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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
“Some Day”: Shemi Zarhin’s Best-Selling Novel
On the shores of Israel's Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, and in Shemi Zarhin’s novel Some Day, it is a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. Zarhin's hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel's larger national story.
A Digital Window into Gaza: Mosab’s Facebook Poetry
“We never chose to be involved in a war. The decision-makers never think of us as real people, with minds to think and hearts to feel. We have lives ahead of us. No one seems to notice.” Today, we share the work of one poet in Gaza whose work opens a tiny window to what's happening on the other side.
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.
Asenath Barzani: The First Known Woman Rabbi
Asenath Barzani was the first known woman rabbi in Jewish history. The only child of an eminent rabbi in Kurdistan, she was trained to be a learned scholar. After her father's death, she became the head teacher at the Yeshiva. Asenath was famous for her Hebrew poetry.