Israel in Translation

"I hereby close the gates between my legs till further notice / For an unlimited period, due to maintenance. / No bearers of first fruit will come / No pilgrims will make pilgrimage..."

This week, Marcela reads from Amichai Chasson, who like many international poets encountering America, has written his Walt Whitman in the supermarket poem titled, “Rami Levy in Talpiot.”

Rosh Hashanah begins Sunday night—it is the beginning of the Jewish new year. 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.”

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...

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.

Yesterday something wonderful happened—Etgar Keret’s newest short story collection, Fly Already, appeared in the world, in English, translated by a ridiculously talented cast of translators. This collection contains all the charm, the...

“He didn't call himself a writer, but rather a craftsman,” Haim Be'er says about Yossel Birstein. Today Marcela reads a story containing Birstein’s two great loves: Buses and Shoes.

On this week's episode, Marcela excerpts from a fairy tale written by Leah Goldberg. She was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and comparative literary researcher. Her writings are considered classics of Israeli...

Naji Daher, a writer, poet, and playwright, was born in Nazareth and lives there. He works as a creative writing teacher and writes literature reviews. He has published more than fifty books, including six novels. Daher's works have been translated...

Gali-Dana Singer is a bilingual poet, translator, an artist and photographer, born in St. Petersburg, who immigrated to Israel in 1988. To Think: A River, her first book of poems in Hebrew, in translation from the original Russian, appeared in 2000....