Israel in Translation

Host Marcela Sulak reads Aharon Shabtai's poem 'Our Land' (translated by Peter Cole), which features a kind of 'afterlife' Tel Aviv:

... Soon we will all / meet in the Tel Aviv below—Weinstein the milkman, / and Haim the iceman,Solganik / and the staff at the dry-goods co-op:Hannah and Frieda and Tzitron; / and the one-armed manfrom the clothing store / at the cornernear Café Ditze...

Aharon Shabtai was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv and spent his childhood on Kibbutz Merhavia. He’s the brother of Yaakov Shabtai, author of Past Continuous.

His poetry’s incredibly intimate references to his personal life have made Shabtai a controversial figure among contemporary Israeli poets and critics. He’s also an outspoken critic of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories, and of human rights violations. Here's the ending of 'Nostalgia' (translated by Peter Cole):

And when it’s all over,my dear, dear reader,on which benches will we have to sit,those of us who shouted “Death to the Arabs!”and those who claimed they “didn’t know”?

Texts:

War & Love, Love & War: New and Selected Poems, translated by Peter Cole (New Directions) October 29, 2010.

J’Accuse, translated by Peter Cole (New Directions) 2003.

Music:

'Next week' - Lyrics by Aharon Shabtai, performed by Benny Berman

'Redy Redy' - Lyrics by Aharon Shabtai, music by Jack in the Box

Host Marcela Sulak reads Aharon Shabtai's poem 'Our Land' (translated by Peter Cole), which features a kind of 'afterlife' Tel Aviv:

... Soon we will all / meet in the Tel Aviv below—
Weinstein the milkman, / and Haim the iceman,
Solganik / and the staff at the dry-goods co-op:
Hannah and Frieda and Tzitron; / and the one-armed man
from the clothing store / at the corner
near Café Ditze...

Aharon Shabtai was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv and spent his childhood on Kibbutz Merhavia. He’s the brother of Yaakov Shabtai, author of Past Continuous.

His poetry’s incredibly intimate references to his personal life have made Shabtai a controversial figure among contemporary Israeli poets and critics. He’s also an outspoken critic of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories, and of human rights violations. Here's the ending of 'Nostalgia' (translated by Peter Cole):

And when it’s all over,
my dear, dear reader,
on which benches will we have to sit,
those of us who shouted “Death to the Arabs!”
and those who claimed they “didn’t know”?

Texts:

War & Love, Love & War: New and Selected Poems, translated by Peter Cole (New Directions) October 29, 2010.

J’Accuse, translated by Peter Cole (New Directions) 2003.

Music:

'Next week' - Lyrics by Aharon Shabtai, performed by Benny Berman

'Redy Redy' - Lyrics by Aharon Shabtai, music by Jack in the Box

Blessed be He who made me woman

created of nothing!

Blessed be He who hasn't made me man

who never dies

and is not born.

So began the mornings of Shin Shifra, born in Bnei Brak in 1931, who turns the traditional Jewish Orthodox morning prayer up-side-down.

Shin Shifra’s poetry is steeped in Orthodox religious practice, befitting her home life and background. But it portrays a feminine and feminist focus, as in the poem 'Sabbath Prayer,' translated by Tsipi Keller and read by host Marcela Sulak:

"Let there be in the house a troop of toddlers... Let them bring in mud / from the garden and I will yell at them / let them quarrel and call each other names / and they will give me strength / like the angels of the recitation of Shema / and my forefathers will be named in them."

Text:

Poets on the Edge. An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. Selected and translated by Tsipi Keller. SUNY Press (2008).

Music:

Hagar Kadima - 'Stop' (2011), lyrics by Shin Shifra, performed by Etty BenZaken.

Gil Shohat - 'Songs of Bathsheba' (2005), lyrics by Shin Shifra.

Blessed be He who made me woman

created of nothing!

Blessed be He who hasn't made me man

who never dies

and is not born.

So began the mornings of Shin Shifra, born in Bnei Brak in 1931, who turns the traditional Jewish Orthodox morning prayer up-side-down. 

Shin Shifra’s poetry is steeped in Orthodox religious practice, befitting her home life and background. But it portrays a feminine and feminist focus, as in the poem 'Sabbath Prayer,' translated by Tsipi Keller and read by host Marcela Sulak:

"Let there be in the house a troop of toddlers... Let them bring in mud / from the garden and I will yell at them / let them quarrel and call each other names / and they will give me strength / like the angels of the recitation of Shema / and my forefathers will be named in them."

Text:

Poets on the Edge. An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. Selected and translated by Tsipi Keller. SUNY Press (2008).

Music:

Hagar Kadima - 'Stop' (2011), lyrics by Shin Shifra, performed by Etty BenZaken.

Gil Shohat - 'Songs of Bathsheba' (2005), lyrics by Shin Shifra.

Winter is the rainy season in sunny Israel, and in general we welcome the rare, rain-filled clouds. Tuvya Ruebner's poems are full of clouds in Rachel Tzvia Back's wonderful new translation of his selected poems, In the Illuminated Dark.

After losing his entire family to Auschwitz-Berkenau, Ruebner made it to Mandate Palestine. He married Ada Klein from his native Slovakia and had a daughter with her in 1949. A few months later Ada was killed in a bus accident that seriously injured Tuvya and forced him into clerical work on the kibbutz where he lived with his daughter. He later married pianist Galila Jizreeli, and the language of his daily life changed from German to Hebrew. They had two sons but in 1983 the younger disappeared in South America.

Ruebner's poetry articulates this cycle of loss and regeneration. Host Marcela Sulak reads from his heartrending poem 'The Memory' - the memory of a young boy's family "vanishing in the mist" on a train - and from the poem 'My Little Sister,' in which "The blackbird became a cloud / my little sister like a cloud become. / The cloud that covers my life."

Text:

In the Illuminated Dark. Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner. Translated and introduced by Rachel Tzvia Back. Hebrew Union College Press, 2014.

Music:

'Cloud' by Tuvia Ruebner, sung by Avitayl Pasternak

'Mayn Shvester Khaye' - Lyrics by Binen Heler; music by Chava Alberstein; performed by Chava Alberstein & the Klezmatics

Winter is the rainy season in sunny Israel, and in general we welcome the rare, rain-filled clouds. Tuvya Ruebner's poems are full of clouds in Rachel Tzvia Back's wonderful new translation of his selected poems, In the Illuminated Dark.

After losing his entire family to Auschwitz-Berkenau, Ruebner made it to Mandate Palestine. He married Ada Klein from his native Slovakia and had a daughter with her in 1949. A few months later Ada was killed in a bus accident that seriously injured Tuvya and forced him into clerical work on the kibbutz where he lived with his daughter. He later married pianist Galila Jizreeli, and the language of his daily life changed from German to Hebrew. They had two sons but in 1983 the younger disappeared in South America.

Ruebner's poetry articulates this cycle of loss and regeneration. Host Marcela Sulak reads from his heartrending poem 'The Memory' - the memory of a young boy's family "vanishing in the mist" on a train - and from the poem 'My Little Sister,' in which "The blackbird became a cloud / my little sister like a cloud become. / The cloud that covers my life."

Text:

In the Illuminated Dark. Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner. Translated and introduced by Rachel Tzvia Back. Hebrew Union College Press, 2014.

Music:

'Cloud' by Tuvia Ruebner, sung by Avitayl Pasternak

'Mayn Shvester Khaye' - Lyrics by Binen Heler; music by Chava Alberstein; performed by Chava Alberstein & the Klezmatics

Tonight we’ll end 2014 with a blast of fire; we hear Dahlia Ravikovitch's own recitation of her poem 'Dress of Fire,' which host Marcela Sulak translates for us (using Chana and Ariel Bloch's translation). We also listen to some of Ravikovitch's poems set to music.

Born in the Ramat Gan suburb of Tel Aviv in 1936, Ravikovitch wrote fiction, children’s books, and 12 collections of poetry, which have been awarded many literary prizes. After the 1982 Lebanese War, she began writing protest poetry. Two of her most powerful are 'Hovering at a Low Altitude,' and 'You Can’t Kill a Baby Twice.' She was active in the Israeli peace movement until she died in 2005 of sudden heart irregularities.

Texts:

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, edited by J. D. McClatchy (1996).

Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana Bloch & Chana Kronfeld. W.W. Norton & Co. (2009).

Music:

'Tmuna' [picture] by Dahlia Ravikovitch, performed by Yehudith Ravitz

'Lebeitech shuvi' [Return home] by Dahlia Ravikovitch, performed by Chava Alberstein

Tonight we’ll end 2014 with a blast of fire; we hear Dahlia Ravikovitch's own recitation of her poem 'Dress of Fire,' which host Marcela Sulak translates for us (using Chana and Ariel Bloch's translation). We also listen to some of Ravikovitch's poems set to music.

Born in the Ramat Gan suburb of Tel Aviv in 1936, Ravikovitch wrote fiction, children’s books, and 12 collections of poetry, which have been awarded many literary prizes. After the 1982 Lebanese War, she began writing protest poetry. Two of her most powerful are 'Hovering at a Low Altitude,' and 'You Can’t Kill a Baby Twice.' She was active in the Israeli peace movement until she died in 2005 of sudden heart irregularities.

Texts:

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, edited by J. D. McClatchy (1996).

Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana Bloch & Chana Kronfeld. W.W. Norton & Co. (2009).

Music:

'Tmuna' [picture] by Dahlia Ravikovitch, performed by Yehudith Ravitz

'Lebeitech shuvi' [Return home] by Dahlia Ravikovitch, performed by Chava Alberstein

As Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas Eve tonight, we travel to the Galilee through the eyes of the novelist Anton Shammas, a native of this region of Israel.

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.

The New York Times named Arabesques one of the seven best works of fiction in 1988.

All this against the backdrop of Christmas songs sung by Fairuz, one of the most respected and admired Lebanese singers alive.

Texts:

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

As Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas Eve tonight, we travel to the Galilee through the eyes of the novelist Anton Shammas, a native of this region of Israel.

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.

The New York Times named Arabesques one of the seven best works of fiction in 1988.

All this against the backdrop of Christmas songs sung by Fairuz, one of the most respected and admired Lebanese singers alive.

Texts:

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