Israel in Translation

Mordechai Geldman's work is often informed by his career as a psychotherapist. "My poetry comes from the inner void that meditation creates," Geldman writes in his preface to his collected works.

Tsipi Keller, who translated Geldman's most recent collection, describes his poetic persona as "Routinely solitary, whether on foot or on his bike, Geldman is a tourist in his own town; Tel Aviv, especially his neighborhood near Kikar Milano, which plays an important role in the poems."

Text:

Mordechai Geldman, Years I Walked at Your Side. Translated by Tsipi Keller. Excelsior Editions, 2018.

This episode originally aired Oct. 14th, 2015.

In this episode, host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from Yitzhak Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer, his first novel to be translated into English. In this semi-autobiographical work, Robby, aged ten and accompanied by his parents, leaves his home in Alexandria in 1951 to rejoin his two brothers who had already moved to Israel.

In this extract, three generations of the family are sitting together in their home in Alexandria, reading a letter from Robby's brothers about what life is like in Israel. Robby's grandmother thinks it sounds a little primitive:

"They say that people work in construction in Palestine. Yes, even educated boys. A grandson of mine, putting his hand inside the cemento? Wy-di-mi-no!"

André Aciman says in his introduction to the novel, "Alexandrian Summer is a nostalgic, farewell portrait of a world that was fast expiring but still refused to see that history had written it off."

Text: Alexandrian Summer, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren. Translated Yardenne Greenspan. New Vessel Press, 2015.

Music: Dalida - Salma Ya Salama Farid Al Atrash - Wayak Umm Kulthoum - Enta Omri

It's Sukkot—which lasts seven days in Israel and eight days outside of Israel. A sukkah is the temporary dwelling in which farmers would live during harvesting in ancient days. Throughout the holiday, meals are eaten inside the sukkah and some choose to sleep there. During Sukkot, it is customary to read Kohelet, or Ecclesiastes, to remind us how fleeting life is, and that we should seek a deeper meaning besides the fulfillment of material goods.

No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, but it has been traditionally attributed to King Solomon. Orit Gidali imagines king Solomon, Kohelet, as the author in the poem Kohelet.

Text:

Kohelet from Twenty Girls to Envy Me. New and Selected Poems of Orit Gidali. Translated Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.

Six Songs for Tamar by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Harold Schimmel, in Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems. Sheep Meadow Press.

Stop your sorrowing, suffering soul from Vulture in a Cage. Poems by Solomon Ibn Gavirol. translated by Raymond P. Sheindlin. Archipelago Press, 2017.

Music:

Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds

For this Yom Kippur, we read a section of S. Y. Agnon's Twofold translated by Jeffrey Saks.

Text:

Twofold, by S. Y. Agnon, trans. Jeffrey Saks, in The Outcast and Other Tales. Toby Press, 2017

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the ten days known as the Days of Awe. Today we feature works by Yehuda Amichai and Ibn Gavirol fitting of these Days of Repentance.

Text:

The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, edited by Robert Alter. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015. Vulture in a Cage. Poems of Ibn Gavirol. Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Archipelago Books, 2016

Music:

Exploring the Convoluted Singularity by OKAM vs ps

Next week, from Sunday night until Wednesday at sunset, we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year. This year, Marcela focuses on the figure of Isaac, son of Abraham, because the Torah readings for both days of the holiday focus on Sarah's conceiving and giving birth to Isaac, Hagar's banishment into the desert, and also on the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah.

Text:

Amir Gilboa, "Isaac," translated by Arieh Sachs in The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, ed. Stanley Burnshaw, T. Carmi, et. al. "Sarah Laughed Again," and "Isaac in Reverse" from Twenty Girls to Envy Me. New and Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, translated by Marcela Sulak. University of Texas press, 2016. "Hagar" by Yocheved Bat-Miriam, translated by Zvi Jagendrof, in The Defiant Muse. Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. Ed. Shirly Kaufman, et al. The Feminist Press, 1999.

Music:

Avinu Malkeinu by Barbara Streisand Avinu Malkeinu (feat. Maria Katz) by Andrey Makarevich & Евгений Борец Avinu Malkeinu by Lior

Previous Rosh Hashanah Episodes:

2017 https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2017/09/20/fear-and-glory-rosh-hashanahs-unetanneh-tokef/ 2016 https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2016/09/28/hava-pinhas-cohen-poems-for-the-month-of-elul/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2016/10/05/poems-for-rosh-hashanah-and-yom-kippur/ 2015 https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/09/16/blowers-to-the-shofar-souls-to-the-firing-line/ https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/09/09/free-admission-to-rosh-hashanah/ 2014 https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/09/17/rivka-miriam-on-asking-forgiveness-israel-in-translation/ https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/09/24/haim-gouris-piyyut-for-rosh-hashanah-israel-in-translation/

Today we feature poems translated this past spring and summer by some of Marcela's translation seminar students at Bar-Ilan University. After studying and discussing various translation theories, and becoming familiar with different poetic traditions and styles, these graduate and undergraduate students chose a poet and translated their work.

The poems in this episode were translated by Aya Abu Riash, Yavni Bar-Yam, and Hiba Jiryis.

Text:

"Bigger Than All Words" by Nizzar Qabbani, translated by Aya Abu Riash

"The Big Billybong" by Roy "Chicky" Arad, translated by Yavni Bar-Yam

"A Prayer to the New Year" by Fadwa Tuqan, translated by Hiba Jiryis

This episode features a short story written by Sheikha Helawy, a Bedouin woman living in Jaffa. The story, published on the Short Story Project, was originally written in Arabic and was translated by Basma Ghalayini.

Helawy was born in the unmarked Bedouin village of El-Roi, on the outskirts of the city of Haifa. Helawy currently works as a supervisor and advisor at the Institute for Democratic Education in Israel. Her Arabic-language publications, published in Amman, Jordan, include two books of short stories, as well as a book of poetry. Her work has also been translated into French, German, and Hebrew.

Text:

Sheikah Helawy, "R.A. Looks for His Eyes," translated from Arabic by Basma Ghalayini.

David Avidan was born in Tel Aviv where he lived and worked as a self-described "poet, painter, filmmaker, publicist, and playwright." He studied literature and philosophy during a short stint at Hebrew University.

Avidan was often attacked by poetry critics who criticized him as being egocentric, chauvinistic, and technocratic. In an interview, he proclaimed: "My arena is the entire planet. Israel is but a small piece of land. I don't work in Tel Aviv. I work from Tel Aviv."

The poems read in today's episode are translated by Tsippi Keller, from the new collection Futureman.

Text:

David Avidan, Futureman translated by Tsippi Keller, introduced by Anat Weisman. Phoneme Media, 2017.

Roy Hasan was born in 1983 in Hadera, Israel and is the author of two collections of poetry – The Dogs that Barked in our Childhood were Muzzled (Tangiers, 2014) and Golden Lions (Tangiers, 2016).

Michele Rosenthal translated several of Hasan's poems and says of Hasan, "He challenges the cultural gatekeepers to look beyond the traditional topics, tropes and metaphors toward a different, more inclusive version of Hebrew poetry that reflects the lived experience of those that have been traditionally left outside of the canon."

Text:

Roy Hasan, If There'll be Peace all the Arsim will Come, translated by Ron Makleff

Roy Hasan, "The State of Ashkenaz," and "Four in the Morning," translated by Michele Rosenthal

Music:

Yemen Blues - Tonight I'll Be Pretty Ft. Mariem Hassan