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“Wonderful exposure to contemporary Hebrew (mostly) fiction and poetry - much of which is not available or known about outside of Israel.”
“Excellent podcast giving exposure to the best of Israeli letters: fiction and poetry, contemporary and classic, it's an essential regular listen. Also has very well selected musical accompaniments.”
“Marcela's voice is perfect for narrating the poetry featured on this podcast. It really puts me in between the lines of text.”
Recent Episodes
Aharon Appelfeld’s “The Age of Wonders”
Appelfeld's novel is told in two parts. Part one chronicles the dissolution of an assimilated Austrian family and the anti-semitism leading up to the war. Part two picks up “many years later, when everything was over,” and where the narrator has somehow escaped to Palestine.
Yom Hazikaron: The Gate of the Valley
In 1948 the poet Haim Gouri fought as a deputy company commander in the Palmach Negev Brigade and wrote a poem commemorating the fighters who accompanied the convoys and fell at Bab el Wad. We read from it and hear it sung on today's episode.
About the Host
Marcela Sulak
Marcela is an associate professor in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Bar-Ilan University. She teaches American Literature, poetics, and translation, and poetry workshops in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Her poetry includes Decency (2015), Immigrant (2010). She was nominated for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and translates from Czech, French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. She’s co-edited Family Resemblance. An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres, and her essays appear in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.
Nurit Zarchi’s “The Plague”
The story is set during the time of the 14th century great plague in Jerusalem, which killed a quarter of the city’s population. In this story, the monks who lived on the mountain, at a distance of an hour and a half outside of the city, would take turns, by drawing lots, to go into the city to help.