Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron discusses his book, “The Hilltop: A Novel,” and explains why a secular Tel Avivian chose to set the plot in a remote Jewish outpost in the West Bank. More broadly, where do the personal and the political overlap, and what is the role of literature in articulating the two?
This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.
Magic is a transition between God and physics. With God, intent is all. In magic, intent in power is diverse, so limited; what one invokes may be trumped, perhaps by an intentional other, perhaps a–force–without intent, invoke eliding into evoke, whereas with God they are the same, as all one may do is plead. In physics, intent is erased, save in the conjurer. In God there is no binding of power, in magic there is, in physics binding is a matter of perspective. Perhaps those who evoke God fear more not physics but magic.