Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 6 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Even after I got out of the taxi, it was above me the whole time, circling in the air like an annoying little drone.” Shimmy swung back on the metal legs of the kitchen chair. “You know what it reminded me of, Mommy? That little baby duck that stuck to me when I was little, in Lakewood. Remember how it ran to me every time we went for a walk near the lake?”

“Sure, because you gave it food all the time. Did you give this bat anything?”

“He took by himself,” Shimmy said in a joking tone, as he sipped from the coffee his mother had placed before him.

“Maybe it really was that duck from Lakewood!” His mother laughed. “What color was it?”

“It was not a duck,” Shimmy said. “It was clearly a bat, with a very mousy face, and wings. Did you ever realize that bats know how to smile?”

“No. And whatever the case is, it’s a really strange story.”

“Right. The main thing is that at one point, before I entered the terminal, it just disappeared—baruch Hashem!” Shimmy yawned. “Thanks, Mommy. This coffee is great.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 5 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Shio Ching, the interpreter, listened with interest to the story about the bat while he was waiting with Shimmy for the taxi that would take him to the airport. Now, as well, Shimmy censored out the part about the cookie pieces that were thrown at him, because even without that juicy detail, the story sounded delusional.

“The hotels can deny it as much as they want,” Shio said when the story was over. “But when animals lose their fear of people in certain areas, there’s almost nothing to do. And I’ve heard stories like this before.”

“So there are other incidents like what I just told you, in the area where I was? I’m not the first guest in the hotel to have a bat invade his room?” Shimmy scowled. “When Gedalya described to me what goes on in China, he didn’t talk about bats in the room. I thought it was a good hotel!”

“It’s a very good hotel, but not exactly the top tier. You asked for something inexpensive, right? Next time, if you want, go for a better hotel.”

“If I would have known this was what was waiting for me, I would have agreed to pay even another hundred dollars a night.”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 4 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Listen, Jacob,” Abe Rubinson said as he filled his glass with soda. “You speak beautifully, but you can’t use the word ‘Eibishter’ in your shiurim. Haven’t I made it clear to you that a large part of our listeners are people who are just starting to get closer to Judaism? Unfamiliar words might distance them. From now on, please, only straight English.”

Yaakov Shlomo looked at him. “I think you are making a mistake.”

Batya was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, rocking Shmuli’s carriage while listening silently to the voices from the dining room. Shimmy hardly spoke about what his father did. It sounded like even her own father’s job, as a cheder secretary, interested him more. Maybe it was because of this unpleasant employer?

“And I think that I’m not making a mistake.” Rubinson sipped slowly. “In any case, it doesn’t matter what you think. It matters that as long as I am the operator of these shiurim, I would like you to follow the guidelines I’ve established, okay?”

“And you think that if I say ‘Eibishter’ in a shiur, that might turn people off? Even if they understand very clearly Whom I am referring to?”

“Yes.”

Yaakov Shlomo fell silent.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 3 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The wrinkle-faced Chinaman, who was happy to partake of the Osem cookies that Shimmy had placed on the table, seemed a bit detached. He was largely engrossed in his thoughts, and more or less looked only at the cookies that he was slowly consuming, as he laconically answered the translated questions that Shio Ching was asking in an attempt to mediate between the two sides.

“It won’t work out too expensive for you,” Ching translated patiently to Shimmy. “Only seventeen hundred dollars for all the shirts. Do you know how much you can charge for them in Israel?”

The old Chinese man suddenly nodded, as if he’d understood the English, and Shimmy felt distinctly uneasy.

“You know English?” he asked the man directly, and the man gaped at him for a moment, before going back to chewing on cookie number eight or nine.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 2 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The office was elegant and upscale, but that was not the reason he had come specifically here. The two reasons that had led him to contact Sun Jang, the owner of this factory, were his finely tuned production line and his reputation for honesty.

“When you catch a Chinese person lying, he won’t even blink,” Gedaliah had explained to him when they’d first spoken. “He’ll immediately say, ‘Okay, right. You want us to agree on something else?’ But everyone says that Sun Jang is very okay—reliable, diligent, smart. He gets it.”

The meeting at the office of the manager of the ‘Factory for the Production of Motorized Toys,’ the translation of the long, convoluted name in Chinese, went very well. They agreed on an adorable upsherin boy doll that would daven, sing zemiros, recognize the names of the aleph-beis, ask for a ‘nosh with a hechsher,’ and do a few other shticky things along those lines. The deputy manager sat in on the meeting, and at one point, Gedaliah joined by phone. Things were falling into place. Aside for one thing, which Shimmy and Gedaliah had not taken note of before the flight.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 1 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The Chinese-English dictionary turned out to be superfluous when it emerged that the Chinese taxi driver spoke a decent English.

“I bring lot of people to market,” he said.

Shimmy sat in the front seat with his hand luggage on his lap, alternately glancing out at the streets of Beijing and at the note in his hand.

“Why are the windows closed?”

“Soon is a smell of fish. Not Chinese person…not like smell of fish.”

Shimmy was ready to argue about the accuracy of this statement, but a moment later he discovered two things: Firstly, they were apparently very close to the fish market already, and second, Chinese fish were not at all like his mother’s gefilte fish, or Batya’s tilapia. Not the smell, at least.

“You want to meet in the market Shio Ching, the translator.” The driver stopped at a place where the road suddenly ended. “I bring lot of people to him. He knows also Hebrew a little, and he works with Israelis.”

“Yes, I know.” He looked out to the narrow street. “What is this?”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 95 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Continuation of the contract signed between the representatives of the residents of Samson Lager and the unofficial representatives of the Austrian government:

The validity of the contract is twenty-five years, until September 2019. Until that date, all those involved are bound by the obligation to maintain secrecy, without exception.

“It’s unbelievable,” Elky said as she sat on the couch in Dena’s house. Naomi and Dena were clearing the table after shalosh seudos. “Two thousand and nineteen! In the twenty-first century! Taf shin ayin tes. Do you even realize how far into the future that is?”

“A little less than twenty-five years away,” Naomi said as she brushed the crumbs off the pristine white tablecloth. “It’s really a lot. And until then, we are all supposed to somehow integrate into Jewish communities around the world—and to be quiet about what we went through!”

“It’s going to be very complicated.” Elky put her son down on the floor, and he quickly crawled into the other room. She stood up. “We’re b’ezras Hashem making aliyah next week to Eretz Yisrael. Our whole family bought a few beautiful apartments in a neighborhood called Bayit Vegan, in Yerushalayim. What are we going to tell the people there? Who are we, where did we come from?”

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 94 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

An excerpt from the contract signed between the representatives of the residents of Samson Lager and unofficial representatives of the Austrian government:

…All those who have left the camp, of every age, commit to maintaining absolute silence regarding their lives as experienced since the end of the war, or from their birth, until they left the camp grounds.

In addition, each individual who was at the camp for more than a year, but less than ten years, will be compensated with fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Every individual who was in the camp for more than ten years will receive five hundred thousand U.S. dollars.

Being that on the day of the departure from the camp, two civilians were killed, and there was no prosecution in a legal court for this crime, a complaint was received by the Salzburg police. According to what is agreed above, the case will be closed, and the suspects in this matter will not be prosecuted. As noted, this is on condition that the silence regarding Samson Lager is maintained.

Aside for this, those who left the camp will be given Austrian citizenship, which will go into effect without a waiting period.

Anyone who transgresses the secrecy agreement before the expiration date of this contract will be liable, based on his signature of the contract, for heavy fines, as stipulated henceforth…

“They clearly said it’s going to be a lawsuit for huge sums of money,” Rechel said as she and her friend Ruchelle swept the floor of the preschool after the day’s sessions had ended. The preschool was one of the few elements functioning in a way that was reminiscent of their previous lives, after a number of parents had reached out to Naomi and asked her to continue occupying their children in the mornings here in the guesthouse as well.

The conference hall that had been allocated for the preschool to use was spacious and beautiful. Both the children and their parents had been stunned by the elegant furnishings, and they warmly thanked Mrs. Domb, the proprietor of the place.

“So of course we’ll be quiet, somehow,” Shifra Cohen-Sighet said.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 93 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Initial Report – Death Investigation

Hour: 5:07 a.m.

Location: Marker E-65

Fatalities: 1. Female – Katarina Wangel

                  2. Female – Teresa Wangel

Cause of Death: Rollover of prisoner vehicle

Submitted for further investigation

Joachim Klug, Police Investigator, Main Precinct, Salzburg

Police ribbons encircled the manor house, barring entry. But no one from the camp was even looking in that direction anyway. In shul, they had long finished davening Shacharis, and were almost done packing the sefarim. Reb Mottel Kush took the sefer Torah under his responsibility. In the preschool, the children were taking their crafts off the walls, and Naomi and Rivku were scanning the room for a final time. The adults made sure to feed the animals and milk the sheep before they would be handed over to the authorities, and in the cemetery, people gathered to bid farewell and to say Kaddish one last time before they left.

They also went into the factory and divided the valuable equipment and the furs that remained there amongst each other. From the bakery came the aroma of the bread they would take with them for the way, and in the public kitchen, the women were scrubbing the cooking utensils and packing them quickly. Maybe they would need these large utensils to cook in the place where they were going.

Only Sol Sherer was still dragging his feet around the camp’s paths, and not responding to anyone aside for “yes” or “no” answers.

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 92 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

A stained piece of paper on the floor of the car, written in shaky, uneven letters:

We had a backup plan to leave Austria.

We didn’t believe it would ever happen.

Their fear was supposed to be much stronger.

Bernard’s newspaper did a big part of the work. And he did all these experiments to figure out how best to influence and control the Jews: We invited them to our parties, allowed them to make weddings in our manor house…all with that goal in mind.

Leo also helped us a lot with controlling the Jews, without him even knowing it.

And I thought that Sol would be a good replacement.

But now it’s all over.

They discovered the tru—

“Looks like this is where his strength ran out.” The police commissioner pointed to the last line and handed the paper over to Hans. “So, does it still look staged to you?”

“No,” his deputy said, glancing out the window of the stately room at the car standing outside. “Not at all. So I understand that he’s dead. Where are the others?”

Dick Zuerstach, the mayor of Salzburg, shook his head. “Another male, about age thirty, was killed. Based on our impressions, he is Bernard Wangel, Josef’s son. We also found two women locked into one of the huts here.”

Locked? Crazy people! Why hadn’t they left when they realized that everything was unraveling? They had too much self-confidence, those Wangels. But he wasn’t going to fall with them, as Katarina had warned him in that final fax. No. He was smarter than them.