Episodes
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David Grossman's "The Desire to Be Gisella"
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...
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Dory Manor's "The Language Beneath the Skin"
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...
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Jews and Words
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."
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Meir Shalev's "The Blue Mountain"
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...
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The Poetry of Avot Yeshurun
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...
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Ayelet Tsabari's "Savta"
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....
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A. B. Yehoshua's "The Lover"
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....
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Meir Shalev's "Four Meals"
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...
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Batya Gur's "Murder on a Kibbutz"
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...
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Ari Shavit's "My Promised Land"
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…
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Yaniv Iczkovits's "The Slaughterman's Daughter"
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...
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Ayelet Tsabari's "Yemenite Recipes"
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...
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Vaan Nguyen's Poetry Collection: "The Truffle Eye"
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...
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Lali Tsipi Michaeli's "The Mad House"
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…
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Yishai Sarid's "The Memory Monster"
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…
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Hayim Nahman Bialik's "Random Harvest"
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...
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Tehila Hakimi's "COMPANY"
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...
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Rachel (Ra'hel) Bluwstein's "Transformation"
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....
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Ayelet Tsabari's Memoir, "The Art of Leaving"
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
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Yochi Brandes' "The Orchard"
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...
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"Three": D. A. Mishani's Thriller Read
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,...
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"The Tunnel"
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...
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Meir Shalev's "My Wild Garden"
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...
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Miri Ben-Simhon's "The Absolute Reader"
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...
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Shimon Adaf's "Aviva-No"
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…
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Adania Shibli's "Minor Detail"
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...
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The Drive
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...
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Darwish's "In the Presence of Absence"
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…
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"Ladies From the Bible Tell Their Tales"
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...
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Track Changes, Part 2
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...
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Track Changes
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...
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"One, Two, Three"
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...
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"The Children I Will Never Have"
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...
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Nava Semel's "Isra Ilse"
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...
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Ayala Ben Lulu's "Mona Lisa"
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...
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Ronit Matalon's "And the Bride Closed the Door"
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.…
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Sara Aharoni's "The First Mrs. Rothschild"
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...
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Grosman's "The Shop on Main Street"
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...
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"The Book of Disappearances"
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…
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Nora the Mind Reader
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...
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Leah Goldberg's "Room for Rent"
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…
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Shira Geffen's "The Heart-Shaped Leaf"
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...
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"The Mermaid in the Bathtub"
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....
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Nano Shabtai's "Corn"
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…
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Ronny Someck's "The Milk Underground"
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…
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Ayelet Tsabari's "Barefoot and Enlightened"
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…
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Welcoming in the Ushpizin: Poems for Sukkot
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…
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Amichai Chasson's "Rami Levy in Talpiot"
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...
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Etgar Keret's "Ladder"
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...
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Frayed Light
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,...
About this show
Exploring Israeli literature in English translation. Host Marcela Sulak takes you through Israel's literary countryside, cityscapes, and psychological terrain, and the lives of the people who create it.
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