Israel in Translation

Last night in Israel we celebrated the first night of Hanukkah: The festival of lights, or the festival of the dedication of the temple.

From dreidels to doughnuts, host Marcela Sulak takes us through the holiday's customs and traditions, and then lets historian Titus Flavius Josephus, born Yosef ben Matityahu, tell the story in his own words.

In Hanukkah's spirit of 'light,' Marcela reads a poem by Admiel Kosman, 'A Small Pillar of Fire,' translated specifically for this podcast by Lisa Katz.

Texts:

Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus. Loeb Classical Library (Harvard Press).

“Pillar of Fire” by Admiel Kosman, translated by Lisa Katz. From הגענו לאלוהים, Kibbutz Hameuchad, 1998.

Traditional Hanukkah songs used in the show:

Sevivon, Sov, Sov, SovKad KatanHaNerot HalaluBanu Khoshech Legaresh

Last night in Israel we celebrated the first night of Hanukkah: The festival of lights, or the festival of the dedication of the temple.

From dreidels to doughnuts, host Marcela Sulak takes us through the holiday's customs and traditions, and then lets historian Titus Flavius Josephus, born Yosef ben Matityahu, tell the story in his own words.

In Hanukkah's spirit of 'light,' Marcela reads a poem by Admiel Kosman, 'A Small Pillar of Fire,' translated specifically for this podcast by Lisa Katz.

Texts:

Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus. Loeb Classical Library (Harvard Press).

“Pillar of Fire” by Admiel Kosman, translated by Lisa Katz. From הגענו לאלוהים, Kibbutz Hameuchad, 1998.

Traditional Hanukkah songs used in the show:

Sevivon, Sov, Sov, Sov
Kad Katan
HaNerot Halalu
Banu Khoshech Legaresh

Yona Wallach was born in 1944 in Tel Aviv and never travelled outside Israel's borders. Eleven collections of her poetry have been published during her lifetime and posthumously, and many of her songs have been put to music. She also wrote for and joined a rock band. Though she died in 1985 of breast cancer at the age of 41, she is still very much present in Tel Aviv.

Never one to shy away from controversy, her provocative (some would say pornographic) poem 'Tefillin' created a public storm and ruined her close friendship with fellow poet Zelda. Wallach certainly made an astonishing impact on Hebrew literature during her short life, ushering in a feminist revolution in Israeli poetry and revolutionizing literary Hebrew to include the sounds of the twentieth century.

In her poem 'Hebrew,' from which host Marcela Sulak reads, she calls the Hebrew language a "sex maniac" because all nouns have a gender: "She wants to know who’s speaking / almost a vision almost an image / what’s forbidden in the whole Torah / or at least to see the sex / Hebrew peeks through they keyhole."

Text:

Yona Wallach, Let the Words: Selected Poems, translated by Linda Stern Zisquit. The Sheep Meadow Press, 2006.

Music:

'Ayala' by Yona Wallach. Performed by Alma.

'I couldn’t do anything with it' by Yona Wallach. Performed by Ninet Tayeb.

Yona Wallach was born in 1944 in Tel Aviv and never travelled outside Israel's borders. Eleven collections of her poetry have been published during her lifetime and posthumously, and many of her songs have been put to music. She also wrote for and joined a rock band. Though she died in 1985 of breast cancer at the age of 41, she is still very much present in Tel Aviv.

Never one to shy away from controversy, her provocative (some would say pornographic) poem 'Tefillin' created a public storm and ruined her close friendship with fellow poet Zelda. Wallach certainly made an astonishing impact on Hebrew literature during her short life, ushering in a feminist revolution in Israeli poetry and revolutionizing literary Hebrew to include the sounds of the twentieth century.

In her poem 'Hebrew,' from which host Marcela Sulak reads, she calls the Hebrew language a "sex maniac" because all nouns have a gender: "She wants to know who’s speaking / almost a vision almost an image / what’s forbidden in the whole Torah / or at least to see the sex / Hebrew peeks through they keyhole."

Text:

Yona Wallach, Let the Words: Selected Poems, translated by Linda Stern Zisquit. The Sheep Meadow Press, 2006.

Music:

'Ayala' by Yona Wallach. Performed by Alma.

'I couldn’t do anything with it' by Yona Wallach. Performed by Ninet Tayeb.

Host Marcela Sulak traces the life of poet Ronny Someck, from his origins in Baghdad to Israeli transit camps to Tel Aviv, through his poetry.

Life in the transit camps in the 1950s was difficult, as described in the poem 'Poverty Line,' in which Someck says, "The only line I saw was the horizon and under it everything / looked poor."

He went on to study Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. At 63 he now lives in Ramat Gan, and has been called "a poet of Tel Aviv" for poems like 'Seven Lines on the Miraculous Yarkon,' from which Marcela reads today.

Someck’s poetry has been translated into 41 languages, and it’s won the Prime Minister’s Award and the Yehuda Amichai Award. He’s recorded three CDs with the musician Elliot Sharp, and has published two children’s books with his daughter, Shirley.

Text:

Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. San Fransico: City Lights Press, 1996.

Further reading:

The Fire Stays in Red: Poems by Ronny Someck, translated by Moshe Dor and Barbara Goldberg. University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Music:

Salima Murad Pasha - This is not just on your behalf

'Poverty Line' by Ronny Someck, sung by Hanan Yovel

'Glida' by Ronny Someck, sung by Talma for The Middle East Project

Host Marcela Sulak traces the life of poet Ronny Someck, from his origins in Baghdad to Israeli transit camps to Tel Aviv, through his poetry.

Life in the transit camps in the 1950s was difficult, as described in the poem 'Poverty Line,' in which Someck says, "The only line I saw was the horizon and under it everything / looked poor."

He went on to study Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. At 63 he now lives in Ramat Gan, and has been called "a poet of Tel Aviv" for poems like 'Seven Lines on the Miraculous Yarkon,' from which Marcela reads today.

Someck’s poetry has been translated into 41 languages, and it’s won the Prime Minister’s Award and the Yehuda Amichai Award. He’s recorded three CDs with the musician Elliot Sharp, and has published two children’s books with his daughter, Shirley.

Text:

Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. San Fransico: City Lights Press, 1996.

Further reading:

The Fire Stays in Red: Poems by Ronny Someck, translated by Moshe Dor and Barbara Goldberg. University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Music:

Salima Murad Pasha - This is not just on your behalf

'Poverty Line' by Ronny Someck, sung by Hanan Yovel

'Glida' by Ronny Someck, sung by Talma for The Middle East Project

Sayed Kashua is perhaps most known for the wildly popular satirical television series he created, Arab Labor ( a phrase that in Hebrew - avoda aravit - usually implies 'shoddy or second-rate work'). The show holds a mirror up to the racism and ignorance on both sides of Israel's ethnic divide, and is the first program to present Palestinian characters speaking Arabic on primetime Israeli television.

Kashua was born in 1975 in Tira, and attended the prestigious Israeli Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem. He lived in Beit Safafa, a neighborhood divided by the Green line straddling East and West Jerusalem, and then he moved with his family to a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

His novels have won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature, and the Bernstein Prize. His 2002 novel Dancing Arabs has been turned into a semi-autobiographical film, Dancing Arabs, directed by Eran Riklis and written by Kashua himself. The film's Israeli release was delayed due to the Gaza war this summer, but it's finally now showing in Israeli cinemas. In the aftermath of last week’s tensions in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and other parts of the country, Kashua’s message is surely increasingly urgent.

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from his 2010 novel Second Person Singular, which examines the identity of Arab Israelis who have assimilated into mainstream Israeli culture. It has a complex dual plot, and among the characters are a young Arab-Israeli and a Jewish-Israeli who actually exchange identities.

Text:

Second Person Singular, by Sayed Kashua. Translated by Mitch Ginsberg. Grove Press (2013).

Further reading:

Dancing Arabs, by Syed Kashua. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger. Grove Press (2004).

Let it be Morning, by Syed Kashua. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger. Grove Press (2006).

Music:

Arab Labor (TV show) - Theme song

Dancing Arabs (film) - Original Soundtrack

Sayed Kashua is perhaps most known for the wildly popular satirical television series he created, Arab Labor ( a phrase that in Hebrew - avoda aravit - usually implies 'shoddy or second-rate work'). The show holds a mirror up to the racism and ignorance on both sides of Israel's ethnic divide, and is the first program to present Palestinian characters speaking Arabic on primetime Israeli television.

Kashua was born in 1975 in Tira, and attended the prestigious Israeli Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem. He lived in Beit Safafa, a neighborhood divided by the Green line straddling East and West Jerusalem, and then he moved with his family to a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

His novels have won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature, and the Bernstein Prize. His 2002 novel Dancing Arabs has been turned into a semi-autobiographical film, Dancing Arabs, directed by Eran Riklis and written by Kashua himself. The film's Israeli release was delayed due to the Gaza war this summer, but it's finally now showing in Israeli cinemas. In the aftermath of last week’s tensions in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and other parts of the country, Kashua’s message is surely increasingly urgent.

Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from his 2010 novel Second Person Singular, which examines the identity of Arab Israelis who have assimilated into mainstream Israeli culture. It has a complex dual plot, and among the characters are a young Arab-Israeli and a Jewish-Israeli who actually exchange identities.

Text:

Second Person Singular, by Sayed Kashua. Translated by Mitch Ginsberg. Grove Press (2013).

Further reading:

Dancing Arabs, by Syed Kashua. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger. Grove Press (2004).

Let it be Morning, by Syed Kashua. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger. Grove Press (2006).

Music:

Arab Labor (TV show) - Theme song

Dancing Arabs (film) - Original Soundtrack

Benjamin Tammuz’s sculpture 'Memorial for the Pilots' rises above Independence Park, north of the Hilton Beach Hotel on Tel Aviv's promenade. It’s a tall, stylized bird dedicated to the pilots of the 1948 war.

Tammuz wasn’t just a sculptor, though; he was also a painter, novelist, journalist, critic, and editor. Born in Russia in 1919, he immigrated with his parents to Mandate Palestine at the age of five. He joined the Haaretz editorial board in 1948, and from 1971 to 1975 served as cultural attaché at the Israeli embassy in London. He died in Tel Aviv in 1989.

Tammuz's short story 'The Swimming Race' appears in the anthology 50 Stories from Israel, edited by Zisi Stavi. It begins as the narrator, the young Jewish child of a widowed doctor, is summoned with his mother to the summer home and orange groves of a grateful Arab patient, who is called “the grandmother.” The narrator loses a swimming match to the 19-year-old Abdul-Karim, a member of "the grandmother's" family, and proclaims that when he grows up he will win. The swimming race becomes a kind of metaphor for relations between the land’s Jews and Arabs, which painfully disintegrate before our eyes. The tale finishes in 1948, in the same orange grove in which it began.

Text:

50 Stories from Israel. An Anthology. Edited by Zisi Stavi. Yedioth Ahronoth and Chemed Books (2007 & 2010).

Further reading:

A Castle in Spain (1973), translation of Be-Sof Ma'arav (1966).

A Rare Cure (stories, 1981), translation of Angioxyl, Terufah Nedirah (1973).

Minotaur (1981), translation of the Hebrew-language novel of the same title (1980).

Requiem for Na'aman (1982), translation of Requiem Le-Na'aman (1978).

The Orchard (novella, 1984), translation of Ha-Pardes (1972).

Music:

Chana Ahroni - Land of the Pomegranate

Chana Ahroni - Cacha Merakdim Beisrael

Benjamin Tammuz’s sculpture 'Memorial for the Pilots' rises above Independence Park, north of the Hilton Beach Hotel on Tel Aviv's promenade. It’s a tall, stylized bird dedicated to the pilots of the 1948 war.

Tammuz wasn’t just a sculptor, though; he was also a painter, novelist, journalist, critic, and editor. Born in Russia in 1919, he immigrated with his parents to Mandate Palestine at the age of five. He joined the Haaretz editorial board in 1948, and from 1971 to 1975 served as cultural attaché at the Israeli embassy in London. He died in Tel Aviv in 1989.

Tammuz's short story 'The Swimming Race' appears in the anthology 50 Stories from Israel, edited by Zisi Stavi. It begins as the narrator, the young Jewish child of a widowed doctor, is summoned with his mother to the summer home and orange groves of a grateful Arab patient, who is called “the grandmother.” The narrator loses a swimming match to the 19-year-old Abdul-Karim, a member of "the grandmother's" family, and proclaims that when he grows up he will win. The swimming race becomes a kind of metaphor for relations between the land’s Jews and Arabs, which painfully disintegrate before our eyes. The tale finishes in 1948, in the same orange grove in which it began.

Text:

50 Stories from Israel. An Anthology. Edited by Zisi Stavi. Yedioth Ahronoth and Chemed Books (2007 & 2010).

Further reading:

A Castle in Spain (1973), translation of Be-Sof Ma'arav (1966).

A Rare Cure (stories, 1981), translation of Angioxyl, Terufah Nedirah (1973).

Minotaur (1981), translation of the Hebrew-language novel of the same title (1980).

Requiem for Na'aman (1982), translation of Requiem Le-Na'aman (1978).

The Orchard (novella, 1984), translation of Ha-Pardes (1972).

Music:

Chana Ahroni - Land of the Pomegranate

Chana Ahroni - Cacha Merakdim Beisrael