“The Memory Monster” takes the form of a report by the narrator, a young Israeli Holocaust scholar, written to his superior from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, and raises ethical questions about the struggle to cope with the memory of the Holocaust

School has begun, and once again children are learning how to read, encountering the alphabet for the first time. Hopefully it is a pleasant and magical time, but here is a story of a boy who feared his teacher, although he loved the alphabet.

As we labor under unbelievable pressures and uncertainties of the pandemic, especially women who have children at home, it might make us feel a little better to see that, back in 2018, the writer Tehila Hakimi already envisioned what work would be like in 2020.

It’s Sukkot again! This holiday, Marcela focuses on the agricultural aspects — the festival was originally connected to the harvest. And to help us along is Rachel Bluwstein, Israel’s farmer-poet.

Amidst the holidays, Marcela celebrates by reading an excerpt from Ayelet Tsabari’s newly published memoir, “The Art of Leaving”

“The Orchard” tells the story of Rabbi Akiva, placing him in the context of his contemporaries, the Sages of Jewish tradition and of early Christianity.

Marcela has got a thriller for you! “Three” is a page turner that tells the stories of three women. All of them will meet the same man. And he won’t tell the truth about himself.

It may sound crazy, but A. B. Yehoshua has written a page-turner about an aging engineer in the early stages of dementia, which features descriptions of highway construction in great detail.

Meir Shalev’s “My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden,” is a beautiful book, from the size and shape of the hardcopy, to the feel of the paper. Even the font type is notable. The watercolor illustrations subtly draw out the descriptions, rather than compete with them.

The literary critic Yitzhak Laor once noted about Ben-Simhon’s work and perspective, that “In the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim, but as one.”