These raw, interlocking short stories--set in Israel, Portland, and Thailand--explore the complex reality of modern Israel, its recent history, and what it represents to its citizens and foreign-born Jews. With a range of different narrators--three Israel Defense Force soldiers, a hawkish retiree, a synagogue executive director, and a young video game fan--each story viscerally speaks to the contrasts between Israel's founding mythology and current political realities. Each narrator's perspective is different, but collectively the voices engage with a growing concern in US Jewish communal life: how to countenance an Israel that increasingly doesn't reflect the values of American Jews.
Author Biography
Eric Flamm was raised in southern Minnesota and studied English literature and Chinese at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. After graduating, he worked as a journalist in Taiwan, and then at a startup technology company in Israel, where he became a citizen. In 1996, he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and eventually joined an artillery unit as a reservist. In 2001, he moved to Portland, where he still lives with his wife and two children. Since 2012, Flamm has been active in Israel advocacy, including the promotion of a negotiated settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The first chapter of Portland Zionists Unite! is based on a short story which won honorable mention in the Writecorner Press Short Fiction Awards.
