Why 'beach reading' is a joke on Jews like me

I’m reading a new novel by an Israeli author that has nothing to do with the war in Gaza, or any current crisis for that matter.

I can’t tell if I feel relieved or guilty. With a world in turmoil, how much permission can I give myself to tune out — if tuning out is even possible?

Iddo Gefen’s “Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory” is set in a village on the lip of a crater deep in the Negev Desert — far from the bright lights of Tel Aviv and even Beersheba. When the family matriarch invents a machine that creates custom rain clouds, her family sees a way out of their thwarted lives in an Israeli ba...