Poet and translator Rachel Tzvia Back lives in the Galilee, where her great-great-great-grandfather settled in the 1830s. Her poetry collections include A Messenger Comes (elegies), On Ruins & Return, Azimuth, and the forthcoming collection entitled What Use Is Poetry, the Poet Is Asking. Her most recent translation project, On the Surface of Silence: The Last Poems of Lea Goldberg, will be published in spring 2017.
Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia Ruebner
Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was characteriz...
Photo by Zvika Melamed
Song of the Younger Brother
1 I can think of nothing but the little one, the younger brother.
He holds his father’s hand. Peering into the camera, h...
The opening lines of Lea Goldberg’s poem “A god once commanded us,” from Found in Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets (2006), tr. Robert Friend, ed. Gabriel Levin.
Israeli poetry of protest...