Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 8 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

“If you don’t fix this command line, the computer will go into a loop mode and will repeat the function over and over. In essence, it will do it tens of thousands of times. But—” Mr. Kingston, the computer teacher, stopped when he heard rapid footsteps behind his back. He turned around to find Joe Diamond striding directly to Martin, who was staring at the screen, red-eyed.

“Martin!” Joe whispered, ignoring the presence of the teacher and the other students. “Martin, come here a minute!”

Martin’s red eyes stared at him. “What?”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 7 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

It was a pastoral scene by any measure: a couple and their son walking peacefully at a late evening hour on Geulah Street in Haifa. Hinda nodded in greeting to an acquaintance who studied her for a moment longer than was appropriate, and continued walking. Out of the corner of her eye, she observed Dov explaining to Yosef how a diesel engine works. Yosef listened, asked something, and Dov answered.

She tuned in to their conversation.

“How do you know all this?” Yosef asked.

“Oh,” Dov chuckled, “I got a whole lecture yesterday from the worker at the gas station near the entrance to Haifa. Yosef, do you drive?”

“No. Why?”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 6 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“How are you, Hinda?” Chana, standing beside her in the narrow aisle of the bus traveling to the Denia neighborhood, had a sorrowful tone when she spoke to her. Hinda didn’t know if she spoke this way to everyone she met, or only when she spoke to her. “I haven’t seen you since I heard you got married. I was so happy to hear. Baruch Hashem, baruch Hashem…”

“Thank you.” Hinda smiled pleasantly, but didn’t take the seat near the window. If Chana would stand here for two more seconds, it would be expected of her, and she’d have to do it, but there was a chance that Chana would advance further into the bus and wouldn’t sit down next to her, and Hinda preferred it that way. When she had to get to the Shmueli, Oren, Tawil, and Danziger families, she liked to use the time she had on the way to daven that her mission should go well. Sometimes it went well with these people; other times, less so.

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 5 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Immmaaaaaa! The tzedakah lady is here!”

Hinda leaned against the wall in the stairwell and waited. The little Ben-Baruch boy was raised well; he came back after twenty seconds with a ten-shekel coin in his hand. Hinda wrote a receipt, tore it off the pad, and handed it to him. “Thank you, and tizku l’mitzvos. Give this to Ima.”

At the door across the hall, she hesitated before knocking, but then decided to go ahead with it. A light knock, and then another one. As usual, they didn’t open for her. She went up another floor, skipping the door of the Russians and knocking at the Lanzitzkys.

“Ah…Mrs…Hinda!” Chaya Lanzitzky blushed and smiled. They’d always called their neighbor in shul “Mrs. Schorr.” That was what her chair in the ladies’ section said, too. What was her name now that she’d remarried? It was a good thing she remembered her first name. “Welcome! How are you? We haven’t seen you in a long time!”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 4 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Anyone passing him on Emek Refa’im Street would be sure that he was an old man who had emerged at dawn to seek the rising sun: legs thrust forward, a short, dusty jacket, and a peaked cap pulled low over his face. That was what Benny thought when he passed the bench and glanced quickly at the figure sprawled on it. He didn’t give the matter more than three seconds of thought—something along the lines of “these strange kinds of people”—before continuing on to his pizza store and café.

The noise of the metal shutters being rolled up startled the figure out of his place.

“Oh!” he said, in a very normal-sounding voice. “I was waiting for you.”

“You…were waiting for me? Oh, it’s you! The British student from around here—remind me what your name is?”

“Canadian, not British,” the youth replied in his heavy accent. “And my name is Martin. When will the first pizza be ready?”

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