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International Interfaith Reading Group on ART in Interfaith Contexts
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*Hebrew-English Poetry “So Many Things Are Yours” by Admiel Kosman, trans. Lisa Katz*
26 February, 2024
Author: Poet, Professor of Talmud at Potsdam University, and the Academic Director of the Abraham Geiger Reform Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, Admiel Kosman is the author of nine books of Hebrew poetry, six academic books on Talmud and Midrash, and two bilingual Hebrew-English collections: So Many Things Are Yours (forthcoming, Zephyr Press, 2022) and Approaching You in English (Zephyr, 2011), both translated by Lisa Katz. Born in Haifa, Israel, Professor Kosman has lived in Berlin since 2003. In 2000, he was invited by Nobel Prize–winning Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska to participate in an interfaith festival in Cracow, Poetry – between Prayer and Song. Professor Kosman has been awarded the Israel National Prizes for Poetry including the Bernstein Prize, the Prime Minister’s Prize, and the Brenner Prize awarded by the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel.
“So Many Things Are Yours” is Professor Admiel Kosman’s second volume of poetry translated in English. It explores Jewish texts —Bible, Talmud, midrash — alongside bodies, physical desires, military experiences, even a refrigerator. Demons and fantasy enter these poems; so do politics, so does God. These are not religious poems in a conventionally liturgical, “inspirational” sense; yet they point to the big questions that religion asks: about love, hate, desire, violence, transgression, and disappointment.
Translator: Dr Lisa Katz’s introduction provides background information about Kosman, the translation process, and the poems themselves that brim with wonder, sadness, sensuality, and humor. Translator and poet Lisa Katz has published two collections of her own poems and translated several volumes of Hebrew poetry. Late Beauty, by Tuvia Ruebner, which she co-translated with Shahar Bram, was a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She also translated The Absolute Reader, a chapbook by Miri Ben Simhon (Toad Press, 2020); Approaching You in English, co-translated with Shlomit Naim-Naor (Zephyr, 2011); and Look There, by Agi Mishol (Graywolf, 2006). She lives in Jerusalem.
Panel Members: Professor Adriana Jacobs, University of Oxford, and Dr Tamar Hess, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Moderator: Professor Aaron Koller, Senior Fellow at the Oxford Interfaith Forum.
Date: 26 February, 2024
Time: 18:00-19:00 GMT| 19:00-20:00 CEST | 10:00-11:00 PST | 13:00-14:00 EST | 20:00-21:00 Israel
For more information, please, visit: https://www.oxfordinterfaithforum.org/thematic-international-interfaith-reading-groups/art-in-interfaith-contexts/poetry-book-launch-so-many-things-are-yours-by-admiel-kosman-trans-lisa-katz/
It’s good to welcome everyone here my name is Aaron koher I’m a professor of near Eastern studies at Yeshiva University in New York and a senior fellow at the Oxford Interfaith forum and it’s a real honor to welcome you to the program we have this afternoon this evening this morning if you’re farther
West uh it’s going to be a split program uh reflecting the bilingual nature of the book that we’re celebrating we’re celebrating the publication of a book of Hebrew English po poetry by Adel kosman and so our first conversation will feature the author Adel is Professor of talmud at
Ham University and the academic director of the Abraham Gyer reform reinal seminary in Berlin he’s published nine books of Hebrew poetry um and now this is his second bilingual Hebrew English collection he’s also published six academic books on his field of research of talmud and midra
Um I won won’t read uh the full list of all the many things that he’s accomplished and done in his life but I will say that he’s been awarded the Israel national prize for poetry a number of Israel national prizes for poetry including the Bernstein prize the prime minister’s prize and the brener
Prize uh which is particularly important because it’s awarded by the Hebrew writers association in Israel Dr Tamar hes is chair of the Department of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and head of the riim honor program for training teachers in Jewish studies she teaches modern Hebrew
Literature she will be in conversation with Professor coar thanks um uh for hosting us um at this uh event celebrating uh this Exquisite collection um of uh Adel cosman’s um uh poems that Lisa Catz has uh edited Chosen and translated and given us a double gift
Because um um on on for for Hebrew readers it’s an it’s uh a fabulous collection of cosman’s poems it’s a retrospective from his early poetry to uh to the most uh recent choosing from every every selection and it gives us a a a profile of um of kman that hasn’t
Been seen in Hebrew this uh this way and uh and then of course the poems come alive in uh in English and they’re uh you’ll be speaking later about how they’re an interpretation of uh of cosman’s uh poetry uh as well so as as a Hebrew reader I understood the poems
Differently reading them through uh the translations that you’ve given us so thank you Lisa and thank you Adel for the these great collections why don’t we start by reading a poem and then talking about so the first the first poem that I’d like for us to read is U the central
God Elohim Kazi in Hebrew I’ll share my screen and so everyone can follow when you read it in Hebrew and then Lisa will read it in um in English did you read okay El for for and for thank you very much uh for our uh English uh listeners our anglophone listeners Lisa could you read the English now the central God is passing through our neighborhood now he he heals everyone fixes everything and he has plenty of time no one will be pushed
Aside Yesterday Today Tomorrow he smiles he’s the central God in the role of a glazier now a glazier a new Glazier for repairs and from every porch all the families and neighbors watch him now so tall and slim almost transparent passing through he repairs everything in complete Serenity oh you’ve nothing to
Worry about ma’am everything’s shining now the windows and the lights all scrubed like new this is how life improves as my central God passes by now as a glazier in our neighborhood he is the central God Supreme the one on high and now he’s passing through our neighborhood as a
Gardener with a rake and a broken bucket he weeds and hoes sprinkles bright Eternal dust on the lawn of the neighbor to the left and on the burn wound of the future and the past there’s nothing to be afraid of here he’s smiling at the old man and
Woman it’s never too late I have wisdom and counsel and I have forgiveness and understanding and again the god returns and smiles the central God of dignity of mist the angels and Divinity of my people so weary in the neighborhood Yesterday Today Tomorrow he is the Cent
God Supreme the one on high the lofty one passing through our neighborhood with a wheelbarrow now he’s the professional God a plasterer an excellent steeple Jack and also a provider of whitewash in abundance the plaster tablets of Free Will and divine knowledge totter in his wheelbarrow among the cylinders and
Tiles while this God so slim the central God Mr Fixit who is established this pure and clean Universe many years ago sits with chobin now a pure hero Lord Creator and speaker of the plain truth wrapped in a filmy robe of light this God passes near me in complete Serenity
Now a good maker fixing every transgression he needs ad I I want to ask you I know you don’t necessarily agree with me on this but um uh in um Israeli the history of Israeli poets you you signify a revolution in um uh the joining of um um
Religious poets to Israeli poetry that had been secularized for for Generations before you open the door for U secular for for religious Israeli poetry joining the tradition of secularized poetry and in this fem specifically um your God is a very mundane figure but he has has bright Eternal dust that he spreads on
Everything and um I want I want to I want you we spoke beforeand if you could tell us more about the your your concept of um a um um of the relationship between religious texts and your religious background and writing Hebrew and Israeli poetry I’ll say only few words that are
Not really covering the Deep large issue that you are talking about first of all you are referring here to the connection between art ER creative human or culture in general what we call literature music whatever to the religious level this is an issue for itself that demands not not one semester
I always say at least two semesters with good students so uh and to myself as well to study with them it’s not an easy thing but one thing I can say the the common Dominator that is as I feel it all my life is that you are not
Living in the religion you are you are living in religiosity as bobber would say in his language and I mention bober a lot not because we’ve everything that bber said I I agree but it’s easier to speak about somebody and to hang as we say in to speak through the language of
Somebody who expressed much of what I’m saying not everything again is exactly what I try to say but it’s easier to say bober wrote then it’s a kind of path that I’m putting in front of us it’s not religion that I was interested from my childhood although I was grown up as you
Know in Israel it would be called Orthodoxy uh some of will call it the religious Zionism some would call it modern in America they would call it modern Orthodox but uh and was educated in the best schools that you can imagine in Israel in this path but I never felt
One of it actually I never felt one of anybody and the the same thing is about the Academia that I’m leaving in the Academia the same thing is about every institution that I see I never was really belonging to anything and felt always Outsider when I was there and in
The end either I went away or they banished me because it was too much for them so it’s it’s a type of things that let you in the end a situation that led you in the end not to be one of anything and to see the things in a kind of Exile
All the time and that makes you um more it’s not really I cannot say that it is a rule but it it it let the spirit as bobber say again I’m saying via Boer things to to to let the spirit if you’re intend to be with God and to
Live with through religious reality not not religion but relig religiosity then you can find yourself in the end in a kind of a of creative religious life and the poems for me are discussion in the end with God in this way or the other even if they are erotic poems they are
Speaking about the the the huge gift of giving us this erotic energy so it’s always a kind of speech not speak dialogue with God it’s it’s a kind of discussion this is not what you find not in the secular poems in Israel as they are and not in what is called now
Religious movement of of creative poems in Israel because they don’t have it they are one they are belonging to the institution and that was in my eyes blocking them but again it’s I said only points that are like chapters for for a book to be written not more I cannot enter into
The points in really in depth that’s what I’m saying no uh you you’ve open opened a lot of room for thoughts um I want to ask about one of those um um sub chapters possibly um the uh the language in the poem that we’ve uh read of this
Mundane uh God walking around and uh working in favor of everyone is it’s the poem is embedded with uh Lang with um uh if if you you were talking about in being in dialogue with so this is in dialogue with many Jewish texts um that
Um uh that are in in the poem of of prayer and and of biblical language um what what text do you feel you are most in conversation with first of all H I have to say what I told you already tomor when we spoke in the preparation discussion that I it’s
True I know people will will maybe don’t wouldn’t believe me but that’s the truth I never wrote any poem this is the real truth sheer truth that I cannot prove but that’s the fact I I was never belonging to any group of writers I was not part of any any you
Know periodical that published I still have problems to to print in Israel and outside things this is not the easy part of my life I never was part of any any any group actually I never had friends although I’m connected to to hundred of people via connection via Connections in
The Academia or other things but the institution that is called friendship I never I I was not never I was never interested in it even as a child and of course you can understand that to be grown up like that in a very very tight Society like Israel and the Army later
Is not the easiest thing in the Yesa academic I learned in many before I came to the Academia is not an easy thing but but I couldn’t behave differently that’s that’s what I was born into something else so what what I’m saying is that that the language since I never wrote any any
Poem or what what to make it simple what what does it mean that means that only when the poem comes I write it I’m the messenger I’m the pizza deliverer I always say I’m not the one even to prepare the pizza so I’m I’m just the
Messenger on my bicycle to bring it to the people I don’t feel that it is me even now that we are speaking it sounds to me when we read it as somebody else wrote it I tell you the truth so I never know from where it comes and why it
Comes I know that I don’t have to wish that it will come it’s not my business I’m only the messenger so if it comes I write it sometimes it comes to me that I have to fix something that was written because many many things are only the
Beginning of something but then I hear the call and I come sometimes to the computer sometimes to the paper to make my to to to make my to to feel to feel my job and that’s all to feel out what I’m I’m I’m tended to do but not more
Than that when I’m enjoying something from that I enjoy it as you enjoy it not really enjoyment that’s not the right thing I would say that if a poem is really making me feel that it has to be sent then I know that this is poem
Otherwise I don’t know that is is the PO but this feeling is very strong I cannot even imagine I think that it is much stronger than anything that I feel in my life in every sense I mean um we we all are having you know kind of excitement
For many things in life but I think that this is different from any anything that I know of now even academically I’m not writing something that is not coming to me as like falling down from above and because I don’t have now to run away
After getting my uh my uh you know full professorship thank God and I I’m not in a in a run and competition with anybody so I’m writing only things that are falling in like to then I’m the messenger again I have to work a lot in
Order to write it and mostly it is not accepted because it’s not the regular things that people are writing in the Academia it’s falling down somewhere always but anyhow I I wish to live like that all my life even in other senses in relationship with people with my
Children my family my my neighbors everywhere I feel that this is the right way to live not I’m not able to do it but here in poetry it is clearcut it’s coming and you know that it is coming and even now I’m not running after that
H in in the few last days I had a poem that fell just from above I don’t know how I write it here in this place that I’m sitting now on a paper and then writing it in the computer that’s all but but again to to the point that you
Asking it’s very very very deep thing the language the language is a mix of everything like you cannot control your dreams if I have to make an example the dreams are wonderful wonderful ER I mean the way the the way they create themselves the dreams is example for poetry you are not involved
In that but you see the beauty of it if you write it after you are waking up whoever it is a a a pleasure event or or a horror event it’s it’s a masterpiece if you follow the power of creating dreams the same thing is about it you know when the
Ego is there and you want to write it or it is come as pure as a dream is coming and then you you can see that you don’t understand it now the language is the most I mean the the most hardest part to understand how the language is is
Creating this kind of carpet for materials that are in this point for example you have the street language of the people in Israel you have the you have the the the poems that you find in the sidur in the prayer book you have language from all over the word and they
Are woved in a like in a carpet in a wonderful way and you don’t understand understand how you can understand it better than me as somebody who is expert in analyzing poems or Adriana later can speak about it but I don’t understand it at
All I I I want us to look at a very different poem uh since you’re talking about this weave of carpets just so that everyone can get um an impression of the the great variety of voices and languages that um this uh this book and
You are offering us and uh I want to look at a poem that’s um uh really uh dreamlike and um and also um speaks to what you were saying about poems being sort sort of a a revelation and dream like so um I’ll share my screen Again For For For For Al thank you um Lisa can we ask you to read the translation above the roofs of the Jewish village I am my Imaginary Lover hover above the roofs of the Jewish village above the courtyards Dairy barns animal pens above the slanting roofs of the chicken coups amid smells and clucking
Cold air and wind must her imaginary hair soft colorful flapping like cards my love is not Jewish she’s an urban girl from the city of Tel Aviv giggling a pleasant and liberating laugh I’m an inhibited Village boy and as I hover this stammering and the rest of my blushes have completely
Disappeared my voice is eloquent we kiss quickly in the middle of the air without stopping my hands my tender beard my earlocks my hat and my two feet moving near her up there in the skies like so many uncount able lizards the heat of our bodies creates a
White cloud pale and streaming above humpback mountains stin shacks and Village cubes and so we Embrace up there in the center in the blue in the middle of the blue sky right above the church above the cross and the entire Jewish village stares watches like dozens of
Eyes stabbing my back but we are into our thing Rising disappearing into the the clouds high so high in a Heavenly K kiss close to God oi a painful Arrow my love my imaginary non-jewish love cleaves the village in my heart like a gunshot with a very daring Heavenly Kiss
And all the rest that is to say all of life that comes after in the village is an allegory about a wound a wound I’ve dragged along with me for years like this lovely ing of a sacrificed child face Fallen by an artist or like the
Slash of a plow bleeding sorrow on top of the furrows of time um ad um I told you this poems reminds me of a shagal painting it’s like putting putting yeah um so we’re in a dream of an Eastern European fantasy moved to Tel Aviv and to Israel and um there’s um
With the pleasure of of of the scene there’s a lot of humor in uh your your poems um um as as well connects with when you’re dealing with very Serene issues um um it I’m I’m I’m wondering how do you make these things funny uh I I don’t know as I told you
Because I’m not writing them but I’m always laughing from from when I read them I don’t know from where it comes because there I again I can I can have with my students a course on humor in Jewish text like the talmud is full of humor the Jewish the Jewish people at
Least are very famous for having maybe because of the you know all the suffering that is accompany the Jewish Life as a community it was like a kind of therapy inner therapy of of the community and but I never had it in my in at my home it was a very very serious
Family I my mother I I don’t remember my mother never laughed or my father or or anybody around me when at least in my memory so I don’t know from it come it comes from the poems I guess that the pizza had it from itself I don’t know
Why God is sending it like that I have no idea we have this poem has the community um the first poem uh that we read describes God to the community the second one that we read has a very hostile Community um stabbing the individual speaker and because we’re
Running short of time we’re going to conclude with a poem which you directly address or the speaker in the poem directly addresses um god um and it’s a very confrontational poem as as well as I told you Tamar I think that these poems again I’m not I’m not
Author Authority in in this kind of things you are much much more than me as somebody who who can analyze text and teach text and and understand the text but but least my impression is this kind of poem that I’m not I’m reading with you is talking about the God of the
Religion the god of the of the of what I don’t think that I can believe even if I would be forced to believe and I never believed even as a child I never believed even when I learned in theiva so this is a rejection to what is the
Religion not the religiosity that was in me all the time so let me read it wait wait let let me put it on um um on the screen for everyone um the Jewish promos come Up Thank you Lisa okay like the Jewish Prometheus I feel my way quietly I first of the Jews climb the tower and steal your fire and at the same opportunity sorry I steal a butt a last cigarette from the crinkly pocket of Heaven if you don’t owner of
Everything so real perfect discreet I myself will Splash paint over the sky at Sunset and I’ll call to your Ravens to sit with me in these trees and create a scandal for you thank you thank you both we we have to end our part here um I I would have
Loved to ask about what happened to the scandal in Hebrew when it turned into a scandal uh but maybe we’ll we’ll leave that um for later that’s a perfect segment to the question of translation so I think that’s actually a perfect note to end this segment on and on that
Note thank you Tamar NM um I’m going to quickly introduce our next two guests but very quickly because I do want to give them time to speak rather than to hear their bios um so we have Dr Lisa Katz who’s a translator and a poet who lives in Jerusalem and who whose voice
You’ve already heard um she’s published two collections of her own poems and several volumes of Hebrew poetry that she’s translated uh one of her co-rated volumes was a finalist for the National Jewish book award a few years ago um and uh Adriana X Jacobs is a poet scholar
And translator based in Oxford in New York City she’s a associate professor at the University of Oxford she’s also published a number of very impressive volumes uh translations of Hebrew poetry um which have won numerous Awards and she’s been awarded a number of Grants and fellowships for the translation work
And also uh is the author of strange cocktail translation and the making of modern Hebrew poetry uh in 2018 which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer book award um from the association of Jewish studies so there’s lots that I would love to hear from these two wonderful
Scholars and guests so I’ll turn it over to them and uh to the second half of the conversation and let me just say I don’t know if we’ll have time for questions but um we will keep them to the to the chat so if there are questions as as
They percolate in your head please send them in the chat ideally straight to me um and I’ll hopefully have a few minutes at the end to just curate some questions for the author of The translators or or any of our guests all right go ahead great thank you um so I’m going to
Start off uh asking Lisa some questions about the translation the experience of translating and hopefully if we have time to get into some of the poems and more specific questions about the translation process so I want to start um just first of all congratulating you Lisa on this undertaking um it’s a
Really wonderful uh collection of poems um really wonderful translations um and it’s also your second full length translation of cosman’s poetry and it arrives almost 12 years or so after your first translation of his work approaching you in English which was also published by Zephyr press and while that book Drew from nine
Collections uh they were rearranged by you to create a collection that doesn’t existed Hebrew this one on the other hand also draws from multiple collections but is organized chronologically so I kind of want to have P pitch two questions to you uh the first is what is it about cosman’s
Poetry that has motivated you to keep translating it and two beyond the obvious temporal differences how does a chronological approach uh differ ultimately and fundamentally from the one you used previously I what I want to say I think that what Adil just defined as religiosity
Is just human and has nothing to do with organized religion and as a completely secular all my life secular to this day even though I’ve been in Israel for 40 years I have really no collection no connection to the text that he’s that he is using which he wouldn’t actually
Reveal too much about in the answers to Tamar’s question um and I think that I was gonna say I think I secularized him in Translation but I actually think it it it isn’t it isn’t religious poetry it’s poetry that moves me and I and I thought about why I like poetry and when
I was a child we were given in school we had we each given a poem a different poem we had to recite them and ever since then I’ve really liked poetry and I I I think it was a physical thing and it’s hard for me to separate the
Physical from the mental and the spiritual I don’t even know what that is all I have is a body and there’s lot of body in Admiral cosman’s poetry a lot of it and while I in 1999 I was assigned to translate him for an international poetry Festival which they stopped
Having in 2006 in Jerusalem and ever and then I just wanted to translate more and I I maybe even gave me books I don’t remember and then um it gave me lists because my Hebrew is not my Hebrew um it it isn’t perfect at all but
I can write English really well so after I talk to someone about something I can get it into English and what I I mean I think I just um it’s poetry for me it’s poetry that’s why I think it needed to be in English and it was good that it’s
In English so people can read it it’s h which now when you hear Adel and I’ve heard him say this before he used to say that the poems jump up at him so um I I think that and that that’s true he’s a poet okay he’s a scholar
But but he’s a poet and that has to do with writing things that move people that come from unknown spaces that we don’t exactly know what they mean I don’t know what I don’t know what he means when I A lot of times when I translate I don’t know what he means I
Can look up things and find out or he can tell me where to read or he sends it to me you know something in the Talma that I can read it and then I begin to understand or he explains it to me um but it’s just for me it’s poetry you you
Reviewed the first book the um approaching you in English and you said but it’s not a it’s not a book it’s not a translation of a book it’s it’s a collection it’s something new in Hebrew the first book I picked what was attractive that I thought would make people read they
Would want to read the first poem in the first book is about writing poetry what I can do I can write poems I thought that was great anyway and um and then I just I wanted people to keep reading so it’s like Greatest Hits but since you
Said that and I take you really seriously I decided that this book it should be in chronological order from the beginning when he writes about the Army he’s writing about a problem with the Army and a problem um I actually wanted to look at a letters from reserve duty
Which he apparently wrote in his 20s which to me it could somebody could write it right now which questions the connection to the land and what it means and then reminds us looking overhead and now we have drones I don’t think we had drones then that what you are
Uh shooting at has children in the house which it’s incredible to me it’s so completely relevant I don’t think he wrote I’m sure I didn’t write it to be relevant but it is and it speaks to me say I don’t remember if I necessarily meant my observation to be a critique B
Just that okay it’s okay when we do when we rearrange we are creating a book that doesn’t exist in the original but it’s always a book that doesn’t exist in the original um but then when a reader is told that there’s a chronological approach they might start to think in
Terms of like development and evolution and other things so it just creates I think interesting and different reading I think it was a really good thing to say it made me aware of what I was doing so I was really glad that you said it um but I just think it’s so
Fascinating that you did do it differently this time because now it’s like I want to go back to see if it changes somehow the way I I read these two books together but since you did men mention um the letters from reserve duty that Segways nicely into the next
Question or which is um both a question sort of a comment um and this is something you and I keep talking about uh have had ongoing conversations about which is that you know often there’s this expectation that translators are decoders a linguistically and cultural decoders that we unlock the mystery and
Meaning of an original poem so that then the translation becomes this kind of gloss or exegesis on the original poem um and with this in mind I want to turn to letters from reserve duty um in the south of Israel which appears on pages
15 and 17 in this book um and I’ll share the screen I’ll just I was wondering if you would just read the first one letters from reserve duty in the south of Israel in the guard Tower when I arrived I knew a great man had been
There before me there were signs on the ground Trac of a struggle and shouts and black soot covering the stone the sight of an ancient ritual perhaps Abraham of Beva or Isaac waiting for Rebecca or perhaps Jacob on his way from Heron I don’t know but there were signs of it at
The distant army base ponderously he made his way North to the mountains with women and children and sheep and now too it’s a fact the ground under me struggles to hold on to these footsteps and the tattoo that’s been on the door all these years that no one has managed to
Erase when we were emailing about this uh event you described these two poems as an example of translating what is said not what is meant and I was really intrigued by this formulation and was hoping you could say a bit more about this every translator has to do that in
A way because we don’t the meaning comes from the reader and the I I am obviously translating meaning I’m giving meaning to ascribing meaning Adriana with a small note the fact is that many people tried to to to translate the poems and it did not work there is a miracle with
Lisa that we both don’t understand but it it is working and Leora who has been re charged for all the publishing books she knows it and in when they accepted the poems something is is happening we both don’t understand it I don’t even feel it because I have no feeling with
English but uh but people are reject are are are are are um H showing us all the time that we as a couple let’s say for the poems are working in English very well and we don’t both understand I don’t think that Lisa understand what’s happening here
And but I have experience with many other translator and people say somebody says to me with other translators that I feel that there is something Beyond it so as one Professor here in Germany I feel that there is much Beyond it but it’s not really transferred via this
Translation while with Lista nobody says it ever to any point although she made mistakes and she knows it I have to correct her yeah I make mistakes for sure and you you yourself Adriana corrected her with your critique in the past I don’t think that that’s that’s
Not how I would describe what I did um I but these mistakes are are are are are matching the poem I I’m correcting her just because it’s something from the Sido or from the Bible she doesn’t know but it’s working that that’s a miracle but all the thing we are talking about
Miracles here what we are talking about about Paul PA are not really a machine so you cannot talk about it with the regular logic that we are something is happening here maybe you as researcher of poetry can understand it better than us but we don’t understand so it’s not
The right thing to ask Lisa um I think Lisa you I’m not trying to pin you down to describe your why you make certain choices or others but um I do think this whole notion again going by the expectations we often have to deal with as translators that people
Expect us to be experts on the text that we’re um translating I just wanted you to reflect especially because you did mention these poems in particular um if there was something because you said you were hoping that someone else could explain it to you um but I think you
Raised an important point that it’s possible to translate um without having all the answers in front of you um but is that the case for every po or what was it about these this particular series of poems that you felt you didn’t have all the answers for you should understand
That some of these poems were translated 20 years ago I just didn’t put them in the first book Because I had some idea that I didn’t I wasn’t sure they were right and finished or I didn’t understand them or I thought they weren’t as interesting so so so I don’t
Even remember but I just want to say everybody knows Emily Dickinson right you read Emily Dickinson what on Earth does she mean I don’t know so you take the soldier and the stone and the what and you translate the words and and and in Hebrew I I because I’m so lucky to
Have English with its incredible vocabulary I’m very happy that I don’t have to read Emily Dickinson in in Hebrew and but everybody I understand why people want to do it but then of course it’s completely different but I don’t know like what does Emily Dickinson mean I don’t know and Depends
When you read it you know um when does any really good poetry that’s why I I maybe this sounds um pretentious but I think this is really good poetry therefore it’s really interesting and you don’t get it all anyway all poetry that I really like doesn’t tell me what to think and
Doesn’t give me a lecture it’s it evokes things and then I as the reader put them together um so I think uh we have time for one more question and I wanted to ask you a bit about um translating Jewish inner textuality um which is something I think
We Tamar brought this up and I think this is one of the um Hallmarks of adil’s poetry usually I think the question we get a lot as translators of Hebrew poetry is how do we handle sort of biblical references and that sort of thing but I think with Kat’s poetry it
Goes even more than that it’s also that there are a lot of references to the T mode to sort of this Rich um multilingual tradition of Jewish ex aesus or interpretation um and then so that can present sort of other challenges for a translator because sometimes these texts
Don’t have say a King James translation that has been widely circulating um that we can um go to so when you’re translating texts that are kind of heavily I know first of all that that you’re very transparent about um you know just that there are reference that
Evade you um and that you’re sometimes relying on ADM or other readers to kind of yes to to kind of help you identify certain moments in these poems but then when it comes down to like kind of the the nitty-gritty of translating um sort of I’m curious a bit about your process
Of deciding kind of what stays and what goes in terms of making these intertextual moments sort of more explicit for a non-hebrew reader and actually the only example I can give you has to do with an aim Mish poem that she wrote a million years ago
That has gimmel from the Army in it a gimmel is a you can stay home and stay in bed when you’re in the Army and somebody has yum giml is a Tuesday and someone has translated that as Tuesday and I had to translate it as a day off
From the Army which is a whole sentence um but there I thought it would be completely the person would reading the poem would know nothing understand nothing so that was her Jewish text in a sense this gimmel from the Army um with Adel he either sends me stuff or I you
Know thank God for the internet I think I have one explanation of something that I didn’t understand until I read online in Hebrew or something because I can read Hebrew so sometimes I can look but usually I depend on admil to explain as best he can and then I guess I don’t really
Remember each poem is different I I decide whether I’m going to explain it or I’m going to leave it out probably the best thing if we could some publisher would would be willing is to have a you know like a big Anthology in chronological order with notes so people
Who wanted to know could know I think that W wraps up our section okay thank you to you both so we do have a couple of minutes if anyone has questions they want to put in the zoom um there’s been so many interesting observations about the act of writing poetry and
Translating poetry and consuming poetry um maybe I’ll just uh share two quotes that popped into to my head one related to what uh Adriana was just saying uh France Rosen swag who did translate a lot of Hebrew um and also interesting in in the religious but not religious and
Interesting uh um vantage point there um said that all all of Hebrew literature is in quotation marks which is I think one of the challenges that Adriana and Lisa were just uh discussing you know if everything’s in quotation marks you know is there anything other than a Norton
Anthology with all those notes that can really do justice and yet I think you know it was really beautiful Insight that you know it it uh it actually takes away from that so knowing something seems necessary but knowing too much weighs it down I think that’s quite a
Quite a fascinating and insightful way that you’ve uh you’ve put it the two of you so thank you for that um and uh I kept I kept thinking as you were talking Leonard con always says that he didn’t he didn’t write his songs he just went
To some place where the songs were and they came to him and if he knew how to get there he would go there more often because he actually made a lot of money on his songs so for him you know he wanted access to this place of songs
That uh just you know the songs were and then they would come through him onto the page and onto the stage um so I I I confess you know maybe I’ve just never been there I I don’t actually understand this I would love to I’d love to understand that more or watch you
Um you know as a poem comes to you it sounds like a fascinating uh fascinating experience um so I guess we had just you want me to say you want me to to say something about it if you could say it briefly I would love to hear briefly yes
Here again uh my great teacher boober H I never go to any place I’m never I I don’t like even to travel I just doing my jobs in life you know you have a lot of responsibility students family I have a Down syndrome daughter that I’m caring for all the
Time um I mean life is full of Duties and and responsibilities but for me that’s the synagogue because this is the way you worship God we are the people we are the creatures that God has created doesn’t matter if it’s people or nature or whatever you meet so I don’t
Have to go anywhere and it comes to me usually when I don’t have time for the poems the only thing that I have to do is to push something and to call somebody and apologize that I cannot come to the meeting 10 minutes after that I’m there but the 10 minutes is the
Time that God wants me to write the poem I’m as I said this is my duty so but this is always pushing something I’m a you know in the middle of discussion with somebody or something it happened to me that I wrote a poem Onish G if you
Know in Israel I don’t know how to compare it to United States or New York the main road in Israel on driving I wrote it somewhere I don’t know don’t tell the police but it came at that moment so it never comes on time that’s
What I can tell you this is the only thing not going to anywhere any island or any place to get it life are the place of God this is the way there is no other place no synagogue no Yeshiva nowhere no church the only place to worship God is via the creatures on
Earth when you serve the people you serve God go and on the way I I have also pizza here and pizza there that I’m have to deliver and that takes 10 moments or even less sometimes amazing okay well on that uh quasy mystical note we’ll have to wrap this up
Uh it’s really been fascinating I I’ve learned so much from all four of you thank you so much for your work and your conversation here um I do have to oh no I want to invite you next everyone next Monday March 4th um the Oxford Interfaith Forum will be hosting
Professor Lawrence schiffman who is the uh has a quite the title he’s a global distinguished professor of Hebrew and judaic studies at New York University um and he will be speaking on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Christian dialogue which is a topic that he’s been thinking about and writing
About for many decades a marvelous speaker for those of you who know him or have not yet had a CH chance to know him so that will be next Monday at the regular 1 pm Eastern Time 6 PM uh England time and sorted other time zones around the world thank you all again
Very much it was really such a fascinating pair of conversations and I love the mixing of the conversations as well thank you all for being here and um have a marvelous week just one thank you for who arrang all this event from Oxford University and she is hiding
Herself somewhere here and Leora who initiated this book in cing who is with us here so thank you to you all that joined us and and and especially Adriana and Tamar thank you very much and you are on thank you bye bye Shalom to bye