Robert Alter’s historic one-man translation of the entire Hebrew Bible is like two worlds at once, the heavens and the earth, with the translation above and the commentary below. One can spend a lifetime in either of these worlds.

The poetry of Bracha Serri is intertextual, not only for its Biblical references, but for its dialogue with Yemenite culture, feminism, politics, and religion. She often adopts the first person voice of a Yemeni woman, crushed between an oppressive patriarchal background and the discriminatory nature of her everyday life.

Several of Agbaria’s poems, written in Arabic, have been translated into Hebrew, and have been well received. Among the themes found in his poetry are the extreme alienation from the self that of living as a religious and linguistic minority in Israel can produce.

Today we commemorate the life of Ella Bat Tsion, who passed away one month ago. We begin the episode with the poem “I waited with Endless Patience.”

This Purim, we turn to Robert Alter’s excellent new translation, “Strong as Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel.” Alter writes that the Book of Esther, unlike any other book of the Bible, seems to have been written primarily for entertainment.

This week we feature a novel told in a series of vignettes, narrated by three young Israeli women following their high school years in a small northern village and through their enlistment in the Israeli Defence Force where they train marksmen, guard a border and man a checkpoint.

In this week’s episode, we will consider Israeli Love poetry through the lens of Barbara Goldberg’s new book, “Transformation: The Poetry of Translation,” which has just come out this year, after winning the Valentin Krustev Award for Translation.

An introduction to the genre called “Auto-Reality,” a term coined by Israeli writer and editor Rana Werbin to describe her first book, “Life Is Good.”

Aharon Appelfeld would say that in order to be a serious writer you need to have a routine. For years his routine had been to write in the café at Ticho House, in Jerusalem. It was there that Alain Elkann interviewed him for The Paris Review.

We feature poetry by Ron Dahan and Sharron Hass from the new “Crisis” issue of The Ilanot Review, which was edited by guest editor Adriana X. Jacobs, and our very own Marcela Shulak.