Today we explore Yom Kippur through the poetry of Yehuda Amichai and Shelley Elkayam, and the music of Leonard Cohen and Chayim Moshe. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, when God seals the verdict on each person's fate for the coming year in the Book of Life. Amichai's poem refers to the 'Ne'ila' - the closing prayer, shortly before sunset, when heaven’s 'gates of prayer' will be closed for the year. The subject has a moving encounter with an "Arab’s hole-in-the-wall shop" nea...
Oct 01, 2014•7 min
Born in Tel Aviv in 1923, Haim Gouri is a poet, novelist, documentary film maker, journalist, and the author of a book on the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann. During World War II, Gouri joined the elite strike force of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force operating during Mandate Palestine, called the 'Palmach.' He was sent to Hungary to help holocaust survivors come to Palestine. This experience inspired Gouri’s documentary film The 81st Blow, which was nominated for an Academy Award in...
Sep 24, 2014•7 min
We're now in the month of Elul, the last month in the Jewish calendar, which leads up to the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur festivals. We explore Elul's themes of creation and forgiveness through two poems by Rivka Miriam. Rivka Miriam was a Jerusalem-born child prodigy, who has gone on to publish 12 collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, and several children’s books. According to her mother, her parents were among the 20 out of a population of 6,000 from their home town in Polan...
Sep 17, 2014•7 min
Yehuda Amichai is probably the most widely translated Hebrew poet since King David. He says, “I grew up in a very religious household... So the prayers, the language of prayer itself became a kind of natural language for me.” But Amichai revised the national, Biblical narrative into a personal love story, making space for individual agency and narrative freedom. Born Ludwig Pfueffer in Wurzburg, Germany, Amichai immigrated to Israel with his family in 1935, aged 11. He fought in the 1956 Sinai W...
Sep 10, 2014•8 min
Born in Haifa in 1922, Emile Habibi worked in the city's oil refinery before moving to the Palestinian broadcasting station in Jerusalem. Habibi was a lone voice calling for the acceptance of the UN plan for the division of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Soon after the creation of Israel, he became a political activist, serving in the Knesset for 20 years. After the shock of the six-day war of 1967, Habibi’s writing turned to satire and bitter humor. In 1974 he published The Secret L...
Sep 03, 2014•7 min
Naomi Shemer is “The first lady of Israeli song and poetry.” She wrote Jeruslaem of Gold” in 1967 and it became the unofficial second anthem of Israel after the Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem. Text: Jerusalem of Gold. Translated by Chaya Galai Music: Ishtar, The Eucalyptus Grove Yossi Banai, For all these things” Shuli Nata, Jerusalem of Gold, Ofra Haza, Jerusalem of Gold
Aug 20, 2014•10 min
Having grown up in a shtetl near Kiev, Sholem Aleichem wrote about the extreme poverty, pettiness and greatness of shtetl life, as well as the threat of conscription into the Russian army, pogroms and intermarriage. But, like the American author Mark Twain, he addressed dark subject-matter in such a light-hearted manner that the reader often did not realize their attention was being fixed on great suffering and injustice. When Mark Twain heard of the writer called 'the Jewish Mark Twain,' he rep...
Aug 13, 2014•8 min
The grandfather of Yiddish literature, and one of the founders of “modern” Jewish literature, Mendele Mocher Sforim. He "wanted to be useful to his people rather than gain literary laurels,” and his satirical, critical stories got him chased from town. Text: Of Bygone Days - translated by Rayomond P. Scheindlin. In A Shtetle and Other Yiddish Novellas” ed. Ruth Wisse. Wayne State University Press, 1986. Music: Avraimi der Marvicher, performed by Chava Alberstein Di Goldene Pave by Ana Margolin, ...
Aug 06, 2014•8 min
'Ruth' is a little street in Tel Aviv, nested near Dizengoff Square and off the other little streets named after Biblical heroines such as 'Esther HaMalka.' Both Ruth and Esther were immigrants, and so it's appropriate that the Ministry of Absorbtion for new immigrants should be located here. While Esther was a covert Jew, Ruth was the most famous convert to Judaism in history. As a Moabite, she was explicitly forbidden to marry an Israelite, but nevertheless she became the great-grandmother of ...
Jul 30, 2014•7 min
Called 'Lashonsky' for his comic wit, linguistic innovations and irrepressible puns, every child in Israel knows Avraham Shlonsky's version of the German Rumpelstiltskin fairytale: Utzli Gutzli. His upbringing was one of religion and agricultural labor, which is evident in his work; host Marcela Sulak reads from his exquisite poem 'Toil,' which compares working the land to prayer. Despite the fact that his poetry wasn't taught in Israeli schools because of his rebellion against Bialik's generati...
Jul 23, 2014•6 min
Some know Natan Alterman as an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist and translator who deeply influenced socialist zionist politics. Others might know that his song "Kalaniot" served as a code to warn against British forces during the Mandate Period. But few know he brought the seeds of the marmande tomato to Israel, where it was the main species cultivated in the country until the 1960s. Host Marcela Sulak reads his poem, The Silver Platter, inspired by Chaim Weizmann's 1947 claim: "A state is ...
Jul 16, 2014•8 min
Yocheved Bat Miriam is unique among Hebrew language poets for holding the land of her birth and the land of her life in equal esteem. Born in Russia in 1901, she published her first book of poetry, Merahok ("From a distance"), in Palestine in 1929. A critic has said of her work, "One always feels a vibrant tension between daring syntax and astonishing metaphorical leaps on the one hand, and artful, conservative prosody on the other." Perhaps because her work is challenging only two of her poems ...
Jul 09, 2014•7 min
Manger Street is a 'crook' of a street in North Tel Aviv, the kind of street you find only when you're looking for something else – perfect for our Yiddish-speaking prankster Itzik Manger. Born in Chernovitz in 1901, Itzik Manger was kicked out of school and into Yiddish theater. He reset the Bible story of Esther in contemporary Eastern Europe, casting a tailor (his father's profession) as the hero, in his most scandalous and popular literary work: The Songs of the Megillah. Manger claimed of h...
Jul 01, 2014•6 min
Yud Lamed Peretz Street lies in the Southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Florentine. Although now bearing the fruits of gentrification, the area still retains the mix of residential and industrial with which it was founded. I.L.Peretz failed at distilling whiskey and had his law license revoked by the Imperial Russian Authorities, before he became the most influential Yiddish language writer of his time. He believed in the inevitability of progress through enlightenment, and 100,000 mourners attend...
Jun 25, 2014•6 min
Ahad Ha'am Street occupies the heart of Tel Aviv; it's full of grand Bauhaus buildings and artistic cafes, with Tel Aviv's Great Synagogue on the corner. Ahad Ha'am means "one of the people" in Hebrew, and is the pen name of Asher Zvi Ginzberg, the founder of Cultural Zionism. Lauded by such greats as Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first President, and Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet, as an inspiration, Ahad Ha'am foresaw both the Israel/Palestine conflict AND the solution as early as 1891...
Jun 18, 2014•6 min
Passing by Anne Frank St in Tel Aviv has inspired us to take a fresh look at the young diarist whose words inspired the world. Before she died in Bergen Belsen, Anne Frank said, "Despite everything, I believe that people are, at heart, really good." The English edition of her diary was introduced by Eleanor Roosevelt, and it was read by Nelson Mandela in prison for inspiration. Book: The Diary of a Young Girl. The Definitive Edition. By Anne Frank. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Tr...
Jun 11, 2014•8 min
Shaul Tchernihovsky was a physician, linguist, naturalist, and poet who translated from 15 different literatures into Hebrew. Music: Shlomo Artzi - You don’t know Yarden Bar Kochva -They say there is a land Arik Lavie -I believe Book: The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself. Edited Burnshaw, Carmi, Glassman, Hirschfeld and Spicehandler. (Wayne State University 2003)
Jun 03, 2014•7 min
How two Israeli women defeated a few ancient armies and saved the day — and then wrote a little poem about it. Today we explore the life and poetry of that force to be reckoned with, Deborah the Prophet. With sounds from: The Bible, narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier Composition for Vocal and Frame Drum by Ayalet Ori Benita
May 28, 2014•6 min
Discover Yaakov Shabtai’s single-paragraph novel, Past Continuous, the first truly vernacular work in the Hebrew language. Find out how to build community housing out of shipping crates. Books: Past Continuous. A Novel. Translated Dalya Bilu. Tusk Ivories, 2002. Uncle Peretz Takes off. Short stories. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Overlook Books, 2004. Music: Arik Einstein - My White-throated Love Lior Eyney - Song of the Vineyard
May 21, 2014•8 min
The poet Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky was Amos Oz's first love, first cousin to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and beloved by all Israelis, religious or secular. Book: The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems. Trans. Marcia Falk. Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Press, 2004. Music: Chava Albertstein - Free time Chava Albertstein - Everyone has a name
May 14, 2014•6 min
Remembering Israel’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, Shai Agnon, and his masterpiece, Only Yesterday (Tmol Shilshom), which describes the founding of Tel Aviv and the first building outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Playlist: Rita - Take me Under Your Wing Various artists - Sleepy Jaffa (Nama Yafo Nama)
May 07, 2014•7 min
A teenaged spice-shop owner and professional scribe, Shmuel Hanagid wrote such scintillating and literary love letters that a client hired him for bigger and better things. His work was lost for nearly 1,000 years and rediscovered only in the 1930s. Book: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 Music: Zahava Seewald and Zohara Abulafia - I would lay down my life
Apr 30, 2014•5 min
Hannah Szenes was only 23 years old when she was executed before a firing squad in Nazi-occupied Budapest. She was attempting to rescue Jews who were about to be deported to Auschwitz. In her short life, she became a poet, farmer, and paratrooper. Book: Hannah Szenesh, Her Life and Diary, Translated Marta Cohn (Jewish LightsPublishing, 2007). Music: "Eli Eli" [My God, My God] performed by Ofra Haza "Zog nit kaynmol" performed by Chava Albertstein
Apr 23, 2014•6 min
A teenaged spice-shop owner and professional scribe, Shmuel Hanagid wrote such scintillating and literary love letters that a client hired him for bigger and better things. His work was lost for nearly 1,000 years and rediscovered only in the 1930s. Book: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 Music: Zahava Seewald and Zohara Abulafia - I would lay down my life
Apr 16, 2014•6 min
The Founder of Hebrew Spanish Poetry, Dunash ben Labrat, also made your ulpan studies possible. He was the first to distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs in Hebrew, and to catalog verbs by the 3-letter roots. His smart, talented wife produced the only Hebrew language poem we have by an Andalusian woman. Book: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492. Music: "Dror Yikra” [“He Will Proclaim Freedom”]--performed by Maimon Cohen "Dror Yikra" perf...
Apr 09, 2014•7 min
Lea Goldberg is the best-selling poet in the history of Israel. Many of her poems express both a love of the land of Israel, as well as nostalgia for her abandoned home in the diaspora. Do you know which university department she founded and chaired? And which Russian classics she translated into Hebrew? Book: "With this Night," translated by Annie Kantar. (University of Texas Press, 2011). Music: Achinoam Nini (Noa) - Ilanot (Pines) Shlomo Yidov - White Days...
Apr 02, 2014•7 min
Moshe Ben Ezra was a fine Andalusian poet, as well as the chief of the Granada police. Listen to a couple of poems from the guy who made complaining a form of art. Book: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492. Music: "Let Man Remember," composed and performed by Avi Belleli "Castille," composed and performed by Avi Belleli
Mar 26, 2014•7 min
Hayyim Nahman Bialik was one of the pioneers of Hebrew poetry. Hear the National Poet of Israel sung by Arik Einstein, who created the"Soundtrack of Israel." Find out about the fascinating Bialik house, and his songs and activities for children. Music: Nad-Ned [See-saw], performed by Shula Chen Take me Under your Wing, performed by Arik Einstein Take Me Under Your Wing Take me under your wing,be my mother, my sister.Take my head to your breast,my banished prayers to your nest. One merciful twili...
Mar 19, 2014•8 min
The mother of Hebrew Poetry, and one of the first women poet's in theHebrew language since the Biblical Deborah. She switched from paining artand playing music to painting with the soil and playing with the hoe. Book: Flowers of Perhaps. A Bilingual edition of selected poems translatedby Robert Friend. Toby Press, 2008. Music: "And Maybe," performed by Arik Einstein "Sing, you must," performed by Idan Raichal and Din Din Aviv "To MyCountry," performed by Netanela,...
Mar 12, 2014•5 min
It's great to be living in a city whose streets are named for so many poets and writers, but who are these people and what exactly did they write? In this segment we'll learn about the main north-south street of Tel Aviv, Ibn Gavirol, and the brilliant Golden-Age poet described as "the spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh century Andalusian-Jewish elite." Book: "The Dream of the Poem. Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492. Translated by Peter Cole. Princeton U...
Feb 26, 2014•6 min
