What We Choose To Keep, Stories of devotion, survival, love and memory (Paperback)

Some stories are born from imagination.
Others are carved out of lived truth.

What We Chose to Keep is a powerful collection of short stories and short novellas about devotion, survival, and the quiet kind of love that holds when everything else collapses.

Across war-torn streets, fractured families, fleeting encounters, and lifelong vows, Joseph Portnoj Gaj writes with a voice that is both intimate and unflinching-where tenderness and pain share the same page, and every ending leaves a mark.

Inside these pages you will find:
A soldier returning home to an imperfect soup that tastes like protection.
A child selling chewing gum with dignity sharper than poverty.
A man trapped in a world that erased his own name.
Ten minutes inside a city where survival depends on discipline and nerve.
A love found in the middle of grief.
Two engagement rings that become an oath.
And an epilogue that asks the only question that matters:

When everything is taken... what remains?

These are not just stories about hardship.
They are stories about what people refuse to lose:

memory, loyalty, faith, and love-
not as a feeling, but as a decision.

If you find tenderness here, keep it.
If you find pain, know you're not alone.
And if you find hope, let it stay with you.

Born in Mexico on July, 17th, 1955, lived in Israel for 40 years. Studied extra-curricular courses in literature and History at the University of Tel Aviv. After my parents´ passing, I returned to Mexico,