Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 4 of a new online serial novel, Without a Trace, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday. Click here for previous chapters.

Yehudah gave the receiver in his hands a strange look, as though it was responsible for the bizarre conversation he was in the midst of. “His legs?” he repeated incredulously.

“Yes, as in, his feet.”

Yehudah rubbed the creases in his forehead with two fingers. “Do you suspect that he has chicken feet, by any chance?”

“No,” the man replied shortly. “But have you seen his feet?”

“Let me think a minute…” Yehudah said slowly, but not because the additional minute would help jog his memory. He knew very well that he had never seen Zevi Bloch’s feet, and he strongly suspected that no other bachur in the yeshivah had either. Zevi Bloch never took his shoes off during the day, not even during the afternoon rest period. At night he slept curled up, and his feet never peeped out from beneath his blanket. But Yehudah had no intentions of telling anything of the sort to the curious person on the phone. He looked at the receiver in his hand again and remained silent.

“Nu?” Eliyahu asked, fed up with waiting. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 3 of a new online serial novel, Without a Trace, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday. Click here for previous chapters.

“Excellent,” Ilana Auerbach, Shevi’s mother-in-law said, when she heard that Shevi’s father had found a reliable renovations contractor for them. “A friend of your father’s, Shevi? Then let’s hope that that will move things, and within two weeks, give or take, you’ll be able to move in already.”

“Yes,” Shevi said. “Let’s hope. Yes.”

Ilana smiled with satisfaction. “I’m really happy you bought this apartment. It’s a great apartment and the location is also good. It’s not too Chareidi there, right, Gabi?”

“Right,” Gavriel said with a slight smile, looking at the package of cookies in front of him without reaching for it. “But don’t worry, Ima, we’ll get there, too, eventually.”

“You and your jokes. And why aren’t you eating? Soon you’ll tell me the hechsher isn’t good. It’s made with flour from after Pesach, did you know that?” She held little Miri and tried to picture her ten years down the line with tights and long braids. She shuddered at the thought.

“The hechsher is perfect,” Gavriel said, and quickly reached for the package, knocking into Shevi’s coffee cup on the way and splattering light brown drops all around it. “Sorry, Shevi. I’m just not that hungry, Ima.”

“You don’t eat cookies because you’re hungry.” His mother sniffed. “When you’re hungry, you eat normal food, but when you come to Ima and don’t eat anything because you’re sure her kitchen is treif, then you have no choice and you eat cookies.” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 2 of a new online serial novel, Without a Trace, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday. Click here for previous chapters.

The friendship that blossomed between Yehuda and Zevi after that night was unquestionably an interesting one. It began the morning after their nocturnal encounter.

“Zevi, I think your mother’s waiting for you outside.”

“My mother?” Zevi was surprised.

“She asked me to call you. Go check.”

He went and checked, and was pleased to discover his mother standing on the sidewalk outside, leaning on the gate. “Hello. Did you eat?” she asked when he was still several feet away from her. A light, end-of-winter breeze blew around them. Small yellow bursts of color, peeping between the scraggly grass in the unkempt yard behind them, heralded the imminent arrival of spring.

“Yes.” He smiled. “I just bentched. Hello, Ima, how are you?” Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 1 of a new online serial novel, Without a Trace, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday. 

Zevi flipped the pillow over to the other side, hoping that perhaps this simple act would achieve something, although he knew the chances were slim. One would think that this side of the pillow had something that would help him finally fall asleep. He was nearing despair. Was it possible to not fall asleep the whole night?

The silence that enveloped the room irritated him. His three roommates were the type who got into bed, said Krias Shema, turned over, and after a moment or two were sound asleep. He usually dropped off easily as well, but lately, he had been having trouble. Strange. He had long gotten over the adjustment of his new yeshivah.

Or perhaps not. He sat up with a sigh, and swung his legs over the side of the bed so his feet touched the floor. Yehuda Levy turned over in his bed on the other side of the room, while the seventeen-year-old youth quickly stuck his feet into the shoes waiting beside the bed and laced them quietly. Yehuda continued tossing and turning, and then suddenly he raised his head and queried, “Oww oh ah?”

Zevi raised a surprised pair of eyes. “Aah!” he cried. He had been sure, for some reason, that he was the only one in the room awake. Apparently there were others who sometimes had trouble falling asleep, too, but they did it in a quieter fashion than he did. “Ah uh huh!” he replied.

Regardless of whether he understood or not, Yehuda burst into typical “Yehuda” laughter. Zevi couldn’t help but join him. There was something contagious about Yehuda’s laughter, and there was undoubtedly something very humorous about this situation. Two yeshivah bachurim sitting on their beds at half past two or three in the morning, conversing in such an odd way—a stranger entering the room would no doubt be convinced that he had happened upon an institution for deaf-mutes. Of course, that would only be if he didn’t realize that both boys had already recited Hamapil.

Yehuda fell suddenly silent and pointed to the half-open door. “Mmmm?” he asked, and Zevi provided a nod in response, watching as Yehuda shoved his feet into his slippers. The two boys rose, stretched, and together made their way toward the door.

Keep Reading…

Without a Trace

Zevi Bloch is hiding something. Something that no one outside of his family may ever find out…

Unbeknownst to Zevi, he has a secret stalker, as well. Eliyahu Katz is determined to find out information about the seventeen-year-old yeshivah bachur, even if he must resort to pretty atypical means of doing so…

And then there’s Zevi’s aunt Chasida, his mother’s twin sister—still single after all these years, still working in her parents’ store, still attempting to quash her feelings of loneliness and pain…

From Haifa to Bnei Brak, from the yeshivah dormitory to a health food store to an alternative medicine practitioner’s office…Without a Trace will lead you into many different scenes and sites as it enthralls you with its spellbinding plot… Be swept up with the emotions of eerily realistic characters on a journey that will leave behind…not a trace…

Check back at the end of this week for Chapter 1 of this exciting new Israel Bookshop online serial.