In his essay, “The Desire to be Gisella,” Grossman ponders the root of our fear of the “other” in ourselves and in those we love, and he thinks of authorship as a mad rebellion against this fear. Text David Grossman, “The Desire to be Gisella.” Writing in the Dark, Essays on Politics and Literature. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
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 cul...
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 p...
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. Text “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 ...
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. Text 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. Text 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 wh...
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. Text Murder on a Kibbutz. A communal Case. by Batya Gur. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Harper Perennial, 1994. Previous Episode on Batya Gur h...
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. Text 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. Text The Slaughterman’s Daughter , by Yaniv Iczkovits. Trans...
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! Text 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 ...
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 close...
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. Text 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 . Text Random Harvest and other Novellas by Haim Nachman Bialik. Translated by David Patterson & Ezra Spicehandler. Toby ...
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 lan...
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. Text: Flowers of Perhaps by Ra’hel. Translated by Robert Friend with Shimon Sandbank. Toby Press, 2008. Sad Melody by Ra’hel translated by...
This week, amidst the holidays, Marcela celebrates by reading an excerpt from Ayelet Tsabari’s newly published memoir, The Art of Leaving . Text: 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 Text: The Orchard, by ...
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. Text: D. A. Mishani. Three . Translated by Jessica Cohen. Europa...
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,...
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 notabl...
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.” Text: 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. Text: 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....
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 be...
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. Text: 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 colle...
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, o...
