Israel in Translation

Yesterday and today we commemorate Yom Hazikaron —Memorial Day— in Israel.

In 1948 the poet Haim Gouri fought as a deputy company commander in the Palmach Negev Brigade and wrote a poem commemorating the fighters who accompanied the convoys and fell at Bab el Wad.

We read from it on today's episode.

Text:

Haim Gouri, "Bab El Wad," translated by Vivian Eden

Music:

"Bab El Wad," Haim Gouri, sung by Shoshana Damari, music by Shmuel Fershko

"Bab El Wad," Haim Gouri, sung by Yafa Yarkoni

Before she died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank said: "Despite everything, I believe that people are, at heart, really good."

In honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, host Marcela Sulak takes a fresh look at the young diarist whose words inspired the world.

Texts:

The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. By Anne Frank. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Translated by Susan Massotty. Bantam Books.

Music:

The Whole Story Soundtrack: Epilogue. Composed by Graeme Revell and Orchestrated by Tim Simonec.

This week we continue exploring Robert Alter's translation of the Bible and sacred poetry by looking at The Song of Songs, which is traditionally read on the Shabbat of the intermediate days of Passover before the morning Torah reading, or on the morning of the seventh day.

Robert Alter's historic one-man translation of the entire Hebrew Bible is like two worlds at once, the heavens and the earth, with the translation above and the commentary below. One can spend a lifetime in either of these worlds.

Text:

Robert Alter, Strong As Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel. A Translation with Commentary. W. W. Norton & Company. 2015

This week and next, during Passover, we'll be exploring Robert Alter's translation of the beginning of Exodus, the basis for the Passover story. Next week we'll approach the Song of Songs, which is traditionally recited during the days of Passover.

Robert Alter's historic one-man translation of the entire Hebrew Bible is like two worlds at once, the heavens and the earth, with the translation above and the commentary below. One can spend a lifetime in either of these worlds.

Text:

Robert Alter's Bible: A Symposium By Ronald Hendel, Aviya Kushner, Shai Held, David Bentley Hart, Adele Berlin, Adam Kirsch. Jewish Review of Books, 2019. Winter 2019

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. W. W. Norton & Company.

Bracha Serri was born in 1942 in San'a, Yemen, and brought to Israel in a mass exodus of Jews from Yemen soon after the State was established. She often adopts the first person voice of a Yemenite woman, crushed between an oppressive patriarchal background and the discriminatory nature of her everyday life, as in the poem "Dish."

Serri studied linguistics and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition to her writing, Sari established her own publishing house, the Or HaGanuz publishing house. Her books are known for their innovative design. Her own poetry is intertextual, not only for its Biblical references, but for its dialogue with Yeminite culture, feminism, politics, as well as religion.

Text:

Bracha Serri, "Aliza Says," translated by Rachel Zvia Back. The Defiant Muse. Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. Ed. Shirly Kaufman, et al. New York: The Feminist Press, 1999.

Bracha Serri, "No More Important Men," translated by Yaffah Berkovits Murciano, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, Indiana University Press, Number 11, Spring 5766/2006

Bracha Serri, "I am the Daughter of Lot," "Jerusalem and San'a," "To Hold the World," trans. Yonina Borvick and Ammiel Alcalay & "Dish," translated by Yaffah Berkovits Murciano, Keys to the Garden. New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay, San Francisco: City Lights 1996.

Born in Umm Al-Fahm, Ayman Agbaria is a researcher, poet, playwright, social activist, and a senior lecturer in the department of leadership and policy in education at the University of Haifa.

Several of Agbaria's poems, written in Arabic, have been translated into Hebrew, and have been well received. Among the themes found in his poetry are the extreme alienation from the self that of living as a religious and linguistic minority in Israel can produce.

Text:

Ayman Agbaria, various poems at Poetry International Rotterdam

Today we commemorate the life of Ella Bat Tsion, who passed away a month ago. We begin the episode with the poem, "I waited with Endless Patience," translated by Lisa Katz. It comes from her last book, After, which was published in 2000.

Text:

Ella Bat Tsion, "I waited with Endless Patience." Translated by Lisa Katz. After published in 2000.

On this Purim, we turn to Robert Alter's excellent new translation, Strong as Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel.

Robert Alter writes that the Book of Esther, unlike any other book of the Bible, seems to have been written primarily for entertainment. Alter notes:

"It has variously been described as a farce, a burlesque, a satire, a fairy tale, and a carnivalesque narrative, and it is often quite funny, with sly sexual comedy playing a significant role. The portrait of King Ahasuerus and the Persian court makes no pretense of serious correspondence to historical reality, as the original audience surely must have known. The Persian emperors were famous for their tolerance toward ethnic minorities—a policy clearly enunciated in the Cyrus Cylinder—and so Ahasuerus's accepting Haman's plan to massacre all the Jews of the realm is a manifest fantasy."

Text:

Strong As Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel, A Translation with Commentary. W. W. Norton & Company.

This week we feature an excerpt from Shani Boianjiu's novel, "The People of Forever Are Not Afraid," published in 2012 in English.

The novel is told in a series of vignettes narrated by three young Israeli women – Lea, Avishag and Yael – following their high school years in a small northern village, through their enlistment in the Israeli Defence Force where they train marksmen, guard a border and man a checkpoint. The novel follows them into their twenties.

Text:

Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, Hogarth; First Edition (September 11, 2012)

In this week's episode, we will consider Israeli Love poetry through the lens of Barbara Goldberg's new book, Transformation: The Poetry of Translation, which has just come out this year, after winning the Valentin Krustev Award for Translation.

Goldberg calls her volume "a small anthology of Israeli poets writing on love and war." Among the 62 poets represented, nearly all are alive and currently writing today. She says of them, that they "are men and women, old and young, natives of Israel and foreign born, secular and religious, straight and gay; each, in his or her individual way, represents Israel and reflects the diversity of its faces."

Text:

Barbara Goldberg, Transformation: The Poetry of Translation. Poet's Choice, 2019.