israel in translation

One Night, Markovitch

“He felt Sonya’s entrance before he saw her, because over the last six weeks he had learned to pick out the smell of oranges even on a busy street.”

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Waking Lions: A story of secrets and extortion

“…he can’t freeze the previous moment, the exact moment he ran him down, the moment a man driving an SUV ran down a man walking on the road.”

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The Dawning of the Day

“Ezra, what would you call the story told by my violin?”… He said to Rahamim, “I would call it, The Dawning of the Day.”

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Dolly City, where Kafka meets Tel Aviv

“I ran outside to buy vaccines against tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio…, and I gave them to him all at once—though I knew you shouldn’t do this.”

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“Dear Perverts”: The poetry of Hezy Leskly

“My father—the hammer poised above the plate, / My mother—the snake of love, / And I—a girl with a dick; / We set out on the path / traced with my tongue.”

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Israeli Poetry’s Brightest Flame

Lag B’Omer, the Jewish holiday of light celebrated by lighting bonfires, is coming up. We explore it through the poetry of Agi Mishol.

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David Grossman’s “Falling Out of Time”

“The boy is dead. I recognize these words as holding truth. He is dead, he is dead. But his death, his death is not dead.”

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Poet Agi Mishol on “Holocaust, Remembrance, Independence”

“How we flew – / Not from Gadera to Rehovot or up the Castel / en route to Jerusalem, like in those dreams, but / outside of the stratosphere…”

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