And more recently there was, until this year, Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011) a Palestinian-Israeli poet who lived in Nazareth and ran a souvenir shop. Not as widely celebrated as Amichai, he may be more famous in English than at home, due to Adina Hoffman’s fine 2009 biography in English and the translations into English from Arabic of her husband Peter Cole with Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin. Taha, no less than Amichai, wrote with accessible wit and wisdom about life in this contested place, of which he was a native. Toward the end of his life, he too commanded a large audience at Israeli poetry festivals, in the Hebrew translations of Anton Shammas.

Agi Mishol. (Iris Nesher via Wikimedia Commons)

Currently, the beloved veteran poet Agi Mishol (disclosure: I translated a book-length selection of her poems, Look There, in 2006; she is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry in Hebrew) continues to be extremely popular and draw large crowds. She is often called a successor to the great Israeli women poets Yona Wallach and Dahlia Ravikovitch, with poems as deceptively simple as “Blue Bird”:

On the kitchen
counter

the goat-eyed
cat
carries a blue-feathered
bird
already dead
the beak still
in a pincer grip
on a pomegranate twig

each of us holds
something
in our mouths.

But poetry here, as elsewhere no doubt, is no longer the province of one clearly identifiable artistic elite, and certainly not the province of only a few poetry kings or queens. There are hundreds of poets active in Israel, and they come in all stripes: lyric, protest, experimental, minimalistic, formalist, academic, and others. A poet’s union is forming, and, as the prelude to its first meeting, an open reading was held in the street last month on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard.

Because I am a translator, I know that for poetry to cross language borders, it must have strong content and brilliant or at least surprising thoughts, not the province of all writers, even the very good ones. To stay at home with honor, poetry must touch a local nerve—be sensitive to both language and current affairs—which is a different thing. Since it may very well be true, as Charles Simic said in a famously negative 2007 New York Review of Books essay about Robert Creeley, that “there are not many poets, even among our best ones, who are likely to have more than eighty pages worth reading,” this will be a brief journey among excerpts from what I consider excellent poems by poets you have probably never heard of. I make no claim to represent everyone’s taste, just my own. And space limitations will mean that mostly everyone is being left out.

***

I’ll begin with a beginner, a barely published 29-year-old Hebrew poet whose first language is Russian: Johnny Spector. I can’t translate him, as I hesitate to translate rhyme and it is nearly impossible to reproduce consonance and assonance. I find that the words emphasized by the repetition of sounds change so completely in translation that a rhymed translation often loses content, in order to give a pathetic illusion of formal similarity to the original.

To feel the force of its beauty, however, you can read the first line of Spector’s “Poem for Budapest” for yourself in a transliteration of the original Hebrew: “Lah-lekhet beh-mah-seh-khat shah-lehket hah-gashmeem. Blee mah-seem. Beh-lo-mileem.” The poem opens with a scene of walking, after a rain, without really noticing, and without uttering a word, on the piles of fallen leaves that are also masking something. The poet, by the way, is writing a thesis on the ethnic identity of prison wardens in Israel.

Continue reading: Zecharya, Behar, and others

Yitzhak Laor was born the same year as Israel: 1948. He has written stories, novels, plays, essays, and journalism, and his poetry has been recognized as among the best—if most controversial—of his generation. In 1972, Laor became one of the first Israeli Defense Forces soldiers to refuse to complete his compulsory military service in the territories captured during the Six Day War, a decision that earned him a brief prison sentence. Today Laor lives in Tel Aviv, where he edits the literary magazine Mita’am.

Issue 12 of n+1 magazine features six of Laor’s poems, presented both in the original and my translation. Here are three—from radically disparate periods in Laor’s career. What unites them are biblical allusion and a doubting of language’s capacity to effect political change—a crisis marked by flares of rage and humor.

To read more of Laor’s work, you can purchase the current issue of n+1.

Take Care, Soldier

Don’t die, soldier, hold the radiophone,
don your helmet, your flak jacket, surround
the village with a trench of crocodiles, starve
it out if need be, eat Mama’s treats, shoot
sharp, keep your rifle clean, take care of the armored
Jeep, the bulldozer, the land, one day it will be
yours, little David, sweetling, don’t die, please.

Keep watch for Goliath the peasant, he’s trying to sell his
pumpkin at the local market, he’s plotting to buy a gift for his grandkid,
   erase
the evil Haman whose bronchitis you denied treatment, eradicate
the blood of Eva Braun by checking on the veracity of her labor pains,
   silence her
shriek, that’s how every maternity ward sounds, it’s not easy
having such humane values, be strong, take care, forget
your deeds, forget the forgetting.

That thy days may be long, that the days of thy children may be long,
   that one day
they shall hear of thy deeds and shall stick fingers in their ears and
   scream
with fear and thy sons’ and thy daughters’ screams shall never fade.
Be strong, sweet David, live long unto seeing thy children’s eyes,
though their backs hasten to flee from thee, stay in touch with thy
   comrades-in-arms,
after thy sons deny thee, a covenant of the shunned.
Take care, soldier-boy.

שמור על עצמך, חייל

חַילָּ, אָל תָּמוּת, לְמִי יש כֹּחַ לִשְכוֹל
רַדְיוֹפוֹניִ, חֲבֹש קַסְדָּה, לְבַש שַכְפָּ”ץ, הַקֵף אֶת
הַכְּפָר בִּתְעָלָה, מַלֵּא אוֹתָהּ בְּתַנּיִניִם, אִם ישֵׁ, הַרְעֵב
אִם צָרִיך לְהַרְעִיב, אֱכֹל אֶת מַמְתַקֶּיהַ שֶל אִמָּא, אַל
תָּמוּת, צְלֹף, מַלֵּא מַחְסַנּיִּוֹת, נקֵַּה את הָרוֹבֶה הַטֶּלֶסְקוֹפּי
שְׁמֹר עַל הַג’יפּ הַַמְּשֻרְיןָ, עַל הַדַּחְפּוֹר, שְמֹר עַל הָאָרֶץ
יוֹם אֶחד תִּהְיהֶ שֶלְךָ, דָודִ קָטָן, מָתוֹק, אַל תָּמוּת, בְּבַקָּשָׁה מִמּךָ.

הִזּהֵָר מן הדְּלַעַת של גלְָיתַ הַפַלָּאח, הוּא מְנסֶַּה לְמָכְרָהּ
בַּשּׁוּק הַקָּרוב, לֹא מֵרָעָב, לִקְנוֹת לְנכְֶדוֹ מַתָּנה הוּא זוֹמֵם, שְכַח
את הָמָן הָרָשָׁע שֶמָנעַתָ טִפּוּל בַּבְּרוֹנכְִיטִיס שלוֹ, מְחַק את דִמּוּמָהּ
שֶל אֶוהָ בְּרָאוּן, כְּשֶבָּדַקְתָּ אִם זיִפְָּה צִירֵי לֵידָה, דוֹמֵם את צִוחְוֹתֶיהָ
כָּכָה נשְִמָע כָּל חֲדַר לֵידָה, הֱיהֵ חָזקָ, לֹא פָּשוּט לַעֲבוֹר מָה שֶאַתָּה
עוֹבֵר, בֶּטח לֹא פָּשוּט עִם עֲרָכֶיךָ הָהוּמָניים, רָק אַל תִּתְבַּישֵּ
)הַצָּרפָתים בְּאַלְג’ִירְיהָ לא הָיוּ יוֹתֵר טוֹבים(, שְׁמֹר על עַצְמְךָ, שְכַח

אֶת מַעֲשֶׂיךָ, שְכַח אֶת הַשִּׁכְחָה, שְׁכַח אֶת שִׁכְחַת הַשִּׁכְחָה
לְמַעַן יאֲַרִיכוּן ימֶָיךָ, לְמַעַן יאֲַריכוּן ימְֵי בָּניֶךָ, לְמַעַן יוֹם אֶחָד
ישְִמְעוּן עַל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ ויְתְִקְעוּן שְׁתֵי אֶצְבָּעות בָּאֹזנְיַם ויְצְִוחְוּן
מִפַּחַד, צְוחָה אֲרוּכּה אֲרוּכָּה, וזְעֲַקַת בִּנךְָ/בִּתְךָ לא תִדֹּם לָעַד.
הֱיהֶ חָזק, דָּודִ מָתֹק, והְַאֲרֵך ימִָים, רְאֵה את עֵיניֵהֶם של ילְָדֶיךָ
עָרְפֵּיהם יחֵָפֵזוּן לִבְרֹחַ מִמֶּךָ, שְמֹר עַל קֶשר עִם חֲבֵרֶיךָ
לַנּשֶק, אַחֲרֵי שֶבָּניֶךָ יתְִכַּחֲשוּ אֵלֶיךָ, בְּרִית בֵּין
הַמְּנדִֻּים. שְמֹר עַל עַצְמְךָ, חַילִַּיקוֹ

Continue reading: “Shut Door.” Or view as a single page.

The story begins, as such stories often do, with an academic conference, this one dedicated to political blogging. Among the invited panelists was Benny Ziffer, the editor of Ha’aretz’s literary section and a popular and provocative blogger on the newspaper’s website. Last year, when Yitzhak Laor, a noted Israeli poet, was accused by a female acquaintance of rape, Ziffer took to the blogosphere, writing strongly in support of Laor and questioning his accuser’s motives.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the panel to which he was invited, but in Israel, as well as in academia in general, the political and the personal are conjoined. Laor’s accuser, an artist named Eshkar Eldan Cohen, contacted Dr. Orly Lubin, the Comp Lit department chair, and demanded that Ziffer be uninvited. Lubin, a thoughtful scholar whom I’d had the pleasure to briefly meet while myself an undergraduate at TAU, wrote Eldan Cohen a long letter, explaining that uninviting Ziffer is tantamount to censorship and that if Eldan Cohen was so inclined, she, too, would be invited to the panel where she could freely confront Ziffer.

None of this sufficed to Eldan Cohen, who proceeded to lobby the family of the late professor in whose honor the conference is held annually. Realizing that the panel was growing needlessly controversial and counterproductive, Lubin announced last Friday that she was canceling it altogether. That, too, apparently, wasn’t enough: A few days after the panel had already been cancelled, Eldan Cohen took to her blog and demanded, once again, in an open letter to the university’s governing body, that Ziffer’s invitation be rescinded.

This, apparently, was all Lubin could take. She resigned. She couldn’t accept, she told Ha’aretz, that the gender studies program, which falls under the purview of her department, would be tainted by accusations of not being sufficiently committed to preventing violence against women. Reached for comment Tel Aviv University said it knew nothing of Lubin’s resignation. This is probably not where the story ends.

***

Those looking for less confusion on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians can find it on the bookshelf—if they zealously seek out ideological polemics that reinforce their existing prejudices. Adherents of the anti-Zionist left, for example, can choose from many books that support their predictable vitriol: in M. Shahid Alam’s Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Palgrave Macmillan, November) and Yitzhak Laor’s The Myths of Liberal Zionism (Verso, November), those so inclined can enjoy condemnations of Zionist colonialism, as well as the dubious, disturbing claim that Israel thrives on, and thus should be held responsible for, Arab anti-Semitism.

More nuanced studies analyze Israel’s many challenges without oversimplifying the problems, or blaming them exclusively on Zionists and Jews. Indeed, in Exiled in the Homeland: Zionism and the Return to Mandate Palestine (Texas, November), Donna Robinson Divine examines memoirs, letters, and news report by and about immigrants to British-controlled Palestine and insists that Zionism never took as monolithic a form as its critics claim. Dan Avnon and Yotam Benziman, two Hebrew University scholars, present essays in Plurality and Citizenship in Israel: Moving Beyond the Jewish/Palestinian Civil Divide (Routledge, November) that grapple with the legal and civil challenges that currently bedevil Israeli society, and As’ad Ghanem’s Ethnic Politics in Israel: The Margins and the Ashkenazi Centre (Routledge, December) addresses not only the social marginalization of the Arab population, but also the struggles of Mizrahi and Russian immigrants. In The Political Right in Israel: Different Faces of Jewish Populism (Routledge, December), meanwhile, Dani Filc, an Argentina-born doctor who has written on Israeli healthcare, explains the rise to prominence of Likud, Shas, and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu as a result of their powerful appeal to the electoral masses. Such authors write from particular ideological positions, too, but at least their critiques of Israeli policy do not ignore the Israelis’ humanity while advocating for Palestinians, or flaunt rhetorical bitterness as if it, and not peace, were their main goal.

***

The Hebrew poet Abba Kovner once remarked on the way that Jewish history influenced his writing: “As a Jew, you love your people. You can’t love and be objective at the same time.” Born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Kovner lived a fascinating life: he organized the Jewish resistance in the Vilna ghetto, sought to murder Nazis in revenge killings after the war, served in the Givati Brigade during Israel’s War of Independence, and designed the permanent collection of Israel’s Diaspora Museum. Dina Porat surveys Kovner’s experiences and poetry in her 2000 biography The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner (Stanford, November), newly translated into English by Elizabeth Yuval.

Like Kovner, most Israeli writers can’t help but reflect on the matsav, whether directly or obliquely. The fifth and latest annual issue of Modern Hebrew Literature (Toby, November), which includes stories, novel excerpts, poems, and interviews translated from Hebrew on the ever-so-slightly dated theme of “Israel at 60: Retrospective and Renewal,” offers a range of responses on this theme by a diverse group of Israeli authors and journalists that includes Ronit Matalon, Ruth Almog, and Benny Barbash.

Covering a wide swath of Israeli culture single-handedly, Iris Bahr, a young Israeli-American actress and memoirist, serves up a gallery of Israeli caricatures in her one-woman show Dai (Enough), now published as a slim paperback (Northwestern, November). Previously known as the Orthodox girl stuck on a ski lift on Curb Your Enthusiasm and for the memoir Dork Whore, Bahr sets her play at a Tel Aviv café, performing as a kibbutznik, a Palestinian intellectual, a Russian prostitute, an Evangelical American, a bourgeois yoredet, and more, to dramatize how a strange mix of people can have their lives yoked together by terrorist violence in contemporary Israel.

Popular music is one forum in which Israeli Jews and Arabs have lately managed to overcome their political differences: as UC Berkeley music professor Benjamin Brinner describes in Playing Across a Divide: Musical Border Crossings in Israel and the West Bank (Oxford, December), bands like Bustan Abraham and Alei Hazayit include Jewish and Arab musicians drawing upon global music traditions in their compositions. It remains a question, however, as to how such instances of audiotopia—defined by Josh Kun as “the space within and produced by a musical element that offers the listener and/or the musician new maps for re-imagining the present social world”—might translate into rapprochement in a situation as tense and violent as today’s Middle East.

***

Can we imagine a different Jewish state, beset less intensely by seemingly inexorable internal and external pressures? Eric Maroney’s The Other Zions: The Lost Histories of Jewish Nations (Rowman & Littlefield, November) gathers the scant and at times unreliable data on the rare places throughout history in which Jews reigned, either because those in power converted (as in Himyar, Adiabene, and Khazaria) or because a government designated an area for Jewish self-government (as in Soviet Birobidzhan). Do these historical oddities have anything to contribute to contemporary debates about Middle Eastern politics? Maybe, maybe not. But at least we know Michael Chabon has material for half a dozen more adventure novels in the spirit of Gentlemen of the Road.