In continuation of the celebrations surrounding Israel’s Independence Day, host Marcela Sulak reads from Amos 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 This episode originally aired April 23, 2015....
Apr 25, 2018•9 min
Tonight marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. Moving past all the euphoria and towards attempts at wisdom, this episode will feature excerpts from the essay “The Meaning of Homeland” by Amos Oz, found in the collection “Under This Blazing Light,” translated by Nicholas de Lange. Text: Amos Oz, “The Meaning of Homeland” in Under This Blazing Light translated by Nicholas de Lange, Syracuse University Press, 2995. Music: Canvas (Instrumental Version) by Imogen Heap Prev...
Apr 18, 2018•6 min
In honor of Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel - host Marcela Sulak reads poetry by Paul Celan, including his famous “Death Fugue.” Paul Celan was born Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Czernowitcz in 1920. The death of his parents in the Holocaust, and his imprisonment in a Romanian work camp are the defining forces in his poetry and use of language. Celan wrote in German. According to Pierre Joris, who translated Celan’s later poetry, he “harbored feelings of intense estrangement...
Apr 11, 2018•7 min
In honor of the seven (or eight) days of Passover, which began on Saturday night, we will continue reading the work of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, whose novel Jacob’s Ladder was featured two weeks ago for its reference to Palm Sunday. This week features the essay “To Die a Modern Death,” which is often used as a text on bereavement in Israeli nursing schools. It is not an easy text, but it is a very important one for those caring for aging family members, especially during the holidays. Text : “...
Apr 04, 2018•8 min
In honor of the beginning of Passover this weekend, this week's episode features an excerpt from S.Y. Agnon’s story, “The Home,” which appears in Herbert Levine and Reena Spicehandler’s English translation in Jeffrey Saks’ series on Agnon, the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Text: “The Home,” by S. Y. Agnon, translated by Herbert Levine and Reena Spicehandler, in The Outcast and Other Tales. Ed. and annotated by Jeffrey Saks. Toby Press, 2017....
Mar 28, 2018•9 min
In honor of Palm Sunday, this episode features an excerpt from Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff's Jacob's Ladder . Born in Cairo in 1917, the author depicts life in Egypt between the two world wars in the novel, which was published in 1951, before she settled in Israel. Here is an excerpt from the novel: Miss O’Brien had felt the child’s hand stiffen in hers, and Rachel’s unseemly interest in the beggar boy moved her. The child might be loved and spoiled, but she must be unbearably lonely if she cared...
Mar 21, 2018•9 min
This episode features segments from the book J erusalem Stands Alone by Mahmoud Shukair , a collection of tales narrated in a series of stand-alone observations, usually no more than a single page, and often simply a paragraph, so that they resemble, in a way, the tenants of a house or the apartments of a neighborhood. Nicole Fares has translated it from the Arabic. Mahmoud Shukair was born in 1941 in Jerusalem and worked for many years as a teacher, journalist and editor-in-chief of the cultura...
Mar 15, 2018•10 min
In honor of the Purim custom of reading the Book of Esther, this episode features an excerpt from Ruth Calderon's short story "A Bride for One Night". It is the title story in her collection of Talmudic tales, published in Ilana Kushan's English translation in 2014. Calderon has a doctorate in Talmud from Hebrew University and was elected to the Israeli Knesset in January 2013. She is founder and former director of Elul Beit Midrash in Jerusalem and founder and chair of Alma: Home for Hebrew Cul...
Feb 28, 2018•10 min
Ruby Namdar's second novel, "The Ruined House", appeared in its English translation in 2017. Set in New York, the book centers on an esteemed professor. It is uncannily timely in that it dovetails with the #MeToo movement and the close scrutiny that the film industry, media, sports, academia and politics are undergoing right now for their participation in systemic sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Here is an excerpt form the novel: Cohen specialized in elegantly naming his cours...
Feb 21, 2018•8 min
This podcast is devoted to the poetry of the Jerusalem Light Rail. Each of the 23 stops of the Jerusalem Light Rail's red line features a poem, translated into Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Some of the poems depict bodies in a state of fatigue, as if coming home from work during a daily commute. And some of them are about travel, and the tiny details of it -- construed in a metaphysical as well as a physical sense. The beauty of the project is the insinuation that we travel via language, as well ...
Feb 14, 2018•6 min
Haim Gouri, the last poet of Israeli’s founding generation, died one week ago today. He wrote of the terrible sacrifice of war, and of memory and camaraderie. Born in Tel Aviv in 1923, Gouri was 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 ...
Feb 07, 2018•11 min
Author and playwright Nava Semel passed away in December 2017. Her novel "Paper Bride" paints a vivid portrait of British Palestine in the 1930s, seen through the eyes of an illiterate boy. Here is an excerpt from the novel: And so, dear children, we repeat the question. What does your family do for the homeland? Herzl Fleisher stood up first, followed by other pupils, all of them describing how their fathers or their uncles or other people they knew were active in the defense of Jews in Palesti...
Jan 31, 2018•9 min
Peter Cole is a poet and translator who has recreated Spain's golden age of Jewish culture and adapted tenth-century Arabic-language poetry to 21st-century English so skillfully that the lines sing. This episode features translations from Cole's new book Hymns and Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations , which features poems originally written in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, alongside Cole's new poetry. Here is an excerpt from the poem "Blessed Are Those" by Avraham Ben Yitzhak, transla...
Jan 24, 2018•10 min
Novelist and playwright, Nava Semel, passed away in December 2017. There are writers that you plan to read and never do, and then, when they pass away, you regret not having read them in their lifetime. Nava Semel is one of these writers. Her work was the first to address the topic of the so-called “Second Generation”— children of Holocaust survivors. And The Rat Laughed is a five-part novel dealing with the horrors of the Holocaust and the influence of this harrowing chapter of human history; o...
Jan 17, 2018•10 min
The acclaimed and prolific Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld passed away last week at the age of 85, leaving behind 47 published works. This episode honors his legacy with excerpts from his memoir, entitled The Story of a Life . Here is an excerpt from the memoir: After the Sabbath meal, we take a stroll to the stream. Grandfather and Grandmother walk ahead, and we follow behind them. At night this branch of the river looks wider. The darkness sinks, and white skies open above us, flowing slowly. ...
Jan 10, 2018•12 min
Ronit Matalon's Bliss: A Novel revolves around two friends: Sarah, a politically active photographer, and Ofra, a selfless graduate student. The story is told in flashbacks as Ofra is summoned from Tel Aviv to a provincial township near Paris for a funeral. While there, Ofra, and we, the readers, learn about the collapse of Sarah's marriage. Here is an excerpt from the novel: Sarah closed her eyes in surrender to the music. “It really is unlike anything else,” she said. Michel and I exchanged gl...
Jan 03, 2018•13 min
We end 2017 with an infusion of religious, secular, biblical, and sensual registers and sensibilities as we enter the poetic world of Esther Ettinger, curated through the translations of Lisa Katz. The Jerusalem-born Ettinger is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, and a monograph on the Israeli poet Zelda. Text: “Elisha,” translated by Vivian Eden,” “Dynasty” translated by Lisa Katz, “History II,”and “When I Brought You,” translated by Rona May-Ron . See also: Dreaming the Actual: Co...
Dec 28, 2017•7 min
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. Text: “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...
Dec 20, 2017•10 min
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 ...
Dec 13, 2017•8 min
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...
Dec 06, 2017•10 min
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. Text: Tuvia Ruebner, Late Beauty...
Nov 29, 2017•11 min
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.
Nov 22, 2017•8 min
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....
Nov 15, 2017•6 min
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...
Nov 08, 2017•9 min
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 Conversat...
Nov 01, 2017•23 min
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
Oct 18, 2017•6 min
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: Sele...
Oct 11, 2017•5 min
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, pe...
Oct 04, 2017•6 min
Host Marcela Sulak's daughter, Amalia, gives her top three children's book recommendations for the holidays.
Sep 27, 2017•2 min
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 ...
Sep 20, 2017•6 min
