Brothers pull in different spiritual directions, unable to let one another go. In a Saxony pub, two old men fight a war that ended decades before. "The Attempted Destruction of Herr Neumann," Ezra Olman's debut short story collection, explores the seam at which holy and secular converge, and along the way examines what is broken and whole in contemporary Jewish life. The scope ranges from an antediluvian quincentenarian's search for companionship ("Ard") to a struggling biblical theme park ("Bibleworld"), from a young ultra-Orthodox woman furtively tearing through the streets of Jerusalem...