Between Tradition and Modernity

2016-09-13T10:16:00.002-07:00

Cover reveal of my novel COME BACK FOR ME

COME BACK FOR ME: A NOVEL chosen as inaugural fiction offering by The New Jewish Press

2016-07-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to share the news that my novel Come Back for Me has been accepted for publication by The New Jewish Press. The New Jewish Press is an exciting new publishing venture run by the well-known publisher Malcolm Lester, former head of one of Canada's most distinguished publishing houses, Lester & Orpen Dennys. He and Andrea Fochs Knight of the prestigious Azrieli Foundation have teamed up to form the New Jewish Press, an arm of the University of Toronto's Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.

I'm thrilled that my debut novel has been chosen as their inaugural fiction offering, and will appear in print in 2017!

Announcing my forthcoming book.

2015-01-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

I am delighted to announce that my new book, Bridging the Divide: The Selected Poems of Hava Pinhas-Cohen, Translated and Introduced by Sharon Hart-Green will be forthcoming from Syracuse University Press in 2015. It will be the first book of poems in English by the prize-winning Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen, featuring approximately 100 poems in a bi-lingual edition. Stay tuned for its upcoming release!

Revisions have their own rewards

2013-07-12T17:12:00.001-07:00

My debut novel, Come Back for Me, has recently gone through revisions, but I have to admit, it's still not quite ready to be sent off to agents/publishers. What a ride it has been! Though writers are naturally wedded to their prose, I must admit that making these changes has been (dare I say it?) --exhilarating. It proved to me that I can make changes and not lose the essence of my work. It also tells me that my work is not sacrosanct; it can be altered and yes, improved. And those changes can take it in directions that are entirely unanticipated. It’s like turning the corner of a familiar street and discovering an entirely new neighborhood. It can be frightening to veer away from the familiar. But that is what writing fiction is all about: opening oneself to unexpected paths and honing the experience so that it speaks to those beyond oneself.

2013-04-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

Having lived in Boston for several years, I was moved to write a poem in response to the terrible events of April 15.

Ode to Boston

The city will not die
By fire
Or smoke
Or bursting nails.
A gun is shot
Your mark is set
The race goes on
To reach
The bell upon the hill.

The torch will pass
From hand to hand
Through missing arms
And legs
And wind.
Their necks are hard
Their eyes are wide
Not daunted by the
Pointed shards dispersed along
The bloody trail
They run for freedom.

Sharon Hart-Green, April 15, 2013

The Weight of Emptiness: a poem by Hava Pinhas-Cohen

2012-07-12T08:28:00.002-07:00

The following poem is the third in a series of 3 poems by the Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen that I translated and published recently in The Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought: http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/

The Weight of Emptiness

Hava Pinchas-Cohen

1.
Lord, the whole weight of emptiness
You placed on my shoulders. The whole weight of emptiness
Bends my back
Pulls my neck
To follow you.

2.
The power of your touch that hovers
Over my neck and earlobes
The power of longing
To make you present for me

In my lying down and my rising up
And especially
My going out. My going out in the morning
On my journey where a shadow of a white dog
Whose simple desires are before me—

And you are with me. To you I tell
My wishes, I hear my voice
Fill the emptiness with words.
And you inhabit the chambers of my body, my throat, my guts,
Every place that is open and hollow is yours.
Cleaving to your silence. No voice, no word on the phone,
No letter, no touch. No human thing I can claim.
I went out to declare it in the streets
Gathering signs for my children to find their way through this cold and empty place.

Translated by Sharon Green

Request: a poem by Hava Pinhas-Cohen

2012-06-27T08:55:00.001-07:00

The following poem is the second in a series of 3 poems by the Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen that I translated and published recently in The Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought: http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/

Request

Hava Pinhas-Cohen

When a baby is in my arms
Its life woven with human milk
At nights there come heartbeats, thumping voices
Trains—

At a certain station in that land
Barefoot and weak
I spread my arms
Like the horns of a ram in a thicket
The earth whispering to the heavens
Hear, make a canopy of your mercy
Like shade for the vine and the fig tree
Please, do not put me to the test.

There is wood and thicket, a smell of fire
And the sight of smoke. Don’t play hide-and-seek
With mothers—

Weakly I cover my eyes
My voice is lost in a scream
That can’t be heard
Where are you

Translated by Sharon Green

A Mother's Prayer Before Dawn

2012-06-17T19:34:00.001-07:00

The following is one of three poems by the Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen that I translated and published in the recent issue of the Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought.
http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/

A Mother’s Prayer Before Dawn

by Hava Pinhas-Cohen

At the hour when I am about to cook porridge
May all my strange thoughts recede
And when I touch my baby’s back to check his temperature
Let all my troubles leave me
and not confuse my thoughts.
Give me the strength to wash my face
So that each one of my children
Will see his face in mine
Like a mirror cleaned for a holiday.

And may the darkness that is sunk within
My face---be covered with light.
So that my patience not break nor my throat grow parched
From a troubled thickening scream
May I not become powerless
Against the unknown
And may I never cease for even a moment
To feel the touch of my children’s flesh against my own.

Give me your love so that I will have enough of it in me to stand at my doorway
Sharing it simply as slicing bread and spreading butter each morning anew
The aroma of boiling milk overflowing and the lingering smell of coffee
Is an offering of thanks and an eternal offering
That I do not know how to give.

Translated from the Hebrew by Sharon Green

Jewish Fiction Comes to the Web

2012-06-13T11:52:00.001-07:00

I was pleased to be interviewed for Barbara Trainin Blank's article about jewishfiction.net (reprinted from HadassahMagazine.org)

People of the Web Site
by Barbara Trainin Blank

Jews have always been disproportionately represented among both authors and readers. However, with the affects of technology and the economy on the publishing industry, it is more difficult than ever to see one’s works in print—especially if you are a fiction writer.

With fewer—and possibly less challenging—options available, avid readers seeking high-quality contemporary fiction are being shortchanged.

“If you look at [traditionally published] Jewish fiction, most of the names are very well known and much of what is published is nonfiction,” says author Nora Gold. “Many publishers can’t take chances on new writers or difficult topics.”

In response, she founded Jewish Fiction.net (www.jewishfiction.net), the only English-language online journal devoted exclusively to the art of literary fiction as practiced, and consumed, by Jews. Launched at Rosh Hashanah 2010, Jewish Fiction.net posts original works every three to four months.

With each new edition, subsribers have a wealth of literary fiction to choose from. During its first 15 months, Jewish Fiction.net viewers read 77 short stories or novel excerpts—“originally written in eight languages [besides English] by writers on five continents,” says Gold.

Without the site, she adds, “First-rate writing may be lost. We’d like to share it with as wide an audience as possible.”

And audiences are responding. Readers hail from 83 countries, and as of the end of February, the site had 20,000 visitors—and the number keeps growing.

If not a virtual United Nations, Jewish Fiction.net has featured works in translation by Elie Wiesel (French); Marcelo Birmajer (Spanish); Grigory Kaovich (Russian); Gordana Kuic (Serbian); Shira Gorshman (Yiddish); and Nava Semel (Hebrew), among others.

English-language writers include Sharon Hart-Green and Gold herself; Clive Sinclair of England; and Ora Mendels of South Africa and England.

The latest edition, out last month, includes translated works from Mario Levi, “Where Were You When Darkness Fell,” an excerpt from Levi’s Turkish novel, and “Purimspeil” by Jasminka Domas, originally in Croatian.

About half of the works published are by “not-yet-well-known” literary figures. “We’re flooded with submissions from these writers,” Gold says. “We’re quite anguished over what to pick.”

The site publishes “a very small percentage of dead writers,” says Gold. But viewers will sometimes encounter familiar writers, such as Israel Prize and National Jewish Book Award winner Aharon Appelfeld. In the sixth edition, posted last December, for example, fiction lovers could read the first-ever English translation of S.Y. Agnon’s novella, Ve’haya He’akov Le’Mishor.

The first issue featured Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk and George Jonas, the Hungarian-born Canadian writer whose book Vengeance about the Munich Massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes inspired two films.

Although she is also from Toronto, Hart-Green didn’t meet Gold until both attended a literary conference in Israel when Gold was launching the journal.

“ I was so impressed with the quality of the first issue that I decided it was a journal in which I would like my work to appear,” says Hart-Green, the author of Not a Simple Story: Love and Politics in a Modern Hebrew Novel (Lexington Book, 2001), and a debut novel recently submitted to publishers. “Nora has attracted some of the leading figures in Jewish literature internationally.”

Readers can find Hart-Green’s short story entitled “A Sign”—about a lonely single woman in Boston who meets an injured Israeli she may connect with—in the second issue of Jewish Fiction.net.

Her hope was that the story work would receive broad exposure by being published in an online journal that “reaches thousands of subscribers who love Jewish literature… “I believe that my story did reach a broad audience, since I received many responses from near and far,” the writer says.

For Gold, art is a way to bridge differences among Jews around the world, whether these are geographic, religious, or ethnic. “We want to provide an online community for writers and readers,” she says.

Now in her fifties, this is Gold's third career. A trained social worker, she has also been an activist in her home city, as well as a tenured professor who left that career to write full time. Thinking like a social worker and activist, the online publisher says that when she sees a problem or need, she tries to link it to a resource or create one of her own.

Gold’s first book, Marrow: And Other Stories (Warwick Publishing, Canada) won the Louis Lockshin Prize for Short Fiction. Recently she completed her first novel, Exile—which does not yet have a publisher.

Choosing a Web site rather than a print publication stemmed from Gold’s desire to be “accessible not only to people of means” as potential readers but “to any Jew with a computer.”

Gold admits, “It’s both a labor of love and a huge amount of work.” Looking forward to the next edition, she expresses the hope that someone will emulate her model—create a Jewish Poetry.net and a Jewish Playwriting.net.

My Top 25 Film Picks

2011-12-10T20:00:00.001-08:00

I have not posted anything on my blog for several months, as I've committed almost all of my time to writing my second novel. However, since the holiday season usually brings with it free time to do such "frivolous" things as watching movies, I have decided to depart from my usual musings by offering a list of my favorite 25 films (listed alphabetically). These are movies that I consider to be "classics". To me, a classic film is one that can be viewed repeatedly and never gets stale. In fact, the viewer sees new things in it every time it's played. It's a simple definition, but sometimes the simplest explanations are the most apt. I've watched all of these movies again and again, and I'm not embarrassed to admit that even the sight of the names in this list makes me want to run out and watch each one of them one more time. Hope you enjoy!

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

The Brothers McMullen (1995)

Casablanca (1942)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Crossing Delancey (1988)

David Copperfield (1935)

The Family Man (2000)

The Firm (1993)

The Fugitive (1993)

The Great Escape (1963)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

High Noon (1952)

It Could Happen to You (1994)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Moonstruck (1987)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

North by Northwest (1959)

Notorious (1946)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Saboteur (1942)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

She’s the One (1996)

Spellbound (1945)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Who knows more—the writer or the reader?

2011-08-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

When I first started writing my novel Come Back for Me, I had no intention of composing a symbolic tale about the Jewish people and their fate in the modern world. I was simply writing the story of an individual Jew who struggles to find happiness after losing everything in the war. Yet now that I have finished the novel, several readers have commented that my novel truly captures the essence of the modern Jewish experience. Of course I am gratified that they view it that way. Perhaps I did unconsciously try to portray something essential about Jewish life in modern times. But I didn’t set out to do that. I just wrote what came naturally to me.

Although my book has yet to hit the marketplace (it’s about to be submitted to publishers by my wonderful agent!), I expect that once it is out in the world at large, readers and critics will offer a variety of interpretations about what the book conveys. Some of what they say might ring true to me. Other interpretations might seem off base. Yet, slowly my opinion will diminish in importance. Once the book is out in the world, it will take on a life of its own.

The question is: do writers understand their own work better than their readers? It reminds me of a humorous story I once heard about the Nobel prize-winning novelist S.Y. Agnon. After attending a lecture about his work given by the esteemed critic Baruch Kurzweil, Agnon apparently exclaimed, “Now I finally understand my own work.” Although Agnon was undoubtedly being ironic, there is a hint of seriousness in his statement. Sometimes authors do not grasp the hidden elements in their own work, perhaps because “art” is partly the result of unconscious forces that emerge in the creative process. It is possible that readers might interpret a work in ways that the writer might never have fathomed. And such interpretations certainly have some validity.

This leads back to my original question about intention. To what extent does a writer control what emerges? My answer would be: almost all of it. A writer might rely on the unconscious for the initial creative burst, but the finished product is based on a high degree of editing, refining, honing, and perfecting. What serious writer doesn’t know the intense labor that goes into each sentence of his work? Often, every word is tried and discarded multiple times. So when it comes to deciphering a writer’s work, a reader can assume that most of what is written is conscious and intentional. But there is still that small bit, that essence, which arises from some unknown place that may even take the writer by surprise. And when it comes to understanding that, surely anything is possible.

The Significance of Titles

2011-06-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

Some people believe that words have mystical powers. There are others (mainly kabbalists) who think that even individual letters possess a mysterious force that when viewed in particular combinations, can reveal clues to the secrets of the universe. I was never one to take such things seriously until something happened that made me think twice about the power of words. But it was not just any words. It was the words of a title. My title. The title of my book.

I originally called my novel Tenacity. I liked the title for its simplicity and its suggestion of strength and stubborn resistance. But inside, I knew it was not the right title for my book. And I am sure that others knew it too, although they were probably too polite to say it out loud.

As soon as I dropped the title, it was as if the book had been reborn. Of course, I must admit that before I did so, I made major revisions to the novel itself. I added and changed and fixed and polished until I was confident it was as perfect as it could be. Yet something was askew. It still felt flawed. And then it hit me: the title. It was all wrong.

Almost miraculously (in a matter of minutes?), the new title came to me as if it had been waiting for me all along: Come Back for Me.

Yes. That was it. It felt so right. And I immediately knew that others felt it too. As soon as I’d mention it to them, there was a reaction. A good one. They would look up and smile, as if they could hear it gently humming in their ears: Come Back for Me.

Certainly titles cannot make a book speak to the human heart. The book must do that itself. But a title can beckon a reader. It can draw them near. And if not for that wondrous meeting, what is writing for?

The Sneer

2011-01-09T12:40:00.000-08:00

I used to think that a sneer was a facial expression -- turning up the nose -- implying ‎contempt, disgust and derision. I have come to realize that a sneer also appears in written ‎form: it can be a scornful turn of phrase, a tone of disparagement or even a single ‎mocking word. But the thing that distinguishes a sneer from other forms of loathing is ‎that it combines contempt with an air of superiority. The “sneerer” possesses so much ‎confidence in his own cleverness that he assumes that all clever people must agree with ‎him. No rational argument need be presented in order to justify the sneer. It stands on its ‎own as a self-evident truth. And if you dare object—well, watch out. You’ll be viewed as ‎a mindless boor who never learned to use his brain. Perhaps worst of all, you’ll be ‎sneered at too.‎

So what is all this sneering about? It’s about many things—the suburbs, religion (other ‎than primitive tribes), SUVs, shopping malls, June Cleaver, chivalry, polyester, red meat, ‎discipline, carpeting, plastic bags, politicians, iceberg lettuce, florescent bulbs (to name ‎only a few).‎

Now, as a Jew with a well-developed sneer detector, I’ve noticed that the sneer has ‎increasingly crept into one particular venue: journalistic articles about Israel. For ‎example, I was recently reading what started out as an informative piece about one of the ‎first Israeli hit songs to gain an international audience, the song “Tzena Tzena”. The ‎author ably traced the origin of the song and described how it grew in popularity, until it ‎eventually reached the number 2 position on the American charts. But the article did not ‎end with that factual observation. At the end of the article, there it was: a sneer—subtle ‎yet condescending—about how the song idealized Israelis and helped propagate the ‎‎(supposedly false) notion of their attractiveness. The author states, “With its romantic ‎depiction of young women lusting after righteous male soldiers, the song fulfilled the ‎expectations of Israel held by many American Jews in 1951”. Now I don’t mean to sound ‎over-sensitive, but why is it that Israelis cannot be allowed to take pride in a successful ‎song without having it pointed out that it promoted a romantic myth? And why are ‎American Jews being blamed, as if they concocted the myth in order to make themselves ‎feel good about themselves? Are Jews not allowed to take pride in anything? ‎

Now it may be that the author did not intend it as a sneer at all, and was merely reflecting ‎an earlier zeitgeist: that in those days, Israeli soldiers were considered righteous, and that ‎woman lusted after them for that reason. But this assumes that we now know better. We ‎‎(the clever of today) know that there is no glory in being a soldier and any woman who ‎thinks so is foolish. If one wanted to argue this point, then surely it can be done through ‎the presentation of persuasive facts. But with a sneer? To my mind, that’s cheating. ‎

I have come to the conclusion that the sneer should come out in the open and declare its ‎position candidly. If it has validity, then it should be forthright about it. And prove it with ‎evidence. It is not enough to merely turn up your nose--whether it is in person, or on ‎paper. A sneer after all, is merely a form of mockery. And mockery is only a slightly ‎classier version of a snub.‎

Funny, you don't look Jewish

2010-10-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

In the course on Israeli literature and culture that I teach at the University of Toronto, I frequently ‎include a poem by Yehuda Amichai called, “Jews in the Land of Israel.” It is about the profound ‎and often painful process of change accompanying the Jews’ transition from being a homeless ‎people to an autonomous nation. ‎

Some of these changes in Jewish life might not always be obvious. One line from the poem that I ‎always like to bring to the attention of my students is: “our children are beautiful.” I ask them if ‎this statement surprises them. The students generally stare at me with a look of perplexity: why ‎would I ask such a thing? They take it for granted that Israelis think of their children as beautiful, ‎and that it would be a natural thing for an Israeli poet to include this in one of his poems. I then ‎go on to explain that (from my perspective) this is one of the most radical statements in the poem. ‎

I point out that it was not so long ago that Jews did not think of themselves as beautiful at all. To ‎‎“look Jewish” was something to be ashamed of, and in fact it was considered a compliment if ‎someone told you that you don’t look Jewish. ‎

After this, I would look around the classroom and watch as the floodgates would begin to open. ‎The Jewish students would start to admit that yes, they still sometimes feel that way today. In ‎their minds, “Jewishness” is still not associated with beauty. Tales of personal humiliation would ‎often emerge. Sometimes their stories would be funny; often they were sheathed in self-‎deprecating irony. This would lead to a discussion of Jewish stereotypes, and the ways that Jews ‎have internalized these negative conceptions about themselves without even being aware of it.‎

I would then ask the students to re-examine the phrase “our children are beautiful” (actually ‎stated twice by Amichai in the poem). Suddenly, a look of recognition would appear on their ‎faces. They would grasp that it is no small thing that the Jews can finally call themselves ‎‎“beautiful.” In fact, it is one of the major differences between Jewish life in Israel and the ‎Diaspora. This is an achievement that most people hardly think about and may even consider ‎trite. But for the Jews and their sense of internal dignity, it is one of the swiftest and most ‎revolutionary changes to have come about in modern times. ‎

Jews in the Land of Israel

by Yehuda Amichai

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish
names from the Exile give us away,
bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,
metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,
spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,
handicrafts long gone from the world
‎(the hands are gone too).‎

Circumcision does it to us,
as in the Bible story of Shechem and the sons of Jacob,
so that we go on hurting all our lives.‎

What are we doing, coming back here with this pain?
Our longings were drained together with the swamps,
the desert blooms for us, and our children are beautiful.
Even the wrecks of ships that sunk on the way
reached this shore,
even winds did. Not all the sails.‎

What are we doing
in this dark land with its
yellow shadows that pierce the eyes?
‎(Every now and then someone says, even after forty
or fifty years: "The sun is killing me.")‎

What are we doing with these souls of mist, with these names,
with our eyes of forests, with our beautiful children,
with our quick blood?‎

Spilled blood is not the roots of trees
but it's the closest thing to roots
we have.‎

Being "Between"

2010-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

I call this blog “between tradition and modernity,” with a definite emphasis on the word ‎‎“between”. As I see it, to be a Jew today is to be pulled in two directions—to the world ‎of tradition where religion, language, and nationhood offer an all-embracing form of ‎collective sustenance, versus the world of modernity which grants almost boundless ‎freedom and tolerance to all individuals, including Jews. Both worlds have attractions ‎and detractions, and it is nearly impossible to choose one over the other, if one wants to ‎enjoy the benefits of modernity and remain Jewish. Indeed, it is this state of constantly ‎being caught “between” that characterizes the modern Jewish experience. ‎

I define Jewish literature along similar lines. If I were to add anything to the long-‎standing debate about “what is Jewish literature”, it is this: Jewish literature is the act of ‎writing between tradition and modernity – between the ties that bind the writer to his ‎Jewish heritage and the forces that (for better or for worse), offer to break those ties. In ‎this sense, one can say that all modern Jewish literature is by nature “dialectical.” This is ‎perhaps the reason why S.Y. Agnon (the Nobel prize-winning Hebrew author) is ‎considered to be the quintessential modern Jewish writer. His heroes almost always find ‎themselves vacillating between the worlds of tradition and modernity, unable to decide ‎where they truly belong. Perhaps that is his point. Being a modern Jew is to live in the ‎irresolvable tension “between” these two poles. ‎

אופרה בהפתעה בדיזינגוף סנטר - A Surprise Opera in the heart of Tel Aviv

2010-08-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

A surprise burst of song in a Tel Aviv food court. Trust Israeli ingenuity to think of novel ways of bringing opera to the masses! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNqosHRbWog

2010-08-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

Since this is my first post, I thought I would explain my choice of picture which ‎seems to encapsulate the theme of this blog. In the photo, I am standing in front of a ‎booth at the well-known book festival in Jerusalem called Shavua HaSefer (Book Week). ‎This annual week-long celebration of books takes place in numerous locations all over ‎Israel. Since I happened to be in Israel this June, I was finally able to attend this festival ‎for the first time. I must say that more than anything, I was struck by the sheer vitality of ‎the event. ‎

Not only was I impressed by the enormous number of Israeli book publishers ‎displaying their wares (and in a country as tiny as Israel, this alone deserves mention), ‎but the different sorts of people buying books was what astounded me most. From men in ‎Hasidic garb to women with shaved heads and tattoos (with most of the crowd falling ‎somewhere in between) the people were certainly as colorful as the displays themselves. I ‎found it fascinating to observe this full range of types ---religious, secular, Jew, Arab, ‎old, young--- all coming to the same place for the singular purpose of finding that right ‎book. And done with such fervor. I sometimes found that I could barely get close to some of ‎the booths as the hunting was so intense. ‎

‎ I was also impressed by the large number of families with children attending
the ‎festival. There were no rides or amusements for the children (other than a few free ‎balloons at some of the booths) ---just heaps and heaps of books. As I roamed between ‎the rows of books, I couldn’t help thinking that this may be one of the most telling ‎features of life in Israel: despite all the anguish of the past, the people of the Book, like ‎wide-eyed children, are still excited at the prospect of a book.‎