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?”