Tzaddik stories first emerged in the 1990s in the blogpost “And this part is true,” then reemerged in a novel that followed Malkah’s occultation on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific exactly when her father, the Tzaddik, got stuck in southern Tunisia unable to cross the Sahara. Instead of protecting her, the Tzaddik was traveling in North Africa with his buddy, Rav Gavriel, who got unbearably sick right about then and they had to stay put somewhere between Douz and Tozeur. And there I left them all, missing in action, unable to complete their journeys. Thirty years later, both Malkah and the Tzaddik’s adventures had changed unrecognizably… Mrs Tzaddik also appears in many of the original tales, so if you read them, you’ll know why she was omitted from Malkah’s Notebook: she would have completely taken over.
