Klopf nicht an diese Wand

Life in the religious agricultural settlement in northern Israel follows strict rules. To be unmarried at twenty-five is tantamount to an act of subversive rebellion. But Jisca cares neither for her family's worries nor for the conventions of her surroundings. Driven by instinct, dominated by erotically motivated fantasies and repressed passion, Jisca is like a thorn in the side of her Orthodox community. But life begins where prohibitions are disregarded, where boundaries are crossed. Jisca loves. She loves passionately—at first, when she is still a girl, silent, then obsessively. Elisha, the early-widowed man from the neighboring house, in whose yard thorny bushes grow as wild as his defiant grief for Alma, who died giving birth to their daughter Heda. In the figure of Heda, the abyss of this world, permeated by both security and superstition, is particularly evident. Every new moon, her hair is shaved so that she, too, will not die an early death like her mother. But like Jisca, Heda also eludes her, in her own way. To uncover Alma's secret, Jisca embarks on a meticulous, indiscreet, and brazen quest. She breaks the taboos of her heritage, defying all reason. The world she immerses herself in—the worldly, vibrant Jerusalem—is not her own, but within it she finds herself.