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 t...
Sep 13, 2017•8 min
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 orig...
Sep 06, 2017•8 min
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. Y...
Aug 30, 2017•7 min
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. ...
Aug 23, 2017•9 min
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 Ar...
Aug 16, 2017•9 min
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 Oce...
Aug 09, 2017•10 min
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....
Aug 02, 2017•7 min
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...
Jul 26, 2017•7 min
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
Jul 19, 2017•5 min
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...
Jul 12, 2017•7 min
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 Silv...
Jul 05, 2017•8 min
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 He...
Jun 28, 2017•7 min
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 daughte...
Jun 21, 2017•11 min
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...
Jun 14, 2017•7 min
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...
Jun 07, 2017•7 min
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 e...
May 31, 2017•6 min
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. “T...
May 24, 2017•9 min
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, a...
May 17, 2017•8 min
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,...
May 10, 2017•7 min
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 al...
May 03, 2017•9 min
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' tran...
Apr 26, 2017•20 min
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...
Apr 19, 2017•9 min
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 Gadi...
Apr 12, 2017•9 min
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!
Apr 06, 2017•4 min
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...
Apr 05, 2017•8 min
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...
Mar 29, 2017•7 min
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...
Mar 22, 2017•7 min
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 bu...
Mar 15, 2017•7 min
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 Israe l" 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....
Mar 08, 2017•13 min
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 pa...
Mar 01, 2017•11 min
