Israel in Translation

In honor of the holy month of Ramadan observed by Muslims worldwide, host Marcela Sulak reads an essay by Iman Jmal, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University. Jmal is from Jatt in northern Israel and she writes about preparing a Ramadan meal with her mother, the shopping for which they must travel through a checkpoint.

Here is an excerpt from her story "The Meal":

"When I call upon the soldiers and say that Mom forgot her ID, they get angry. One soldier says "Then go back home and find your mom's ID and she will stay with us until you come again and show us that she is really an Israeli citizen!" My stomach would digest anything in the world but not this sentence. We argue with them for a while and say that they could check on the computer, investigate mom's ID number that she recited to them with a great Hebrew accent, but it is all in vain."

Music: Approaching the Bridge - The Bridge Project Notre Wagon - The Bridge Project

In honor of the holy month of Ramadan observed by Muslims worldwide, host Marcela Sulak reads an essay by Iman Jmal, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University. Jmal is from Jatt in northern Israel and she writes about preparing a Ramadan meal with her mother, the shopping for which they must travel through a checkpoint.

Here is an excerpt from her story "The Meal":

"When I call upon the soldiers and say that Mom forgot her ID, they get angry. One soldier says "Then go back home and find your mom's ID and she will stay with us until you come again and show us that she is really an Israeli citizen!" My stomach would digest anything in the world but not this sentence. We argue with them for a while and say that they could check on the computer, investigate mom's ID number that she recited to them with a great Hebrew accent, but it is all in vain."

Music:
Approaching the Bridge - The Bridge Project
Notre Wagon - The Bridge Project

This week Jews celebrate Shavuot, the celebration of harvest and receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. To commemorate the festival, host Marcela Sulak reads from Israeli author Michal Govrin's novel The Name in Barbara Harshav's translation. Shavuot is a corollary to Passover, when Jews begin counting the seven weeks of Omer. In the story, that tradition is mentioned as its main character Amalia, a weaver and daughter of Holocaust survivors, takes refuge in an ultra-orthodox seminary.

Here is an excerpt from Govrin's novel:

"Sometimes it seems as if nothing had ever happened, as if everything were only a vision going off, evaporating in silence, swept away beyond the border of the end of the Counting, mixing us up together in a wind bellowing from the jaw of the shofar, confusing us in an impeccable unity. As if everything is already so far away from what will be done perhaps at the dawn of hte Shavuot, movements of leaving that will suddenly hasten, binding the pages, lifting the Torah curtain. Going..."

Text: The Name, Michael Govrin. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Riverhead Books,1998.

Music: Csardas - Vittorio Monti

This week Jews celebrate Shavuot, the celebration of harvest and receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. To commemorate the festival, host Marcela Sulak reads from Israeli author Michal Govrin's novel The Name in Barbara Harshav's translation. Shavuot is a corollary to Passover, when Jews begin counting the seven weeks of Omer. In the story, that tradition is mentioned as its main character Amalia, a weaver and daughter of Holocaust survivors, takes refuge in an ultra-orthodox seminary. 

Here is an excerpt from Govrin's novel:

"Sometimes it seems as if nothing had ever happened, as if everything were only a vision going off, evaporating in silence, swept away beyond the border of the end of the Counting, mixing us up together in a wind bellowing from the jaw of the shofar, confusing us in an impeccable unity. As if everything is already so far away from what will be done perhaps at the dawn of hte Shavuot, movements of leaving that will suddenly hasten, binding the pages, lifting the Torah curtain. Going..."

Text:
The Name, Michael Govrin. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Riverhead Books,1998.

Music:
Csardas - Vittorio Monti

Dorit Rabinyan's All the Rivers is about a Israeli women and Palestinian man who meet in New York. An immediate best seller in Israel, the novel was named one of the ten best books of 2014 by Ha'aretz newspaper and won the Bernstein Award for Literature. In January 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Education banned the book from high school curriculum.

Marcela reads parts of this novel, including this excerpt from :

""Here's the thing about me." He put his right hand on his chest like I had done. "There are three things I don't know how to do." "Only three? That's not bad." "Three things a man should know." "Should?" "Yes. A man should know how to drive, and I don't. I've never driven." "Walla?" I said, expressing my surprise. He grinned as he had on the previous times I'd used Arabic words like walla or achla. I held up my thumb, starting to count his flaws: "You don't drive." "I don't know how to shoot a gun." Unintentionally, my thumb and finger formed a childish pistol. "Yes . . ." "And swimming. I can't swim." He saw my face fall. "I was born and raised in Hebron," he said as if by way of apology. "There's no sea there.""

Text: All The Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Music: Medjool live on the roof Jimi Hendrix - 12 String Blues

Dorit Rabinyan's All the Rivers is about a Israeli women and Palestinian man who meet in New York. An immediate best seller in Israel, the novel was named one of the ten best books of 2014 by Ha’aretz newspaper and won the Bernstein Award for Literature. In January 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Education banned the book from high school curriculum.

Marcela reads parts of this novel, including this excerpt from :

"“Here’s the thing about me.” He put his right hand on his chest like I had done. “There are three things I don’t know how to do.”
“Only three? That’s not bad.”
“Three things a man should know.”
“Should?”
“Yes. A man should know how to drive, and I don’t. I’ve never driven.”
“Walla?” I said, expressing my surprise.
He grinned as he had on the previous times I’d used Arabic words like walla or achla.
I held up my thumb, starting to count his flaws: “You don’t drive.”
“I don’t know how to shoot a gun.”
Unintentionally, my thumb and finger formed a childish pistol.
“Yes . . .”
“And swimming. I can’t swim.” He saw my face fall. “I was born and raised in Hebron,” he said as if by way of apology.
“There’s no sea there.”"

Text:
All The Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Music:
Medjool live on the roof
Jimi Hendrix - 12 String Blues

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems written by Batsheva Dori-Carlier from her debut collection Soul Search, which won the 2015 Helicon Ramy Ditzanny Prize for emerging authors. Batsheva Dori-Carlier was born in Jerusalem to parents who left Iraq in the 1950s. For 18 years, she worked as a macrobiotics teacher, chef and consultant in Israel, Belgium, Germany and England. Critics say her poetry "lifts life situations into the realm of art."

Here is an excerpt from Neve Shalom, about an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa:

"Under an olive tree in Neve Shalom it's impossible to write "olive tree" without murdering some dove it's impossible to write "Neve Shalom" without entering into a war. It's impossible to say "I saw a prickly pear bush this morning on the way to meditation" without quarreling with the thorns that words send beyond their stone walls, ours, whose olive tree is this and why is each leaf so significant, stuck in my mouth like the bitter word of the war that I didn't start and I can't end."

In the episode, Batsheva Dori-Carlier also sings a rendition of an Um Kultum.

Text: All poems by Batsheva Dori-Carlier, translated by Lisa Katz, from Poetry International

Music: Umm Kulthum - Enta Omry Umm Kulthum - Alf Leila

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems written by Batsheva Dori-Carlier from her debut collection Soul Search, which won the 2015 Helicon Ramy Ditzanny Prize for emerging authors. Batsheva Dori-Carlier was born in Jerusalem to parents who left Iraq in the 1950s. For 18 years, she worked as a macrobiotics teacher, chef and consultant in Israel, Belgium, Germany and England. Critics say her poetry "lifts life situations into the realm of art.”

Here is an excerpt from Neve Shalom, about an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa:

"Under an olive tree in Neve Shalom it’s impossible
to write “olive tree” without murdering some dove it’s impossible to write
“Neve Shalom” without entering into a war.
It’s impossible to say “I saw a prickly pear bush this morning
on the way to meditation” without quarreling with the thorns
that words send beyond their stone walls, ours,
whose olive tree is this and why is each leaf so significant, stuck in my mouth
like the bitter word of the war that I didn’t start and I can’t end."

In the episode, Batsheva Dori-Carlier also sings a rendition of an Um Kultum.

Text:
All poems by Batsheva Dori-Carlier, translated by Lisa Katz, from Poetry International

Music:
Umm Kulthum - Enta Omry
Umm Kulthum - Alf Leila

For this upcoming Lag B'Omer, the Jewish holiday of light celebrated by lighting bonfires, Marcela reads work by poet Agi Mishol. Here's a glimpse of his very own Lag B'Omer bonfire:

"You piss on my love as if it were a bonfire, extinguishing it ember by ember with the arrogance of the perfect crime..."

One of Israel's most popular living poets, Agi Mishol's work has been described thus by literary scholar Dan Miron:

"In contemporary Israeli poetry, intense, white flames appear against the dark, burning background, whose smoke is greater than the fire… Agi Mishol's poetry is one of the brightest of these flames."

Texts: "Sermon at Latrun" translated by Joanna Chen "Wax Flowers" translated by Joanna Chen

Further Reading: Look There, translated by Lisa Katz, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, 2006

Music: Rivka Zohar - Rabi Akivah (lyrics by Dahlia Ravikovitch) Maya Mishol - Rakavet Tachana

This episode originally aired on May 25, 2016.

For this upcoming Lag B'Omer, the Jewish holiday of light celebrated by lighting bonfires, Marcela reads work by poet Agi Mishol. Here's a glimpse of his very own Lag B'Omer bonfire:

"You piss on my love as if
it were a bonfire, extinguishing it
ember by ember with the arrogance
of the perfect crime..."

One of Israel's most popular living poets, Agi Mishol's work has been described thus by literary scholar Dan Miron:

"In contemporary Israeli poetry, intense, white flames appear against the dark, burning background, whose smoke is greater than the fire… Agi Mishol’s poetry is one of the brightest of these flames."

Texts:
“Sermon at Latrun” translated by Joanna Chen
“Wax Flowers” translated by Joanna Chen

Further Reading: Look There, translated by Lisa Katz, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, 2006

Music:
Rivka Zohar - Rabi Akivah (lyrics by Dahlia Ravikovitch)
Maya Mishol - Rakavet Tachana

This episode originally aired on May 25, 2016.