FICT 10 (2) pp. 243–250 Intellect Limited 2020 Short Fiction in Theory & Practice Volume 10 Number 2 www.intellectbooks.com 243 © 2020 Intellect Ltd Interview. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/fict_00031_7 TOM UE Dalhousie University Reading David, and David’s Reading: Eric Steel on David Bezmozgis’ ‘Minyan’ and Minyan ‘Minyan’ is the final story in Canadian writer David Bezmozgis’ Natasha and Other Stories (2004) and it focuses on the goings-on in the B’nai Brith building, the new home of Mark Berman’s grandfather. Following his spouse’s death, Berman’s grandfather moves to the subsidized housing, an arrangement that seems ideal for all parties: it enables him to save some money; and he would help make up the minyan’s numbers (‘the B’nai Brith building had its own one-room synagogue which was no longer drawing a minyan for Friday night and Saturday morning services’ [Bezmozgis 2004: 131]). His neighbours include Herschel and Itzik, two widowers who now share the latter’s apart- ment and who have become the victims of considerable public scrutiny. As Itzik’s health deteriorates and his death is imminent, multiple parties propo- sition the synagogue’s gabbai Zalman in hopes that he would influence the building’s manager into letting them take Herschel’s and Itzik’s home. Berman is privileged to invaluable insights through his interactions with Herschel and Itzik, the latter’s son, and Zalman: he comes to sympathize with Herschel; to realize that Itzik has a past about which he can only ever have partial knowl- edge; and finally, to learn Zalman’s perspective on the matter of housing. Where Berman worries about what would happen to Herschel, who had relied