Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 19 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Dovi Brim looked around the small room. The principal pulled back the curtain that shaded the window and pointed to a chair facing the desk.

“Please, have a seat,” she said quietly. “One moment; there’s only one chair here.” She began walking towards the door, but Mr. Brim turned to his son before she got there.

“Dovi, go bring yourself a chair.”

A mournful silence rang in Dovi’s ears as he walked out to the secretary’s office. He walked over to a chair standing near the wall and picked it up. “There’s only one inside,” he said by way of explanation, tilting his head towards the inner office. “May I take it?”

“Sure,” Chana replied, and went back to what she was doing.

“Good morning,” Mr. Brim began. “Or rather, it’s just about good afternoon. Pleased to meet you. We are the Brims, from Manhattan. We came here because we are aware of the strong connections Rabbi Weinstock has with your school.”

The principal nodded silently, her face somber. She seemed to be apprised of the situation, Dovi mused to himself, and from her expression, he came to the conclusion that the subject was closed as far as she was concerned.

But his father had no intentions of giving in so quickly. “I don’t know if the principal is aware of things as they were until now,” he continued, “but Dovi is an excellent talmid. Last year, in shiur beis, they were very pleased with him in the yeshivah. He learns well, is very respectful, and is well liked by his friends. True, he also knows how to play the flute beautifully, and he even played for the yeshivah on Purim night. What happened over summer vacation was really a very big mistake on our part that simply…got out of hand at one point. Dovi, perhaps you should describe how Mr. Aberfort called you and how it all began.”

Dovi complied, and the principal listened attentively as he spoke, her eyes fixed on the pen in her hand. Dovi stopped short at describing the concert itself. He wanted to add something, but at the last minute decided not to. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 18 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Yaffa was gratified to find the hallways empty. What if they would have been teeming with students just then? What would she have been expected to say, do, respond? She walked with smaller steps than she had taken on her first day at the school, but at least now she knew where the office was.

Three pairs of eyes turned to her as she appeared in the doorway: Yael, Chana, the head secretary, and Faigy, her assistant.

“Good morning, Mrs. Levinsky,” Yael said naturally, lifting her head from a large sheet of paper spread out before her on the table. She took the page and stepped into the inner office, switching on the light as she did.

Yaffa hesitated for a moment. “Good morning,” she finally replied, forcing herself to smile at the secretaries, who were clearly sizing her up. She followed Yael into the other room.

Yael was already sitting on the black chair, the same kind that the teachers’ room had to offer, and was continuing to peruse the paper she was holding. She raised her eyes after a few seconds. “Why aren’t you sitting down?” she asked Yaffa, pointing to the brown leather chair on the other side of the desk. “These are the class lists for the ninth grade, and I want you to look them over to see if they’re okay.” She pushed the page toward the empty brown chair and then turned to the door, where Yaffa was standing.

“Nu?” she said with a smile.

“This is very hard for me, Yael,” Yaffa said, a blush rising in her cheeks. “If I have to look at that paper, you can give it to me here.”

“Absolutely not,” Yael said, sounding like she was trying to suppress a smile. “That’s your chair for now, and there’s no reason for you to stand.”

The situation was so comical that even Yaffa’s lips curved upward in a smile. “Is that how you usually talk to the principal?” she asked.

Yael chuckled. “Now you sound like a real principal,” she declared. “Good for you, Yaf—em, Mrs. Levinsky. You’ll go far, b’ezras Hashem.”

By now Yaffa was standing directly behind the brown chair. “But it’s still delusional,” she said quietly, not realizing that she was quoting her sister Chaya’s exact words. “It’s unbelievable to think that I’ll be sitting in this chair, at this desk, and will tell you if the class divisions look alright. I don’t understand anything about these things, and I…” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 17 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Faigy Krauss, the assistant secretary of the high school, listened in silence to the tirade coming through the phone.

“It’s totally crazy, I’m telling you,” Chana raged repeatedly on the other end of the line. “And then he kept explaining to me how I have to give her all the backing and authority to make sure the job is done effectively and that there is continuity, blah blah blah.” She paused for a second. “Isn’t it ridiculous, Faigy? I’m asking you, is this normal? Principal! If Malka or Yael didn’t want to take on the job for whatever reason, couldn’t they have given it to one of us?”

“Why?” Faigy asked.

“Why? Because you and I at least have a vague idea of how the school runs, which this little girl does not!”

“That’s exactly what they wanted, Chana.” Faigy was calm. “They would never have given you the job of running the school, precisely because you know how to do it too well.”

“And you?”

“I would never take such a thing on myself.”

“So what do they want? Someone to run the place without knowing how?”

“No.” Only as Faigy said the words did she grasp how true they were. “They want someone to sign all their forms and to be presentable enough, but they will manage everything through her.”

“Presentable?” Chana huffed into the phone; it sounded almost like a snort. “Come on, Faigy.”

“Presentable from a legal standpoint, I meant, not that she’s going to speak at parents’ evenings or anything.”

“But why—” Chana wasn’t ready to give up so fast. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 16 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Can I speak to the princ—er, to Mrs. Yael Braun, please?”

Yaffa put down the receiver and walked over to the principal’s office. The board members were seated around the large desk with Malka Mann and Yael Braun, while Mrs. Kotzker’s chair remained empty. Yaffa knocked lightly, and all heads turned in her direction.

“I’m sorry to disturb,” she said in a near whisper. “Mrs. Braun, you have a phone call.”

Chana, the second secretary, walked into the office at that moment. “You shouldn’t bother them there, Yaffa,” she said to the younger woman’s back. “Is it urgent for now?”

“I told her to transfer all calls to me. They could be important,” Yael said as she emerged from the principal’s office and picked up the receiver. Yaffa returned to her desk and went back to the student roster, comparing the written information with the entries in the computer.

“Are you managing there, Yaffa?” Yael asked when she finished her conversation and headed back to the principal’s office. “How’s the computer program? Is it easy to work with?”

“Yes, and thanks for the explanations. Now I see that it’s not as complicated as I thought.”

“It’s not complicated at all,” Chana remarked from her seat, following Yael with her eyes as she returned to the board meeting. She could see that the discussion in the inner office was getting more intense; the atmosphere there was clearly loaded. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 15 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Malka had once read a newspaper article that said that if a person displays signs of a stroke, he should be rushed to the hospital within three hours, during which time there is a chance to minimize the damage. She also read of a complaint by a patient who had indeed arrived at the hospital in time, but had to wait a very long time in the emergency room before receiving medical attention.

Her mother hadn’t had to wait even a minute. The paramedic in the ambulance had called ahead to the emergency room, giving notice about the patient’s serious stroke incident and loss of consciousness en route to the hospital, and everything was ready for them.

“When did it all begin?” asked the doctor who emerged from the Intensive Care Unit after an endless few minutes.

“At about four,” Malka replied meekly. Her father had been allowed in to see Ima for a minute, while she had been left standing in front of the heavy double doors with her brother, Shaul. As she stared at her whitened knuckles, a bizarre thought crossed her mind: She couldn’t be having a stroke right now also, could she? Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 14 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The curtain began to rise, revealing uniformly dressed figures sitting motionlessly. A small beam of light went on at the edge of the stage, slowly growing larger until it encompassed all of the performers.

“So, are we ready to start?” one of them whispered, clutching a large xylophone in his arms.

“One moment,” the pianist sitting next to him whispered back. “Menachem’s not here yet.”

“He’s here, he’s here,” the violin player interjected, glancing behind him.

The musicians began to applaud, and were quickly joined by the audience. Menachem appeared, nattily dressed, on the edge of the stage, smiling broadly. He bowed lightly to the hundreds of viewers, and without saying a word to them, he turned to those on the stage. “Ready, my friends?”

Then he glanced at his watch, and added, “I might have a surprise tonight…Well, we won’t wait now. Let’s begin.”

Soft notes flooded the hall, but they lasted just one minute before being interrupted by a shout. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 13 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

They were simply not compatible.

You didn’t just discover that now, the chair in the corner, with the rickety right leg, jeered at her. Since when did you think that you were? Remember your first trip to the supermarket, when he put products into the cart with hechsherim that you never even considered using in your parents’ home, not to mention the spend-thriftiness that stunned you? And the first Shabbos you spent at his parents’ house, when he was so unfazed by the fact that he’d left his hatbox at home, and went to davening on Friday night wearing just a suit—no hat? And the day he left his afternoon learning seder for good? And the day, a year later, when he left learning in the morning, as well?

Bentzy continued sleeping as his mother put him in his bed and angrily swiped at the newspaper from Tuesday that was covering the phone. Colorful squares and rectangles and pictures with green, grassy lawns tried to attract her attention, but she didn’t deign to give them a look. She didn’t want a trip to the Czech Republic; she didn’t want to go to remote places full of non-Jewish faces; she didn’t want to take Bentzy out of Eretz Yisrael for no reason, even if his grandmother and young aunts would love to have him there. The grandmother and aunts were really not part of the story at all. In fact, the whole issue of whether to take a vacation in a Czech hotel or in a bungalow up north in Israel was just a grain, one of many, that had accumulated in her throat over time, making it hard for her to breathe. The issue here wasn’t what to do during the time that school would be closed or before she found another job. The issue was Elchanan and herself.

“Compatibility is not everything,” Morah Elka Stern had told her a short time after she’d gotten engaged to Elchanan. His parents were foreign, and their families were so different in every way. “I can show you couples that are amazingly similar and don’t get along all that well. It depends on good middos. There are those who are polar opposites, and things go very smoothly for them.”

No, she and Elchanan weren’t polar opposites, and yes, they both had good middos— but things were not going smoothly at all.

*** Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 12 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The next morning, Adina Kotzker’s head was aching badly. The trip back and forth up north the day before hadn’t done her any good, and although everything had turned out for the best, it was hard for her to muster a smile. Of course, she had smiled in spite of everything, because the coordinators and the madrichos and the students were not to blame that she was drained, but she’d hardly been able to sleep all night.

Her husband suggested that she postpone the board meeting, but she refused. These quiet days were the ideal time for such meetings. She liked the total quiet, without students or teachers in the background. True, she hadn’t planned that even Chana, her veteran secretary, wouldn’t be there, but Chana didn’t have all that much to do at the meeting anyway. Her job was basically to serve the refreshments and answer the phones in the office, which the young Mrs. Levinsky could do just as well.

By 8:50, Mrs. Kotzker was unlocking the door to the office. She nodded hello to the custodian who passed on his way to his little room at the end of the corridor. The members of the board were scheduled to arrive at 9:30, and she wanted to make sure that everything was in order before they came. Malka had prepared the reports before leaving for the Overnight, and all she had to do was pull out the two relevant binders and straighten the tablecloth.

She sat down at her desk, massaging her right temple, and wondered what that noise was on the second floor. She didn’t have too long to wonder, because two seminary girls burst into the empty office at that moment. Seeing that there was no one there, they hurried to the door of the principal’s office, which was open. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 11 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

By four thirty, Malka had managed to completely forget about the disturbing phone conversation. At two o’clock, after lunch, the girls were supposed to board buses for one of the nearby mountains, where a scavenger-hunt-style maze activity was planned for them. But then Yael’s phone rang, and all the plans went haywire.

“A child from a local moshav stepped on an old mine on the mountain we’re supposed to be going to,” Yael said with a somber expression. “He was seriously wounded, and the whole area’s been closed to hikers.”

“Hashem yishmor! I hope he has a refuah sheleimah!” exclaimed Ruti, one of the tenth grade madrichos, but in the same breath she added, “But when we went there the day before yesterday to put down the hints and the markers, there were no old mines!”

“Tell that to the police,” Yael replied dourly. “In any case, it’s closed, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 10 of a new online serial novel, Dance of the Puppet, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters. 

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Elchanan wrinkled his forehead. “So why do you need me?” he asked. “Did you forget where the bank is or something?” Dvir’s store was bustling with the normal pre-closing-hour rush; the last few customers were loitering at the shelves when Yaffa had burst in with her bizarre request.

“I didn’t forget.” Yaffa took a deep breath. Only then did her husband notice the brown envelope in her hand. “But I want you to come with me there. I won’t know where to go and who to speak to.”

“Well, it’s about time you learned,” Elchanan said. He retreated into the store, looking for his wallet in the drawer under the cash register. It was true that Yaffa was only twenty, but if he wasn’t mistaken, he had taken care of banks transactions for his father from the age of fourteen. Well, his father hated big banks because of the Israeli tellers and clerks who had no patience for his heavy accent. And Yaffa? Yaffa couldn’t stand the bank, or the National Insurance office, and she could barely handle the doctor’s office because… Well, why? Now that he thought about it, he realized he had no idea.

“I don’t know,” Yaffa said as they stood in the bank between the chain link dividers and plastic plants. “These huge, cold places get me nervous.” When it was Elchanan’s turn, she watched him walk up to the teller and slide the brown envelope under the glass partition. “The account number is on the envelope,” he informed the clerk. Then he looked at Yaffa, standing to his right. “You see how simple it is?” Keep Reading…