The picture looks a little blurry. I put on my glasses. It’s still blurry. I think it could be an old yellow bus in the desert. There is a man on top of the bus bending over to untie something. A tall, skinny figure is watching him do the work. Near the top of the book, it says “Dead Sea Stories: Tales of Kibbutz Life.” The author’s name, Louis Friedman, is printed off on his own in the desert sand. I turn the book over and it reveals a larger picture. The road continues with a jeep parked behind another yellow bus. Three young people in jeans got off the bus. I see them standing on the side of the road, but I can’t quite make out their faces.
In my first reading of Dead Sea Stories, I didn’t notice that the cover was blurry. But the book is like that. Each time you read it, something else appears. Friedman’s book is written as a first-person journal. It retells ten stories from a time when the main character was living at Kibbutz Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea. Each story begins with a black-and-white sketch. I could imagine him doodling in his journal about the story ahead.
I suspected that the stories were based on some real experiences, but I wasn’t sure if they were true. Friedman had an intimate knowledge of places like Wadi Hever and Wadi Arugot. He was familiar with towns along the Dead Sea route to Kibbutz Ein Gedi. After reading the ten stories, it was like I was living there right beside him. I could picture the Bedouin children, the shopkeepers, and the peddlers. I looked on the back inside flap for clues, but all it said was “About the Author: Louis Friedman lives, works, and writes in Cincinnati, Ohio.” I had to find out more, so I gave Louis Friedman a call.
“I was pretty sure it was fictional but based on your real experiences. How did that work?” I asked.
Friedman said, “I was in Israel as recently as last week. I’ve been there probably 40 times. My theory in writing is to turn personal experience into universal revelation—to draw from my experience, take myself out of it, and let the message and story speak for itself.”
I asked, “Did you live at the kibbutz you write about?”
Friedman said, “Yes, I did. I spent close to four years there.”
The stories focus on day trips and excursions during off-hours. In the summer months, most of the work took place in the early morning to avoid the brutal afternoon desert sun. There were bus trips, a ride in a Peugeot truck, dangerous hikes, and evening parties on the beach. All the while, I felt embedded in the Israeli surroundings. In a story called “Bruno,” Friedman wrote, “We turned the corner and came to the Window, a gap in the rock behind us that cast a perfectly square beam of sunlight down a long canyon. The canyon led down to the sea and was punctuated by a series of waterfalls and interlocking pools. Each pool gleamed as the sun struck its surface…”
I said, “You didn’t write as much about working on the kibbutz as you did about the things in between, with different trips back and forth to various places.”
He said, “That’s right. Movement is big for me, landscape is big for me. Those are kind of like characters in the book.”
There are stories where the beauty of nature can quickly turn into a fight for survival. There are characters like English Tony who “came to Israel looking for sun and girls.” And there is the story “Jericho,” where the main character insists on driving to the Arab-populated city even though he is warned, “It’s a mess there, a big balagan.” The Jericho story has images I won’t forget and a powerful final scene.
Each story can be read on its own or as part of the larger anthology. When read together, intertwining themes begin to appear. One such theme is wrestling with the decision to stay or leave. Volunteering at a kibbutz in Israel can mean freedom and adventure for a young person. But at some point, they have to decide whether to stay in Israel or go back home. As an old man in one of Friedman’s stories said, “You are a Jew? Then you are leaving home, not going there.”
Louis Friedman shared, “The heyday of volunteerism is over. And unfortunately, it was going to Israel and being a volunteer on a kibbutz that gave many people an attachment, a lifelong attachment to Israel, including myself. And I have a lot of friends, non-Jewish friends around Europe and in other countries that love Israel because of their days as a volunteer worker. You know, most volunteer workers weren’t Jewish. I was an American Jew in the minority among the volunteer workers. There were maybe five of us in a group of 40.”
Friedman includes characters from England, Germany, Sweden, and other countries. He said, “Germany, Sweden, England, Holland, they came from all over. And everybody took a little bit different path. I was just in Jerusalem last week and I had lunch with a guy that was a volunteer worker like me—a guy from Texas. He stayed. He married an Israeli woman. He lives in the Jordan Valley now and is a tour guide. He’s a big burly guy with a big beard—Texan. He cooks. His side business is barbecuing briskets at bar mitzvahs. He made it happen.”
Friedman added, “Things are tough in Israel these days. Tourism is down since October 7th. Some of the other people are coming back to Israel, but American tourism is way down, and it’s embarrassing to me… If I’m going to spend money on foreign travel, why not spend it in Israel?”
As my old rabbi would say, “This is a big little book.” At first glance, it looks like a small journal in your hand. It is a short 189 pages, but Friedman is efficient with his words. “I’m a no-nonsense guy,” he told me, and that shows in his writing. The shorter length allowed me to go back and reread the stories several times. I love Friedman’s quote from our conversation. “They say that you can’t step into the same river twice because the water has moved. It’s not the same river, and you have changed. So it’s not really the you that stepped in before. And it’s the same when you reread something.” Friedman happened to be rereading his book Empire Builder. He said, “When I’m rereading Empire Builder, now 10 years after its publication, I’m seeing different things than when I wrote it. Things that maybe I didn’t even realize.”
I’ve lived with Friedman’s stories. They made me wonder if I could have taken the leap to leave my regular life and join the Peace Corps or work on a kibbutz. They sparked memories from my youth, like when I lived with the same group of seven people in a motor home all summer traveling from one state fair to the next, and the tough decision I had to make to go home.
Louis Friedman said, “There’s a misty, surreal, wistful quality” to Dead Sea Stories. Reading his book stirred a memory. It was at the end of my daughter’s senior year in high school. Her softball team planned one last adventure—to play a tournament in Hawaii before everyone graduated. Most would never see each other again. It’s been almost 20 years since that trip, and many of the details have blurred like the picture on the cover. What I remember most is my daughter and I sitting in an open-air ocean café looking at the birds. The birds were customers just like us. They would wait in line patiently for a table to open up. As soon as a patron would leave, they would hop into action before the busboy could clear the plates. My daughter made a sound that only my daughter could make. “Uh haa!” she cheered as a bird successfully poached a leftover piece of toast. She was fascinated by those birds. We didn’t have to say a word to each other. “Uh haa!” as another bird scored a treat. I tried to picture what kind of bird it was, but the bird is fuzzy. My daughter’s face is clear.