Israel in Translation

What if, when you were in Kindergarten, your mother had given you a magic wand that allowed you to read people’s minds? Well, that’s just what happens in Orit Gidali’s book, Nora the Mind Reader, which will bring to a close our month of...

No Israeli childhood experience would be complete without Leah Goldberg. Her story “Room for Rent” was published in 1948 and is one of the most classic children’s books available in Hebrew. Shmuel Katz’s illustrations bring Goldberg’s words...

This month we continue our spotlight on beautifully written and illustrated Israeli children’s books translated into English with The Heart Shaped Leaf, by Shira Geffen and illustrated by David Polonsky. The story opens with eerily beautiful...

Some of Marcela's favorite children’s books in Hebrew have been written by well known poets and illustrated by some of Israel’s most talented graphic artists. This episode features The Mermaid in the Bathtub, written by the poet, essayist and...

For the next few weeks, we will feature work published in The Ilanot Review’s special collaborative issue with Granta Hebrew, focusing on new, up-and-coming writers. And so it is a pleasure to introduce the young writer Nano Shabtai, translated by...

Many poems in Ronny Someck's The Milk Underground deal with being a father of girls—adolescent and teenaged, young women. They explore the fraught territory of daughter’s bodies—body as dowry, body as a locus for pleasure and for betrayal, and...

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, served in the Israeli army, and travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe and North America. In 1998 Ayelet moved to Vancouver,...

We’re currently in the days of Sukkot, in which Jews everywhere dwell (or at least take their meals) in a temporary structure called a Sukkah to commemorate the forty years of wandering in the desert, and also because Sukkot is an agricultural...

"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..."

We are now in the days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which will take place next week. This week, Marcela reads from Amichai Chasson, whose poem America gives a portrait of the everyday reference that Yom Kippur serves in everyday life....