A warm winter day in Tel Aviv, sometime in the seventies.
The street smelled of the sea. My grandparentsʼ home on HaKovshim Street, corner of Yona HaNavi — full of voices, food, and people who loved each other. Every Saturday we took the shared taxi on Ben Yehuda Street to the end of the line, then walked. A small boy with his hands on the window, waiting for lunch.
But lunch wasnʼt the point that day.
My uncle Yitzhak — my motherʼs brother, the family called him “the magician uncle” — was sitting in the big armchair in the living room. He called me over. Asked: “Do you want to see a magic trick?”
I jumped with excitement.
Then he said something I wasnʼt expecting: “This time Iʼm not just going to show you — Iʼm going to teach you how to do it.”
He winked at my mother. She smiled that beautiful smile of hers. “And youʼll even get this deck of cards as a gift.”
Back then, a deck of cards was real treasure.
There are moments in life when everything around you seems to glow — a light made of pure happiness.
That is exactly how I felt. A small boy with a brand-new deck of cards, sitting beside an uncle who was passing on a secret.
That was the moment I discovered the difference between a trick and magic.
A trick — you know how itʼs done.
Magic — even when you know, you still believe.
I still remember it to this day.