[button style=’blue’ url=’tlv1.fm/israelintranslation’ target=’_blank’]Subscribe To The Podcast[/button] [button style=’blue’ url=’tlv1.fm/content/israel-in-translation/’ target=’_blank’]Previous Episodes[/button]

Yael Dayan’s memoir, Transitions: Close Up, translated by Maya Klein, is about losses and regrets, with fine focus on the detailed physical world. Dayan is the oldest child of the late Moshe Dayan, the moody and enigmatic hero of the Six Days’ War, revered as the symbol of the national and military rebirth of the Jewish people, yet reviled as Defense Minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur War for Israel’s failures. Host Marcela Sulak reads from the preface and a favorite passage on today’s episode.

Here is an excerpt from the preface:

“A memoir is not an autobiography. The way I see it, my memoir is committed to the truth and to nothing but the truth; but not to all the truth. Transitions is not a biography written in chronological order. […] I took the liberty of writing about my own transitions: from the naïve Israeli teenager and soldier to the sophisticated and indulged best-selling writer; and from there all the way to the mature, wise old woman, looking back with a degree of frustration on dreams never to be fulfilled.”

Text:
Transitions: Close Up by Yael Dayan, translated by Maya Klein. Mosaic Press, Nov. 2016.