Lavie Tidhar should hopefully be one of the up and coming younger authors of fantastic literature. By now, there are a few fine stories of his scattered about the Web, most of them worth seeking out.
Hebrew Punk (published by Apex Publications, whose now free web magazine Apex Digest I also highly recommend) is a small collection of four longer stories of the author, connected by characters of Jewish myth - The Rabbi, The Rat and The Tzaddik.
Tidhar treats these characters as heroes of a more literary pulp adventure story, all three roaming a half-world of gangsters, vampires and colonial myth and truth. Not all four stories are equally effective at this. The first entry in the collection, "The Heist", is by far the weakest of the four (whatever became of the idea to put the strongest tale first?). As the tale of a break-in into a highly secured blood-bank it's entertaining enough, it just lacks the subtextual punch the other three stories have.
By far the strongest tale is "Uganda" (also to be found in a slightly different version online here), which blends colonial adventure story, Zionism and bits of utopian SF into a fascinating whole.
In other words: You should really read this.
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