Israel in Translation

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak returns to the work of Ibn Gabirol, one of the outstanding figures during the Jewish Golden Age in Moorish Spain. She reads a new edition of his work called Vulture in a Cage, published in 2016 by Archipeligo Books. The translation by Raymond P. Scheindlin interestingly adheres to Gabirol's original rhyme scheme and rhythm of the Hebrew. Here is an excerpt from one of his poems depicting the relationship between God and the speaker as an erotic relationship:

"Greetings to you, red-cheeked friend, greetings to you from the girl with the pomegranate brow. Run to meet her—your beloved— hurry out to rescue her! Charge, like David, valiant king when he took Rabbah, the city." He: "Why, my beauty, why just now do you choose to rouse my love, set your lovely voice to ringing like a priest's robe hung with bells? When the time for loving comes, then you'll see me hurrying. Then I will come down to you as on Mount Hermon drips the dew."

Born in Málaga in about 1022, Ibn Gabirol joined an intellectual circle of other Cordoban refugees. Protected by Gabirol's patron, whom Gabirol immortalized in poems of loving praise, the poet became famous for his religious hymns in Hebrew. At the time, the customary language of Andalusian literature was Arabic. At 16, he could rightly boast of being world famous.

You can access Marcela's first episode on Ibn Gabirol here.

Text: Vulture in a Cage. Poems by Solomon Ibn Gavirol, translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Archipeligo Books, 2016.

Music:מוכיח רע, סחרוף ברי-- השפתות אדומי רוח שפל לך דודי שלום לך יחידה מה

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak returns to the work of Ibn Gabirol, one of the outstanding figures during the Jewish Golden Age in Moorish Spain. She reads a new edition of his work called Vulture in a Cage, published in 2016 by Archipeligo Books. The translation by Raymond P. Scheindlin interestingly adheres to Gabirol's original rhyme scheme and rhythm of the Hebrew. Here is an excerpt from one of his poems depicting the relationship between God and the speaker as an erotic relationship:

"Greetings to you, red-cheeked friend,
greetings to you from the girl
with the pomegranate brow.
Run to meet her—your beloved—
hurry out to rescue her!
Charge, like David, valiant king
when he took Rabbah, the city.”
He:
“Why, my beauty, why just now
do you choose to rouse my love,
set your lovely voice to ringing
like a priest’s robe hung with bells?
When the time for loving comes,
then you’ll see me hurrying.
Then I will come down to you
as on Mount Hermon drips the dew."

Born in Málaga in about 1022, Ibn Gabirol joined an intellectual circle of other Cordoban refugees. Protected by Gabirol's patron, whom Gabirol immortalized in poems of loving praise, the poet became famous for his religious hymns in Hebrew. At the time, the customary language of Andalusian literature was Arabic. At 16, he could rightly boast of being world famous.

You can access Marcela's first episode on Ibn Gabirol here.

Text:
Vulture in a Cage. Poems by Solomon Ibn Gavirol, translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Archipeligo Books, 2016.

Music:
מוכיח רע, סחרוף ברי-- השפתות אדומי
רוח שפל
לך דודי שלום
לך יחידה מה

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poetry by Maya Tevet Dayan. Published in both Rachel Tzvia Back's translation and forthcoming translation by Ayelet Rose, they are Dayan's first poems to appear in English. Born in Tel Aviv, Maya Tevet Dayan grew up in Hod Hasharon and received her Ph.D at Tel Aviv University. Dayan's landscapes, covering childhood to adulthood and parenting, are characterized by attention to time and space. Here is a segment from her poem, Tides.

"Through all the births, through all the women who birthed one another until you were born, This pre-historic fear has now passed on o you, the fear that must never be named. Forming ripples in the dark. You're in the living room, in the empty moon, in abandonment, the child moves in her sleep, the dog is circling the kennel. If ever there was a critical time to caress a dog, that time is now."

Text:

"Sister" and "Hallow's Eve" in Modern Poetry in Translation, summer issue 2016. Translator: Rachel Tzvia Back Other poems translated by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb for the Hebrew library in Berlin Magazine for poetry and literature.

Music:Megazord - The Megazord Galit Wolf - Hana canaan bederech habait Yehudit Rabich - Shir lala sham בורדו - גשם יורד קורין אלאל - שיר לשירה

On this week's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poetry by Maya Tevet Dayan. Published in both Rachel Tzvia Back's translation and forthcoming translation by Ayelet Rose, they are Dayan's first poems to appear in English. Born in Tel Aviv, Maya Tevet Dayan grew up in Hod Hasharon and received her Ph.D at Tel Aviv University. Dayan's landscapes, covering childhood to adulthood and parenting, are characterized by attention to time and space. Here is a segment from her poem, Tides.

"Through all the births,
through all the women who birthed one another until
you were born,
This pre-historic fear has now passed on
o you, the fear that must never
be named. Forming
ripples in the dark.
You're in the living room, in the empty moon,
in abandonment, the child moves in her sleep, the dog is circling the kennel.
If ever there was a critical time to caress a dog,
that time is now."

Text:

“Sister” and “Hallow’s Eve” in Modern Poetry in Translation, summer issue 2016. Translator: Rachel Tzvia Back
Other poems translated by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb for the Hebrew library in Berlin Magazine for poetry and literature.

Music:
Megazord - The Megazord
Galit Wolf - Hana canaan bederech habait
Yehudit Rabich - Shir lala sham
בורדו - גשם יורד
קורין אלאל - שיר לשירה

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Yonatan Berg. He is youngest recipient ever to win the Yehuda Amichai Poetry Prize, and his work has only begun to be published in Joanna Chen's English translation. As Chen points out, Yonatan Berg's poetry strides the lines that divide this country in so many ways, with honesty and compassion.

"On Sabbath afternoon the air is quiet. We stroll towards the Sephardi synagogue, the hills filled with afternoon and beyond, the Dead Sea shimmers, burning with salt, thick with death. Rabbi Avi Sasson stands before us, his voice filling the curves of the stone with psalms. We sit down. Summer switches off and we give ourselves to the same cave where praises cover the decay of our lives – our parents arguing, journeys through Ramallah, the idea that around us hangs a permanent, burning growl of injustice: the shifting of Israel and Palestine's tectonic plates."

Yonatan Berg was born in 1981 in Jerusalem to a religious family and grew up in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. He served in the Israeli Defense Force and was engaged in the active combat that many of his poems witness.

Text: "After a Night in the Alley of Worshipers" & "Unity," translated by Joanna Chen, in Lunch Ticket "The Mothers," translated by Joanna Chen, in Contemporary Works in Translation. Oomph Press

Music:הניגון של הרב שמואל בצלאל אלטהויז Shlomo Carlebach - The Krakow Nigun Shlomo Carlebach - Eso Einai

Producer: Ariella Plachta Technical producer: Tammy Goldenberg

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Yonatan Berg. He is youngest recipient ever to win the Yehuda Amichai Poetry Prize, and his work has only begun to be published in Joanna Chen’s English translation. As Chen points out, Yonatan Berg’s poetry strides the lines that divide this country in so many ways, with honesty and compassion.

"On Sabbath afternoon the air is quiet.
We stroll towards the Sephardi synagogue, the hills
filled with afternoon and beyond, the Dead Sea
shimmers, burning with salt, thick with death.
Rabbi Avi Sasson stands before us,
his voice filling the curves of the stone
with psalms. We sit down. Summer switches off
and we give ourselves to the same cave
where praises cover the decay
of our lives – our parents arguing, journeys through Ramallah,
the idea that around us hangs
a permanent, burning growl of injustice:
the shifting of Israel and Palestine’s tectonic plates."

Yonatan Berg was born in 1981 in Jerusalem to a religious family and grew up in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. He served in the Israeli Defense Force and was engaged in the active combat that many of his poems witness.

Text:
“After a Night in the Alley of Worshipers” & “Unity,” translated by Joanna Chen, in Lunch Ticket
“The Mothers,” translated by Joanna Chen, in Contemporary Works in Translation. Oomph Press

Music:
הניגון של הרב שמואל בצלאל אלטהויז
Shlomo Carlebach - The Krakow Nigun
Shlomo Carlebach - Eso Einai 

Producer: Ariella Plachta
Technical producer: Tammy Goldenberg

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads Between Life and Death, the final novel of Yoram Kaniuk, who died in 2013. The celebrated book is a type of auto-fiction in which real life and memoir blend with style and language and humor. It's a stream of consciousness journey that takes place when the narrator, also named Yoram Kaniuk, lies in coma after surgery.

"After these things—after disease and after death and after pain and after laughter and after betrayal and after old age and after grace and love and after a foolish son the heaviness of his mother and a woman of valor who stayed with me in beauty in the abyss—after all that I woke up into a half sleep and stayed there four months. And it was bad and it was good and it was sad and it was lost and it was a miracle and it was what it was and it wasn't what it wasn't and it could have been and I recalled it was night. A night sealed up in its night. I spent it in bad dreams and woke up dazed with sleep, I was healthy, in my house at 13 Bilu Street, and suddenly I recalled that at night I'd dreamed of screwdrivers. I had no need of a screwdriver and so I didn't search and I didn't find it, but in the place where the screwdriver could have been if there had been one, I found an old map of Tel Aviv, and since the map was already there, I left it and went to drink coffee and I ate a croissant they call corasson here and returned home, to the map, and thought of looking for the street where I lived."

Kaniuk's work was featured on a previous episode, which can be found here.

Text: Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Restless Books, September 2016

Music:Arik Einstein - White City שלישיית קצה השדה - ערב בא Benny Berman & Aharon Shabtai - Life 1959

On today's episode, host Marcela Sulak reads Between Life and Death, the final novel of Yoram Kaniuk, who died in 2013. The celebrated book is a type of auto-fiction in which real life and memoir blend with style and language and humor. It's a stream of consciousness journey that takes place when the narrator, also named Yoram Kaniuk, lies in coma after surgery.

"After these things—after disease and after death and after pain and after laughter and after betrayal and after old age and after grace and love and after a foolish son the heaviness of his mother and a woman of valor who stayed with me in beauty in the abyss—after all that I woke up into a half sleep and stayed there four months. And it was bad and it was good and it was sad and it was lost and it was a miracle and it was what it was and it wasn’t what it wasn’t and it could have been and I recalled it was night. A night sealed up in its night. I spent it in bad dreams and woke up dazed with sleep, I was healthy, in my house at 13 Bilu Street, and suddenly I recalled that at night I’d dreamed of screwdrivers. I had no need of a screwdriver and so I didn’t search and I didn’t find it, but in the place where the screwdriver could have been if there had been one, I found an old map of Tel Aviv, and since the map was already there, I left it and went to drink coffee and I ate a croissant they call corasson here and returned home, to the map, and thought of looking for the street where I lived."

Kaniuk's work was featured on a previous episode, which can be found here.

Text:
Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Restless Books, September 2016

Music:
Arik Einstein - White City
שלישיית קצה השדה - ערב בא
Benny Berman & Aharon Shabtai - Life 1959

This week we're broadcasting a timely re-run of a past episode. As Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas, we travel to the Galilee through the eyes of the novelist Anton Shammas, a native of the Galilee.

In honor of Nazareth, the childhood home of Jesus, host Marcela Sulak reads three excerpts from Shammas' novel Arabesques, which has been called, "a history of its author's youth and the memoir of a family and a fabled region - Galilee." One of the most striking features of the novel is how the life of Jesus and the miracles of Nazareth are woven into the fabric of daily life. All this against the backdrop of Christmas songs sung by Fairuz, one of the most respected and admired Lebanese singers alive.

Text: Arabesques, by Anton Shammas. Translated by Vivien Eden. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Music:I Believe - lyrics by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl and Al Stillman in 1953. Sung by Fairuz. Talj Talja [Snow, Snow] - Fairuz Silent Night - Fairuz

This week we're broadcasting a timely re-run of a past episode. As Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas, we travel to the Galilee through the eyes of the novelist Anton Shammas, a native of the Galilee. 

In honor of Nazareth, the childhood home of Jesus, host Marcela Sulak reads three excerpts from Shammas' novel Arabesques, which has been called, “a history of its author’s youth and the memoir of a family and a fabled region - Galilee.” One of the most striking features of the novel is how the life of Jesus and the miracles of Nazareth are woven into the fabric of daily life. All this against the backdrop of Christmas songs sung by Fairuz, one of the most respected and admired Lebanese singers alive.

Text:
Arabesques, by Anton Shammas. Translated by Vivien Eden. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Music:
I Believe - lyrics by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl and Al Stillman in 1953. Sung by Fairuz.
Talj Talja [Snow, Snow] - Fairuz
Silent Night - Fairuz