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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
Robert Alter’s Bible: Like Two Worlds at Once
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.
“I Am the Daughter of Lot”
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.
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.
The Song of Songs
This week we continue exploring Robert Alter’s translation of the Bible and sacred poetry by looking at the “Song of Songs,” which is traditionally read on the Shabbat of the intermediate days of Passover before the morning Torah reading, or on the morning of the seventh day.