(It feels like a disservice to be writing this in English, but that’s where I am at this point, so it’ll have to do)

I met Etgar Keret in June 2014, when I was in Israel for my brother’s wedding and then to work for the summer. It was one of those happy-go-lucky days in Jerusalem—the sun was shining, the shuk vendors were shouting at full volume, and there was no war going on (yet). Things felt right as I walked into the small bookstore at the end of Emek Refaim St.

It was time for me to read a book in Hebrew.

A full twelve months had passed since my gap year at Nishmat (an Israeli seminary in Jerusalem), and my Hebrew was getting (how you say?) rusty. I am a Hebrew-speaking Jew at my core, but also at my core is my identity as a writer. My ability to express myself in English helps me clarify what I think and who I am, both to others and to myself. Meanwhile, my Hebrew skills were borderline decent, considering thirteen years of Hebrew education. By my gap year, I was able to get by in a cab or order food. But Nishmat was a time to discuss, to discover through exchanges of language and delving into texts. I had plenty to say and plenty to delve into.

I opened my mouth, racked my brain, and hoped something came out in Hebrew that made sense.

It didn’t.

Or at the very least, I hoped, I’d understand what was going on.

I didn’t.

I tried to make friends with students who don’t speak English, tried to tell my roommates I would clean the dishes when I got back from class, tried to challenge an idea in a text from hundreds of years ago, a challenge that very well may have changed my life if I could have only figured out how to say “etgar,” the Hebrew word for “challenge.”

I found myself translating even when I didn’t have to, overusing my mind like some parents use smartphones on vacations. Every day it got easier, but it was always only a chip in the dam. And even when I had a unique moment of fluency, when I was able to say more than five words in a row without tripping up, my accent halted me from being heard as a native Israeli. It didn’t matter how convincingly I argued: my foreign “reish”es and harsh pronunciation undermined my entire game.

Over time, I realized that the less I apologized about it, the less Israelis cared. Yet here I was, one year later, completely out of shape, and nodding at the bookseller.

“I think you’ll like this book,” he said. “It’s by an Israeli author named Etgar Keret. He’s very funny, but he’s a very good writer.” (“He’s very funny, but he’s a very good writer,” I thought. Did that need to contradict?)

On the cover was an airplane passenger sleeping as the plane went down in flames. It was called “Pit’om D’fika Ba’Delet,” “Suddenly a Knock on the Door.” I took it, because I liked humor and because it seemed like the time.

It took me a full year to read that book. Each story was only a few pages, and each story seemed to only be another chip in the dam.

But these chips were so worth it.

Each story shone with a cynicism tainted with a funny brand of optimism. An attitude that says, “The world is messed up. But each individual character in this world has the power to make his or her impact, and that means something.” Shalom Auslander once called him “a terribly caring human being in a terribly uncaring universe.” That right there is what resonated with me. And it was in Hebrew.

In June 2015, in my room in New York, I finished the last story, closed the book, and decided that I needed to meet Etgar Keret. I didn’t know what we would talk about, mind you. I just knew that I needed to meet him, to talk to him about life, about Israel, about Hebrew, about writing. I reached out to a friend at The Current who was also a fan. Within a few months, he gave me a date in October when Etgar Keret would be coming to my school. I smiled very, very widely.

Then I began to worry. Just because I felt a connection to a writer, why would he feel any connection to me? My politics were too classically American Zionist. I didn’t think cynically enough. Maybe I misread all of his stories, because do I actually understand Hebrew anyway?

Through the fretting, I read his newly released memoir (in English), soaking in each story as if reading it would be the only chance I would have to meet him. Which, as it turned out, it was.

As much as I tout myself as a writer, I forgot to write down the date that he was coming in to speak. And so, on October 11, I found myself with an unavoidable conflict: I had written a musical with two friends, of which I was (and am) extremely proud, and Etgar Keret’s reading was the same night, at the same time. I could only push it off enough to hear the beginning of Etgar Keret, and so I arranged with another friend to have my book signed by him afterwards.

I told her, thanking her profusely, “If you can just tell him that he makes me proud to be a writer, that would be amazing.”

So, in October 2015, I had the privilege of hearing Etgar Keret read two of his phenomenal stories, and then I didn’t get to meet him.

The next day, my friend gave me the book, grinned, and said, “I think you’ll like the inscription.” Tentatively, as if this was my second only chance to meet him, I opened up the page.

It was perfect.

He doodled a plane and a person in a boat and wrote:

“L’Tova, (To Tova,)

Tamshichi lichtov. (Keep writing.)

Etgar”

I smiled very, very widely and chose to meet the challenge.