Oz, who died in 2018, was the leading Israeli writer of our times.  Born in Jerusalem into an intellectual and Zionist family, he embraced the Kibbutz movement and controversially supported the two state solution for many years. He was much honored abroad and in Israel for his more than 40 books of fiction and non-fiction.  I read his memoir “A Tale of Love and Darkness” several years ago and found it to be fascinating and very engaging.

These 8 short stories are similarly engaging.  They are linked with the same characters appearing in different combinations as they live ordinary lives full of the human drama on Kibbutz Yechat.  There are no specific examples of the Arab/Israeli conflict though several characters are mourning a husband or son who had been killed in fighting, and a nearby Arab village which had been burned and destroyed in a retaliatory attack was the scene in one story.  We meet Zvi Provizer, a talented gardener, who thrives on bad news sharing it with anyone who will listen; Arielle, Boaz, and Osnat caught in a love triangle that ends badly for all; Nahum and his close friend David Dagan, a teacher at the kibbutz school who has a brief affair with Nahum’s daughter, Edna, and others, all memorably characters drawn vividly with a few brisk brushstrokes.

Oz’s Kibbutz is both Israeli-specific (socialist, communal child raising, commitment to the collective, lack of private property, personal responsibility for work for the collective) and universal (erotic desire, love, gossip, parents & children, authority and independence).  Because of Oz’s ability to portray the human condition, these stories might have taken place anywhere in the world, but because of his Israeli and Jewish roots, they could not have been set anywhere but in Israel.

Israel and the peace movement lost a leading light when Oz died.  Read his memoir and then this book of short stories.