In Conversation: On The Lost Shtetl

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is an Israeli-American novelist and poet. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review’s “The Daily,” Haaretz, and elsewhere.  In Moriel Rothman-Zecher ‘s debut novel, Sadness Is a White Bird (Washington Square Press), a young man prepares to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where—four days after his nineteenth birthday—Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell and recalls the series of events that led him there. After moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper when he meets Nimreen and Laith—the twin daughter and son of his mother’s friend. From that morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, sharing joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, and  intimate secrets. As his draft date approaches, Jonathan wrestles with what it means to be proud of your heritage, while also feeling love for those outside of your own family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever. Pulitzer Prize-winning Geraldine Brooks found Sadness Is a White Bird “Unflinching in its honesty,

Max Gross is a former staff writer for the New York Post and the Forward and is currently the Editor in Chief of the Commercial Observer. What if there was a town that history missed? Such is the premise of Max Gross’ novel The Lost Shtetl (HarperCollins Publishers) For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol somewhere in Poland, existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, electricity, the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, and the divorcing couple disappears and someone is sent to the wider world to find them, the 21st century crashes down on the town. The existence of Kreskol makes headlines nationwide and the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of the town’s disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of the missing couple? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old-world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together or risk their village disappearing for good. Publishers Weekly called it ” Lively and imaginative…. alternately reminiscent of early Isaac Bashevis Singer and a Catskills comedian. Gross’s entertaining, sometimes disquieting tale delivers laugh-out-loud moments and deep insight on human foolishness, resilience, and faith.”