The Meeting

Rachav Shirah is an American-Israeli writer with a Master of Arts in French Literature and a long held interest in Jewish mysticism. She has spent much of a lifetime writing poetry and stories and keeping notebooks of her dreams during sleep in which she recorded the many visitations of an Israeli warrior lover. "Writing the dream texts, which came from somewhere deep in the heart," Shirah explains, "taught me how to craft stories in a way that confronts the reader and draws her into the boundless world of the self that accepts her whole being, not just the 'allowed' parts. As the immortal Pascal attests," she continues, "'Le coeur a ses raisons que l'esprit ne connaît pas' (The heart has its reasons the mind does not understand). Writing "The Meeting" was an exercise in stillness; it forced me to stop, truly listen to my heart and to what I was feeling, and to acknowledge that message as a valid inner truth, even if that truth appeared to conflict with defined external boundaries. My hope is that this story will do the same for the reader."