Israel in Translation

This episode originally aired on April 23, 2015.

This is how Amos Oz, in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, describes what happened the night the UN voted to establish a Jewish state:

"... my father said to me as we wandered there, on the night of November 29, 1947, me riding on his shoulders among rings of dancers and merrymakers, not as though he was asking me but as though he knew and was hammering in what he knew with nails: Just you look, my boy, take a very good look, son, take it all in, because you won't forget this night to your dying day and you'll tell your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren about this night when we're long gone."

As we celebrate Israel's birthday, host Marcela Sulak reads from Oz's iconic description of the events surrounding the struggle for Israeli independence.

Text: Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Translated by Nicholas De Lange. Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

Music: Ofra Haza - Eli Eli (lyrics by Hannah Szenes) City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra - Hatikvah

This episode originally aired on April 23, 2015. 

This is how Amos Oz, in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, describes what happened the night the UN voted to establish a Jewish state:

"... my father said to me as we wandered there, on the night of November 29, 1947, me riding on his shoulders among rings of dancers and merrymakers, not as though he was asking me but as though he knew and was hammering in what he knew with nails: Just you look, my boy, take a very good look, son, take it all in, because you won’t forget this night to your dying day and you’ll tell your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren about this night when we’re long gone."

As we celebrate Israel's birthday, host Marcela Sulak reads from Oz's iconic description of the events surrounding the struggle for Israeli independence.

Text:
Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Translated by Nicholas De Lange. Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

Music:
Ofra Haza - Eli Eli (lyrics by Hannah Szenes)
City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra - Hatikvah

On this episode, host Marcela Sulak interviews Adriana X. Jacobs about her work translating Vietnamese-Israeli author Vaan Nguyen. Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the University of Oxford and recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation of The Truffle Eye, Nguyen's debut collection. Sulak and Jacobs discuss Vaan Nguyen's unique life story, the relationship between translator and writer, and Radiohead.

Here is an excerpt from Jacobs' translation of the poem Mekong River:

"Tonight I moved between three beds like I was sailing on the Mekong and whispered the beauty of the Tigris and Euphrates Under an endless moment looking under the left tit I have a hole and you fill it with other men. Notes of Tiger beer on your body."

Text: "Culture Stain" & "Word Mound": Drunken Boat "Mekong River": Gulf Coast "Packing Poem," Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Lauren McClung, Cathy Linh Che, and Ocean Vuong, to be published by W.W. Norton in 2017.

Music: Jinsang - Genesis Creep - Radiohead - Brooklyn Duo feat. Escher Quartet Cover Exit Music (For a film) - Radiohead Ru con - Anbu Thanh

On this episode, host Marcela Sulak interviews Adriana X. Jacobs about her work translating Vietnamese-Israeli author Vaan Nguyen. Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the University of Oxford and recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation of The Truffle Eye, Nguyen's debut collection. Sulak and Jacobs discuss Vaan Nguyen's unique life story, the relationship between translator and writer, and Radiohead.

Here is an excerpt from Jacobs' translation of the poem Mekong River:

"Tonight I moved between three beds
like I was sailing on the Mekong
and whispered the beauty of the Tigris and Euphrates
Under an endless moment
looking
under the left tit
I have a hole
and you fill it
with other men.
Notes of Tiger beer on your body."

Text:
“Culture Stain” & “Word Mound”: Drunken Boat
“Mekong River”: Gulf Coast
“Packing Poem,” Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Lauren McClung, Cathy Linh Che, and Ocean Vuong, to be published by W.W. Norton in 2017.

Music:
Jinsang - Genesis
Creep - Radiohead - Brooklyn Duo feat. Escher Quartet Cover
Exit Music (For a film) - Radiohead
Ru con - Anbu Thanh

Host Marcela Sulak breaks 'Israel in Translation' custom by devoting this episode to Nell Zink's English language novel, Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats. Nell Zink, an American, began a correspondence with Avner Shats after she moved to Israel in 1997. Zink was unable to read Shats' Hebrew, but she resolved to write a book that would mirror his remarkable style. For fifteen years, Shats was the only reader of her literary output. Zink once said, "Avner and I just began writing for each other. The first thing I wrote for him was a novel called Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats. It never crossed my mind anyone else would ever read my writing."

Here is an excerpt from Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats:

"Mary and I went down to the old port to look at Mr. Pickwick. The old port of Tel Aviv, with its dusty cats, scabby dogs, flaking concrete, deep and opaque berths for ghost ships, etc, is surely worthy of treatment in pose-poetry, that bastard child of television. The style of montage, of snapshots succeeding each other, is similar to the way an inexpensive documentary, where the tripod is carried from place to place while the camera is turned off, might be perceived by someone who is not really paying attention. Certain parties I have attended present themselves to my memory with the benefit of similar editing techniques."

Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink's faux-translation of Shats's 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia ("Sailing Towards the Sunset"). Work by Avner Shats was previously featured on the show.

Text: "Private Novelist," by Nell Zink. Harper Collins Publishers, 2016.

Music: Homeward Bound Instrumental - Simon and Garfunkel The Boxer (Instrumental Cover) - Whalebone

Host Marcela Sulak breaks 'Israel in Translation' custom by devoting this episode to Nell Zink's English language novel, Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats. Nell Zink, an American, began a correspondence with Avner Shats after she moved to Israel in 1997. Zink was unable to read Shats' Hebrew, but she resolved to write a book that would mirror his remarkable style. For fifteen years, Shats was the only reader of her literary output. Zink once said, "Avner and I just began writing for each other. The first thing I wrote for him was a novel called Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats. It never crossed my mind anyone else would ever read my writing."

Here is an excerpt from Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats:

"Mary and I went down to the old port to look at Mr. Pickwick. The old port of Tel Aviv, with its dusty cats, scabby dogs, flaking concrete, deep and opaque berths for ghost ships, etc, is surely worthy of treatment in pose-poetry, that bastard child of television. The style of montage, of snapshots succeeding each other, is similar to the way an inexpensive documentary, where the tripod is carried from place to place while the camera is turned off, might be perceived by someone who is not really paying attention. Certain parties I have attended present themselves to my memory with the benefit of similar editing techniques."

Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink’s faux-translation of Shats’s 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia ("Sailing Towards the Sunset"). Work by Avner Shats was previously featured on the show.

Text:
"Private Novelist," by Nell Zink. Harper Collins Publishers, 2016.

Music:
Homeward Bound Instrumental - Simon and Garfunkel
The Boxer (Instrumental Cover) - Whalebone

Jews ushered in 8 days of Passover with the Seder on Monday night. The holiday has often been misunderstood throughout the non-Jewish world. On this episode, host Marcela Sulak reads excerpts from S.Y. Agnon's story The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel, a bizarre account of Jewish blood libel occurring around Passover. The story is translated by Evelyn Abel and is from the Agnon collection Forevermore & Other Stories, edited by Jeffrey Saks.

Here is an excerpt from The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel:

"One day several of the wickedest men of the nations of the world who were envious of Rabbi Gadiel's father came together and said: 'How long will this Jew usurp us and rob us of our livelihood? The time has come to remove him from this world.' One said to the other.' But for fear of the authorities we would swallow him alive.' And one stood and said 'These Jews' Passover is approaching; come let us take a corpse and put it in this Jew's house and say, 'One of ours he killed, for his Matzot he killed, to bake him in blood he killed,' and we will go and call the judges of the town and the elders of the community, and they will arrest him with iron chains and lead him out to be executed, and we will have our revenge on him, and moreover we will have his wealth and divide it amongst ourselves. "

Text: "The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel," by S.Y Agnon, translated by Evelyn Abel, Forevermore & Other Stories. Edited by Jeffrey Saks. The Toby Press, 2016.

Music: Itzhak Perlman - Nigun Leonid Kogan - Nigun

Jews ushered in 8 days of Passover with the Seder on Monday night. The holiday has often been misunderstood throughout the non-Jewish world. On this episode, host Marcela Sulak reads excerpts from S.Y. Agnon's story The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel, a bizarre account of Jewish blood libel occurring around Passover. The story is translated by Evelyn Abel and is from the Agnon collection Forevermore & Other Stories, edited by Jeffrey Saks.

Here is an excerpt from The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel:

"One day several of the wickedest men of the nations of the world who were envious of Rabbi Gadiel's father came together and said: 'How long will this Jew usurp us and rob us of our livelihood? The time has come to remove him from this world.' One said to the other.' But for fear of the authorities we would swallow him alive.' And one stood and said 'These Jews' Passover is approaching; come let us take a corpse and put it in this Jew's house and say, 'One of ours he killed, for his Matzot he killed, to bake him in blood he killed,' and we will go and call the judges of the town and the elders of the community, and they will arrest him with iron chains and lead him out to be executed, and we will have our revenge on him, and moreover we will have his wealth and divide it amongst ourselves. "

Text:
"The Tale of Little Rabbi Gadiel," by S.Y Agnon, translated by Evelyn Abel, Forevermore & Other Stories. Edited by Jeffrey Saks. The Toby Press, 2016.

Music:
Itzhak Perlman - Nigun
Leonid Kogan - Nigun

Currently out of school for the Pesach holiday, Israel in Translation host Marcela Sulak's daughter Amalia dishes out some reading recommendations to her fellow younger lovers of literature. She clearly knows a good story when she reads one; enjoy!

Currently out of school for the Pesach holiday, Israel in Translation host Marcela Sulak's daughter Amalia dishes out some reading recommendations to her fellow younger lovers of literature. She clearly knows a good story when she reads one; enjoy!