On the eve of the Day of Atonement, in the afternoon, I changed from the express to the local train that runs to my home town. The Jews who had traveled with me got out and went their way, while Gentile townsfolk, men and women, made their way in. The wheels rolled sluggishly between hills and mountains, valleys and gorges; at every station the train stopped and lingered, let out people and baggage, and started up again. After two hours, signs of Szibucz sprouted from both sides of the road. I put my hand to my heart.

In kibbutz Meshek Hazzera, one of the oldest and most established kibbutzim in the Jezreel Valley, there studied several years ago a boy by the name of Alon Tzur. His friends described him as having been soft-hearted like a hurt lamb, kind and warm towards people, and besides he had a congenital heart disease. His parents lived in one of the suburbs of Tel Aviv, and although he was an only child and was born late in his parents' life, they sent him to study in a kibbutz when he was twelve years old.

A selection of Yehuda Amichai's poems in French translation. Translated from the Hebrew by Emmanuel Moses.

142 pages, paperback, 13X24cm, good condition: clean and tight pages with no markings. ISBN 2-86869-795-X.

Contents: The Publisher as Activist / Robert L. Bernstein. Poems / Azriel Kaufman. Book Publishing in Israel / Asher Weill. Poems / Amira Hess. The Russian Press in Israel / Mikhail Hefetz. Fred Pauker, Calligrapher / Leila Avrin. Aliya / Aliza Auerbach. "Mountains Round About": Jerusalem in Israeli Printmaking / Mordechai Omer. Soul-Mate / Yehoshua Bar-Yosef. Book Reviews: Mr. Mani. Without a Single Answer.

From the Table of Contents: Eretz Israel - Poem by Yocheved Bat Miriam; Kindness in Truth - By Nathan Shaham; Ready? Go! - By Moshe Shamir; Mount Tabor at Night - By Jacob Fichman; In a Jerusalem Cafe - By S.J. Agnon; Burdened to Weariness - By Judith Handel; In the Hills of Jerusalem - Poem by Lea Goldberg; and more.

An Israeli woman is happily remarried yet obsessively attached to her former husband. Seven years after the divorce, Ilana breaks the bitter silence with a letter to Alex, now a university professor in Chicago, begging for help with their rebelious adolescent son, Boaz. One letter leads to another, and so evolves a correspondence between Ilana and Alex, Alex and Michael, Ilana's Moroccan husband, Alex and his Mephistophelian Jerusalem lawyer, a correspondence between mother and father, stepfather and stepson, father and son, each pleading his own case and pleading it convincingly. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with author Amos Oz.

Jerusalem 5.2.76

This is the German translation of Levy's "otiot ha-shemesh, otiot ha-yareach" (Letters of the Sun, Letters of the Moon). A novel about the Palestinian first intifada as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy. The book is far from being a realistic novel. Apart from many comically exaggerated details, it teems with arcane legends, poetry and preternatural episodes.Itamar Levy is an Israeli author. He published six books in Hebrew, and some of them were translated into various languages. Levy is also well known for his service of locating hard-to-find books, and participates in an Israeli radio show.
 

251 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, 5''X8'', very good condition. Itamar Levy will personally inscribe this copy of his book to the buyer.

An anthology of Israeli fiction and poetry. From the table of contents: Badenheim 1939 / Aharon Appelfeld; They've moved the house / Yoram Kaniuk; The Orgy / Yehuda Amichai; Louidor Louidor / David Shahar; Chapter from a novel / A.B. Yehoshua; from The crazy book / Haim Gouri; Like salt on birds' tails / Uri Orlev; A hollow stone / Amos Oz; from A journey through the land of Israel / Pinchas Sadeh;  poetry by: Yehuda Amichai, T. Carmi, Amir Gilboa, Haim Gouri, Abba Kovner, Dan Pagis, Dalia Rabikovitch, Natan Zach, Zelda, and more.

342 pages, hardcover, no dust jacket (the jacket in the picture is of a sold out copy), good condition with white, clean and tight pages.

Haim Kalinsky is slowly dying of lung cancer in a Beer-Sheba hospital. Across the road, watching unseen, awaiting his death, is his son Daniel. Between the two men hovers the memory of a terrible moment during the war when smiling Nazi soldiers forced Haim to choose between his two sons - one to live, the other to die. Twenty years after the war, Daniel and Haim meet in the port of Haifa, strangers from two worlds: the Kibbutz and post-war Warsaw, the Israeli and the Jew. Yael Dayan is the daughter of General Moshe Dayan.

191 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, good condition: few tears to jacket.

Yesterday he moved to a friend's flat across the road from the hospital. The old-fashioned long key turned once to let him in and he immediately registered the comforting emptiness of his new residence. The walls were recently whitewashed but everything else about the two rooms suggested a neglect and indifference which he found appealing.

Und auf enimal, sagte der alte Amerikaner im weiben Hemd, flog uber diese Holle hinweg eine Taube. Stille trat ein. Sein unerwartetes Hebraisch, die Taube, die seinen Mund entflogen war, uberraschte alle Anwesenden. Auch die, die nicht verstanden, wovon er redete.

Wir hatten zu Hause eine Spieluhr. Jede volle Stunde spielte sie nach dem letzten Schlag ein altes Menuett, und zwei Porzellanfiguren, ein Herr mit weißem Zopf und weißem strümpfen und eine Dame in Rosa Krinoline, tanzten dann immerdazu.

A German translation to Amos Oz's autobiographical book Sipur al ahava ve-choshech. Translated from the Hebrew by Ruth Achlama.

A Novel. Oz's fictional community of Metsudat Ram is a microcosm of the Israeli frontier kibbutz, where, held together by necessity and menace, the kibbutz-niks share love and sorrow under the guns of their enemies and the eyes of history. Translated from the Hebrew ("Makom aher").

You see before you the kibbutz of Metsudat Ram:
Its buildings are laid out in strict symmetry at one end of the green valley. The tangled foliage of the trees does not break up the settlement's severe lines, but merely softens them, and adds a dimension of weightiness.

A novel. Nimrod, who is seven when the story opens, is brought up to fear nothing, to do whatever must be done without regards for his personal safety or his own feelings. Raised from childhood to endure the hardships of frontier life Nimrod, in common with a whole generation of Israeli youth, regards strength and fearlessness as major virtues and weakness as despicable. Against this background, Yael Dayan tells Nimrod's story: his youth, his life as a soldier-farmer and the conflicts within him as he learns of the demands of friendship and a woman's love. This is also the story of three generations in an Israeli village community. Yael Dayan is the daughter of General Moshe Dayan.

When the villagers discovered the secret place, and began to stroll past it, it was necessary to find a new one. And what better place could there be for meetings than the old cemetery.

A novel. Fima lives in Jerusalem, but feels that he is in Jerusalem by mistake, that he ought to be somewhere else. In the course of his life he has had several love affairs, several ideas, has written a book of poems that aroused some expectations, and here he is now, in his early fifties, in this shabby flat on a gloomy wet morning, engaged in a humiliating struggle to release the corner of his shirt from the zipper of his fly. Translated from the Hebrw (Ha-matsav Ha-shelishi)

Five nights before the sad event, Fima had a dream which he recorded at half past five in the morning in his dream book, a brown notebook that always lay beneath an untidy heap of old newspapers and magazines on the floor at the foot of his bed.

A novel. In the autumn, Molkho's wife died. The years of his loving attendance, of life played out in tender counterpoint to her painful, inevitable death, were now ended and both of them were free. For Molkho it is a freedom unlike the one he had imagined. His is an uneasy liberty, filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love, but whose longing for meaningful relationships is held hostage by the spirit of his wife. Translated from the Hebrew ("Molkho")

Molkho's wife died at 4 A.M., and Molkho did his best to mark the moment forever, because he wished to be able to remember it. And indeed, thinking back on it weeks and even months later, he was convinced that he had managed to refine the instant of her passing (her passing? he wasn't sure the word was right) into something clear and vivid containing not only thought and feeling but also sound and light, such as the maroon glow of the small electric heater, the greenish radiance of the numbers on the digital clock, the yellow shaft of light from the bathroom that cast large shadows in the hallway, and perhaps, too, the color of the sky, a pinkish ivory set off by the deep obscurity around it.

A novel. The story of four generations of the Joffes, from the grandparents who built their home in the Jezreel Valley, through their four daughters, ending in Michael Joffe ("Fontanelle") and his family. Translated from the Hebrew by Ruth Achlama.

574 pages, paperback, 17.5cm tall, good condition: clean, white and tight pages and binding.

A book of prose, poetry and art that spans 20 years of life in the artist's village of Ein Hod. The book contains five stories (donkey tales): The Bargain; To the Sheikh; The Pilatus Affair; At the Foot of Mount Sinai; The Tower;  and 90 poems written for 90 illustrations. Some of the stories and poems have been aired on the BBC.

The sun was high-noon fierce when the dogs began to bark. A tractor swerved sharply from the asphalt road, punched through a slice of gently sloping land where thistles had been cleared and braked finally before three tall mounds piled to protect a row of newly planted pine at the boundry-line.
Hatless, wearing a dirt-stained once-white undershirt and khaki shorts, the swarthy figure of Abaad, the Druze fidgeted in the driver's seat, behind dark glasses mustering an un-certain smile. An awkward hesitation followed. After all his calculated preparations he didn't know how to begin.

21 Israeli short stories in English translation: Israel Zvi / Yitzhak Shenhar. The Runaway / S. Yizhar. And Dabiyah Never Came Back / M. Taviv. The White City / Aharon Megged. Till Daylight / Moshe Shamir. Inside the Room / Nathan Shaham. The Wild Plant / Yitzhak Orpaz. A Visit of Love / Matti Meged. Polka / Yigal Mossinson. Angioxyl, a Rare Cure / Benjamin Tammuz; The Stranger and I / Hanoch Bartov. Night Scene / Yosef Aricha. The Broken Stick / Yehoshua Bar Yosef. Assistant to an Imaginary Director / S. Nitzan. The Times My Father Died / Yehuda Amihai. An Evening in Yatir Village / Avraham B. Yehoshua. To Be a Baker / Nissim Aloni. Pinik Asks for a Maiden's Hand / David Shahar. Bertha / Aharon Applefeld. Crime and Punishment of a Goner / Yitzhak Oren. The Table / Yosef Bar Yosef.

380 pages, hardcover, no dust jacket, good condition: pages are white and tight with no markings.