Aharon Appelfeld - Poet
"I am still afraid that I might lose this language. Sometimes I wake up with the fear that my Hebrew, learned at great pains, would fade away and vanish. I want to catch it and I can't."
Aharon Appelfeld was born in Romania in 1932, and was deported to a concentration camp at the age of eight. He escaped and spent three years hiding in the Ukraine before joining the Russian army. A post-war refugee, he made his way to Italy and immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1946. He currently resides in Jerusalem. He is now a professor of Hebrew Literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He began publishing poetry in 1959. He writes novels, short stories and essays and his work has been translated to a number of languages. Appelfeld's work is recognized worldwide as among the most profound literary explorations of the Holocaust.
Evgenya Dodina - Actress
"It's different now. The Russians keep to Russian. With my daughter, I insist and battle to speak only Russian."
Born in Russia, Evgenya Dodina is now a stage, television and film actor in Israel.
Daniel Epstein – Rabbi and Philosopher
"Take the word "tendresse" tenderness. There isn't in the Hebrew "roch", the softness and the mellowness of the French word. On the other hand, Hebrew saves me from the rhetoric of French which appeals to me."
Head of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Matan Institute and a widely respected theologian.
Salman Masalha - Poet
"Hebrew doesn't belong to the Jews any longer. It belongs to anyone who speaks it and writes it. Even if people from other lands may have renewed it, it belongs to this region just as Arabic and other Semitic languages."
Salman Masalha was born in 1953 in the Arab town of Al-Maghar (in the Galilee, northern Israel). In 1972 he moved to Jerusalem and has lived in the city ever since. In the mid '70s he was imprisoned in an Israeli military jail for reasons of conscience. Masalha studied at the Hebrew University and holds a Ph.D. degree in classical Arabic literature; he has taught Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and served as a co-editor of the Concordance of Early Arabic Poetry. Six volumes of poetry have been published to date, as well as articles, columns, poems and translations in newspapers and journals in both Arabic and Hebrew and articles in European languages. His poems have been translated and published in anthologies and journals in many languages. Masalha serves on the editorial board of Masharef, a quarterly Arabic journal.
Agi Mishol – Poet and Translator
"I remember when my father died. As I felt Hebrew was no longer in me. I felt myself sinking into Hungarian, grieving in Hungarian."
Agi Mishol, poet and translator, was born in Hungary in 1947. She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lives on Kfar Mordechai, a moshav in the Coastal Plain. She teaches literature and creative writing and has published several collections of poetry. She was awarded Israel's Prize for Creativity in 1995.
Amal Murkus - Singer
"They gave me typical Hebrew songs with an Oriental beat. All those songs about hard work on the land. But deep inside I knew very well that those who had worked the land were my father and grandfather."
Amal Murkus is an Israeli singer. As an Christian Arab of Palestinian origins and a Communist, she occupies a unique place in Israeli society. She sings Palestinian folk songs in Arabic with a pop influence. Her first album, self-titled Amal, was released on Israeli label Hemisphere in 1998, making her the first Arab to record on an Israeli label.
Haviva Pedaya – Poet and Professor of Jewish Thought
"I'm glad I had the chance to experience Hebrew through my grandfather. Through him I heard the Hebrew which conveys the Jewish mystique without any Zionist connotations."
Haviva Pedaya is a professor of Jewish thought and history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, specializing mainly in Jewish mysticism from antiquity to modernity. She has published three books of scholarship including Name and Sanctuary in the Teaching of R Isaac the Blind (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2001, Heb.) and Vision and Speech (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2002, Heb.). Her books of poetry are From a Sealed Ark (Am Oved Press, 1996), and The Birthing of the Anima (Am Oved Press, 2002).
Haim Uliel - Musician
"Ironically, everyone around was from Morocco and all were ashamed. This is the opposite of what is happening with Russian immigrants today."
Haim Uliel is a Moroccan Jew and pop music star in Israel.
Meir Wieseltier - Poet and Translator
"From the moment I wanted to get into Hebrew in order to write, I knew I must kill Russian, eliminate it, because it stood in my way, the mother tongue"
Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941, just before the Germans invaded Russia. He was taken to Novosibirsk in southwestern Siberia by his mother and two older sisters in the same year. His father was killed while serving in the Red Army in Leningrad. Wieseltier came to Israel after spending two years in Poland, Germany and France; he grew up in Netanya and, in 1955, moved to Tel Aviv where he has lived ever since. After studying at Hebrew University, Meir Wieseltier became the central figure in a group of artists known as the Tel Aviv Poets in the early 1960s. Wieseltier was co-founder and co-editor of several issues of the literary magazine Siman Qri'a, and served as poetry editor at the Am Oved publishing house. He has translated English, French and Russian poetry into Hebrew, as well as four of Shakespeare's tragedies, and novels by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster and Malcolm Lowry.
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