Daniella Levy is a mother of three, rabbi’s wife, writer, translator, self-defense instructor, bridal counselor, black belt in karate, and certified medical clown—and she still can’t decide what to be when she grows up. She is the author of Letters to Josep: An Introduction to Judaism, and her articles, short fiction, and poetry have been published in both English and Hebrew in popular and literary magazines such as Writer’s Digest, Pnima Magazine, Reckoning, Newfound, the Rathalla Review, and the Jewish Literary Journal, as well as online platforms such as Kveller, Aish.com, JWire, Ynet News, and Hevria.
Born in New York, Daniella immigrated to Israel with her family as a child. She currently lives in Tekoa, Israel, with her husband and their three sons. She wrote her first book at age ten and completed her first full-length novel at fourteen. Her Talmud studies notes from high school consisted of a series of silly dramatizations of Jewish sages yelling at each other. She’s pretty sure her teacher would have been horrified.
She blogs at LetterstoJosep.com about Judaism and life in Israel, and at The Rejection Survival Guide about resilience in the face of rejection and criticism. Connect with her online at Daniella-Levy.com.
Disengagement
In other times, they would never have met. They come from different corners of Israeli society, rooted in their own beliefs, busy with their own troubles. Farmers and fishermen, skeptics and believers, immigrants and natives, children and grandparents struggle with faith, loss, jealousy, hope — and the turmoil around them only deepens the rifts that divide them.
But when the Israeli government orders all Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip destroyed, Neve Adva — the settlement some of them call home — becomes the unlikely crossroads where all their worlds collide and all their lives are changed forever.
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By Light of Hidden Candles
In a mud hut in the Jewish Quarter of 16th-century Fez, a dying woman hands her granddaughter a heavy gold ring—and an even heavier secret.
Five hundred years later, Alma Ben-Ami journeys to Madrid to fulfill her ancestor's dying wish. She has recruited an unlikely research partner: Manuel Aguilar, a young Catholic Spaniard whose beloved priest always warned him about getting too friendly with Jews. As their quest takes them from Greenwich Village to the windswept mountain fortresses of southern Spain, their friendship deepens and threatens to cross boundaries sacred to them both; and what they finally discover in the Spanish archives will force them to confront the truth about who they are and what their faiths mean to them.
At times humorous, at times deeply moving, this beautifully written and meticulously researched book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of Inquisition-era Spain, Sephardic Jews, or falling in love.
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