Israel in Translation

Shai Agnon is the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Agnon being awarded the prize, Toby Press has been releasing Agnon's work in English translation. Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from Agnon's introduction to the "Book of the State," one of his little-known political satires.

"... The State is a metaphysical concept rendered into something physical which feigns meta-physicality. When you attempt to approach it as a meta-physical entity it slips back into physicality; if one considers it in physical terms it suddenly reverts into meta-physicality."

In this introduction, we see the role Agnon envisioned for himself as someone standing at the crossroads - a traditional figure between eastern European traditional Orthodoxy and modern Israeli life.

Text: "Introduction," translated by Sara Daniel, in The Orange Peel and Other Satires. S. Y. Agnon. With annotations and a foreword by Jeffrey Saks. Toby Press, 2015.

Music: Avishai Cohen Trio - Dreaming; Beyond; Variations in G Minor

Shai Agnon is the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Agnon being awarded the prize, Toby Press has been releasing Agnon's work in English translation. Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from Agnon's introduction to the "Book of the State," one of his little-known political satires.

"... The State is a metaphysical concept rendered into something physical which feigns meta-physicality. When you attempt to approach it as a meta-physical entity it slips back into physicality; if one considers it in physical terms it suddenly reverts into meta-physicality."

In this introduction, we see the role Agnon envisioned for himself as someone standing at the crossroads - a traditional figure between eastern European traditional Orthodoxy and modern Israeli life.

Text:
"Introduction," translated by Sara Daniel, in The Orange Peel and Other Satires. S. Y. Agnon. With annotations and a foreword by Jeffrey Saks. Toby Press, 2015.

Music:
Avishai Cohen Trio - Dreaming; Beyond; Variations in G Minor

It's summer holiday season, and most of us will probably be asked when we arrive at the airport, "Did you pack it yourself?" - referring, of course, to our luggage. Israeli poet Orit Gidali answers her interrogation like this:

"Of all the questions to ask: Did you pack it yourself? Yes, by myself. It was hard, I said, but it is harder to fear that it will never come. I am not beautiful, you see, and the heart is the size of a fist."

Today's podcast features the newly-released collection, Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, translated and introduced by none other than our host Marcela Sulak. Gidali's poetry appears to focus on domestic issues like airport questions and Shabbat preparations, but Marcela explains that she's actually reworking the geopolitical on an individual scale. Gidali has published three collections of poetry, as well as a children's book.

Text: Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, translated by Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.

Music: Eshet Chayil (Traditional) Keren Peles - Shir LeAsaf Philip Glass - Metamorphosis 1

It's summer holiday season, and most of us will probably be asked when we arrive at the airport, "Did you pack it yourself?" - referring, of course, to our luggage. Israeli poet Orit Gidali answers her interrogation like this:

"Of all the questions
to ask: Did you pack it yourself?
Yes, by myself.
It was hard, I said,
but it is harder to fear that it will never come.
I am not beautiful, you see,
and the heart is the size of a fist."

Today's podcast features the newly-released collection, Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, translated and introduced by none other than our host Marcela Sulak. Gidali's poetry appears to focus on domestic issues like airport questions and Shabbat preparations, but Marcela explains that she's actually reworking the geopolitical on an individual scale. Gidali has published three collections of poetry, as well as a children's book.

Text:
Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, translated by Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.

Music:
Eshet Chayil (Traditional)
Keren Peles - Shir LeAsaf
Philip Glass - Metamorphosis 1

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Tel Aviv-based poet Tahel Frosh. Her debut poetry collection, from which these poems have been chosen, was published in 2014. Translator Adriana Jacobs calls it one of the most urgent and political books of poetry published in recent years. Here is an excerpt from "The Mountains of Spain":

"All of this is so impossible that it holds back thoughts of love and lust and my will to breathe the air after rain so much that I'll lose myself in a book called Cocaine Nights and get mad when I read about people with money, so much money that they retire to the mountains of Spain and sunbathe in fancy villas at the age of thirty-eight."

Frosh's stunningly crafted poems, which include a number of prose poems, offer a critique of Israel's free-market economy, the housing crisis, and globalization through the perspective of Israel's working class. She has degrees in law and psychology, and is currently working on a doctorate in literature. She co-edited the anthology Avodat Gilui ("Unveiling Work") and is a member of the art and social justice collective Cultural Guerrilla.

Texts: "The Mountains of Spain," and "Accountant," translated by Adriana X Jacobs in World Literature Today.

Music: Tahel Frosh - Shirey Zman Maya Belzitsman & Matan Efrat - Yafa Kalevana (orig. by Evyatar Banai) Tahel Frosh - Shir Tshuka

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Tel Aviv-based poet Tahel Frosh. Her debut poetry collection, from which these poems have been chosen, was published in 2014. Translator Adriana Jacobs calls it one of the most urgent and political books of poetry published in recent years. Here is an excerpt from "The Mountains of Spain":

"All of this is so impossible
that it holds back thoughts of love and
lust and my will to breathe the air
after rain so much
that I’ll lose myself in a book
called Cocaine Nights
and get mad when I read about people with
money, so much money
that they retire to the mountains of Spain
and sunbathe in fancy villas
at the age of thirty-eight."

Frosh’s stunningly crafted poems, which include a number of prose poems, offer a critique of Israel’s free-market economy, the housing crisis, and globalization through the perspective of Israel’s working class. She has degrees in law and psychology, and is currently working on a doctorate in literature. She co-edited the anthology Avodat Gilui ("Unveiling Work") and is a member of the art and social justice collective Cultural Guerrilla.

Texts:
“The Mountains of Spain,” and “Accountant,” translated by Adriana X Jacobs in World Literature Today.

Music:
Tahel Frosh - Shirey Zman
Maya Belzitsman & Matan Efrat - Yafa Kalevana (orig. by Evyatar Banai)
Tahel Frosh - Shir Tshuka

Host Marcela Sulak reads from the novel Death of a Monk by Israeli novelist and playwright Alon Hilu. It's an innovative retelling of the 1840 Damascus Affair, a blood libel against the Jewish community of Damascus, from the perspective of Aslan Farhi, a young Damascene Jew who ends up being at the center of the blood libel accusations.

"My happy friend, while I impart the these words to you, and as you record them with your industrious fingers and with expression in your large brown eyes, I would ask your indulgence in reviving for a few moments the former, innocent image of Aslan, the image of a hollow-cheeked youth, whose days were as roses, plagued by persecution at the hands of members of his household."

Published in 2006, Death of a Monk won the President's Prize for debut novel. Hilu's second novel, The House of Rajani, was published in English in 2010.

Text: Death of a Monk by Alon Hilu, translated by Evan Fallenberg. Harvill Secker, 2006.

Music: Derya Türkan - Nikriz Peşrev Traditional - Üsküdara Giderken Rifat Bey - Prayer for Sultan Murad V Sultan Abdulaziz - Hicazkar Sirto

Host Marcela Sulak reads from the novel Death of a Monk by Israeli novelist and playwright Alon Hilu. It's an innovative retelling of the 1840 Damascus Affair, a blood libel against the Jewish community of Damascus, from the perspective of Aslan Farhi, a young Damascene Jew who ends up being at the center of the blood libel accusations.

"My happy friend, while I impart the these words to you, and as you record them with your industrious fingers and with expression in your large brown eyes, I would ask your indulgence in reviving for a few moments the former, innocent image of Aslan, the image of a hollow-cheeked youth, whose days were as roses, plagued by persecution at the hands of members of his household."

Published in 2006, Death of a Monk won the President’s Prize for debut novel. Hilu's second novel, The House of Rajani, was published in English in 2010.

Text:
Death of a Monk by Alon Hilu, translated by Evan Fallenberg. Harvill Secker, 2006.

Music:
Derya Türkan - Nikriz Peşrev
Traditional - Üsküdara Giderken
Rifat Bey - Prayer for Sultan Murad V
Sultan Abdulaziz - Hicazkar Sirto

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Mei-Tal Nadler, whose work distorts and defamiliarizes the Israeli locale in ways that are political, lyrical, and alarming. This is the beginning of "The Voices of Snipers on the Israel Defense Forces Radio Station*":

"The voices of snipers can't be heard over the radio waves of the IDF Station. But they chose songs for us before they left. What songs do snipers like? I focus all my listening on their musical choices, till my focus becomes a gaze. Perhaps that's how snipers are trained..."

Nadler received the 2014 Teva Prize in Poetry and the 2008 Ministry of Culture award for emerging poets. Her debut collection, "Experiments in electricity," was published in 2013. She is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University and a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Text: Three poems by Mei-Tal Nadler in World Literature Today, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back.

Music: Rockfour - Avshalom Vaadat Charigim - Ein Li Makom Ray Charles - Hit The Road Jack ABBA - The Winner Takes It All Talking Heads - Psycho Killer

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the poetry of Mei-Tal Nadler, whose work distorts and defamiliarizes the Israeli locale in ways that are political, lyrical, and alarming. This is the beginning of "The Voices of Snipers on the Israel Defense Forces Radio Station*":

"The voices of snipers can’t be heard over the radio waves of the IDF Station.
But they chose songs for us before they left. What songs do snipers like?
I focus all my listening on their musical choices, till my focus
becomes a gaze. Perhaps that’s how snipers are trained..."

Nadler received the 2014 Teva Prize in Poetry and the 2008 Ministry of Culture award for emerging poets. Her debut collection, "Experiments in electricity," was published in 2013. She is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University and a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Text:
Three poems by Mei-Tal Nadler in World Literature Today, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back.

Music:
Rockfour - Avshalom
Vaadat Charigim - Ein Li Makom
Ray Charles - Hit The Road Jack
ABBA - The Winner Takes It All
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer