Perhaps the greatest Yiddish poet of the post-war era—if not of the language’s entire history—Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010) spent most of World War II in the Vilna ghetto before fleeing to the forests to fight with the partisans. Thereafter he settled in Israel. He was also a prolific author of prose, some of which, like this short story translated by Zackary Sholem Berger, comes close to poetry. The tale is set in the Aladdin Cafeteria in Jaffa, near the sea where, as the author reminds us, the prophet Jonah set sail for Tarshish:

March 15 marks the beginning of this year’s Israel Apartheid Week, during which campus groups around the world hold rallies and events for the purpose of defaming the Jewish state and mustering support for the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction it (BDS). Richard Kemp comments: