Featured Interview With Oron Ofek
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Givatayim, Israel. I particularly enjoyed playing outside with my friends or reading books. It was a time where the tv was black and white and there was only one channel.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My mom used to read me stories when I was a baby, and when I grew up I used to listen to records and story tellers. My favorite story was “Peter and The Wolf”. I would listen to it again and again, fascinated and anxious about the wellbeing of Peter and the animals in the book. To this day I enjoy listening to the classical music of the book.
As a kid, I really liked to read, especially action and adventure stories. As a teen I continued reading but then I became interested in Philosophy and read all of Plato writings and many other philosophers. When I became older I flew to the Far East for a few months, and studied Yoga in Nepal. The main reading material that I read was Yoga and spiritual development. As the years went by, I studied Chinese Medicine, our family grew, and I have two sons and two daughters.
When my forth son was born I published my first book: The art of healing with Chinese medicine. The book incorporates two fields I really love- Healthy diet and Chinese Medicine. After a few years my wife and I became religious and most of our time was dedicated to Jewish studies. In that time I practiced Diabetes curing methods, as a result of that I published my second book- “Diabetes: Prevention and treatment in a natural Chinese way”. My hobbies today are Traveling, sports, studying, reading and writing.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite author is Dan Brown- I really connected to his writing style and technique and the way that he builds the suspense in the story.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
As my children grew older, they became book lovers themselves and when they read Harry Potter, I had a look at the book, read it and then an idea came to me. I told myself that a lot of the most interesting ideas in the world of magic actually appear in Judaism which addresses these ideas as a reality and not as literary concepts. The “Torah” tells about the Egyptian sorcerers, Balak and Bilam who practiced witchcraft. The Bible and the Talmud are filled with ghost stories, witches and magicians, this world and the afterlife. Moses and other characters that were capable to perform things that were above nature. That’s where the idea of my book ” The Urpalians: The Search for the Magical Cave” came to my mind. I thought about how Judaism sees the powers of good and evil and what their characteristics are. I started to put together a plot and characters that were influenced from the Torah’s stories. People who don’t know these stories see a fantasy and suspense story. The names are made up and the plot takes place in the deserts and underground caves, areas where I love to travel.
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