Acclaimed Israeli author Etgar Keret spoke to a crowd of some 100 people in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center this past Monday evening.
The short story novelist imparted a series of brief anecdotes to the audience about his upbringing as the child of Holocaust survivors, his family and the upheaval his writing career went through after October 7.
Keret’s talk was this year’s Dubin Family Lecture, an annual lecture series organized by the University of Maryland’s Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies.
While in past years, the Gildenhorn Institute showcased Israeli ambassadors, diplomats and politicians for their annual Dubin Family Lecture, last night’s talk struck a different chord with Keret, a leading name in Israel’s literary scene and vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Keret, who is known for penning surreal short stories that blend tragedy with bleak humor, discussed the war on a small-scale. He focused on those around him who stand to lose, or have already lost, over the course of the past year.
“It was always obvious for me, even though it wasn’t articulated, that storytelling and imagination, they were not accessories or luxuries… they were a means of survival,” Keret said. “You need to know how to tell a story, how to imagine, because if you won’t — you’re doomed.”
Despite Keret’s liberal outlook, organizers still worried anti-Israel protesters may interrupt the talk with heckling or a staged walkout. Security was tight at the venue entrance, with guards checking the bags of all who entered.
“I hope this will be a peaceful and respectful event,” prefaced Gildenhorn Institute Director Ilai Saltzman before Keret’s talk that evening, warning attendees not to interrupt the talk. The event proceeded without any obstruction.
UMD President Darryll Pines also spoke that night, voicing his support for the university’s Israel studies program.
Pines noted the approaching one-year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which he called “a reminder of how I, and all of us, remain hopeful for an end to this conflict and for a return of the hostages.”
For Saltzman and many other Israelis who grew up in the 1990s, Keret bears a special significance.
“I can say that he is the person responsible for making me like Israeli literature — as opposed to just reading it because my high school literature teacher told me to,” joked Saltzman, heaping praise on the author’s debut short story collection, “Pipelines” or in Hebrew, “tzinorot“.
Earlier this year, Keret came out with his seventh short story anthology — “Autocorrect” — which deals with the dangers posed by the spread of artificial intelligence.
“I would say that there is a good chance that it will end humanity,” said Keret about AI, and used an analogy: “If I gave each of you a golf cart, and said, ‘Why walk? Use the golf cart.’ — within three weeks, none of you would be able to walk.’”
But Keret’s new collection comprises only a fraction of his life as a storyteller post-October 7.
He told the audience that following Hamas’s massacre, he began to view storytelling as more of a public service.
“When October 7 hit us, everyone went out and tried to do whatever they could to help… I went with my wife and we would go to all the communities of the people from the kibbutzim, we would babysit, tell stories to children, tell stories to adults,” he recounted.
Before the catastrophe, Keret felt as if “there was some kind of vanity” behind whatever he wrote. Since then, he has taken up sending people short stories through WhatsApp, doing small favors and using his fame to aid others.
“All the walls fell, and people were crying for help,” he said.
