The Only Way To Get Read In Today's World: Sayed Kashua

Some writers lend themselves to translation much better than others. A short while ago I heard on the radio program This American Life (501: The View From In Here, JUL 26, 2013) a story by the Arab-Israeli writer Sayed  Kashua. I was impressed, but not surprised, at how well Kashua’s story came across in English. I read the original in Hebrew and his insights, subtle criticism of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and his wit shone in English as well as they did in Hebrew. As an Arab in Israel, Kashua is constantly translating from Arabic to Hebrew and from Hebrew to Arabic. His biography is the embodiment of translation: he was born in the Arab village of Tira, and in school he learnt both Arabic and Hebrew. 
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http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-only-way-to-get-read-in-todays-world-sayed-kashua/

Please Leave Me A Note: About The Language Of Personal Notes

My husband  Tzvi and I were the kind of people who left notes to each other, they were short, often functional, but full with attention and love. By the time our first daughter was born, we have been writing notes for almost 8 years.

 At that time we lived in the US but, of course, we always corresponded in Hebrew. I never thought about the complex meaning of English versus Hebrew until it was time to read to my daughter. I knew that she would learn  English in pre-school, so we decided  to read to her mostly in Hebrew.

But then I started to think about the language of her future notes. As personal notes are such an intimate form of communication, I felt that it was crucial for my daughters (first the one and soon after the two) to be able to write them in Hebrew. 

Thus I decided to teach my daughters to read and write in Hebrew. I explained to them my rationale, and they agreed to make an effort. We created our own Hebrew school and every Sunday we wrote letters to my parents, and invented  stories that the girls wrote in their note books.

Although Tzvi and I spoke Hebrew at home, there was a period when my daughters spoke English to one another. I used to hear them play school with their stuffed animals giving them instructions in English. I didn’t say anything, but was worried about the future of those personal notes. 

Then we spent a Sabbatical year in Israel and once we had moved  back to the US, I noticed that the girls naturally shifted  back Hebrew.

Around us there were many Israeli friends who spoke English with their children. The strong Hebrew accent in English is very noticeable for me, and  I  always felt sorry for them. Somehow it seemed that this choice of  language reflected something about the relationship between parents and children and weakened the position of  the parent in the new country.

I had some frame of reference, from the beginning of the 20^th century Israel has always been  an immigrant society. Often when new immigrants arrived to Israel they knew very little Hebrew. Their  children normally became fluent in the language much faster than their parents and grandparents. A friend of mine told me that when she was 11 in the late 1960s she used to accompany her grandmother everywhere, especially to places like the local  hospital and different government offices. She was the interpreter for her grandmother who knew no Hebrew. This is a typical story, those children who became the mouth piece for the whole family  were put in an awkward position. On the one hand, they gained a special status in the family because of their responsible role.On the other hand, this reversal of roles, in which the child is the ambassador to  the outside world, was also a source  of confusion for everybody within that family

.

Our Israeli friends in the US were young professionals whose English was good enough and they didn’t need an interpreter.  But still they lived in a foreign country where their children had a better mastery of the English language.  I felt that speaking to my daughters in my native tongue was  a better way to preserve the traditional roles in our family.

And as for the personal notes, my daughters, who spent most of their life in the US,  prefer to read and write in English. But whenever I come home to find a note from one of my daughters,  it is always written in Hebrew.

This  makes me especially happy.

The Price Of An Haggadaless Seder

 MAR.24.2013 

Today as I spend the day  preparing for the Passover Seder I remember the many Seders which I attended as a child, a guest and a host.

My mother had 3 brothers and two of them lived in a kibbutz; when her own mother, my grandmother, was ill she asked her children to keep on getting together for the two main Jewish holidays: Passover and Rosh Hashana.  So my parents, brother and I spent those holidays in one kibbutz and the other brothers in a second kibbutz. In the kibbutz  holidays are celebrated in a communal dinner of about 400 people. Although I loved my uncle and aunt, I always disliked those occasions in which the Passover Haggada was replaced with the kibbutz's own spring Haggada and the food never tasted right.

One year, I got the measles and my family had to stay home, this was the happiest Seder of my childhood: my mother made our favorite food, we read some portions from the regular Haggada, and best of all, it was just the four of us –my parents, my brother and I.

Jewish people call any place outside Israel “a diaspora” and there they celebrate the holidays twice. One year, when we lived in the States we arranged with another family with small children to celebrate the two Seders together. We were supposed to celebrate the first Seder  at our place and the second night at their's. Unfortunately on that first night my kitchen drain got plugged.  I was very uncomfortable as I told  my friend that we had to do the first Seder at their home. My friend, a  good woman, was not very happy, she did not like her plans changed. I felt very guilty, and it was a strained evening in which we read the Haggada in in a foreign language and heard familiar Hebrew songs sung with unfamiliar melodies. When we came home that night my two year old daughter said “we didn’t have any Seder:  the songs and the language were all wrong”. I spent the next hour reading and singing to her, in Hebrew parts of the Haggada. After that night we only celebrated the first Seder at home in Hebrew.

Our Seders became much happier when we returned to Israel and could celebrate with my parents and my brother and family.  Our children became expert at finding the Afikoman(the mazzo that the head of the household hides for the children to find, and rewards them with gifts) which my husband hid.

As the girls grew older my husband decided that the Haggada was no longer relevant. He claimed that it was a  ridiculous text and he felt silly reading it. He was  right of course, by itself the text doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t tell the story of the Exodus, rather it  is a collection of songs, interpretations, different customs and anecdotes. In order to appreciate it you have to learn a lot and even then it is quite obscure. So from that time on we  prepared all the symbolic food for the Seder meal, we sang the songs and  followed the customs but we never read the Haggada anymore.

Yet being post- modern has its price, it seems that in spite of the preparations and the anticipation an Haggadaless Seder   makes the evening somewhat disappointing.

My partner asked me the other day “how about reintroducing some of the highlights of the Haggada to our Seder?”  I hope my husband who is looking down from above forgives my transgression, but I seriously consider doing it.

Keywords:

Afikoman Haggada Hebrew kibbutz Pesach reading Seder

Studying A Talmudic Text Together: The Poet Admiel Kosman

AUG.28.2013 

In graduate school at the University of Iowa I was an assistant editor for Modern Poetry in Translation, a magazine edited by the poet and translator Daniel Weissbort. One of my responsibilities was to find appropriate Hebrew poems which Daniel and I could translate together. Daniel didn't know Hebrew, so I chose the poems, did the literal translation and then we worked on the final version together. When he came back from the Second International Poets Festival in Jerusalem, Daniel told me that he had met a young religious Jewish poet who, according to him, was “quite eccentric.” Apparently the young poet suggested that they would study a Talmudic text together. Although Daniel loved working together on translation, he was baffled by this suggestion. He did not understand that it was an offer of friendship and a way of  exchanging ideas.

Daniel showed  me the books which the young poet had given him as a gift.  I have never heard of Admiel Kosman before, but the moment I read his poems we knew that we found a treasure.

Today Admiel Kosman is a professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at Potsdam University in Germany and the academic director of Abraham Geiger Reform Rabbinical Seminary.

Here are two poems by Admiel  Kosman  from Modern Poetry in Translation which Daniel and I translated together.

 Out!

For my son Abraham, one year old

Out!

From here into the light, without gripping the doorframe and

  looking

back at the moonlike pallor of your father, making music

alone inside the curtained darkness.

  

Out, into the light, my son!

Be strong. Be modest. May the kingdom of evil

dry and flake off like plaster in your days.  

Wanted

Wanted a quiet place where the soul may rest

just for a few minutes.

Wanted a place to plant my feet

just for a few minutes.

 Wanted flowers, a leaf, a stalk, a bush that will not strike camp

and move off when she comes. Just for a few minutes.

  

Wanted just one word, clean, pleasant, warm, a bench

a shelter, for someone, for kin, a dovelike child, my soul

that left the ark for a few minutes at dawn

and since then has found no footing anywhere.

(Basic training camp 1989)