Israel in Translation

In his essay, “The Desire to be Gisella,” Grossman ponders the root of our fear of the “other” in ourselves and in those we love, and he thinks of authorship as a mad rebellion against this fear. Text David Grossman, “The Desire to be Gisella.” Writing in the Dark, Essays on Politics and Literature. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

This week, Marcela takes a step back from the literature itself to look at the language of the words we use. The idea of the podcast, Israel in Translation, is that the works discussed were written originally in a language other than English—indeed, in the writer’s native language. But one of the realities of our age—or rather—one of the realities of literature—is that often poets and writers do not write in their first language. Or, if they do, this first language is not the language of the culture in which they find themselves. Marcela revisits the Granta Hebrew issue of the Ilanot Review to talk about Dory Manor’s The Language Beneath the Skin: A Meditation on Poetry and Mother Tongues.   Text Dory Manor. “The Language Beneath the Skin: A Meditation on Poetry and Mother Tongues” translated by Mitch Ginsburg. The Ilanot Review.

In 2014, historian Fania Salzberger Oz, and her father, the late writer Amos Oz, paired up to write a book which is “a nonfiction, speculative, raw, and occasionally playful attempt to say something a bit new on a topic of immense pedigree... the relationship of Jews with words.”

Set in a rural village prior to the creation of the state of Israel, The Blue Mountain describes a community of eastern European immigrants as they pioneer life in a new land. Narrated by Baruch, a grandson of one of the founding fathers of the village, the novel offers not only a fascinating account of the hardships experienced by the Jewish pioneers, but is also extremely funny and imaginative. It is arranged as a series of vignettes, narrated by Baruch, a mortician, who reflects on the many people he has buried in a remote village. Text The Blue Mountain. By Meir shalev. Translated by Hillel Halkin. Cannongate Books, 2001.

On this episode, Marcela features the poems of a fascinating writer whose pen name was Avot Yeshurun. He published his first book of poems in 1942, and his last book appeared in 1992, on the day before he died. Text “Memories are a House” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Leon Weiseltier, Poetry Magazine “The Son of the Wall” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Leon Weiseltier, Poetry Magazine “The Collection” by Avot Yeshurun. Translated by Harold Schimel, Poetry International Rotterdam “A Day Shall Come” by Avot Yeshurun, translated by A. Z. Foreman in Poems Found in Translation

Marcela shares the second installment of a three-part podcast on Ayalet Tsabari’s important and beautiful memoir, The Art of Leaving. Although it was written in English, Tsabari’s native language is Hebrew. This episode gives us a glimpse of Israelis from Yemen, whose stories are so rarely told. Text Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019.

On this episode, Marcela highlights The Lover, the first novel by A. B. Yehoshua, which he wrote in 1977. Yehoshua has been called the Israeli Faulkner, perhaps because of this novel. It is narrated from the point of view of each of its six main characters. Text The Lover by A. B. Yehoshua. Translated by Philip Simpson. Doubleday & Co., 1978. https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/07/22/a-b-yehoshuas-green-seas-and-yellow-continents/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2020/08/12/the-tunnel/

Meir Shalev has been featured on two previous episodes. Four Meals is his third of eight novels. He’s also published 7 works of nonfiction and 13 children’s books. Four Meals is the story of Zayde, his enigmatic mother Judith, and her three lovers. When Judith arrives in a small, rural village in Palestine in the early 1930s, three men compete for her. Globerman, the cunning, coarse cattle dealer who loves women, money, and flesh Jacob, owner of hundreds of canaries and host to the four meals which lends the book its narrative structure, and Moshe, a widowed farmer, who gives Zayde his home. During the four meals, which take place over several decades, Zayde slowly comes to understand why these three men consider him their son and why all three participate in raising him. Text Four Meals, by Meir Shalev. Translated by Barbara Harshav, 2000. https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2020/07/29/meir-shalevs-my-wild-garden/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/06/03/my-russian-grandmother-and-her-american-vacuum-cleaner-israel-in-translation/

On this episode, Marcela revisits Batya Gur, who introduced the murder mystery into Hebrew literature. Gur’s highbrow mysteries are often set in closed communities that mirror issues in the greater Israeli society. You can hear a previous podcast on her life and literary influence, as well as an excerpt from, Murder in Jerusalem, by following the link below. Text Murder on a Kibbutz. A communal Case. by Batya Gur. Translated by Dalya Bilu. Harper Perennial, 1994. Previous Episode on Batya Gur https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/10/29/the-israeli-detective-novel-israel-in-translation/

This book catapulted Ari Shavit into the international spotlight. The book was a New York Times best seller and listed by the Times in its “100 Notable Books of 2013.” The Economist named it as one of the best books of 2013 and it received the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award in History from the Jewish Book Council. It also won the Natan Book Award. Text My Promised Land, by Ari Shavit. Spiegel & Grau, 2013.

On this episode, Marcela reads an excerpt from Yaniv Iczkovits’s novel The Slaughterman’s Daughter: The Avenging of Mende Speismann by the Hand of her Sister Fanny. It is translated from the Hebrew by Orr Sharf. The protagonist of this book is the titular character, Fanny Keismann, who leaves her home and her wonderful husband, a cheesemaker, and their beloved children, to find her sister’s husband. Adventures and misadventures ensue. Text The Slaughterman’s Daughter, by Yaniv Iczkovits. Translated by Orr Sharf. Maclehose Press. Quercus, 2020.

Today, Marcela finishes the three-part series on Ayalet Tsabari’s wonderful memoir, The Art of Leaving, with her favorite thing: cooking! This episode unveils the secrets of Tsabari’s family kitchen. You’re going to want to take notes for this one! Text Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019

In her introduction to Vaan Nguyen’s collection, Adriana X. Jacobs writes, “Nguyen’s poetry may circulate in the Anglophone literary market as part of an increasingly visible Vietnamese literary diaspora… And yet, introducing Nguyen’s poetry to the Anglophone reader needs to account for the particularities of the Vietnamese experience in Israel without letting it entirely overshadow her work.” Between 1977 and 1979, approximately 360 Vietnamese refugees entered Israel, and of that number, about half left for the United States or Europe. Those who stayed were able to apply for Israeli citizenship, take on jobs, start families, and continue with their lives.  Nguyen’s parents were among these refugees. She was born in Ashkelon, Israel in 1982, one of five daughters. The family moved around and eventually settled in Jaffa Dalet, a working-class—and largely immigrant and Arab—neighborhood that is part of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality, “not the pastoral tourist part, but the section that is far from the sea,” Nguyen explains. Text The Truffle Eye, Vaan Nguyen. Translated by Adriana X. Jacobs. Zephyr Press; Nov. 2020 Previous Episode on Vaan Nguyen’s Work https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2017/04/26/sitting-with-strangeness-a-conversation-with-adriana-x-jacobs/

Have you seen the Crazy House on HaYarkon Street in Tel Aviv? It’s a highrise that looks like pink cement, with some metallic puffed cream lobbed at the front of it? Or at least that’s how it seems to Marcela. It used to look that way to the poet Lali Tsipi Michaeli, as well. Michaeli says “fear is what I felt as a child every time I drove with my parents in a car on Hayarkon Street. As the car was about to reach the “crazy house” (I called it the “scary”), I hid on the back seat floor and closed my eyes tightly. The house troubled the girl I was. Over the years it has become a Tel Aviv landscape and I have always had a certain aversion to it, a kind of traumatic childhood memory.” Text The Mad House by Lali Tsipi Michaeli, translated by Michael Simkin. Adelaide Books, 2020. Previous Episode with Lali Tsipi Michaeli

Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster takes the form of a report by the narrator, a young Israeli Holocaust scholar, written to his superior from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, and raises ethical questions about the struggle to cope with the memory of the Holocaust. Text Yishai Sarid. The Memory Monster. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Restless Books, Sept. 2020.

School has begun, and once again children are learning how to read, encountering the alphabet for the first time. Hopefully it is a pleasant and magical time, but here is a story of a boy who feared his teacher, although he loved the alphabet. It’s a chapter called The Alphabet and What Lies between the Lines, from Hayim Nahman Bialik’s unfinished Novella, Random Harvest. Text Random Harvest and other Novellas by Haim Nachman Bialik. Translated by David Patterson & Ezra Spicehandler. Toby Press, 2005.

As we labor under unbelievable pressures and uncertainties of the pandemic, especially women who have children at home, it might make us feel a little better to see that the writer Tehila Hakimi already envisioned what work in 2020 would be like back in 2018. Here are some excerpts of her experimental, fragmentary text, COMPANY. It is addressed to a nameless “woman in a workspace”—that describes, head-on, the corporate work experience, its gendered dimensions, and its operative, emptied-out language. The piece is translated by Maayan Eitan. Text: Company, by Tehila Hakimi (Resling Publishing House: The Lab Series for Contemporary Literature, 2018). English translation copyright 2019 by Maayan Eitan.

It’s Sukkot again! Over the years in this podcast we’ve focused on various aspects of this holiday — inviting guests, selecting an etrog, the transitory nature of our existence on earth. This time, Marcela focuses on the agricultural aspects — the festival was originally connected to the harvest. And to help us along is Rachel Bluwstein, Israel’s farmer-poet. Text: Flowers of Perhaps by Ra’hel. Translated by Robert Friend with Shimon Sandbank. Toby Press, 2008. Sad Melody by Ra’hel translated by Chana Shuvaly Previous Episode Featuring Rachel Bluwstein

This week, amidst the holidays, Marcela celebrates by reading an excerpt from Ayelet Tsabari’s newly published memoir, The Art of Leaving. Text: Ayelet Tsabari, The Art of Leaving. Harper Collins, 2019. Previous Episode Featuring Ayelet Tsabari

On this episode, Marcela features Yochi Brandes’ ninth book, The Orchard. It is the second to be translated into English, this time by Daniel Libenson. The Orchard tells the story of the venerated yet enigmatic Rabbi Akiva, placing him in the context of his contemporaries, the Sages of Jewish tradition and of early Christianity. Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Ishmael, Rabban Gamaliel, Paul of Tarsus, and many others. Get your discounted hardcopy through israbook@gefenpublishing.com Text: The Orchard, by Yochi Brandes, translated by Daniel Libenson. Gefen Publishing House (2018).

Marcela has got a thriller for you! Three, by D. A. Mishani, is a page turner that tells the stories of three women: Orna, a divorced single-mother looking online for a new relationship; Emilia, a deeply religious Latvian immigrant on a spiritual search; and Ella, married and mother of three, returning to University to write her thesis. All of them will meet the same man. His name is Gil. And he won’t tell the truth about himself. Text: D. A. Mishani. Three. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Europa Editions, August 18, 2020.

It may sound crazy, but A. B. Yehoshua has written a page-turner about an aging engineer in the early stages of dementia, which features descriptions of highway construction in great detail. How on earth did he do this? Well, perhaps it is the honest grappling with what it feels like to be diagnosed with an illness that will eventually erase your personality and knowledge. And surely it is the context of the engineer’s long and loving marriage to a pediatrician, a marriage that is full of humor, understanding, and honesty. And finally, it is the mystery of the secret military highway in the desert, and the textured relationships of two engineers on opposite ends of their career, an army general, and the people who inhabit the negev, whose secret lives are intertwined with the fate of the road. Text: A. B. Yehoshua, The Tunnel. Translated by Stuart Schoffman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 2020. Previous Podcast on A. B. Yehoshua https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2015/07/22/a-b-yehoshuas-green-seas-and-yellow-continents/

With the world hit hard by the pandemic, Marcela has been taking consolation in nature, noting, as well, the benefits on the flora and fauna around us when we humans withdraw a little from the world and allow nature more space. The March arrival of Meir Shalev’s book, My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden, in Joanna Chen’s eloquent translation, could not have been more timely. A beautiful book, from the size and shape of the hard copy, to the feel of the paper. Even the font type is notable. Rafaella Shir’s watercolor illustrations subtly draw out the descriptions, rather than compete with them. Marcela reads her favorite passage, which is from the introduction of the book. Text: Meir Shalev, My Wild Garden. Notes from a Writer’s Eden. Translated by Joanna Chen. Illustrated by Rafaella Shir. Shocken Books, March 31, 2020 Previous podcast on Meir Shalev

Miri Ben-Simhon was born into a Moroccan family, on the near bottom of the social scale. She grew up and remained in Jerusalem. Her poetry faces Mizrahi women’s lives in Israel straight on. The literary critic Yitzhak Laor once noted about Ben-Simhon’s work and perspective, that “In the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim […] but as one.” Text: Miri Ben-Simhon, The Absolute Reader, translated by Lisa Katz. Toad Press, 2020.

This week, Marcela examine Shimon Adaf’s wrenching and linguistically innovative elegy to his sister, who died at the age of 43. Aviva-No is Adaf’s third collection of poetry, and it won the 2010 Yehuda Amichai Prize. It has been translated into English by Yael Segalovitz. Text: Aviva-No by Shimon Adaf. Translated by Yael Sigalovitz. Alice James Books, 2019.

On May 26 the novel Minor Detail, by the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, appeared in Elisabeth Jaquette’s English translation with New Directions Press. Originally published in Arabic in 2017, the novel centers around a brutal crime — the rape and murder of a young Bedouin girl, in the Negev in August, 1949, during the Israeli War of Independence, which is called in Arabic the Nakhba, or disaster. Decades later, a young woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the events surrounding the crime. Marcela reads from the opening of the novel’s second section, narrated by this woman.   Text: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. New Directions Press, May 26, 2020.

On this episode, Marcela reads from Yair Assulin’s searing novel that tells the journey of a young Israeli soldier at the breaking point, unable to continue carrying out his military service, yet terrified of the consequences of leaving the army. Born in 1986, Yair Assulin studied philosophy and history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Drive is the first of two novels he has written and for which he won Israel’s Ministry of Culture Prize and the Sapir Prize for debut fiction. He has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for authors, writes a weekly column in the newspaper Haaretz and has been a visiting lecturer in Jewish Studies at Yale.   Text: Yair Assulin, The Drive. Translated by Jessica Cohen. New Vessel Press, 2020

This week is the last week of Ramadan, which began on April 23rd and will ends Saturday, May 23. To acknowledge those who are fasting in isolation and heat, this episode features Mahmoud Darwish’s aptly titled collection, In the Presence of Absence, translated by Sinan Antoon.   Text: Mahmoud Darwish In the Presence of Absence. Translated by Sinan Antoon. Archipelago Books, 2012.

Marcela reads from Karen Alkalay-Gut’s A Word in Edgewise: Ladies From the Bible Tell Their Tales, published by Simple Conundrum Press. The bible devotes quite a bit of space to the minds of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — we know how they feel, what makes them angry or happy; we hear about their arguments with God. Through her poetry, Alkaly-Gut gives the matriarchs a voice. Karen Alkalay-Gut, was born in London and is professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. In addition to collections of poetry and literary scholarship, she writes lyrics for a rock group, Panic Ensemble, and her “Tel Aviv Diary” appears daily on http://www.karenalkalay-gut.com/diary   Text: Karen Alkalay-Gut A Word in Edgewise: Ladies From the Bible Tell Their Tales

On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes. The novel was published in December by Grove Press. Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. This suggests, perhaps even implies, the so-called truth of Kashua’s first-person fiction. Yet his character, whose job is to transcribe others’ memories onto the page, repeatedly reveals his elisions from and additions to strangers’ memoirs-for-hire, often inserting his own memories as their own, thereby erasing his life in scattered pieces. The narrator’s confessions are hardly reliable, making every level of his storytelling suspect, which Kashua further visually underscores by “track changes”-style crossed-out text.

On this episode, Marcela reads from Sayed Kashua’s fourth, and latest novel, Track Changes. The novel was published in December by Grove Press. Kashua’s protagonist is a nameless “I” who shares considerable biographical overlaps with the author. This suggests, perhaps even implies, the so-called truth of Kashua’s first-person fiction. Yet his character, whose job is to transcribe others’ memories onto the page, repeatedly reveals his elisions from and additions to strangers’ memoirs-for-hire, often inserting his own memories as their own, thereby erasing his life in scattered pieces. The narrator’s confessions are hardly reliable, making every level of his storytelling suspect, which Kashua further visually underscores by “track changes”-style crossed-out text. Text: Sayed Kashua, Track Changes. Translated by Mitch Ginsburg. Grove Press, 2019. Previous Podcasts: https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2016/04/20/sayed-kashuas-farewell/ https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/11/26/sayed-kashua-an-examination-of-arab-israeli-identity-israel-in-translation/

Marcela reads from Anat Zecharia’s poem, “One, Two, Three,” which recently appeared in an issue of The Ilanot Review, in collaboration with Granta Hebrew. The poem’s title and subtitle refer to Uzi Hitman’s children song about three dwarfs who sit chatting behind a mountain. Anat is known as an outspoken poet who writes forthrightly about women's desires. Her work has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for writers. She has published three collections of poetry — As Soon as Beautiful (2008), Due to Human Error (2012), and Palestina I (2016). Her new book, “Ever After,” won an ACUM literary award for 2019. Text: Anat Zecharia “One, Two, Three.” Translated by Lisa Katz and Maayan Eitan. The Ilanot Review Music: עוזי חיטמן - מאחורי ההר

Marcela highlights poetry from the latest issue of The Ilanot Review which, in collaboration with Granta Hebrew, published English translations of up and coming poets and writers, most of whom are featured for the very first time. Text: “And I Begin to Confess” by Salih Habib, translated by Christine Khoury Bishara. The Ilanot Review “The Children I Will Never Have” by Liat Rosenblatt, translated by Jane Medved. The Ilanot Review “Rivka Speaks” by Ori Ferster, translated by Marcela Sulak. The Ilanot Review “I am the one who’s free” by Dareen Tatour, translated by Christine Khoury Bishara. The Ilanot Review “Biotope” by Shira Stav, translated by Adriana X Jacobs. The Ilanot Review

This week Marcela reads from Nava Semel’s novel, Isra Ilse, an alternative history of the Jewish People in which there was no state of Israel, and no holocaust. The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, a detective story, opens in September 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Noah, learns about and inherits Grand Island, which is downriver from Niagara Falls. He leaves Israel intending to reclaim this “Promised Land” in America. Shortly after he arrives in America Liam disappears. Simon T. Lenox, a Native American police investigator, tries to recover Israel’s “missing son.” Text: Nava Semel, Isra Ilse. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Mandel Vilar Press (October 17, 2016)

This week Marcela returns to focus on up and coming Israeli writers who have rarely or never before been translated into English, by featuring Ayala Ben Lulu. This story appears in the latest issue of The Ilanot Review, which was a collaboration with Granta Hebrew. Ayala Ben Lulu is an Israeli poet, winner of the Teva prize for poetry. She holds a B.A. in psychology and an M.Sc. in history and philosophy of science and ideas. Text: Mona Lisa by Ayala Ben Lulu. Translated by Karen Marron. The Ilanot Review

This podcast is dedicated to marriage—all the engaged couples with cold feet, newly married couples, whose memories of the ceremony are still fresh, long-married couples who survived the wedding day. We’ll be reading from and discussing the last book Ronit Matalon wrote before her death in 2017. It is called And the Bride Closed the Door, and it was awarded Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize the day before her death. Previous Podcasts: Bliss The One Facing Us The Sound of her Steps Text: And the Bride Closed the Door, by Ronit Matalon. Translated by Jessica Cohen. New Vessels Press, 2019.

The novel, The First Mrs. Rothschild, by Sara Aharoni, tells the story of the wife of Meir Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the banking dynasty, and is written in the form of a personal journal. Sara Aharoni was born in Israel in 1953. She worked as a teacher, educator and school principal for twenty years. Together with her husband, Meir Aharoni, Sara wrote, edited and published a series of books about Israel, as well as six children’s books. She is the author of the bestselling Saltanat's Love, based on her mother’s life story and the novel Persian Silence. Text: The First Mrs. Rothschild, a novel by Sara Aharoni. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Amazon Crossing, July 2019.

Today we read from the story The Shop on Main Street, written by Ladislav Grosman, a Slovak novelist and screenwriter. The story is comical and tragic, and it asks the question—are we not our brother’s keeper? Who is our brother? Text: Shop on Main Street by Ladislav Grosman. Translated by Iris Urwin Lewitova. Karolinum Press, 2019.

Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the novel The Book of Disappearances unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Text: The Book of Disappearances by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon.

What if, when you were in Kindergarten, your mother had given you a magic wand that allowed you to read people’s minds? Well, that’s just what happens in Orit Gidali’s book, Nora the Mind Reader, which will bring to a close our month of illustrated children’s books written by Israeli poets and writers. Previous Episodes on Orit Gidali: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2016/07/26/did-you-pack-it-yourself/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/10/16/welcoming-in-the-ushpizin-poems-for-sukkot/ Text: Nora The Mind Reader, by Orit Gidali, illustrated by Aya Gordon-Noy, translated by Annette Appel. Enchanged Lion Books, 2012. Music: יהודית רביץ - הילדה הכי יפה בגן

No Israeli childhood experience would be complete without Leah Goldberg. Her story “Room for Rent” was published in 1948 and is one of the most classic children’s books available in Hebrew. Shmuel Katz’s illustrations bring Goldberg’s words to life in both the original and in Jessica Setbon’s 2017 translation. Leah Goldberg born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), in 1911, moved to Mandate Palestine in 1935. Well known during her lifetime as a poet, author, and translator, she is remembered as one of Israel's great authors and literary scholars. She earned a PhD in Semitic languages from Bonn University and helped found Hebrew University's Department of Comparative Literature, which she chaired until her death in 1970. Previous Episodes on Leah Goldberg: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/08/21/a-fairy-tale-by-leah-goldberg/ https://tlv1.fm/arts-culture/2014/04/02/i-have-been-planted-with-the-pines-israel-in-translation/ Text: Leah Goldberg, Room for Rent. Illustrated by Shmuel Katz, translated by Jessica Setbon. Gefen Publishing House, 2018. Music: Leah Goldberg: Le-mi She-ino Ma'amin, sung by Yehudit Ravitz

This month we continue our spotlight on beautifully written and illustrated Israeli children’s books translated into English with The Heart Shaped Leaf, by Shira Geffen and illustrated by David Polonsky. The story opens with eerily beautiful illustrations of a very rare day in Israel: an overcast sky dotted with yellow leaves; tree branches are bent in the wind, and a cobalt blue school building glows out of the gray. The book's main character Alona makes her way home from school. Text: The Heart Shaped Leaf, by Shira Geffen. Illustrated by David Polonsky. Green Bean Press. Green Bean Books

Some of Marcela's favorite children’s books in Hebrew have been written by well known poets and illustrated by some of Israel’s most talented graphic artists. This episode features The Mermaid in the Bathtub, written by the poet, essayist and writer, Nurit Zarchi, and illustrated by Rutu Modan. Translated by Tal Goldfajn, and published by Restless Books. Previous podcast on Rutu Modan: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/08/20/rutu-modans-graphic-touch/ Previous podcasts on Nurit Zarchi: https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2019/05/22/nurit-zarchis-the-plague/ https://tlv1.fm/israel-in-translation/2015/07/15/nurit-zarchis-baby-blues/ Text: The Mermaid in the Bathtub by Nurit Zarchi. Illustrations by Rutu Modan. Translated by Tal Goldfajn. Yonder (Restless Books) 2019 Music: Millie, “Mermaid in the Bathtub” from Miracle Milk

For the next few weeks, we will feature work published in The Ilanot Review’s special collaborative issue with Granta Hebrew, focusing on new, up-and-coming writers. And so it is a pleasure to introduce the young writer Nano Shabtai, translated by Maya Klein. Shabtai is already known in Hebrew arts and letters as a poet, dramatist and director. She was born in Jerusalem, to a large family, where she attended the High School of the Arts, majoring in theatre. She studied acting and directing at the Kibbutz College in Tel Aviv, and completed the screenwriting track at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. Since 2005 she has worked as a fiction reader for an Israeli publishing house, and as a book editor and reviewer. Her first book of poems, The Iron Girl, was published in 2006. She’s published a collection of short stories, children stories and a few plays. Text: Corn by Nano Shabtai, translated by Maya Klein.

Many poems in Ronny Someck's The Milk Underground deal with being a father of girls—adolescent and teenaged, young women. They explore the fraught territory of daughter’s bodies—body as dowry, body as a locus for pleasure and for betrayal, and the poems extend a fatherly embrace to the girls after their pained mother has broken off relations. Previous Someck Episode Text: Ronny Someck, The Milk Underground, translated by Hana Inbar and Robert Manaster. White Pine Press, 2015.

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, served in the Israeli army, and travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe and North America. In 1998 Ayelet moved to Vancouver, Canada, where she studied film and photography. She directed two documentary films, one of which won an award at the Palm Spring International Short Film Festival. As an Israeli writer, she is unusual in that she usually writes in English, not Hebrew, though the essay we are featuring today called Barefoot and Enlightened was originally written in Hebrew. Text: Ayelet Tsabari. “Barefoot and Enlightened,” translated by the author and Janice Weizman.

We’re currently in the days of Sukkot, in which Jews everywhere dwell (or at least take their meals) in a temporary structure called a Sukkah to commemorate the forty years of wandering in the desert, and also because Sukkot is an agricultural festival as well, and in ancient times people lived in temporary shelters as they harvested. One of the customs of Sukkot is inviting guests for meals into the Sukkah, close friends or needy strangers, as well as the supernatural —“Ushpizin” is Aramaic for “guests.” Today we’ll hear poems that feature these ushpizin, from Orit Gidali’s book, Twenty Girls to Envy Me. The Selected poems of Orit Gidali. Previous Podcast Text: Twenty Girls to Envy Me. Select Poems of Orit Gidali. Translated from the Hebrew by Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.

We are now in the days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which will take place next week. This week, Marcela reads from Amichai Chasson, whose poem America gives a portrait of the everyday reference that Yom Kippur serves in everyday life. The poem, as its title suggests, also illustrates the relationship between Israel and the United States. It is translated by Vivian Eden. Like many international poets encountering America, Chasson has written his Walt Whitman in the supermarket poem, as well, titled Rami Levy in Talpiot, translated by Lisa Katz. Text: America by Amichai Chasson

Rosh Hashanah begins on Sunday night—it is the beginning of the Jewish new year. And to usher it in, we read an excerpt from Etgar Keret’s short story, “Ladder,” published in his brand-new English language collection, “Fly Already.” Text: Fly Already, by Etgar Keret, translated by Sondra Silverston, et. al. Riverhead Books, Sept. 2019.

Yesterday, Yonatan Berg’s first poetry collection appeared in Joanna Chen’s English translation, Frayed Light, published by the Wesleyan Poetry Series. The poems in this collection gather all of these experiences—religion, settlements and the Palestinian neighbors they displace or live next to, military service—into heartfelt narrative poems. Berg was born in 1981 in Jerusalem to a religious family and grew up in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. After serving in the military, Berg gave up the religious lifestyle. He now lives with his wife, the poet and essayist Geula Gertz in Jerusalem, with their young daughter. Text: Frayed Light by Yonatan Berg, translated by Joanna Chen. Wesleyan Poetry Series, Sept. 2019. Previous Podcast Featuring Yonatan Berg

Israeli elections are just one day shy of a week away, and now might be a good opportunity to examine the use of stereotypes to shut down important conversations that we might have, as we elect the people who will represent us. Today, Marcela reads a lyrical essay from a graduate student in poetry at Bar-Ilan’s Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Her name is Hiba Ghannan, and this piece will appear in her thesis entitled “Leftovers.” Text: “My Essay on Stereotypes” by Hiba Ghannan