Admiel Kosman and Lisa Katz

Admiel Kosman’s nine books of poetry confound and criticize received thought about national and religious identity in Israel while also suggesting a paradigm change. Kosman’s concepts of spirituality and Judaism defeat the assumptions of readers who expect piety from what they believe to be religious poetry. For nearly a decade, his poetry has addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the effects of fundamentalism. He is also the author of three volumes of postmodern scholarship on gender in traditional Jewish texts. In 1997, Kosman co-edited an anthology called New Poetry: young poetry of faith. A selection of his work is translated by Lisa Katz, and published as Approaching You in English, (Zephyr Press, 2011).  

Lisa Katz, editor of the Israeli pages of Poetry International Web,is a translator and book reviewer for the English edition of the daily Haaretz newspaper.  She served as a lecturer in literary translation at Hebrew University 2001- 2010, and is the author of Reconstruction, a book of her poems translated from English into Hebrew by Shahar Bram.