By Nava Semel Nava Shean and I shared the same name. I remember my amazement when she introduced herself to me one day in Haifa in the mid-1980s. We bonded immediately, in spite of the age gap. She was the oldest "Nava" I ever knew, since this name was typical…

By Nava Semel What the hell are we doing here in the boiling Middle East, when we could have been living peacefully for the last 180 years in our own cool state, IsraIsland, near Niagara Falls in America? No wars, no bloodshed, no Arab-Israeli conflict... We could have "Dwelt safely,…

Gabriel and Fanny - A Jewish-Israeli Tale of Love and Hate By Nava Semel Forward, USA, 6 November 2009 Published also in Ha'aretz daily paper Grandfather left Grandmother. In those days it was considered a scandal, a secret whispered behind closed doors, unsuited, God forbid, for children's ears. Like death,…

I began "writing" stories even before I knew how to read and write. This, by simply telling them to whoever was willing to listen. My childhood, in a white city by the beach of the Mediterranean, called Tel Aviv, was filled with family stories. Not only my own strange family…

A Conversation with Uri Orlev There were no lead soldiers in my toy drawer. My mother maintained that is was dangerous stuff and used for making bullets. Uri Orlev's book was one of the few books on the Holocaust that I read in my youth. It was written two years…