The Story of My Socks

“I hated him then. I hated him with hot rage and cold bitterness. I hated him for being mean to Mom. I hated him for making me share a room with my brother, and for how helpless he was in the face of Mom’s illness. I hated him for not understanding me.” A short story by Jennifer Anne Moses.

A Theory of Everything

“Perhaps most of all, I miss discussing your theories, Nora. Under the spell of love and a dancing fire, our nude bodies warmed by burning oak and afterglow, we explored without telescopes or complicated mathematical formulas. Free radicals, you called us.” A short story by Ron Rindo.

Screaming Faces Made of Dots

“I tightened my hold on the snow globe and then slipped it into my pocket. I had never stolen anything before, but I had an idea that the snow globe was meant to be mine—a consolation for the lost bird keychain—that it was a powerful artifact intended to pass from one Hannah to the next. That it had first belonged to the original Hannah, the one who was favored by God.” A new short story from award-winning author Becky Mandelbaum.

Piano Bench

“Right there at one of the long brown tables in the middle of a class I don’t care about, I realize I’m in love with someone from the university, which is funny because being in love with someone from the university is what my husband accuses me of all the time.” A short story by Cady Vishniac.

Sol’s Visit

“He was afraid of girls. It didn’t matter how shy or friendly or fat or pretty or plain or desperate the girl was. He was afraid of them all. Then he grew up and his father died and he was still afraid of girls . . .” A short story by Jennifer Anne Moses.

On Privacy

“Having procured the grape leaves, the Whole Foods shopper sat back down next to me on the bed in our married couple pose, lifted the comforter up over himself again, and started munching. . . I was entranced.” A short story by Cady Vishniac.

The Children

“The truth is, even now he doesn’t know how or why he’d so abruptly turned his back on his wife and children, forsaken his wedding vows, and broken with Jewish law. It was almost as if he’d been under the influence of a drug.” A story by Jennifer Anne Moses.

Matrimonial Agency

She fumbled for the bedside lamp as her husband asked who was it now, for the love of Pete, and what made college students think they could wake up their professors in the middle of the night. She kissed his forehead and told him it was probably one of those wrong numbers again. People should really know better than to drink and dial, she said, knowing that her little joke, like previous attempts at cheerful intimacy, would most likely fall, to use a biblical expression, on uncircumcised ears. He rubbed his nose and mumbled something into his pillow, rolled over and resumed snoring, first softly, like a baby, then with rapidly increasing vigor. She cupped the phone in both hands and whispered a hesitated hello into the receiver.

CAMP HAPPINESS

They were going to separate—she wanted to and he was done fighting her—but before that there was Dylan’s bar mitzvah, and before that was now: this weekend in the rolling hills beyond Oakland with similarly bereaved Jewish strangers.