What if a person doesn want to hear the voices of dead people?
Not hearing those voices is missing part of yourself, part of your life. When I wrote “A Tale of Love and Darkness” I was inviting the dead to my home for coffee. I said to them, “Sit down. Let’s have a cup of coffee and talk. When you were alive we didn’t talk much. We talked about politics and current affairs, but we didn’t talk about things that matter … And after the talk and the coffee you’ll go away. You’re not staying to live in my home. But you are invited to drop by from time to time for a cup of coffee.” This in my view is the right way to treat the dead. You wrote that as a child you wanted to grow up to be a book. Is a book more enduring than a person? It was a matter of personal safety. I was afraid. I was a terrified little child. Rumors were beginning to come to Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1940’s about the mass murder of the Jews in Europe. The air was full of premonitions about the same destiny awaiting the Jews of Jerusalem. I thought it would be safer to grow up
