Breakdown and Bereavement, first published in 1920, is the story of a young Jewish immigrant in Palestine in the early 20th century. Like many of Yosef Haim Brenner's protagonists, Hefetz finds that pioneer life under Ottoman rule is a difficult and depressing path to a Zionist homeland. Brenner, himself a Russian-born immigrant to Palestine, was one of the first and most important authors of modern Hebrew literature. He was killed during the Jaffa riots of 1921.

This is a bilingual project. The first part, in Hebrew, is the story "Injustice" by Yosef Haim Brenner, written following the conquest of Palestine by the British troops during WWI. The story takes place on the Turkish side of the dividing line between the combating forces. An escaped British prisoner of war had taken shelter among a group of Jewish workers, who, following a heated discussion, turned him over to the Turkish army. The second part of this project, in English, is a chapter in the book "The Escaping Club," written in 1922 by the same British prisoner of war, the aviator A. J. Evans, who gave his account of the same event.