a black shoe in the entrance to the building. A black shoe, just one, on the second tile beyond...

The Shoe

Hisham Naffa

5 min

Israel

One morning, they woke up and the cat wasn’t there. He wasn’t sprawled on the couch, as he usually was, gleaming white against the faded gray of the living room. He had not infiltrated his way...

Bringing Back Snow

Riky Cohen

6 min

Israel

I remember a tree. Its crown awning the path. I remember a large trunk, thicker than any I had seen before. I remember roots cleaving the black earth, bursting it asunder, like snakes fighting free and...

Close to the Body – Fifth Place

Sarit Elkon

9 min

Israel

A woman is workspace when will someone love you? Have you ever stayed seated in your chair until lunchtime, you drink lots of water- your body took the shape of a chair. A woman in workspace,...

A Woman in a Space

Tehila Hakimi

3 min

Israel

High up, stretching into the sky, loomed the tower of the fair princess. It was made of pure crystal and its pinnacle was bedecked with gold and precious stones. All around it, a multi-hued, large rose...

The Rose Garden (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

7 min

Israel

I wash my hands, scrubbing them. They still smell of shit. 1. Sophie went joyfully down the slide, straight into Danny’s waiting arms. When he offered to help her climb back up, she said, “By myself.”...

Safe Zone

Deakla Keydar

9 min

Israel

“I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones 1 The road descends all the way to the sea, as though the whole world was a huge basin where everything drove, sailed, glided...

And The Sea Is Not Full

Edna Shemesh

11 min

Israel

The man who has been the dearest person to my mother for the past 42 years is dead. Facing a dead man is a shitty feeling. A baby’s howling creeps through the open window. It’s midnight....

Prostheses

Iftach Alony

9 min

Israel

On dark, stormy nights they would run through the sleeping streets, burning torches in their hands, and no one saw their faces and no one knew their names. And the echoes of the steps of fourteen...

Autumn (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

3 min

Israel

I have nothing against fame except for the misguided notion—which people who achieve it often have—that they can remain the same doe-eyed individuals, freely roaming the earth. The only one I have ever met who managed...

Tumbling Towards Absurdity

Linor Katz

9 min

Israel

In the morning, when I first open my eyes, is when I really feel like a criminal for the first time. Like the crazy moms who bathe their babies, gently caressing the head, and then holding...

Criminal

Ofir Oz

8 min

Israel

As the flames died to embers, he knew something had to change. He looked around the little rented cabin and his eyes met Emily’s. They had talked about having to move again, about needing a better...

Late Bloomers

Amir Atsmon

6 min

Israel

I can’t recall when I first started scribbling those little notes I later stashed in various hiding places around the apartment. It sure as hell could not have been a lot earlier, because at the time...

Sunflowers

Michal Yaara Carmi

3 min

Israel

The alien wasn’t green and had no antennas on his head. He looked ordinary except that he was about a quarter size. In fact, with his gray clipped mustache and his gloomy countenance he reminded me...

Alien

Zeev Smilansky

8 min

Israel

In the still of the night, you are surrounded by darkness in the room of your childhood. Sticky and smelling of semen, you hear the familiar footfalls that you recognize as your mother’s. Next to your...

Your Honor

Shay Aspril

25 min

Israel

His heart suddenly flipped over in his chest. “Just like a carp in the kitchen sink,” Grigory Katz thought. To calm himself down, he stuck his nose into his scarf and breathed in his own warm...

Rooms

Anna Likhtikman

8 min

Israel

Our school was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the first woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Therefore, we had endless lectures about her life: how Zoya did in school, what she read, what essays...

Zoya

Alice Bialsky

33 min

Israel

A poet leaves his house in haste, heading toward the harbor. In one hand, he carries a book of poems; in the other, his keys. The man then boards a British ship that takes him from...

Keys

Salman Natour

7 min

Israel

Yuda is banging the wall with his pillow; Moishe is switching the lights off and on again. I lay silent, not involved in the nightly disturbance. “He’s coming!” calls Zvika, the sun-shield watcher. We get under...

Sun Shields

Yariv Sapir

2 min

Israel

On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She...

Heart of Stone

Nir Yehudai

26 min

Israel

“Sonya, how could you? How can you wear those short dresses covered with pea-green dots?” “Sonya, have you said your prayers?” “Sonya, how can you listen to those fascists?” “Sonya, have you read Sholem Aleichem?”...

Chicken Morning, Noon and Night

Tasha Karluka

8 min

Israel

Søren Kierkegaard was a young university student who lived in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark in the nineteenth century. He enjoyed his university studies, but he felt that they were missing something. His professors taught the...

Søren Kierkegaard Confounds the City

Tom Baikin-O'hayon

5 min

Israel

It is possible that you have lots of friends, or maybe you have only a friend or two. Your friends could be children, or they could be adults, or maybe your friends are dogs or cats...

The Granddad and the Dandelion

Yannets Levi

2 min

Israel

One day, when I was nine or ten years old, my uncle sent me alone from my father’s clothing shop to the post office in downtown Haifa. I’m not sure whether it was my idea or...

Memories from Haifa

Mati Shemoelof

4 min

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Israel

Many years ago, before the days of highways-speed internet and underground tunnels, before natural gas drilling sites ever existed, human beings lived here side-by-side with jinn. Today it may sound strange, but back then it was...

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Tamar Hochstadter

5 min

Israel

When Homai took the throne as the queen, She was kind and victorious – supreme! But when she had a son, the true heir to the crown, He was sent on the river, unseen. But...

Darab on the River

Thamar E. Gindin

8 min

Israel

There are those who invent lies, and there are those who believe them. In an ideal world Jerry would spread his wings and fly away from there. For as long as he can remember himself,...

The Gift

Iftach Alony

6 min

Israel

1. AZIZ Our small room in Motel 6 smells like depressing sex that someone tried to scrub off with lots bleach. Gershon and I sit on the bed and start scribbling calculations on a napkin....

Three Men in America

Julia Fermentto

30 min

Israel

David Lugasi, I think, never knew how much he really loved the Western Wall until he saw it completely dismantled, stone by stone by stone, and piled onto the three trucks of his hauling and renovations...

The Man Who Moved the Western Wall

Uzi Weil

15 min

Israel

I remember when my breasts developed. I would hold them in my hands, squeeze them in front of the mirror, examining them from every angle. I inspected the color of the nipple, checked for the first...

Breasts

Yoav Katz

27 min