Israel in Translation

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 Culture in Tel Aviv.

The story opens with a Talmudic passage:

When Rav would visit the city of Darshish, he would announce: "Who will be mine for a day?" And when Rav Nachman would visit the city of Shachnetziv, he would announce: "Who will be mine for a day?"

Text: Ruth Calderon, A Bride for One Night. Talmudic Tales.

Translated by Ilana Kurshan. The Jewish Publication Society, 2014.

Music: משירי ארץ אהבתי" (לאה גולדברג / דפנה אילת) בביצוע חוה אלברשטיין"

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 courses, which attracted students from every department and were always fully enrolled. It was more than just their names, though. His courses were well conceived and well rounded. For all their incisiveness, their main strength lay in the aesthetic harmony of their superbly formulated interpretative models, which were easy to understand and absorb. In general, "elegant" was the adjective most commonly applied to anything bearing the imprint of Professor Andrew P. Cohen.

Music: Demian by Tatran

Text: Ruby Namdar, The Ruined House. Translated by Hillel Halkin. Harper Collins, 2017.

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 as via train, through landscapes, and through bodies, as in Samih Al-Qasim's poem "Rain on the Newsstand," translated from the Arabic by Idan Barir.

Here is "Rain on the Newsstand" by Samih Al-Qasim:

Sudden rain pouring on the morning papers rain, the ink flows from language to language the mannequin's features fade away from the cover as does the face of an athlete proud of his trophy the eyeliner melts in an actress' eyes the bloody red oozes and wounds open on the opinion page the small newsstand shuts its doors rain, on the last issue.

Music:

רכבת לצפון - אסף אמדורסקי רכבת לילה - משינה

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 to help holocaust survivors come to Palestine.

Gouri's first book of poetry, published in 1949, was heavily influenced by his experience in the Palmach during the war of 1948. His later books become more abstract.

Today's episode features poems from the volume Words in My Lovesick Blood, translated by Stanley Chyet.

This is an excerpt from the poem "Account":

And again, as always in the Land of Israel, the stones boil, earth gives no cover. And again my brothers call out from the depths.

Texts:

Haim Gouri, Words in My Lovesick Blood, translated, Stanley Chyet, Wayne State University, 1996. Poems translated by Linda Zisquit and T Carmi: Poetry International Rotterdam

Previous podcast:

Haim Gouri's Piyyut for Rosh Hashanah

Music:

רונה קינן - אני גר כעת בספר ישן

עינב ג׳קסון כהן - עקרתי אל עיר אחרת

ארז לב ארי - אולי זו רק פתיחה למשהו אחר

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 Palestine or had devoted their lives to building the country. But I hadn't lied. My big brother Imri really did go to Poland to get married for the homeland.

Text: Paper Bride by Naveal Semel. Translated by Sondra Silverston. Hybrid Publishers, 2012.

Previous podcast: And The Rat Laughed: Remembering Writer Nava Semel

Music: שלמה ארצי – באיזשהו מקום

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, translated by Cole from the original Hebrew:

Blessed are those who sow and do not reap— they shall wander in extremity. Blessed are the generous whose glory in youth has enhanced the extravagant brightness of days— who shed their accoutrements at the crossroads.

Text:Hymns and Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Music:Etti Ankri – Mi Yitneni Etti Ankri –Avdei Zman Etti Ankri –Yefe Nof

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; on humanity's relationship with God; on the understanding of human nature; on the need to forget in order to survive; and on the need to remember, nonetheless.

Here is an excerpt from the novel:

If you were going to hand me over to strangers, why did you bring me into the world?

Where is "there"?

Who's going to help me with my homework "there"?

Whose bed will I go to "there"?

And who will be with me "there"?

Who else will be "there"?

Why isn't "there" here?

Text: "And The Rat Laughed" by Nava Semel. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger (Hybrid Publishers 2008)

Links: The Sound of Her Steps The One Facing Us: Ronit Matalon's Family Album Tale of Two Friends: "Bliss" by Ronit Matalon In Memory of a Life: Aharon Appelfeld's "The Story of a Life"

Music: שלמה ארצי – בגרמניה לפני המלחמה

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. I stretch out my hands and feel the white flow coming straight into my palms. "Mother," I say. "What is it, my love?" The words that I had sought to describe the sensation have slipped away from me. Since I don't have words I sit there, open my eyes wide, and let the white night flow into me.

Music:

Little Bird (Instrumental) by Imogen Heap

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 glances. She was completely tone-deaf and couldn't tell the difference between the theme song from the nightly news and Bruce Springsteen, a Hebrew folk song and the overture to Don Giovanni. She heard it all as one cacophonous mess.

"It's because she has so much inner noise," Michel explained.

On one of his previous visits a few years earlier, he had accepted an invitation to join her on a tour of Gaza and had endured Channel 2 and Army Radio the whole way.

Text:

BLISS. By Ronit Matalon. Translated by Jessica Cohen. New York: Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt & Company, 2003.

Previous Podcasts:

The Sound of Her StepsThe One Facing Us

Music: How Deep Is The Ocean - Meredith D'Ambrosio It Might As Well Be Spring - Meredith D'Ambrosio Throw It Away - Abbey Lincoln Giant Steps - Meredith D'Ambrosio

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: Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers, edited by Miriyam Glazer. SUYNY Press, 2000. Music: כל יום מתחילה שנה – עפרה חזה Axcik Girl – The Bridge Project בית הבובות – שנה חדשה