Israel in Translation

This week, Marcela takes a step back from the literature itself to look at the language of the words we use. The idea of the podcast, Israel in Translation, is that the works discussed were written originally in a language other than English—indeed, in the writer’s native language. But one of the realities of our age—or rather—one of the realities of literature—is that often poets and writers do not write in their first language. Or, if they do, this first language is not the language of the culture in which they find themselves.

Marcela revisits the Granta Hebrew issue of the Ilanot Review to talk about Dory Manor’s The Language Beneath the Skin: A Meditation on Poetry and Mother Tongues.

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Dory Manor. “The Language Beneath the Skin: A Meditation on Poetry and Mother Tongues” translated by Mitch Ginsburg. The Ilanot Review.

In 2014, historian Fania Salzberger Oz, and her father, the late writer Amos Oz, paired up to write a book which is “a nonfiction, speculative, raw, and occasionally playful attempt to say something a bit new on a topic of immense pedigree... the relationship of Jews with words.”

Set in a rural village prior to the creation of the state of Israel, The Blue Mountain describes a community of eastern European immigrants as they pioneer life in a new land. Narrated by Baruch, a grandson of one of the founding fathers of the village, the novel offers not only a fascinating account of the hardships experienced by the Jewish pioneers, but is also extremely funny and imaginative. It is arranged as a series of vignettes, narrated by Baruch, a mortician, who reflects on the many people he has buried in a remote village.

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The Blue Mountain. By Meir shalev. Translated by Hillel Halkin. Cannongate Books, 2001.

On this episode, Marcela features the poems of a fascinating writer whose pen name was Avot Yeshurun. He published his first book of poems in 1942, and his last book appeared in 1992, on the day before he died.

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“Memories are a House” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Leon Weiseltier, Poetry Magazine

“The Son of the Wall” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Leon Weiseltier, Poetry Magazine

“The Collection” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Harold Schimel, Poetry International Rotterdam

“A Day Shall Come” by Avot Yeshurun, translated by A. Z. Foreman in Poems Found in Translation

Marcela shares the second installment of a three-part podcast on Ayalet Tsabari’s important and beautiful memoir, The Art of Leaving. Although it was written in English, Tsabari’s native language is Hebrew. This episode gives us a glimpse of Israelis from Yemen, whose stories are so rarely told.

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Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019.

On this episode, Marcela highlights The Lover, the first novel by A. B. Yehoshua, which he wrote in 1977. Yehoshua has been called the Israeli Faulkner, perhaps because of this novel. It is narrated from the point of view of each of its six main characters.

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The Lover by A. B. Yehoshua. Translated by Philip Simpson. Doubleday & Co., 1978.

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/07/22/a-b-yehoshuas-green-seas-and-yellow-continents/

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2020/08/12/the-tunnel/

Meir Shalev has been featured on two previous episodes. Four Meals is his third of eight novels. He’s also published 7 works of nonfiction and 13 children’s books.

Four Meals is the story of Zayde, his enigmatic mother Judith, and her three lovers. When Judith arrives in a small, rural village in Palestine in the early 1930s, three men compete for her. Globerman, the cunning, coarse cattle dealer who loves women, money, and flesh Jacob, owner of hundreds of canaries and host to the four meals which lends the book its narrative structure, and Moshe, a widowed farmer, who gives Zayde his home.

During the four meals, which take place over several decades, Zayde slowly comes to understand why these three men consider him their son and why all three participate in raising him.

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Four Meals, by Meir Shalev. Translated by Barbara Harshav, 2000.

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2020/07/29/meir-shalevs-my-wild-garden/

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/06/03/my-russian-grandmother-and-her-american-vacuum-cleaner-israel-in-translation/

On this episode, Marcela revisits Batya Gur, who introduced the murder mystery into Hebrew literature. Gur’s highbrow mysteries are often set in closed communities that mirror issues in the greater Israeli society.

You can hear a previous podcast on her life and literary influence, as well as an excerpt from, Murder in Jerusalem, by following the link below.

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Murder on a Kibbutz. A communal Case. by Batya Gur. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Harper Perennial, 1994.

Previous Episode on Batya Gur

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/10/29/the-israeli-detective-novel-israel-in-translation/

This book catapulted Ari Shavit into the international spotlight. The book was a New York Times best seller and listed by the Times in its “100 Notable Books of 2013.” The Economist named it as one of the best books of 2013 and it received the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award in History from the Jewish Book Council. It also won the Natan Book Award.

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My Promised Land, by Ari Shavit. Spiegel & Grau, 2013.

On this episode, Marcela reads an excerpt from Yaniv Iczkovits’s novel The Slaughterman’s Daughter: The Avenging of Mende Speismann by the Hand of her Sister Fanny. It is translated from the Hebrew by Orr Sharf.

The protagonist of this book is the titular character, Fanny Keismann, who leaves her home and her wonderful husband, a cheesemaker, and their beloved children, to find her sister’s husband. Adventures and misadventures ensue.

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The Slaughterman’s Daughter, by Yaniv Iczkovits. Translated by Orr Sharf. Maclehose Press. Quercus, 2020.

Today, Marcela finishes the three-part series on Ayalet Tsabari’s wonderful memoir, The Art of Leaving, with her favorite thing: cooking! This episode unveils the secrets of Tsabari’s family kitchen. You’re going to want to take notes for this one!

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Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019

In her introduction to Vaan Nguyen’s collection, Adriana X. Jacobs writes, “Nguyen’s poetry may circulate in the Anglophone literary market as part of an increasingly visible Vietnamese literary diaspora… And yet, introducing Nguyen’s poetry to the Anglophone reader needs to account for the particularities of the Vietnamese experience in Israel without letting it entirely overshadow her work.”

Between 1977 and 1979, approximately 360 Vietnamese refugees entered Israel, and of that number, about half left for the United States or Europe. Those who stayed were able to apply for Israeli citizenship, take on jobs, start families, and continue with their lives. 

Nguyen’s parents were among these refugees. She was born in Ashkelon, Israel in 1982, one of five daughters. The family moved around and eventually settled in Jaffa Dalet, a working-class—and largely immigrant and Arab—neighborhood that is part of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality, “not the pastoral tourist part, but the section that is far from the sea,” Nguyen explains.

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The Truffle Eye, Vaan Nguyen. Translated by Adriana X. Jacobs. Zephyr Press; Nov. 2020

Previous Episode on Vaan Nguyen’s Work

https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2017/04/26/sitting-with-strangeness-a-conversation-with-adriana-x-jacobs/

Have you seen the Crazy House on HaYarkon Street in Tel Aviv? It’s a highrise that looks like pink cement, with some metallic puffed cream lobbed at the front of it? Or at least that’s how it seems to Marcela.

It used to look that way to the poet Lali Tsipi Michaeli, as well. Michaeli says “fear is what I felt as a child every time I drove with my parents in a car on Hayarkon Street. As the car was about to reach the “crazy house” (I called it the “scary”), I hid on the back seat floor and closed my eyes tightly. The house troubled the girl I was. Over the years it has become a Tel Aviv landscape and I have always had a certain aversion to it, a kind of traumatic childhood memory.”

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The Mad House by Lali Tsipi Michaeli, translated by Michael Simkin. Adelaide Books, 2020.

Previous Episode with Lali Tsipi Michaeli

Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster takes the form of a report by the narrator, a young Israeli Holocaust scholar, written to his superior from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, and raises ethical questions about the struggle to cope with the memory of the Holocaust.

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Yishai Sarid. The Memory Monster. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Restless Books, Sept. 2020.

School has begun, and once again children are learning how to read, encountering the alphabet for the first time. Hopefully it is a pleasant and magical time, but here is a story of a boy who feared his teacher, although he loved the alphabet.

It’s a chapter called The Alphabet and What Lies between the Lines, from Hayim Nahman Bialik’s unfinished Novella, Random Harvest.

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Random Harvest and other Novellas by Haim Nachman Bialik. Translated by David Patterson & Ezra Spicehandler. Toby Press, 2005.

As we labor under unbelievable pressures and uncertainties of the pandemic, especially women who have children at home, it might make us feel a little better to see that the writer Tehila Hakimi already envisioned what work in 2020 would be like back in 2018.

Here are some excerpts of her experimental, fragmentary text, COMPANY. It is addressed to a nameless “woman in a workspace”—that describes, head-on, the corporate work experience, its gendered dimensions, and its operative, emptied-out language.

The piece is translated by Maayan Eitan.

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Company, by Tehila Hakimi (Resling Publishing House: The Lab Series for Contemporary Literature, 2018). English translation copyright 2019 by Maayan Eitan.

It’s Sukkot again! Over the years in this podcast we’ve focused on various aspects of this holiday — inviting guests, selecting an etrog, the transitory nature of our existence on earth. This time, Marcela focuses on the agricultural aspects — the festival was originally connected to the harvest. And to help us along is Rachel Bluwstein, Israel’s farmer-poet.

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Flowers of Perhaps by Ra’hel. Translated by Robert Friend with Shimon Sandbank. Toby Press, 2008.

Sad Melody by Ra’hel translated by Chana Shuvaly

Previous Episode Featuring Rachel Bluwstein

This week, amidst the holidays, Marcela celebrates by reading an excerpt from Ayelet Tsabari’s newly published memoir, The Art of Leaving.

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Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019.

Previous Episode Featuring Ayelet Tsabari

On this episode, Marcela features Yochi Brandes’ ninth book, The Orchard. It is the second to be translated into English, this time by Daniel Libenson.

The Orchard tells the story of the venerated yet enigmatic Rabbi Akiva, placing him in the context of his contemporaries, the Sages of Jewish tradition and of early Christianity. Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Ishmael, Rabban Gamaliel, Paul of Tarsus, and many others.

Get your discounted hardcopy through israbook@gefenpublishing.com

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The Orchard, by Yochi Brandes, translated by Daniel Libenson. Gefen Publishing House (2018).

Marcela has got a thriller for you! Three, by D. A. Mishani, is a page turner that tells the stories of three women: Orna, a divorced single-mother looking online for a new relationship; Emilia, a deeply religious Latvian immigrant on a spiritual search; and Ella, married and mother of three, returning to University to write her thesis. All of them will meet the same man. His name is Gil. And he won’t tell the truth about himself.

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D. A. Mishani. Three. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Europa Editions, August 18, 2020.

It may sound crazy, but A. B. Yehoshua has written a page-turner about an aging engineer in the early stages of dementia, which features descriptions of highway construction in great detail.

How on earth did he do this? Well, perhaps it is the honest grappling with what it feels like to be diagnosed with an illness that will eventually erase your personality and knowledge. And surely it is the context of the engineer’s long and loving marriage to a pediatrician, a marriage that is full of humor, understanding, and honesty. And finally, it is the mystery of the secret military highway in the desert, and the textured relationships of two engineers on opposite ends of their career, an army general, and the people who inhabit the negev, whose secret lives are intertwined with the fate of the road.

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A. B. Yehoshua, The Tunnel. Translated by Stuart Schoffman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 2020.

Previous Podcast on A. B. Yehoshua

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/07/22/a-b-yehoshuas-green-seas-and-yellow-continents/

With the world hit hard by the pandemic, Marcela has been taking consolation in nature, noting, as well, the benefits on the flora and fauna around us when we humans withdraw a little from the world and allow nature more space.

The March arrival of Meir Shalev’s book, My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden, in Joanna Chen’s eloquent translation, could not have been more timely. A beautiful book, from the size and shape of the hard copy, to the feel of the paper. Even the font type is notable. Rafaella Shir’s watercolor illustrations subtly draw out the descriptions, rather than compete with them.

Marcela reads her favorite passage, which is from the introduction of the book.

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Meir Shalev, My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden. Translated by Joanna Chen. Illustrated by Rafaella Shir. Shocken Books, March 31, 2020

Previous podcast on Meir Shalev

Miri Ben-Simhon was born into a Moroccan family, on the near bottom of the social scale. She grew up and remained in Jerusalem. Her poetry faces Mizrahi women’s lives in Israel straight on.

The literary critic Yitzhak Laor once noted about Ben-Simhon’s work and perspective, that “In the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim […] but as one.”

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Miri Ben-Simhon, The Absolute Reader, translated by Lisa Katz. Toad Press, 2020.

This week, Marcela examine Shimon Adaf’s wrenching and linguistically innovative elegy to his sister, who died at the age of 43. Aviva-No is Adaf’s third collection of poetry, and it won the 2010 Yehuda Amichai Prize.

It has been translated into English by Yael Segalovitz.

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Aviva-No by Shimon Adaf. Translated by Yael Sigalovitz. Alice James Books, 2019.

On May 26 the novel Minor Detail, by the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, appeared in Elisabeth Jaquette’s English translation with New Directions Press. Originally published in Arabic in 2017, the novel centers around a brutal crime — the rape and murder of a young Bedouin girl, in the Negev in August, 1949, during the Israeli War of Independence, which is called in Arabic the Nakhba, or disaster. Decades later, a young woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the events surrounding the crime.

Marcela reads from the opening of the novel’s second section, narrated by this woman.

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Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. New Directions Press, May 26, 2020.

On this episode, Marcela reads from Yair Assulin’s searing novel that tells the journey of a young Israeli soldier at the breaking point, unable to continue carrying out his military service, yet terrified of the consequences of leaving the army.

Born in 1986, Yair Assulin studied philosophy and history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Drive is the first of two novels he has written and for which he won Israel’s Ministry of Culture Prize and the Sapir Prize for debut fiction. He has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for authors, writes a weekly column in the newspaper Haaretz and has been a visiting lecturer in Jewish Studies at Yale.

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Yair Assulin, The Drive. Translated by Jessica Cohen. New Vessel Press, 2020

This week is the last week of Ramadan, which began on April 23rd and will ends Saturday, May 23.

To acknowledge those who are fasting in isolation and heat, this episode features Mahmoud Darwish’s aptly titled collection, In the Presence of Absence, translated by Sinan Antoon.

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Mahmoud Darwish In the Presence of Absence. Translated by Sinan Antoon. Archipelago Books, 2012.

Marcela reads from Karen Alkalay-Gut’s A Word in Edgewise: Ladies From the Bible Tell Their Tales, published by Simple Conundrum Press.

The bible devotes quite a bit of space to the minds of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — we know how they feel, what makes them angry or happy; we hear about their arguments with God. Through her poetry, Alkaly-Gut gives the matriarchs a voice.

Karen Alkalay-Gut, was born in London and is professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. In addition to collections of poetry and literary scholarship, she writes lyrics for a rock group, Panic Ensemble, and her “Tel Aviv Diary” appears daily on http://www.karenalkalay-gut.com/diary

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Karen Alkalay-Gut A Word in Edgewise: Ladies From the Bible Tell Their Tales

On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes. The novel was published in December by Grove Press.

Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. This suggests, perhaps even implies, the so-called truth of Kashua’s first-person fiction. Yet his character, whose job is to transcribe others’ memories onto the page, repeatedly reveals his elisions from and additions to strangers’ memoirs-for-hire, often inserting his own memories as their own, thereby erasing his life in scattered pieces. The narrator’s confessions are hardly reliable, making every level of his storytelling suspect, which Kashua further visually underscores by “track changes”-style crossed-out text.

On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes. The novel was published in December by Grove Press.

Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. This suggests, perhaps even implies, the so-called truth of Kashua’s first-person fiction. Yet his character, whose job is to transcribe others’ memories onto the page, repeatedly reveals his elisions from and additions to strangers’ memoirs-for-hire, often inserting his own memories as their own, thereby erasing his life in scattered pieces. The narrator’s confessions are hardly reliable, making every level of his storytelling suspect, which Kashua further visually underscores by “track changes”-style crossed-out text.

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Sayed Kashua, Track Changes. Translated by Mitch Ginsburg. Grove Press, 2019.

Previous Podcasts:

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2016/04/20/sayed-kashuas-farewell/

https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/11/26/sayed-kashua-an-examination-of-arab-israeli-identity-israel-in-translation/

Marcela reads from Anat Zecharia’s poem, “One, Two, Three,” which recently appeared in an issue of The Ilanot Review, in collaboration with Granta Hebrew.

The poem’s title and subtitle refer to Uzi Hitman’s children song about three dwarfs who sit chatting behind a mountain. Anat is known as an outspoken poet who writes forthrightly about women's desires.

Her work has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for writers. She has published three collections of poetry — As Soon as Beautiful (2008), Due to Human Error (2012), and Palestina I (2016). Her new book, “Ever After,” won an ACUM literary award for 2019.

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Anat Zecharia “One, Two, Three.” Translated by Lisa Katz and Maayan Eitan. The Ilanot Review

Music:

עוזי חיטמן - מאחורי ההר

Marcela highlights poetry from the latest issue of The Ilanot Review which, in collaboration with Granta Hebrew, published English translations of up and coming poets and writers, most of whom are featured for the very first time.

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“And I Begin to Confess” by Salih Habib, translated by Christine Khoury Bishara. The Ilanot Review

“The Children I Will Never Have” by Liat Rosenblatt, translated by Jane Medved. The Ilanot Review

“Rivka Speaks” by Ori Ferster, translated by Marcela Sulak. The Ilanot Review

“I am the one who’s free” by Dareen Tatour, translated by Christine Khoury Bishara. The Ilanot Review

“Biotope” by Shira Stav, translated by Adriana X Jacobs. The Ilanot Review

This week Marcela reads from Nava Semel’s novel, Isra Ilse, an alternative history of the Jewish People in which there was no state of Israel, and no holocaust.

The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, a detective story, opens in September 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Noah, learns about and inherits Grand Island, which is downriver from Niagara Falls. He leaves Israel intending to reclaim this “Promised Land” in America. Shortly after he arrives in America Liam disappears. Simon T. Lenox, a Native American police investigator, tries to recover Israel’s “missing son.”

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Nava Semel, Isra Ilse. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Mandel Vilar Press (October 17, 2016)

This week Marcela returns to focus on up and coming Israeli writers who have rarely or never before been translated into English, by featuring Ayala Ben Lulu. This story appears in the latest issue of The Ilanot Review, which was a collaboration with Granta Hebrew.

Ayala Ben Lulu is an Israeli poet, winner of the Teva prize for poetry. She holds a B.A. in psychology and an M.Sc. in history and philosophy of science and ideas.

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Mona Lisa by Ayala Ben Lulu. Translated by Karen Marron. The Ilanot Review

This podcast is dedicated to marriage—all the engaged couples with cold feet, newly married couples, whose memories of the ceremony are still fresh, long-married couples who survived the wedding day.

We’ll be reading from and discussing the last book Ronit Matalon wrote before her death in 2017. It is called And the Bride Closed the Door, and it was awarded Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize the day before her death.

Previous Podcasts:

Bliss

The One Facing Us

The Sound of her Steps

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And the Bride Closed the Door, by Ronit Matalon. Translated by Jessica Cohen. New Vessels Press, 2019.

The novel, The First Mrs. Rothschild, by Sara Aharoni, tells the story of the wife of Meir Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the banking dynasty, and is written in the form of a personal journal.

Sara Aharoni was born in Israel in 1953. She worked as a teacher, educator and school principal for twenty years. Together with her husband, Meir Aharoni, Sara wrote, edited and published a series of books about Israel, as well as six children’s books. She is the author of the bestselling Saltanat's Love, based on her mother’s life story and the novel Persian Silence.

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The First Mrs. Rothschild, a novel by Sara Aharoni. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Amazon Crossing, July 2019.

Host Marcela Sulak reads from a folkloric-infused story by the Jerusalem-born writer Dan Banaya-Seri, in which a simple Jewish man uses his minimal understanding of Christmas to try to make sense of his marital obligations.

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“Birds of the Shade,” by Dan Banaya-Seri. Translated by Betsy Rosenberg. In Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Ed. Ammiel Alcalay. City Lights Books. 1996.

Music: 

Silent Night by George Martinos

Birds Chirping by Alexander

In honor of the beginning of Hanukkah, host Marcella Sulak reads Etgar Keret’s story “Childish Things”, translated by Sondra Silverston, which takes place during the holiday.

Excerpt:

When Lev heard that he couldn’t burn the curtain, he burst into tears and claimed that in kindergarten, they said that every day you have to light a curtain and eat eight jelly doughnuts. My wife still tried to argue that the only things that gets lit are candles and the exact number of jelly doughnuts to be eaten isn’t specified in the holiday manual. But her flimsy arguments shattered on the armor of our pyromaniac son’s terrifying determination.

Text: “Childish Things” by Etgar Keret. Translated by Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine.

Music: Al Hanisim by Izhar Cohen Banu Hosheh Legaresh by LeHakat HaKesher HaVirtuali Ma’oz Tzur by Yosef Karduner

In Yehudit Hendel's story "The Dancer", the narrator talks about life, death, and God with a barefoot man dancing in a park.

Hendel was born in Warsaw in 1926 to a Hasidic family. In 1930, her family immigrated to Israel, and her first stories were published in 1942. She emerged as one of the first female voices in Hebrew literature after Israel's independence in 1948.

Text: “The Dancer” by Yehudit Hendel, translated by Miriam Schlusselberg

Tuvia Ruebner is a poet who was born was born in multi-ethnic Bratislava, Slovakia in 1924 and received permission to enter British Mandate Palestine in 1941. To this day, he translates his work into German, and all of it has been published in Germany. In Hebrew, he is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry, two photograph albums, and a monograph on the poetry of his close friend, writer-scholar Lea Goldberg, as well as other literary criticism and translations.

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Tuvia Ruebner, Late Beauty. Translated by Lisa Katz and Shahar Bram. Zephyr Press, 2017.

Previous episode of "Israel in Translation" featuring poems by Tuvia Ruebner.

Tamar Merin is a writer, critic, and literary scholar. In her story “What Are You Looking At?”, the prosaic act of a mother and son going for ice cream becomes an exploration of the anxiety of immigration, the shock of living in a new land.

Text: “What are you Looking At?” by Tamar Merin. Translated by Ari Leiberman.

Sharon Hass's poems draw on mythical images and on philosophy, reflecting her academic background. Many of her pieces dance on the border between reality, legend and dream, while frequently alluding to figures known from ancient mythology and world literature.

Music: Lonely Arcade Man – Diamond Estate The Video Within – Diamond Estate

Text: Poems by Sharron Hass, translations by Amalia Ziv, Vivian Eden, Lisa Katz.

Set in a Tel Aviv apartment building, Eshkol Nevo’s newest novel, Three Floors Up, examines a society in crisis, through the turmoils, secrets, unreliable confessions, and problematic decisions of the building’s residents.

On the first floor, Arnon, a tormented retired officer who fought in the First Intifada, confesses to an army friend how his obsession with his daughter’s safety led him to lose control and put his marriage in peril. Above Arnon lives Hani, whose husband travels the world for work while she stays at home with their two children, increasingly isolated and unstable. On the top floor lives a former judge, Devora. Retired and eager to start a new life, she joins a social movement, tries to reconnect with her estranged son, and falls in love with a man who isn’t what he seems.

Text: Three Floors Up. Sondra Silverston. Otherpress, Oct. 2017.

Eshkol Nevo’s Homesick Episode

In April, we kicked off a series of conversations with translators of texts featured on this podcast. Today, host Marcella Sulak interviews Michael Kramer for the second installment. He teaches in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. He has authored and edited numerous books and essays on Jewish and American literature and has also translated S. Y. Agnon’s “And The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight.”

Previous episodes: Sitting with Strangeness: A Conversation with Adriana X. Jacobs on Translating theIsraeli-Vietnamese Poet Van Nguyen And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight

Poet, writer, and editor Ya’ara Shehori was awarded the Fulbright International Writing Program and is, as we speak, participating in the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa. This means that part of her latest novel, “Aquarium,” has been translated into English by Maayan Eitan.

Interview with Ya’ara Shehori

Tomorrow is the last day of the 2017 high holiday season, which began with Rosh Hashanah and ends with sukkot and Simchat Torah. This year, host Marcela Sulak wraps up the holidays with a selection of poetry from various poets.

Text: “On the Eve of the Holiday,” by Hava Pinhas-Cohen, translated by Sharon Hart-Green, in “Bridging the Divide.” Syracuse University Press, 2015.

“The Illustrated Bible,” by Meir Wieseltier, translated by Shirley Kaufman with the author, in “The Flower of Anarchy: Selected Poems.” University of California Press, 2003.

Music: Dunet by The Bridge Project

This past Shabbat was also Yom Kippur, which is the writer Etgar Keret’s favorite holiday. This week, host Marcela Sulak reads his piece, “Swede Dreams,” originally published in The Tablet, and which you can find in his memoir, “The Seven Good Years,” translated by Sondra Sondra Silverston. It is about Keret’s 2009 visit to Sweden, just before Yom Kippur.

Here is an excerpt:

The Swedes listened and were fascinated. The thought of a day on which no motorized vehicles drive through the cities, people walk around without their wallets and all the stores are closed, a day on which there are no TV broadcasts or even updates on websites–all sounded to them like an innovative Naomi Klein concept and not like an ancient Jewish holiday.

Text: Etgar Keret, “Swede Dreams,” in “The Seven Good Years: A Memoir.” Translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen, and Anthony Berris. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015.

Host Marcela Sulak's daughter, Amalia, gives her top three children's book recommendations for the holidays.

Today’s episode is about the story behind the prayer we most usually associate with Rosh Hashanah, “Unetanneh Tokef.” We don’t know who wrote the poem, although it’s attributed to an 11th century sage who lived in Germany. Modern scholars say the prayer is much older than originally believed, perhaps as early as the 8th century. Host Marcela Sulak explains the legend behind this piece of liturgy from the high holiday services and reads the prayer for the new year.

Music: “ונתנה תוקף” by סא”ל שי אברמסון & המקהלה והתזמורת הפילהרמונית אס.אף.ווי

Text: Unetanneh Tokef (Wikipedia)

Eli Eliahu is a poet who lives in Ramat-Gan. Recently, his work has begun to be translated and published into English. Eliahu’s work can be playful and fanciful, but it is also socially engaged. He has described his poetry as “a documentation of the struggle of the individual against [the] background” of “a very stressed, crowded, violent and noisy country.” Eliahu has published two highly praised books in Hebrew, “I, and Not an Angel” (2008) and “City and Fears” (2011). He is the recipient of the 2014 Levi Eshkol Prime Minister’s Poetry Prize and writes for Haaretz on poetry and culture. Host Marcela Sulak reads six of his poems on today’s episode.

Music: The Joy Of Lina (Farha) by Ihsan Al Munzer Cacha Merakdim Beisrael by Hanna Ahroni

Text: All works by Eli Eliahu “Crossroads” and “Simple Thing,” translated by Kenneth Haworth “Alibi,” translated by Adriana X. Jacobs “Recommendation,” “On How I am Like a Pencil,” and “Under the Ground”

This week, host Marcela Sulak features Israeli poetry from the current issue of a special international journal based in Israel called The Ilanot Review. Each issue is themed, and the current issue is called “Letters.” It covers all aspects of letters, from the alphabet, to the epistolary. The Ilanot Review is edited by alumni and faculty from the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University publishes an expanse of writers in English translation and in English originals.

Music: Avdei Zman by Etti Ankri

Text: Yonathan Berg, “To My Mother,” translated by Joanna Chen Vaan Nguyen, “Metropolitan Pieces,” translated by Adriana X. Jacobs Avraham Sutzkever, Two Poems, translated by Maia Evrona Tahel Frosh, “This is What Happened,” translated by Yosefa Raz Rafi Weichert, “Odyssey,” translated by Karen Alkalay Gut

The Jewish month of Elul began last week, a month of repentance before the High Holidays. This seems a fitting time to read an excerpt of the 11th century Jewish-Spanish poet Solomon Ibn Gavirol’s magnificent poem, “A Crown for the King,” translated by David R. Slavitt. The theme of this poem is human frailty and proclivity to sin, and it focuses on humanity’s place in the world, the operation of free will, and repentance.

Here is an excerpt:

You live, but not in time, for you are time itself. You live, but not by breathing in and breathing out, for you are breath itself. You live, but not with a soul, for you are the source of souls. You live, but not with the life of man that is like vanity and ends      in the ravening of worms and moths. You live, and he who finds you out as you gather him into      your eternal bliss “will eat and live forever.”

Music: Sezufat Semes/Lesoni Bonanta – Shlomo ibn Gabirol “Avicebrón”

Text: Psalm 27 “Solomon Ibn Gabirol, A Crown for the King.” Translated by David R. Slavitt. Oxford University Press, 1998.

These hot weeks of summer, host Marcela Sulak will be suggesting some good beach reading, such as Ofir Touche Gafla’s novel The World of the End, translated by Mitch Ginsburg, and published in English 2015. The book won the 2005 Geffen Award for the best fantasy/science fiction novel of the year and the 2006 Kugel Award for Hebrew literature. Gafla teaches creative writing in the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem.

Music:A Musical Joke K522 by Mozart

Text: Gafla, Ofir Touché. The World of the End. Translated by Mitch Ginsburg. Tom Doherty Associates, 2015.

On today's episode, we’re listening to pieces from Roy "Chicky" Arad. In addition to writing poetry and novels, painting, editing, journalism and activism, Chicky is also a singer and musician. His works are usually political. In 2001, during the peak of Intifadah, he was amongst the founders of the “Rave Against Occupation” assembly, which organized protest-parties of Arab and Israeli youth against the 1967 occupation.

Music:Look at the sky by Roy Arad Sputnik In Love Karaoke Version by Roy Arad

Text: Roy Chicky Arad: Poetry and Literature

Adi Sorek is the author of Sometimes You Lose People (which won the 2013 Goldberg Prize), Internal Tourism, Seven Matrons, Spaces, and new novel, Nathan. Her work is described as subtle and musical, a study in a possibility of lingering in intermediate zones and looking at the tiny details that comprise the reality of being and the fabric of the personal, familial, and public. Host Marcela Sulak reads two pieces of Sorek’s work on today’s episode.

Music: Missing You by The Bridge Project Ocean sounds by mysoundeffect.com

Host Marcela Sulak reads a long poem by Yehezkel Kedmi, called "My People, Knowledge, and Me," translated by Ammiel Alcalay. Kedmi was born in Jerusalem and spent much of his youth and adult life on the streets. He is an autodidact, expanding his range of interests while working as a night watchman at Hebrew University.

Text: Yehezkel Kedmi, “My People, Knowledge, and Me,” translated by Ammiel Alcalay in Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. City Lights Books, 1996.

Yael Dayan’s memoir, Transitions: Close Up, translated by Maya Klein, is about losses and regrets, with fine focus on the detailed physical world. Dayan is the oldest child of the late Moshe Dayan, the moody and enigmatic hero of the Six Days’ War, revered as the symbol of the national and military rebirth of the Jewish people, yet reviled as Defense Minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur War for Israel’s failures. Host Marcela Sulak reads from the preface and a favorite passage on today’s episode.

Text: Transitions: Close Up by Yael Dayan, translated by Maya Klein. Mosaic Press, Nov. 2016.

Host Marcella Sulak participated in a collaboration with a young, talented poet in Gaza. The collaboration was sponsored by the Peace Factory. Today’s episode is about Israel’s impact on a particular literary endeavor in Gaza. Marcela says, “We felt it was important to get to know one another as people and as poets, not just as ideological issues.” 

Music: My White and Brown Land by The Bridge Project

Daniel Oz’s collection of flash fables, Further Up the Path, is charming for the way they make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. These pieces of prose poetry blend two frames of reference, creating a new world. Host Marcel Sulak reads six poems from Oz on today’s episode.

Text: “Further up the Path” by Daniel Oz, translated by Jessica Cohen.

Music: Stream Noise recorded by Caroline Ford A New World by SS Music Productions 10 Different Voices One Song by The Bridge Project

Eshkol Nevo’s first novel, Homesick, is the engrossing, interwoven story of an apartment community, told from about 8 different first-person perspectives, and a third-person omniscient narrator, as well. The novel was awarded the Book Publishers Association Gold Prize (2005), among other prizes. it was translated by Sondra Silverstein and published in English in 2009. Host Marcela Sulak reads two passages from Homesick on today’s episode.

Text: Homesick by Nevo Eshkol. Translated by Sondra Silverstein. Vintage Books,2009

Music: The Night Brings The Morning by The Bridge Project Nikriz Peşrev by Derya Türkan

Celebrated Israeli author and Nobel Prize laureate S.Y. Agnon wrote his first novella And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight over 100 years ago. It has been translated for the first time into English by Michael Kramer and is newly published with Toby Press. Host Marcela Sulak reads the opening of this folktale that still bears lessons for us in the modern era. 

Text: And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight, by S. Y. Agnon, translated by Michael Kramer. Toby Press, 2017.

Music: Yiddish Hora - A Heymish Freylekhs - The Chicago Klezmer Ensemble Sha, Sha, Di Shviger Kumt - The Chicago Klezmer Ensemble

Part memoir, part fairy tale, and part political commentary and history, Emile Habibi’s Saraya, The Ogre’s Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale opens on a moonless night in the summer of 1983, on a boulder off the shore of what was once al-Zeeb, a Palestinian village north of Akko. The narrator glimpses a mysterious female figure who saves him from death, and in the story that follows, he tries to discover who she is. He calls her 'Saraya,' the flesh-and-blood beloved of his childhood, the daughter his uncle Ibrahim adopted, who shares a name with a fairy tale heroine who was captured by an ogre. Host Marcela Sulak reads three excerpts from Habibi's novel on today's episode.

Text: Saraya, The Ogre’s Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale, by Emile Habibi. Translated by Peter Theroux. Ibis Editions, 2006.

Music: Philip Glass - Island Philip Glass - Closing Philip Glass - Metamorphosis Two

In this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads two pieces from award-winning poet Meir Wieseltier's collection The Flower of Anarchy. His works in this collection, translated by Shirley Kaufman with the author, cover 40 years of history and yet maintain their power over time. Shaped by his early experiences of war and conflict, Wieseltier's voice is bold and unflinching.

Text: The Flowers of Anarchy, Selected Poems by Meir Wieseltier. Translated by Shirley Kaufman with the author. University of California Press, 1997.

Music: Faran Ensemble Musica Judia - The Best Nigun Ever

In honor of the holy month of Ramadan observed by Muslims worldwide, host Marcela Sulak reads an essay by Iman Jmal, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University. Jmal is from Jatt in northern Israel and she writes about preparing a Ramadan meal with her mother, the shopping for which they must travel through a checkpoint.

Here is an excerpt from her story "The Meal":

"When I call upon the soldiers and say that Mom forgot her ID, they get angry. One soldier says "Then go back home and find your mom's ID and she will stay with us until you come again and show us that she is really an Israeli citizen!" My stomach would digest anything in the world but not this sentence. We argue with them for a while and say that they could check on the computer, investigate mom's ID number that she recited to them with a great Hebrew accent, but it is all in vain."

Music: Approaching the Bridge - The Bridge Project Notre Wagon - The Bridge Project

This week Jews celebrate Shavuot, the celebration of harvest and receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. To commemorate the festival, host Marcela Sulak reads from Israeli author Michal Govrin's novel The Name in Barbara Harshav's translation. Shavuot is a corollary to Passover, when Jews begin counting the seven weeks of Omer. In the story, that tradition is mentioned as its main character Amalia, a weaver and daughter of Holocaust survivors, takes refuge in an ultra-orthodox seminary. 

Here is an excerpt from Govrin's novel:

"Sometimes it seems as if nothing had ever happened, as if everything were only a vision going off, evaporating in silence, swept away beyond the border of the end of the Counting, mixing us up together in a wind bellowing from the jaw of the shofar, confusing us in an impeccable unity. As if everything is already so far away from what will be done perhaps at the dawn of hte Shavuot, movements of leaving that will suddenly hasten, binding the pages, lifting the Torah curtain. Going..."

Text: The Name, Michael Govrin. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Riverhead Books,1998.

Music: Csardas - Vittorio Monti

Dorit Rabinyan's All the Rivers is about a Israeli women and Palestinian man who meet in New York. An immediate best seller in Israel, the novel was named one of the ten best books of 2014 by Ha’aretz newspaper and won the Bernstein Award for Literature. In January 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Education banned the book from high school curriculum.

Marcela reads parts of this novel, including this excerpt from :

"“Here’s the thing about me.” He put his right hand on his chest like I had done. “There are three things I don’t know how to do.” “Only three? That’s not bad.” “Three things a man should know.” “Should?” “Yes. A man should know how to drive, and I don’t. I’ve never driven.” “Walla?” I said, expressing my surprise. He grinned as he had on the previous times I’d used Arabic words like walla or achla. I held up my thumb, starting to count his flaws: “You don’t drive.” “I don’t know how to shoot a gun.” Unintentionally, my thumb and finger formed a childish pistol. “Yes . . .” “And swimming. I can’t swim.” He saw my face fall. “I was born and raised in Hebron,” he said as if by way of apology. “There’s no sea there.”"

Text: All The Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Music: Medjool live on the roof Jimi Hendrix - 12 String Blues

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems written by Batsheva Dori-Carlier from her debut collection Soul Search, which won the 2015 Helicon Ramy Ditzanny Prize for emerging authors. Batsheva Dori-Carlier was born in Jerusalem to parents who left Iraq in the 1950s. For 18 years, she worked as a macrobiotics teacher, chef and consultant in Israel, Belgium, Germany and England. Critics say her poetry "lifts life situations into the realm of art.”

Here is an excerpt from Neve Shalom, about an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa:

"Under an olive tree in Neve Shalom it’s impossible to write “olive tree” without murdering some dove it’s impossible to write “Neve Shalom” without entering into a war. It’s impossible to say “I saw a prickly pear bush this morning on the way to meditation” without quarreling with the thorns that words send beyond their stone walls, ours, whose olive tree is this and why is each leaf so significant, stuck in my mouth like the bitter word of the war that I didn’t start and I can’t end."

In the episode, Batsheva Dori-Carlier also sings a rendition of an Um Kultum.

Text: All poems by Batsheva Dori-Carlier, translated by Lisa Katz, from Poetry International

Music: Umm Kulthum - Enta Omry Umm Kulthum - Alf Leila

For this upcoming Lag B'Omer, the Jewish holiday of light celebrated by lighting bonfires, Marcela reads work by poet Agi Mishol. Here's a glimpse of his very own Lag B'Omer bonfire:

"You piss on my love as if it were a bonfire, extinguishing it ember by ember with the arrogance of the perfect crime..."

One of Israel's most popular living poets, Agi Mishol's work has been described thus by literary scholar Dan Miron:

"In contemporary Israeli poetry, intense, white flames appear against the dark, burning background, whose smoke is greater than the fire… Agi Mishol’s poetry is one of the brightest of these flames."

Texts: “Sermon at Latrun” translated by Joanna Chen “Wax Flowers” translated by Joanna Chen

Further Reading: Look There, translated by Lisa Katz, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, 2006

Music: Rivka Zohar - Rabi Akivah (lyrics by Dahlia Ravikovitch) Maya Mishol - Rakavet Tachana

This episode originally aired on May 25, 2016.

This episode originally aired on April 23, 2015. 

This is how Amos Oz, in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, describes what happened the night the UN voted to establish a Jewish state:

"... my father said to me as we wandered there, on the night of November 29, 1947, me riding on his shoulders among rings of dancers and merrymakers, not as though he was asking me but as though he knew and was hammering in what he knew with nails: Just you look, my boy, take a very good look, son, take it all in, because you won’t forget this night to your dying day and you’ll tell your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren about this night when we’re long gone."

As we celebrate Israel's birthday, host Marcela Sulak reads from Oz's iconic description of the events surrounding the struggle for Israeli independence.

Text: Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Translated by Nicholas De Lange. Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

Music: Ofra Haza - Eli Eli (lyrics by Hannah Szenes) City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra - Hatikvah

On this episode, host Marcela Sulak interviews Adriana X. Jacobs about her work translating Vietnamese-Israeli author Vaan Nguyen. Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the University of Oxford and recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation of The Truffle Eye, Nguyen's debut collection. Sulak and Jacobs discuss Vaan Nguyen's unique life story, the relationship between translator and writer, and Radiohead.

Here is an excerpt from Jacobs' translation of the poem Mekong River:

"Tonight I moved between three beds like I was sailing on the Mekong and whispered the beauty of the Tigris and Euphrates Under an endless moment looking under the left tit I have a hole and you fill it with other men. Notes of Tiger beer on your body."

Text: “Culture Stain” & “Word Mound”: Drunken Boat “Mekong River”: Gulf Coast “Packing Poem,” Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Lauren McClung, Cathy Linh Che, and Ocean Vuong, to be published by W.W. Norton in 2017.

Music: Jinsang - Genesis Creep - Radiohead - Brooklyn Duo feat. Escher Quartet Cover Exit Music (For a film) - Radiohead Ru con - Anbu Thanh

Host Marcela Sulak breaks 'Israel in Translation' custom by devoting this episode to Nell Zink's English language novel, Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats. Nell Zink, an American, began a correspondence with Avner Shats after she moved to Israel in 1997. Zink was unable to read Shats' Hebrew, but she resolved to write a book that would mirror his remarkable style. For fifteen years, Shats was the only reader of her literary output. Zink once said, "Avner and I just began writing for each other. The first thing I wrote for him was a novel called Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats. It never crossed my mind anyone else would ever read my writing."

Here is an excerpt from Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats:

"Mary and I went down to the old port to look at Mr. Pickwick. The old port of Tel Aviv, with its dusty cats, scabby dogs, flaking concrete, deep and opaque berths for ghost ships, etc, is surely worthy of treatment in pose-poetry, that bastard child of television. The style of montage, of snapshots succeeding each other, is similar to the way an inexpensive documentary, where the tripod is carried from place to place while the camera is turned off, might be perceived by someone who is not really paying attention. Certain parties I have attended present themselves to my memory with the benefit of similar editing techniques."

Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink’s faux-translation of Shats’s 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia ("Sailing Towards the Sunset"). Work by Avner Shats was previously featured on the show.

Text: "Private Novelist," by Nell Zink. Harper Collins Publishers, 2016.

Music: Homeward Bound Instrumental - Simon and Garfunkel The Boxer (Instrumental Cover) - Whalebone

Jews ushered in 8 days of Passover with the Seder on Monday night. The holiday has often been misunderstood throughout the non-Jewish world. On this episode, host Marcela Sulak reads excerpts from S.Y. Agnon's story The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel, a bizarre account of Jewish blood libel occurring around Passover. The story is translated by Evelyn Abel and is from the Agnon collection Forevermore & Other Stories, edited by Jeffrey Saks.

Here is an excerpt from The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel:

"One day several of the wickedest men of the nations of the world who were envious of Rabbi Gadiel's father came together and said: 'How long will this Jew usurp us and rob us of our livelihood? The time has come to remove him from this world.' One said to the other.' But for fear of the authorities we would swallow him alive.' And one stood and said 'These Jews' Passover is approaching; come let us take a corpse and put it in this Jew's house and say, 'One of ours he killed, for his Matzot he killed, to bake him in blood he killed,' and we will go and call the judges of the town and the elders of the community, and they will arrest him with iron chains and lead him out to be executed, and we will have our revenge on him, and moreover we will have his wealth and divide it amongst ourselves. "

Text: "The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel," by S.Y Agnon, translated by Evelyn Abel, Forevermore & Other Stories. Edited by Jeffrey Saks. The Toby Press, 2016.

Music: Itzhak Perlman - Nigun Leonid Kogan - Nigun

Currently out of school for the Pesach holiday, Israel in Translation host Marcela Sulak's daughter Amalia dishes out some reading recommendations to her fellow younger lovers of literature. She clearly knows a good story when she reads one; enjoy!

On this episode, Marcela reads two poems by Israeli poet Almog Behar, called Take this poem and copy it and A Poem for the Jailhouse Prisoners in preparation for Passover. Bahar has published books of poetry, a collection of short stories and a novel. In 2005, he won the Haaretz Short Story Competition for his story; Ana Min Al-Yahoud (I am one of the Jews).

Here is an excerpt from Take this poem and copy it:

"Take this poem and copy it a thousand times and distribute it to people on the city's main street. And say to them I wrote this poem this is a poem I wrote this is a poem I wrote this I wrote this poem I wrote this I wrote this I wrote. Take this poem and put it in an envelope and send it to your heart's desire and include a short letter with it. And before you send it change its title and at the end add rhymes of your own. Sweeten the bitter and enrich the spare and bridge the cracked and simplify the clumsy and enliven the dead and square the truth. A person could take many poems and make them his."

Almog Behar was born in Netanya, into a family of Arabic-speaking Jews, in 1978 and lives in Jerusalem. He studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Text: Almog Behar, Take This Poem and Copy It. Various translators.

Music: Naseer Shamma - Baghdad Night

On this episode, Marcela reads from a collection of S.Y. Agnon's work including folk stories and midrashic tales. It's called Forevermore & Other Stories, and is edited and annotated by Jeffrey Saks, and illustrated by Yosl Bergner. There is an area in Jerusalem known by the Arabic name Abu Tor, meaning "father of the ox."

Here is an excerpt from the story "The Father of the Ox" about the origins of Abu Tor:

"Once upon a time there was an old man in Jerusalem. An old, old man he was, yet as innocent as a child. Now this old man had neither child nor wife, but he had a little house and he had a field and he had an ox. This ox had ample strength and a tender heart. He felt sorry for his owner and used to serve him like a slave serves his master. He would plough his field for him and fetch him up water from the spring; and when it was necessary the old man would hang a basket with money round his neck and would tell him, go to the market and fetch me my food. And the old man wanted for nothing with him. I can only hope that we, too, may never lack for anything either rin this world or the world to come. And the neighbors used to call the old man Abu-Tor, or Father of the Ox, all because of the ox he had."

Text: Forevermore & Other Stories. Sy. Y. Agnon. Edited and Annotated by Jeffrey Saks. Illustrated by Yosl Bergner. Toby Press, 2016

Music: Naseer Shamma - The Moon Fades

On this episode, Marcela reads from Author and poet Hagit Grossman's newest book in Benjamin Balint's English translation, Trembling of the City. The collection consists mostly of intimate portraits of inhabitants of the city, particularly women.

Here is an excerpt from her poem "Sophia":

"All morning she has stolen clothes and given them to the poor. This is what Sophia knows how to do. She being, herself, a very poor woman. She steals clothes from charity shops, but can't stand the bounty in her own closet. She has a conscience. She has a good opinion of herself. She gives them to poor women left out in the cold. She always dreamed of being Robin Hood."

Grossman has been featured on Israel in Translation once before.

Text: Hagit Grossman, Trembling of the City, translated by Benjamin Balint. Shearsman Books, 2016.

Music:Questlove - Goodbye Isaac Mos Def - Respiration Trixcis - Meandering Thoughts

All of Israel celebrated Purim on Sunday, and Monday in Jerusalem. In honor of the festival, host Marcela Sulak reads Raquel Chalfi's work from the recently published collection Reality Crumbs, translated by Tzippi Keller.

Here is an excerpt from her poem "Reckless Love," Blues:

"I was a little reckless, he was a little reckless in a cheap cafe on the eve of Purim, everyone around us with the face to the TV up on the wall. He broadcast to me on a high frequency. I wanted to broadcast low-low but it came out high. I was a little reckless, he was a little reckless."

For information about Chalfi, listen to when she was featured on the podcast once before in 2015. 

Text: Reality Crumbs by Raquel Chalfi. SUNY Press, 2015.

Music:7 Years - Lukas Graham - Violin cover by Daniel Jang Lost Boy - Ruth B - Violin cover by Daniel Jang

Jews everywhere are celebrating Purim this Saturday night, the story of which took place in the ancient Persian Empire. On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads from the essay "Journey to the Land of Israel" by the Iranian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad. The highly controversial essay is based on his two-week long trip to see Israel in 1963.

This is the intro to “Journey to the Land of Israel”:

"Jewish rule in the land of Palestine is a guardianship state and not another kind of government. It is the rule of the Children of Israel’s new guardians in the Promised Land, not the rule of the inhabitants of Palestine over Palestine. The first contradiction arising from the existence of Israel is this: that a people, a tribe, a religious community, or the surviving remnants of the twelve tribes—whatever designation you prefer—throughout history, traditions, and myths suffered homelessness and exile, and nurtured many dreams in their hearts until they finally settled, in a way, in answer to such hopes and in a land neither especially promising nor 'promised.'"

Jalal Al-e Ahmad was born to a religious family in Tehran in 1923. A teacher all his life, he joined the Communist Tudeh Party in 1943. His body of work includes short stories, notably the collection An Exchange of Visits and novels including By the Pen, The School Principal, and A Stone on a Grave. Al-e Ahmad was married to the novelist and translator Simin Daneshvar; the couple had no children. He died in 1969. The book was translated by the Jerusalem-based Samuel Thrope.

Text: The Israeli Republic by Jalal Al-e Ahmad. Restless Books, 2017.

Music:Mohammad Reza Shajarian - Entezar آلبوم کامل رندان مست ـ محمدرضا شجریان

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems written by Miri ben Simhon and translated by Lisa Katz. Ben Simhon was born January 13, 1950, in Marseille, France. She was the youngest of three children of Moroccan parents from Fez, born on the family's way to the new state of Israel. In April of that year, the family arrived by boat and was settled in a Jerusalem transit camp. In 1955 the children and their mother moved to permanent housing in the Katamonim neighborhood in the western part of the city, home to many poor immigrants. Her four collections of poetry demonstrates a tremendous grasp of social reality and human power relations.

This is an excerpt from “Girl from the Slums (A Longitudinal Slice)”:

"A dark girl with acne Aliza Alfandari in a place meant for others washes clothes as one who does God’s bidding afterwards she’ll scrub the floor arrange flowers in a vase. Her blouse matches her skirt. She doesn’t care about the spots on her face and covers them with make-up. Her virtues don’t depend on this at all. She fulfills her duties carefully and knows very well who’s right and who isn’t. Sometimes she explodes, but only for good reason, when you consider the fact that so many people don’t know how to behave."

Miri ben Simhon died in 1996, in an auto accident. 

Text: All poems by Miri ben Simhon, translated by Lisa Katz, Poetry International Rotterdam 

Music: Reflection - Thomas Ben Tov Iche - Liebe Articulation - Thomas Ben Tov

On this week's episode, host Marcela reads from Emile Habibi’s picaresque novel The Secret Life of Saeed The Pessopitmist, translated by Salma K Jayyussi and Trevor LeGassick. The Secret Life of Saeed spans twenty years and two wars (1948 and 1967) and is an account of the life of the Palestinian Arab population which remained in the State of Israel after the mass exodus following each war. Saeed is a comic hero, the luckless fool, who has been compared to Voltaire’s Candide and Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk.

This is an exerpt from “Research on the Origins of the Pessoptimists”:

"When I alighted from the donkey, I found that I was taller than the military governor. I felt much relieved at being bigger than him without the help of the donkey’s legs. So I settled comfortably into a chair in the school they had converted into the governor’s headquarters. The blackboards were being used as Ping-Pong tables. There I sat, at ease, thanking God for making me taller than the military governor without the help of the donkey’s legs. That’s the way our family is and why we bear the name Pessoptimist."

Habibi's poetry was also featured on the podcast in September 2014. 

Text: The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, by Emile Habiby, translated by Salma K Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick. Interlink Books, 2003.

Music:Le Trio Joubran - Majâz Le Trio Joubran - Masar

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak takes us on a small excursion to Musrara, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, with poems by Liat Kaplan as our guide. Musrara was founded by upper class Christian Arabs in the late 19th century when people began to live outside the Old City of Jerusalem. During the War of Independence, the residents fled or were expelled. The neighborhood - inhabited by new olim from North Africa -was frequently exposed to snipers until 1967. In 1971, a second generation of Mizrahi Jews founded the Israeli Black Panther movement in the town. Today, the neighborhood is a symbol for the city's complexity and home to a vibrant cultural center.

This is an exerpt from Kaplan's poem On What is Outside the Photograph:

"When photographed, Mussrara is almost composed of the sum of her details, various types of enclosures: asbestos, containers, radiance among leaves, cages, barriers, plants, walls, trees, bushes. Doors, partitions, trapped sun rays, fences and cracks, ramparts, balconies, roofs. Cactuses. And more details: laundry, construction refuse, scaffoldings. Outside the photograph it has no existence. Now, while we look there is no existence outside the photograph."

Liat Kaplan was born on a Kibbutz and currently lives in Tel Aviv. She is the author of six collections of poetry, and her work has been widely anthologized. She frequently collaborates with painters, photographers, and composers. Kaplan has also worked as poetry editor for the Bialik Institute, Helicon, Pardes, Am Oved, and Carmel Publishers. She has worked as director, teacher, and workshop instructor at the Helicon School of poetry.

Text: Reading on Kaplan's poetry About Musrara

Music:Ibrahim Maalouf - Illusions Ibrahim Maalouf - Movement Ibrahim Maalouf - Verdict Between Waters and Waters, Ittai Rosenbaum and Liat Kaplan

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads a selection of Avner Shat's short story, "Figs," which was published in his first book, Printed Circuits in 1994.  Here is an excerpt from the story:

"The years went by, and not a single daughter came to the world. The women were getting older, fewer babies were born, and I was the last girl born here. There is no girl younger than me in the village, no sister nor niece, and today I shall marry a man, and no one is really sure whether to be happy or sad, for no one ever heard of such a thing, not even the army and the other people who came with it, those who wear no uniforms and walk around the village asking silly questions, those who erected a tent like nomads, with bizarre instruments in it, so my aunt says, where they cure people by pricking them or feeding them bitter hard beans, and request you to do odd things and movements and to answer questions about drawings, and even those knowledgeable people have never heard of a wonder such as ours, a place where only males are born."

Text: “Figs” by Avner Shats 

Music:Bill Frisell - Gone Just Like a Train

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads selections of poet Tal Nitzán's book At the End of Sleep. It's an anthology of her poems, translated from the Hebrew by Tal Nitzán, Vivian Eden, Irit Sela, Aliza Raz, and Rachel Tzvia Back. Here is an excerpt from her poem "In the Time of Cholera":

"Facing one another we turn our backs to the world’s calamities. Behind our closed eyes and curtains, both heat and war erupted at once. The heat will calm down first, the faint breeze won’t bring back the boys who have been shot, won’t cool down the wrath of the living. Even if it tarry, the fire will come, many waters won’t quench, etc. Our arms as well can only reach our own bodies: We are a small crowd incited to bite, to cling to each other, to barricade ourselves in bed while in the ozone above us, a mocking smile cracks wide open."

Nitzan’s poems are often concerned with the discrepancies between the domestic and internal world, and the injustice of the exterior world in which the most private bodies are placed. In June 2015 we featured the work of the poet Tal Nitzán. You can find a link to that podcast here.

Text: At the End of Sleep, An Anthology, by Tal Nitzán. Translated by Tal Nitzán, Vivian Eden, Irit Sela, Aliza Raz, and Rachel Tzavia Back. Restless Books, 2014.

Music:Big Lazy - Amnesia Big Lazy - Elephant Walk

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak returns to the work of Ibn Gabirol, one of the outstanding figures during the Jewish Golden Age in Moorish Spain. She reads a new edition of his work called Vulture in a Cage, published in 2016 by Archipeligo Books. The translation by Raymond P. Scheindlin interestingly adheres to Gabirol's original rhyme scheme and rhythm of the Hebrew. Here is an excerpt from one of his poems depicting the relationship between God and the speaker as an erotic relationship:

"Greetings to you, red-cheeked friend, greetings to you from the girl with the pomegranate brow. Run to meet her—your beloved— hurry out to rescue her! Charge, like David, valiant king when he took Rabbah, the city.” He: “Why, my beauty, why just now do you choose to rouse my love, set your lovely voice to ringing like a priest’s robe hung with bells? When the time for loving comes, then you’ll see me hurrying. Then I will come down to you as on Mount Hermon drips the dew."

Born in Málaga in about 1022, Ibn Gabirol joined an intellectual circle of other Cordoban refugees. Protected by Gabirol's patron, whom Gabirol immortalized in poems of loving praise, the poet became famous for his religious hymns in Hebrew. At the time, the customary language of Andalusian literature was Arabic. At 16, he could rightly boast of being world famous.

You can access Marcela's first episode on Ibn Gabirol here.

Text: Vulture in a Cage. Poems by Solomon Ibn Gavirol, translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Archipeligo Books, 2016.

Music:מוכיח רע, סחרוף ברי-- השפתות אדומי רוח שפל לך דודי שלום לך יחידה מה

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poetry by Maya Tevet Dayan. Published in both Rachel Tzvia Back's translation and forthcoming translation by Ayelet Rose, they are Dayan's first poems to appear in English. Born in Tel Aviv, Maya Tevet Dayan grew up in Hod Hasharon and received her Ph.D at Tel Aviv University. Dayan's landscapes, covering childhood to adulthood and parenting, are characterized by attention to time and space. Here is a segment from her poem, Tides.

"Through all the births, through all the women who birthed one another until you were born, This pre-historic fear has now passed on o you, the fear that must never be named. Forming ripples in the dark. You're in the living room, in the empty moon, in abandonment, the child moves in her sleep, the dog is circling the kennel. If ever there was a critical time to caress a dog, that time is now."

Text:

“Sister” and “Hallow’s Eve” in Modern Poetry in Translation, summer issue 2016. Translator: Rachel Tzvia Back Other poems translated by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb for the Hebrew library in Berlin Magazine for poetry and literature.

Music:Megazord - The Megazord Galit Wolf - Hana canaan bederech habait Yehudit Rabich - Shir lala sham בורדו - גשם יורד קורין אלאל - שיר לשירה

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Yonatan Berg. He is youngest recipient ever to win the Yehuda Amichai Poetry Prize, and his work has only begun to be published in Joanna Chen’s English translation. As Chen points out, Yonatan Berg’s poetry strides the lines that divide this country in so many ways, with honesty and compassion.

"On Sabbath afternoon the air is quiet. We stroll towards the Sephardi synagogue, the hills filled with afternoon and beyond, the Dead Sea shimmers, burning with salt, thick with death. Rabbi Avi Sasson stands before us, his voice filling the curves of the stone with psalms. We sit down. Summer switches off and we give ourselves to the same cave where praises cover the decay of our lives – our parents arguing, journeys through Ramallah, the idea that around us hangs a permanent, burning growl of injustice: the shifting of Israel and Palestine’s tectonic plates."

Yonatan Berg was born in 1981 in Jerusalem to a religious family and grew up in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. He served in the Israeli Defense Force and was engaged in the active combat that many of his poems witness.

Text: “After a Night in the Alley of Worshipers” & “Unity,” translated by Joanna Chen, in Lunch Ticket “The Mothers,” translated by Joanna Chen, in Contemporary Works in Translation. Oomph Press

Music:הניגון של הרב שמואל בצלאל אלטהויז Shlomo Carlebach - The Krakow Nigun Shlomo Carlebach - Eso Einai 

Producer: Ariella Plachta Technical producer: Tammy Goldenberg

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads Between Life and Death, the final novel of Yoram Kaniuk, who died in 2013. The celebrated book is a type of auto-fiction in which real life and memoir blend with style and language and humor. It's a stream of consciousness journey that takes place when the narrator, also named Yoram Kaniuk, lies in coma after surgery.

"After these things—after disease and after death and after pain and after laughter and after betrayal and after old age and after grace and love and after a foolish son the heaviness of his mother and a woman of valor who stayed with me in beauty in the abyss—after all that I woke up into a half sleep and stayed there four months. And it was bad and it was good and it was sad and it was lost and it was a miracle and it was what it was and it wasn’t what it wasn’t and it could have been and I recalled it was night. A night sealed up in its night. I spent it in bad dreams and woke up dazed with sleep, I was healthy, in my house at 13 Bilu Street, and suddenly I recalled that at night I’d dreamed of screwdrivers. I had no need of a screwdriver and so I didn’t search and I didn’t find it, but in the place where the screwdriver could have been if there had been one, I found an old map of Tel Aviv, and since the map was already there, I left it and went to drink coffee and I ate a croissant they call corasson here and returned home, to the map, and thought of looking for the street where I lived."

Kaniuk's work was featured on a previous episode, which can be found here.

Text: Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Restless Books, September 2016

Music:Arik Einstein - White City שלישיית קצה השדה - ערב בא Benny Berman & Aharon Shabtai - Life 1959

This week we're broadcasting a timely re-run of a past episode. As Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas, we travel to the Galilee through the eyes of the novelist Anton Shammas, a native of the Galilee. 

In honor of Nazareth, the childhood home of Jesus, host Marcela Sulak reads three excerpts from Shammas' novel Arabesques, which has been called, “a history of its author’s youth and the memoir of a family and a fabled region - Galilee.” One of the most striking features of the novel is how the life of Jesus and the miracles of Nazareth are woven into the fabric of daily life. All this against the backdrop of Christmas songs sung by Fairuz, one of the most respected and admired Lebanese singers alive.

Text: Arabesques, by Anton Shammas. Translated by Vivien Eden. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Music:I Believe - lyrics by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl and Al Stillman in 1953. Sung by Fairuz. Talj Talja [Snow, Snow] - Fairuz Silent Night - Fairuz

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Hadas Gilad, all translated by Lisa Katz. Hadas Gilad was born in Tel Aviv in 1975. She has published one book of poems, "Each and Every Light," and has translated the poetry of Lalla, a 14th century Hindu mystical poet from Kashmir.

"His lips - a soft gate Yes a hedgerow And I was drawn between them to roar within To be close to his voice To reside like this: In the darkness of the cave To hear the taps of swallowed saliva To hear the birth of each syllable To hear the shouts of joy."

Sociologist and Jungian Analyst Guy Perl notes the influence of Lalla on Gilad's poetry. He says that both poets "attempt to remove the illusion that reality is separate from nature [or] God..." However, he adds, "Gilad doesn't seek to rise above the illusion of reality, but rather to live completely connected to it, revealing its transcendent aspects..."

Text: Tamir Greengerb. “Ode” and “My Grandma Rachel, Age 15” in Poets on the Edge. An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. SUNY Press, 2008.

Music: Rahul Sharma - Maqam-E-Navaa (Sufyana Musiqi)

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems about death and dying by Tamir Greenberg, translated by Tzippi Keller and found in Keller's anthology, Poets on the Edge. An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. Here is an exerpt from Greenberg's poem My Grandma Rachel, Age 15:

"'Soon, my shadow will strike a small pile of snow, and then I’ll turn fifteen.' 'Sheets,' says the nurse impatiently. 'A pile of sheets.' 'Marius, my love, will come to meet me near the fence of the high-school for girls in Bucharest.' Grandma laughs. I was there already years ago. It was before my shadow refused to freeze on a small pile of snow, and when my love kissed me, his sweet kiss blossomed into my body like a rose petal, and later, in my father’s wine cellars, in the dim wine cellar, Marius threw me to the floor, and when he tore my virginity my right hand truck the tap of a barrel and wine oozed onto the filthy floor.'

Tamir Greenberg was born in Tel Aviv in 1959, and heads the Architecture Department at Shenkar College. Also a playwright, his work has been staged at Habima - Israel's national theater. He has also published two collections of poems: Self Portrait with Quantum and a Dead Cat, and The Thirsty Soul.

Text: Tamir Greengerb. “Ode” and “My Grandma Rachel, Age 15” in Poets on the Edge. An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. SUNY Press, 2008.

Music:Pure Imagination - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Dance Me to the End - Leonard Cohen Purple Rain - Prince

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads from David Grossman's newest work, A Horse Walks Into a Bar, which came out in Jessica Cohen's English Translation last month with Jonathan Cape Books in London. The exerpt from the short novel is set in a comedy club in Netanya:

"But until midnight… we will raise the roof with jokes and impersonations, with a medley of my shows from the past twenty years, as unannounced in the advertisements, ‘cause it’s not like anyone was going to spend a shekel to promote this gig except with an ad the size of a postage stamp in the Netanya free weekly. F**kers didn’t even stick a poster on a tree trunk. Saving your pennies, eh, Yoav? God bless you, you’re a good man. Picasso the lost Rottweiler got more screen time than I did on the telegraph poles around here. I checked, I went past every single pole in the industrial zone. Respect, Picasso, you kicked ass, and I wouldn’t be in any hurry to come home if I were you. Take it from me, the best way to be appreciated somewhere is to not be there, you get me? Wasn’t that the idea behind God’s whole Holocaust initiative? Isn’t that rally what’s behind the whole concept of death?” The audience is swept along with him. “Really, you tell me, Netanya—don’t you think it’s insane what goes through people’s minds when they put up notices about their lost pets? 'Lost: golden hamster with a limp in one leg, suffers from cataracts, gluten sensitivity, and almond-milk allergy.' Hellooooo! What is your problem? I’ll tell you right now where he is without even looking: your hamster’s at the nursing home!”

Text: David Grossman, A Horse Walks Into a Bar. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Jonathan ape, London, November 2016.

Music:Yame B'zoret - Matti Caspi Savannah - Medjool Hine Hine - Matti Caspi

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads from Annna Herman's books "Unicorn" and "The Book of Simple Medicines." They are translated by Adriana X. Jacobs, who finds that "In Herman's work, the comfort of rhyme and meter provide a meaningful contrast to the uncomfortable and disquieting tales and images that Herman composes."

"At the end of the blocked path, at the edge of a thick forest, There's a house caught between two flickering flames. Like Red Riding Hood I walk through the dim forest, To my grandmother's house, and the snow falls again. I walk up to the edge of the dead end, to the edge of pain, And under each and every step fear lurks like a wolf. In the gap between the closed window and the shifting drape Churns the story that lives in this house and was sketched On a metal box I once bought - a colorful, peeling case - Telling the tale of the girl with the red cape."

About her own writing, Anna Herman has said "My difficulty is in the possibility of my goal, for example, to use words to express a moan: Mmh-mmh-mmh." Herman has also published a third book, "Hameuchad."

Texts: Poems by Anna Herman, translated by Adriana X Jacobs, from Poetry International Rotterdam

Music:The Sleeping Beauty - Tchaikovsky Little Red Riding Hood - Amanda Seyfried Mhm - Ram Orion

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads from the opening of Yael Neeman's 2011 lyrical memoir about life on kibbutz Yehiam in the Galil. It's called "We Were The Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz," and it came out in October of this year in Sondra Silverston's English translation:

"And they were really the best years of our lives, dipped in gold, precisely because we lived in below-zero temperatures in the blazing heat of an eternal sun. We greeted each new day with eagerness and curiosity. We were wide awake in the morning and wide awake at night. We skipped and ran from place to place, our hands stiky with pine tree resin and fig milk. We were so close to each other, all day and all night. Yet we knew nothing about ourselves."

Yael Neeman was born in Kibbutz Yehiam. She is the internationally bestselling author of two novels, "Orange Tuesday" and "Rumors about Love," as well as a collection of stories, The Option. Neeman was awarded the Prime Minister' Prize for Hebrew Writers in 2015.

Texts: Yael Neeman, "We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz." Translated by Sondra Silverston. Poems and Songs translated by Jessica Cohen. The Overlook Press; 1 edition (October 25, 2016)

Music:Shuv Yotze Ha'Zemer - Hagevatron Yam Ha'Shibolim - Hagevatron Emek Sheli - Hagevatron

On today's episode, resident storyteller Marcela Sulak reads from Yoram Kaniuk's story "The Beautiful Life of Clara Shiato," translated by Ruvik Danieli and found in the anthology 50 Stories from Israel. Clara raises three children in Greece with a man who escaped from persecutions in Turkey, suffers through the second world war in hiding, and finds passage to Israel after the war to live an impoverished life in Tel Aviv:

"She always remembered the hidden fear. When Clara Shiato was twelve years of age, she stood by the window and hung curtains. Before the clowns passed by, on their way to the circus, she saw Shmuel Abuman with his brother. He raised his eyes and saw Clara, and then a strange fear filled her, and her eyes, those bright eyes, grew dark, and she felt as if the blood had drained from her face."

Yoram Kaniuk was born in Tel Aviv in 1930, joined the Palmach at age 17, and published over thirty books. He married a Christian woman and successfully petitioned Israeli courts that his religion be changed from Jewish to no religion, making Kaniuk considered a Jew by nationality but not religion. The verb lehitkaniuk was coined thereafter in reference to this process.

Texts: Yoram Kaniuk, "The Beautiful Life of Clara Shiato," translated by Ruvik Danieli. 50 Stories from Israel. An Anthology. Edited by Zisi Stavi. Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books, 2007.

Music:Ravel Kaddisch - Yehudi Menuhin Beethoven - Yehudi Menuhin

On today's episode, resident literature guru Marcela Sulak reads from the recently published novel Judas by Amos Oz, translated by Nicholas de Lange. Perhaps Israel's best-known author, Oz explores the titular apostle alongside Israeli historical narrative told through sensitive young student Shmuel Ash, an elderly man Gershom Wald, and his daughter-in-law Abravanel. Here is an excerpt from his novel:

"Perhaps it really was preferable for what you did here to happen—for tens of thousands to to to the slaughter and for hundreds of thousand to go into exile. The Jews here are actually a single big refugee camp, and so are the Arabs. And now the Arabs live day by day with the disaster of their defeat, and the Jews live night by night with the threat of their vengeance. That way apparently you’re all much better off. Both peoples are consumed by hatred and poison, and they  both emerged from the war obsessed with vengeance and soaked in self-righteousness."

Texts: Judas, by Amos Oz. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. Nov. 8, 2016

Music:Ruchi Tlifat - Daoud and Saleh al Kuwaiti Ezra Aharon - Taksim Oud Maqam Bayati 

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Yudit Shahar. Born and raised in the HaTikvah neighborhood of Tel Aviv, she is a special education teacher and mother of two children. She is best known for her concern with economic justice and now lives in Petach Tikvah, Israel.  Here is an excerpt from her poem "Brightness":

"In the house which was really a shack, in the laundry room, on my fingertips, the sourish smell of work clothes as I look in your pocket for sweet dates that have been forgotten. Brightness, you wanted, and you used to raise the antenna the highest in the neighborhood so it could catch disappearing broadcasts from the expanse of the Mediterranean, as far as Izmir and Istanbul."

Texts: Waxwing. Translated by Aviya Kushner.

Music:From the album Meditations - C Lanzbom Erev shel shoshanim Neharot Neharot - Betty Olivero

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Samih al-Qasim. A Druze resident of the village of Rameh in northern Israel, al-Qasim was best known for his nationalist poetry, in which he passionately defended the rights and identity of Israel's Arab minority. Here is an excerpt from his poem "Regardless":

"We are equal—in bread, roses, love, and sin, in desiring the wheat stalk that begot a song. We are equal, the people of my land, And I love you without election, without ballot, without adjustment. I love you by consensus, without question, without argument."

This is part of a "flock poem" - a format in which a series of small poems is written around a theme. Marcela reads more of al-Qasim's flock poetry, and explains the format in more detail.

Texts: All Faces But Mine: The Poetry of Samih Al-Qasim. Translated by Abdulwahid Lu’lu’a. Syracuse University Press, 2015.

Music:Le Trio Joubran - L'Obstinée II; Majâz; Masar

Host Marcela Sulak reads Hebrew poetry from Medieval Spain to mark the Jewish holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah. The latter celebrates the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, and the beginning of a new cycle. Thus the reading at the morning service for Simchat Torah is from "Genesis." Here is the end of Yosef Ibn Avitor's poem on the creation of the universe, "Hymn for the New year":

"Who hurls ruin upon the strong lest in cruelty they lash out? Who casts fright across the lion before the Ethiopian gnat? Who brings over the scorpion terror of the spider’s poison? Who sends fear of swallows into the falcon’s eyes? Who established the world’s foundations and set them beneath the skies?"

Marcela also reads Yehuda Halevi's poem "Where Will I Find You," an ofan written for the Simchat Torah morning service. Halevi is considered to be one of the greatest Hebrew poets. He lived in both Muslim and Christian Spain before rejecting its culture of Jewish-Arab hybridization and leaving for the Holy Land in 1140.

Texts: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492. Translated, Edited, and Introduced by Peter Cole. Princeton University Press, 2007. "Where Will I Find You" by Yehuda Halevi.

Music:Etti Ankri - Mi Yitneni; Avdei Zman; Yefe Nof (all from the album Songs of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi)

Tonight the fast of Yom Kippur ended, so this episode centers on the theme of Yom Kippur. Host Marcela Sulak reads selected poems from Yehuda Amichai's long series Jerusalem, 1967, as well as a section from his long, narrative poem The Last Travels of Benjamin of Tudela, which begins:

"On Yom Kippur, in tennis shoes, you ran. And with Holy Holy Holy, you jumped up high, higher than anyone, nearly up to the angels on the ceiling. And in the circling of Simchat Torah you circled seven times and seven, and arrived breathless. Like pumping iron, you thrust up the Scrolls of the Law, in the Raising Up with both trembling arms so that all could see what was written, and the strength of your arms."

Texts: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. Edited by Robert Alter. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2015.

Music:Maz Bruch - Kol Nidre Itzhak Perlman & Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot - Kol Nidre