Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 11 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Nava sat near the radiator, studying for her dinim test. Every so often she stopped and listened to the voices coming from the kitchen. It was unbelievable; it was almost one in the morning and her parents were both still up. That she was still up at this time was no great surprise; a high school student (baruch Hashem!) often goes to sleep late. But her parents? They were usually sleeping long before twelve!

But the serious discussion in the kitchen was obviously not taking Yael and Manny Cohen’s bedtime into consideration.

“Look,” Yael said as she poured milk into her husband’s third cup of coffee. “She didn’t just call out of the blue. She’s not prying for the sake of it. She’s talking about something specific, but trying to probe gently to see if it’s even an option.”

“Maybe she means their Danny?” Manny asked with a thread of hope in his voice.

“I don’t think so.” Yael set the coffee in front of her husband and sat down again. Unlike him, she sufficed with a cup of hot water and only a bit of sugar added to it. Coffee was not on her menu. “She’s talking about a child she met while at work.”

“Maybe it’s just a distraction? Maybe they want to go somewhere and leave their son here?”

“Do you want Danny to become another Yossele Schumacher? No, thanks.” Yael gave a bitter laugh as she stirred her water and sugar. “But I told you, I don’t think that’s the case anyway. She wasn’t asking about a three-year-old.”

“How old is the kid she’s talking about?”

“Eight, nine.”

“It could be nice, no?”

“I think that’s maybe a bit too old.” Yael thought about Nava. Wasn’t it hard enough for her with a nephew who was so different from her friends’ nephews? Would she be able to deal with a foster brother of the same type? Ugh. If it would work out in the first place. “It’s not like a little boy whom you can mold into whatever you want. This is a child who has been growing up in a warped lifestyle for several years already. It will be much harder to straighten him out.” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 10 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

It was freezing cold outside, and Ayala’s kitchen was a mess, but she spoke decisively into the receiver. “Okay, Pessy, let’s go.”

They bundled up and went out into the cold Jerusalem winter night. Ayala hoped that whatever it was that Pessy wanted to discuss, the conversation would be short and would require no more than one round around their cluster of buildings. She didn’t dare say anything abut her tired legs, lest it lead to another evening rendezvous tomorrow night.

“So, Ayala, it’s like this,” Pessy said calmly, sidestepping the puddles in her way. “A girl named Frankel has been suggested for my nephew from Bnei Brak.”

Ayala had a student named Frankel but she hardly assumed that that was whom Pessy was referring to. So what did she want from her?

“They heard that her younger sister is in your school. I made some inquiries. She’s your student, right?”

“I have a student by that name,” Ayala said, feeling the biting wind despite her coat. She shivered.

“So that’s it. The question is: what’s her problem?”

“Problem?”

“Why is she by you?”

“Because Hashem sent her there,” Ayala replied simply. Uh-oh, that was not a good answer, because Pessy stopped in her tracks.

“I understand she wasn’t accepted to the good schools. Why?”

“Who said such a thing?” Ayala protested.

“You.”

“Me?”

“Yes. If I ask you why she’s in your school, and you tell me because Hashem wanted or something like that, then that means you’re hiding something, and that something can be that she was just not accepted anywhere else.”

“Absolutely not,” Ayala replied. “I mean, I don’t know about it. I don’t know the reason why any of the girls are in our school.”

Pessy stared at her skeptically, and inadvertently stepped into a small puddle. “Impossible,” she declared. “You don’t know if she was one of the girls transferred from your old school or one of those not accepted anywhere else?”

“No.”

“My sister will think you’re being evasive,” Pessy said snippily. “And to tell you the truth, I think so, too.”

Ayala was cold, but she was afraid that if she would tell Pessy that, it would be further “proof” that she was trying to avoid the subject. So she continued walking and just said with a small smile, “Nu, nu.”

“So am I right?”

“No,” Ayala replied, and then continued with uncharacteristic assertiveness.  “I’m telling you again, Pessy, I specifically asked that I not be told the reason for each girl’s attendance in our school; it’s not only Zahava Frankel. I think that is the girls’ basic right.”

Pessy continued clucking with her tongue with obvious disapproval, but to Ayala’s relief, she began to head back home. “So what should I tell my sister?” she asked, somewhat coldly, after two minutes of silent walking.

“That if it’s so important to her to know, she should try and find out somewhere else. I can’t help her.” Ayala hoped that it wouldn’t take long for Pessy to get over this. “What I can tell you,” she added with an appeasing smile, “is that the Frankel in my class is a wonderful student. You can tell your sister that, if it interests her.”

“How much time have we been walking?” was Pessy’s response.

“Something like fifteen-twenty minutes.”

Pessy wasn’t satisfied. “Not enough,” she said disappointedly. “I heard from the instructor at the exercise class I go to, that for the first forty minutes you walk, you don’t even burn any calories. So we didn’t really do anything.”

Ayala suppressed a yawn. But just then Pessy added, “But it’s too cold for me, so let’s go back in.”

***

That night was equally as cold and as dark on another Jerusalem street. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 9 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

“Nothing’s missing.”

Rabbi Nechemia Paksher, principal of the Nachalas Yisrael school, stood with his arms folded and his expression uncharacteristically somber as he spoke to the police officer. He didn’t even have the option of slumping helplessly into a chair, because the chair—like most of the room—was covered with that horrid black paint. The drawers had been replaced, but a mound of crumpled, dirty papers littered the desk. Reb Nechemia sighed. “If I could catch that vandal, I’d really give it to him!”

“Citizens have no authority to punish,” the bespectacled officer responded blandly.

“Citizens also have no right to do this!” the principal snapped back, pointing at the wall. There was a message painted there, but the words were very unclear. “He can’t even write normally, this robber,” he added and stared again at the crooked letters. To him they seemed to say, “We don’t want you here,” but some of the letters were upside down or cut off, and he only figured out the whole sentence from the context.

“You said he didn’t take anything,” the officer said in a soothing tone.

“But he’s still a robber! Breaking in here isn’t called a robbery?”

“Where do you think he came in from?”

“I don’t know,” Reb Nechemia said, beginning to pace around the room.

“And where did he leave from?”

“Our front door is fashioned in a way that it can be opened from the inside, in the event that a child gets locked in. But now that you mention it, where did he get in from?”

“I looked around a little and found a window open upstairs,” the officer said.

“Well, why didn’t you say so before?! Which window?”

“At the end of the hallway, near the sinks.”

Reb Nechemia waved his hand dismissively. “That little window? The one that’s broken?”

“It also doesn’t have bars,” the policeman pointed out.

“But who could get into such a tiny hole?” Reb Nechemia wondered aloud.

“One of your younger students, perhaps?”

The principal stopped in mid pace and looked sharply at the officer. “No. It could not have been one of my students. Impossible!”

“Why are you so convinced?” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 8 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

Ayala’s pen suddenly dried up and refused to write. She walked over to the supply drawer, hoping she’d find a pen that wrote in a decent color. Near the cabinet in the hallway stood Sari with—what else—the receiver pressed to her ear.

“Excuse me a minute, Sari,” Ayala said.

Still talking to her friend on the phone, Sari moved over, allowing her mother to reach the drawer. “I don’t think the girls are going to like it, Gila. We need something more active, more challenging. We’re not little girls anymore. Listening to a good story while sitting in a circle on the grass is just not going to do it. We have to seriously think about this.”

Ayala found three pens, two blue and one black. She took them all to the table so she could see which, if any of them, actually wrote. Pens are like batteries, she mused. People don’t like throwing them out even when they start to fade, because, “Maybe we can still get some more use out of it, and we’ll check it when we have a chance.” But when you’re looking for a pen that really has something left, all the almost-finished pens become a real pain in the neck!

The black pen was the only one that wrote normally. One blue pen just scraped the page, and Ayala put it aside, making a mental note not to put it back in the drawer, but to throw it out—something that should have been done long ago. The second pen formed something resembling letters, but it was so faint that it was barely legible. It, too, joined the garbage pile.

“Ima?” Sari entered the kitchen. “Did you find a pen? You can borrow mine.”

“Thanks,” Ayala said with a smile. “I found one. I just hope it’s not almost finished also! Are you planning a program with Gila?”

“Uh-huh. Morah Levy asked us to prepare a program for the field trip we’re taking the day after tomorrow.”

“Field trip?” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 7 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

They stood together in the little yard behind the house; the others had gone already. The wall in front of them was cracked, scribbled, and covered with garish drawings.

“Try here,” Ronny said, proffering the metal can. “Remember, you gotta press and move the can at the same time to make letters.”

“What letters?” Rafi looked at the wall with a strange expression.

“Whatever you want to write.”

“But I don’t want to write anything.”

“Fine, you’re just practicing now anyway. Just write anything, and when you get there, you’ll write real stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Ronny laughed. “Who cares? You can write: ‘Chareidim, out!’ or ‘We don’t want you in our neighborhood!’”

“They’re not in our neighborhood.”

“They’re in that neighborhood and we want them out. Forget it; it doesn’t matter. Now stop beating around the bush. Let’s see if you can even use this spray can with those skinny fingers of yours.”

Rafi pressed the nozzle can and a wavy black line appeared on the dirty wall.

“Great. Now write your name or somethin’.”

A fuzzy, fragmented ‘R’ slowly appeared on the wall, followed by an equally shaky ‘a’.

“Nice. Good job,” Ronny complimented Rafi. “You gotta practice more. Try an ‘f’.”

But Rafi put the can down on the ground. “I wanna write with real paint,” he said with surprising confidence. “I’m no good at this. And gimme a note with what you want me to write.” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 6 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

Nava’s father tipped his silver becher once, and then twice, handed the smaller cups to Nava and her mother, and they drank from the Kiddush wine.

Nava straightened the velvet challah cover she had bought her parents more than seven years ago and joined them in the kitchen, waiting for her parents to finish washing their hands. Until she had given them the gift, they had covered the challos each week with the white lace cloth that her mother had purchased for their first Shabbos.

Nava remembered that Shabbos very well. She was seven years old, standing in awe as her mother, wearing a pristine white kerchief on her head, struck the match and touched it to the white wicks as she lit the Shabbos candles. The small flames began to dance merrily as Ima covered her eyes. Nava didn’t know then if her mother was crying, but she understood that this was a special moment.

And suddenly, the doorbell had rung. It was a harsh, grating noise, one that violated the tranquility of the moment. She saw Abba hurry to the door and preferred to stay behind in the dining room, watching Ima.

“Hey! Is Nava here?” It was Michelle, of course; who else?

“Yes, she’s home,” her father replied, sounding openly displeased. He walked back into the dining room.

Oh, no! For the first time, Nava noticed that he was wearing a white yarmulke. And Michelle was the one who had to see it! True, they would go to children’s programs at the local high school, and a nice guy with a black yarmulke told the boys that it was like the crown of a king, and he had some great stories about it. But she had been so happy then that she wasn’t a boy! Imagine having to walk with such a thing on her head in the street! To school! That was all she needed. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 5 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

“Nava, what are you doing?”

“Homework. Ugh!”

Her father’s eyebrows rose. “Ugh? Am I hearing right? To the best of my recollection, the thing that you were most afraid of during summer vacation was the thought that you wouldn’t have homework this year. Hmm…”

Nava smiled. “You get used to good things very quickly, Abba,” she said, putting her pencil down on the open geometry book. The two triangles she was working on were congruent; that much was obvious, but how was she supposed to come to the conclusion that segment CD was equal to EF? They were nowhere near the triangles! “The truth is,” she continued, without looking up from the book, “groaning about homework and schoolwork is part of the fun of being in high school. I’m just enjoying the privilege.”

Nava’s father picked up the pencil and toyed with it. “Still, I would expect you to be a bit more respectful about school. It’s not a good idea for people to hear you talking like that, you know.”

Nava bit her lip and looked out the window. “I only make such comments at home, Abba,” she finally said quietly. “I think I’m considered a very serious student in school. Serious as far as effort, of course.”

Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 4 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

It didn’t take too long to finish the two questions assigned for social studies homework; even sharpening the pencil had taken longer. Ariella closed her notebook and Nava Cohen stood up.

“Are you going now?” Ariella asked, gazing adoringly at the person she had come to think of as “Wednesday’s girl”. Every day since Ariella’s mother had contracted mono, high school girls came to straighten up the house, prepare supper, and help the children with their homework. Ariella liked all of them, but she especially loved Nava. Nava played with her and her siblings, washed the dishes with lightening speed, cut up a colorful vegetable salad, and dressed the younger children in pajamas.

“Yes, sweetie, I’m going,” Nava confirmed.

The other children gathered around them. “Can we make noise now that Ariella’s finished her homework?” Elazar asked. “Can I blow the whistle that Devoiry gave me yesterday?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Nava said, smiling at the six-year-old. “Moishy might wake up.”

“And so might Ima!” Ariella said as she slid her notebook into her briefcase. “Abba said that whoever tries not to make noise gets a mitzvah! Right, Nava?” Keep reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 3 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

Ayala’s green notebook became filled with her close, neat handwriting.

I held the list in my hand. Auerbach, Arnon, Ben Shlomo, Badani, Guttenberg… They were all new names. I didn’t recognize a single one of them and did not know which of the faces sitting before me belonged to which name. I observed a few faces that had closed expressions, as though these girls had made a firm decision not to enjoy a single thing that happened there.  I didn’t know if they were the girls who had been accepted to the old school and had been forced to switch, or perhaps they were the girls who hadn’t been accepted anywhere. For me, they were all new, sweet girls.  New faces, a new page of new names, in a brand new attendance book.

“Dermer, Chaya.”

At the back of the classroom, a diminutive figure sat up straight. Why had she chosen to sit so far back? I was inclined to tell her to change seats with someone sitting closer up front, but at the last second I remembered that I’d better get to know her first, at least a little, before I made any changes.

“Horner, Avital.” Ah, so that girl with the glasses on the left was Avital. Interesting; I thought that at this age the girls already wore lenses, I mused. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 2 of a new online serial novel, Divided Attention, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday.    Click  here for previous chapters.

Copyright © 2010 by Israel Bookshop Publications

Eight-year-old Avi looked at the note. The atrocious handwriting was very familiar, a little too familiar. But how had Ronny gotten a hold of this? And what did it say?

“Do you know who wrote this?” Ronny’s gentle tone did not fool Avi for a minute. His big brother was angry, and he, Avi, was undoubtedly his intended victim.

“Yes,” he said, standing up very straight. He could not allow Ronny to see that he was afraid of him. “He’s my friend.”

“Your friend? Which one?”

Avi giggled. Calling Rafi a friend was preposterous, but that wasn’t Ronny’s business. “Rafi Zimmer. He’s a kid in my class.”

The older boy crumpled the note into a little ball, but then reconsidered. He smoothed out the creased paper and put it into his pocket.

“Get him for me,” he said, his eyes boring into his younger brother’s face. “Did you hear me? I said to go get him.”

Avi laughed nervously. Ronny was asking him the impossible. “Get him? I can’t,” he said uneasily.

“Why not?” Keep Reading…