Israel offers a far richer culture than a visitor can grasp from just following its politics or visiting its tourist sites. One powerful way to plunge deeper is to read Israeli literature. Like the Talmud, though, it’s a vast sea. Where should you start?

In this five-session book series, co-sponsored by The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and Moment Magazine, we at least begin to scratch the surface. We explore today’s Israel through the eyes of recent writers in a kaleidoscope of genres: novel, memoir, short stories, poems. For each work, we offer a special guest: the author, the translator or a scholar who guides readers through the text as well as field readers’ questions.

Moment book review editor Amy E. Schwartz leads these conversations.