Podcasts about modern hebrew literature

As our readers and listeners likely know, since the launch of the TraditionOnline website in the summer of 2019 we have published a weekly feature called “The BEST.” In that column we have asked a wide variety of writers to consider what things “out there” in the big wide world make them think and feel. What elements in general culture potentially inspire us to live better? We have sought to share these insights on cultural objects – both high and low – that might still be described as “the best that has been thought and said,” in Matthew Arnold's phrase. We considered the types of art, literature, film, you name it, that can serve as an antidote to the anarchy of materialism, industrialism, individualistic self-interest, and worst elements of modernity. So far, The BEST has produced almost 150 entries on everything from Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare; Jane Austen and Emily Dickenson; John Locke and John Stuart Mill; the speeches of Lincoln and Dr. King… and reaching all the way over to the music of Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell; Star Trek and Star Wars; and even took up “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” The full archive of these essays and so much more can be found at www.traditiononline.org/thebest However, we inform our listeners, The BEST will be going on recess for a period. It will return in the future, but keep your eyes on our website for news of the exciting feature which will be filling in for a number of months starting after the holidays. Before The BEST takes its break we wanted to do a bit of a retrospective. In this conversation, Marina Zilbergerts, Dov Lerner, and Chaim Strauchler discuss the challenges and opportunities of harnessing worldly culture in the service of religious life. They also consider questions of instrumentalism, the decline of the liberal arts, and the recent “New York Times” expose on Hasidic yeshivot. Marina Zilbergerts is a scholar of Jewish literature and thought and the author of The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature. Dov Lerner serves as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates and a member of the faculty at Yeshiva University's Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. Chaim Strauchler is the rabbi of Cong. Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck, and is an associate editor at TRADITION, where he shepherds The Best column, and has provided us all with so much thoughtful and thought-provoking content.

Adriana X Jacobs, Associate Professor and Cowley Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Literature in conversation with Stanley Ulijaszek

Adriana X Jacobs, Associate Professor and Cowley Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Literature in conversation with Stanley Ulijaszek

Since 2015, the Israeli writer and translator Hillel Halkin has published a series of ten essays in Mosaic on the seminal Hebrew writers of the 19th and early-20th centuries. They dealt with everyone from Bialik to Agnon, Rahel to Ahad Ha’am. Those essays have now been brought together in Halkin’s newly published book, The Lady of Hebrew and Her Lovers of Zion. The act of writing such a book is an act of cultural preservation, safeguarding the literature, poetry, and essays through which the Jewish people sought to understand themselves as a modern nation in the modern world. In this podcast, Halkin joins one of his longtime interlocutors, Professor Ruth Wisse, for a wide-ranging discussion about Israel, aliyah, tradition, religion, cultural fidelity, and, of course, Halkin’s new book. This conversation is but a snapshot of a long-running conversation between these two giants of modern Jewish letters. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble. This podcast was recorded over Zoom at a digital event co-sponsored by Beit Avi Chai and Mosaic.

On this episode, host Marcela Sulak interviews Adriana X. Jacobs about her work translating Vietnamese-Israeli author Vaan Nguyen. Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the University of Oxford and recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation of The Truffle Eye, Nguyen's debut collection. Sulak and Jacobs discuss Vaan Nguyen's unique life story, the relationship between translator and writer, and Radiohead. Here is an excerpt from Jacobs' translation of the poem Mekong River: "Tonight I moved between three beds like I was sailing on the Mekong and whispered the beauty of the Tigris and Euphrates Under an endless moment looking under the left tit I have a hole and you fill it with other men. Notes of Tiger beer on your body." Text: “Culture Stain” & “Word Mound”: Drunken Boat “Mekong River”: Gulf Coast “Packing Poem,” Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Lauren McClung, Cathy Linh Che, and Ocean Vuong, to be published by W.W. Norton in 2017. Music: Jinsang - Genesis Creep - Radiohead - Brooklyn Duo feat. Escher Quartet Cover Exit Music (For a film) - Radiohead Ru con - Anbu Thanh

With Adriana X. Jacobs (Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature), Kasia Szymanska (Junior Research Fellow in Slavonic Studies, University College), chaired by Kate Costello (DPhil candidate in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature). In Michaelmas 2016 the OCCT Discussion Group will follow a new format: we’ll be focussing on key issues in the methodology of comparative study. The sessions will begin with a short conversation between two senior members moderated by a graduate representative, followed by a discussion of the recommended readings. We hope to encourage graduates to think about their research within a comparative context, and contribute to creating a vibrant OCCT graduate community.

Dr. William Cutter argues both sides of California's Right-to-Die Initiative. Dr. William Cutter is Steinberg Emeritus Professor of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he held the Paul and Trudy Steinberg Chair in Human Relations, and was Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Education. He has taught at HUC-JIR since 1965, and has served in several administrative capacities throughout his academic career. In earlier stages of his career he founded three of the ongoing programs of the College-Institute, the training center for Reform Jewish leaders and nonprofit managers. These programs are the Rhea Hirsch School of Education, the MUSE program of the Skirball Museum, and the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health. He also was the founding director of the Louchheim School of Jewish Studies.

Dr. William Cutter argues both sides of California's Right-to-Die Initiative. Dr. William Cutter is Steinberg Emeritus Professor of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he held the Paul and Trudy Steinberg Chair in Human Relations, and was Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Education. He has taught at HUC-JIR since 1965, and has served in several administrative capacities throughout his academic career. In earlier stages of his career he founded three of the ongoing programs of the College-Institute, the training center for Reform Jewish leaders and nonprofit managers. These programs are the Rhea Hirsch School of Education, the MUSE program of the Skirball Museum, and the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health. He also was the founding director of the Louchheim School of Jewish Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. "For God's Sake, Who is Alterman?" This question will be approached by Dan Laor, who will share his experience as the biographer of Nathan Alterman, long recognized as the national poet of modern Israel. Dan Laor is Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at the Divinity School. He teaches Modern Hebrew Literature and is the incumbent of the Jacob and Shoshana Schreiber Chair for Contemporary Jewish Culture, Tel Aviv University. Former Chairman of the Department of Hebrew Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Laor is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, among them the prize-winning biography of S.Y. Agnon, Israel's Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature for the year 1966. Laor's recent book is Nathan Alterman, A Biography (Hebrew), published on November 2013. It has been on Israel's best-seller list for nonfiction for over three months. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance. Recorded in Swift Hall on April 23, 2014.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. "For God's Sake, Who is Alterman?" This question will be approached by Dan Laor, who will share his experience as the biographer of Nathan Alterman, long recognized as the national poet of modern Israel. Dan Laor is Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at the Divinity School. He teaches Modern Hebrew Literature and is the incumbent of the Jacob and Shoshana Schreiber Chair for Contemporary Jewish Culture, Tel Aviv University. Former Chairman of the Department of Hebrew Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Laor is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, among them the prize-winning biography of S.Y. Agnon, Israel's Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature for the year 1966. Laor's recent book is Nathan Alterman, A Biography (Hebrew), published on November 2013. It has been on Israel's best-seller list for nonfiction for over three months. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance. Recorded in Swift Hall on April 23, 2014.