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 So...
Feb 22, 2017•10 min
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 Mi...
Feb 15, 2017•9 min
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 o...
Feb 08, 2017•8 min
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...
Feb 01, 2017•6 min
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 relation...
Jan 25, 2017•8 min
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 th...
Jan 18, 2017•9 min
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 shimmer...
Jan 11, 2017•9 min
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 grac...
Jan 04, 2017•8 min
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...
Dec 28, 2016•8 min
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 b...
Dec 21, 2016•7 min
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 Poetr y. 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 fo...
Dec 14, 2016•7 min
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 t...
Dec 07, 2016•8 min
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,...
Nov 30, 20160
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. W...
Nov 23, 2016•9 min
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 year...
Nov 16, 2016•8 min
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 t...
Nov 09, 2016•7 min
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...
Nov 02, 2016•8 min
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, w...
Oct 26, 2016•11 min
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 th...
Oct 19, 2016•9 min
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 ...
Oct 12, 2016•8 min
In honor of the Jewish new year - Rosh Hashanah - and the upcoming day of atonement - Yom Kippur - host Marcela reads poems on these themes by some of Israel's most exciting poets. She reads "Origin of the World" by the controversial and provocative young poet Noam Partom, which begins like this: "I hereby close the gates between my legs till further notice For an unlimited period, due to maintenance. No bearers of first fruit will come No pilgrims will make pilgrimage No prayers made under the ...
Oct 05, 2016•9 min
As we are in the month of Elul - a month of preparation for the major Jewish holidays - host Marcela Sulak dedicates this week's podcast to poems that give a female insight into the holidays to come: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. All the poems are by Hava Pinhas-Cohen, here is an excerpt from "Follow the Arrow": "Now in Jerusalem, the Ashkenazi Jews are reciting the Selichot prayers. The Sephardi Jews began three weeks ago, chanting El Malei. Only the lines I left in the margins of pages...
Sep 28, 2016•7 min
Last week Muslims celebrated the holiday of Eid al-Adha, which remembers how Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son to God. Muslims believe Abraham's son to be Ishmael (not Isaac, as mentioned in the Bible). In honor of this festival, host Marcela Sulak reads two poems by Mahmoud Darwish. Here is the beginning of "Ismael's Oud": "A mare dances on two strings—that’s how Ismael’s fingers listen to his blood. The villages scatter like poppies in the rhythm. There’s neither night there nor day. D...
Sep 21, 2016•9 min
Not all literature published in Hebrew in Israel is written by Israelis. Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Annabelle Farmelant, an American poet born and raised in Boston who writes in Hebrew. She was living in Tel Aviv when her books appeared with Kiryat Sefer in Jerusalem in 1960 and 1961. Not surprisingly, much of Farmelant's poetry focuses on language and identity. Here is her poem "Builder": "Though you swam in the sea, you're not like a fish, though you took off in flight, you'...
Sep 14, 2016•8 min
Meir Wieseltier is one of Israel's foremost poets. A winner of the Bialik Prize and the Israel Prize, he has published 13 collections of poetry. In honor of the month of Elul, in which, among religious Jews, the "shofar" horn is blown each day, host Marcela Sulak read's Wieseltier's poem "Wisdom." "The whole of my wisdom contracts to the bulk of a fly on a bright window-pane, what were mountains and vales are but a scratch on glass." Marcela reads several other poems by Wieseltier, which tackle ...
Sep 08, 2016•7 min
The Secret Book of Kings, the fifth of Yochi Brandes' six novels, appeared last week in English translation. It's the first of the best-selling writer's novels to be translated into English. Brandes retells the stories of the House of Saul and of the northern Kingdom of Israel, stories that were artfully concealed by the House of David and the scribes of the southern Kingdom of Judah. Host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from the first part of the novel, narrated by the child Shelomoam. "The Jude...
Aug 31, 2016•5 min
Yiftach Atir’s novel, The English Teacher , is newly appeared in English translation this year. Host Marcela Sulak reads some excerpts from the book, including Atir's opening note: "The book you are holding in your hands is the true story of what never happened. This is the story of a Mossad operative. She and others like her operate alone for extended periods of time, deep in enemy countries. Unlike their front-line soldier counterparts, these secret soldiers are armed with nothing but a foreig...
Aug 24, 2016•8 min
Host Marcela Sulak reads the short story "Mosquito" by Roy Chen. Set in Tel Aviv on the city's " White Night ," it follows an author and his girlfriend as they make their way to an evening of literary readings at a local café-bookstore: "Tel Aviv grinned like a little girl with tooth decay while she puffed on a pipe held in the corner of her mouth. Cars honked, ice cream dribbled, dogs peed on sycamore trees. City flags flew atop balconies. Fireworks were launched into the sky from the beach, li...
Aug 17, 2016•10 min
"This is the chronicle of the city of Buczacz, which I have written in my pain and anguish so that our descendants should know that our city was full of Torah, wisdom, love, piety, life, grace, kindness, and charity." So begins Shai Agnon's epic story cycle entitled A City in Its Fullness - a literary memorial to the city of his birth, now called Buchach in Western Ukraine. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Agnon's receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature (Agnon is the only Hebrew language wri...
Aug 10, 2016•9 min
Shai Agnon is the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Agnon being awarded the prize, Toby Press has been releasing Agnon's work in English translation. Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from Agnon's introduction to the "Book of the State," one of his little-known political satires. "... The State is a metaphysical concept rendered into something physical which feigns meta-physicality. When you attempt to approach it as a ...
Aug 03, 2016•8 min
