Exploring Israeli literature in English translation. Host Marcela Sulak takes you through Israel’s literary countryside, cityscapes, and psychological terrain, and the lives of the people who create it.
https://tlv1.fm/israelintranslation
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 1 day 20 hours 39 minutes
The souvenir shop of Taha Muhammad Ali
Born in Saffuriyya in the Galilee, Taha Muhammad Ali settled in Nazareth after the 1948 Arab-Israel war. There, he owned a souvenir shop near the Church of the Annunciation, which became a meeting place for local and visiting writers. Host Marcela...
Sukkot special: The fragility of the etrog
Today we explore the etrog, a powerful symbol of the holiday of Sukkot, through a short story by Shai Agnon and a poem by Orit Gidali. Agnon's story 'That Tzaddik’s Etrog,' translated by Shira Leibowitz and Moshe Kohn, is a parable about a...
Yom Kippur's Poetry of Awe
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...
Haim Gouri's Piyyut for Rosh Hashanah
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...
Rivka Miriam on asking forgiveness
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...
Yehuda Amichai's 'Wildpeace'
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...
The 'pessoptimist' who worked for coexistence
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...
Neomi Shemer
Naomi Shemer is “The first lady of Israeli song and poetry.” She wroteJeruslaem 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...
Sholem Aleichem: 'The Jewish Mark Twain'
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...
Mendele Mocher Sforim
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...