With the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah – coming up on Sunday evening, host Marcela Sulak reads some of the poetry of Navit Barel on that theme. “Free Admission” begins like this:

We ate apples dipped in honey. Free admission
to the sweet and happy years. Mira from Nepal
understood when we talked about indulgence, income tax and chopped liver.

Navit Barel was born in Ashkelon to immigrants from Libya, who had lost a son in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. “I grew up in a home in mourning; it was a complicated existence,” she told Haaretz newspaper when her second book, MAMASH, appeared in 2011. Barel has also been active with the Cultural Guerrillas – a group of Israeli artists who promote social and political struggle via poetry and music.

Text:
All poems and biographical information come from Poetry International Rotterdam.

Music:
Idan Raichel Project – Brachot LaShana HaChadasha (Blessings For The New Year)
Noa Shemer – Yitzrach (Words by Navit Barel)
Arik Einstein – Od Yihiye

Producer: Laragh Widdess
Technical producer: Alex Benish