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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
“The Orange Exploded in My Hand”
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.”
King Ahasuerus and the Persian Court
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.
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 Poetry of Ayman Agbaria
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.