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As you know the curiosity of public increases rapidly about the Islamic regime of Iran More than once we hear about people that searching for information about the lifestyle of the residents behind the walls After four years of intensive work the answers are finally published, now its up to us to share their secrets with the world "Another way" is the story of Iran through the eyes of a child within revolution events, the war, escape through Kurdistan and a search for a home. "Another way" is the true story of my life and my family...

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Uri Nissan Gnessin was born in Starodub, where his father was a rabbi. He left home at an early age, and moving from one yeshiva to the another, he developed a life-long friendship with a fellow Hebrew modernist author, Yosef Haim Brenner. His first published text was in 1904. In 1906 he co-founded the Hebrew language publishing house Nisyonot (Attempts), and after moving to London in 1907, he co-edited (with Brenner) Ha'Meorer, a Hebrew periodical. Following that he moved to Palestine but returned to Russia in 1908. Later he settled in Warsaw, where he died in 1913 of a heart attack. Gnessin wrote in a unique style of prose that was notable for its expressionistic language. Several Israeli literary scholars, such as Dan Miron and Gershon Shaked, wrote about his work, especially about the short story BaGanim (In the Gardens) which is about incest between a father and his intellectually disabled daughter. (Summary following Wikipedia)...

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Short stories

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Micha Josef Berdyczewski (surname also written Berdichevsky) was a Ukrainian-born writer of Hebrew, a journalist, and a scholar. He appealed for the Jews to change their way of thinking, freeing themselves from dogmas ruling the Jewish religion, tradition and history, but is also known for his work with pre-modern Jewish myths and legends. He wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish and German and has been described as the first Hebrew writer living in Berlin to be revered in the world of German letters. The book is supposed to be about Miriam, a young Jewish girl living in Eastern Europe toward the end of the 19th century. She tries to find her way between the old, frozen religious society and the new confusing winds of enlightenment. But in fact, the author draws a wide sketch of Jewish life in that period, by shortly focusing on a large array of characters and events populating the world of Miriam, and thus the real hero of the book is the Shtetl, the small Jewish town of Eastern Europe until the Holocaust. Berdichevski inadvertently created in this work a memorial to a lost rich civilization. (Summary by Wikipedia and Omri Lernau)...

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Literature

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Eliezer Izhak Perlman (1858-1922) signed his articles as E. Ben Yehuda. He was a key figure in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. He regarded Hebrew and Zionism as symbiotic: The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return it to the fatherland, he wrote. Ben Yehuda wrote essays and articles preaching for the use of Hebrew at schools and at home. His was the first family to do so, but it took more than 20 years before there were 10 more families in Jerusalem who spoke only Hebrew at home. Ben Yehuda was the editor of several Hebrew-language newspapers and became the driving spirit behind the establishment of the Committee of the Hebrew Language, later The Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that still exists today. He was also the author of the first modern Hebrew Dictionary coining a large number of new words, many of them in use today. The following is a selection of his articles. (Summary by Omri Lernau following Wikipedia.) This recording is in Hebrew....

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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Genesis is the story of the Creation and the people that followed it. The place is Canaan which is the land of Israel and the adjoining nations. The Book discusses the complex relationship between God and Mankind and portrays the travails of one particular family, the family of Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The book is priceless in its description of the custom of the day and the interaction within the family, tribe and Nation. But most of all the beauty of Genesis lies in the description of human behavior from its petty jealousies through unrelenting commitment for a worthy cause and love for family and friends. We follow the trials and tribulation of the main characters as they deal with adverse circumstances and at times global annihilation. Important part of the book is also the recounting of the genealogy of the people from Adam and Eve to Joseph in Egypt. A connection is made to other different nations and tribes. The Hebrew language is the original language of the Bible. Although Hebrew went through several transformations so far as the shape of the Alphabet, the text is consistent. (summary by Israel Radvinsky)...

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Religion

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This reading is in Hebrew. Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921) was a Ukrainian-born Hebrew-language author, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature. Born to a poor family, Brenner grew up in grinding poverty. Brenner immigrated to Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in 1909. He worked as a farmer, eager to put his Zionist ideology into practice. Later he devoted himself to literature and teaching at the Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He was murdered in southern Tel Aviv in May 1921 in the course of the anti-Jewish Arab riots known as the “massacres of 1921″. Brenner published his second book, In winter, in 1904. It is a collection of 4 stories about hardships of simple poor Jews living in small towns in Eastern Europe, at the time of anti-Jewish massacres in Russia at the turn of the 20s century. (summary by Wikipedia and Omri Lernau)...

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Short stories

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This recording is in Hebrew. Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (1856 - 1927), primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am (literally one of the people), was a Hebrew essayist and one of the greatest pre-state Zionist thinkers. With his secular vision of a Jewish spiritual center in Palestine he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike the founder of political Zionism he strove for a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews. In 1889 his first article criticizing practical Zionism, called Lo ze haddereckh (This is not the way), appeared in HaMelitz. The ideas in this article became the platform for Bnai Moshe (sons of Moses), a group he founded that year. Bnai Moshe, active until 1897, worked to improve Hebrew education, build up a wider audience for Hebrew literature, and assist the Jewish settlements. This article was the first in a collection of essays published in book form in 1895 (At the Crossroads). The following is a selection from this book. (summary from Wikipedia)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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This reading is in Hebrew. Der Judenstaat (German, The Jewish State) is a book written by Theodor Herzl and published in 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. It was originally called Address to the Rothschilds referring to the Rothschild family banking dynasty which was very influential in the realization of a Zionist state in Palestine. It is considered to be one of the most important texts of early Zionism. As expressed in this book, Herzl envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the twentieth century. He argued that the best way of avoiding anti-Semitism in Europe was to create this independent Jewish state. Herzl, who had lived as a secular, largely assimilated Jew, was fluent in neither Hebrew nor Yiddish. His lack of contact with Jewish culture and intellectual currents, and his limited contact with Jews less assimilated than he prior to hitting upon the idea of a Jewish return to Zion, led him to imagine that popular Jewish support for a Jewish State elsewhere than in Israel was conceivable. In Der Judenstaat, Herzl noted the possibility of a Jewish state in Argentin...

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Philosophy, Politics

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Mendele Mocher Sforim (Mendele Book seller, literary name for Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch) (1835 - 1917, b. Kapulye, Belorussia), one of the first modern Jewish writers, wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish throughout his career. In his work he described with sharp satirical criticism the traditional life in small Jewish towns, as well as tendencies for assimilation of learned Jews at the time. He was regarded as the grandfather of Yiddish literature but the Hebraic-Zionist atmosphere in Odessa influenced him, and in 1886 he turned to writing Hebrew fiction. Being a Jew has never been easy, certainly not in the 19th century Eastern Europe. Mendele Mocher Sforim wrote with love, and bitterness, about the harsh conditions of Jewish life at the time. The book tells the story of Hershele who leaves the harsh conditions in Russia for Germany, there to become an educated man of the world, but at the same time remaining a committed Jew. The book was first written in Yiddish (Dos Vintshfingerl) and later translated by the author into Hebrew (Emek Ha-Bakha, the vale of tears). (Summary by Omri Lernau)...

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Fiction

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This reading is in Hebrew. Mendele Mocher Sforim (Literary name for Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch) (1835 - 1917, b. Kapulye, Belorussia), one of the first modern Jewish writers, wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish throughout his career. In his work he described with sharp satirical criticism the traditional life in small Jewish towns, as well as tendencies for assimilation of learned Jews at the time. He was regarded as the grandfather of Yiddish literature but the Hebraic-Zionist atmosphere in Odessa influenced him, and in 1886 he turned to writing Hebrew fiction. The hero of The Travels of Benjamin the III is a fool in a town full of poor Jews who barely manage to keep themselves alive. Benjamin is struck suddenly by a desire to travel, and joined by Sendrel he sets out to find a Jewish kingdom mentioned in legends of the Ten Lost Tribes. They hardly make it around the block. Barely escaping from their own wives, the two travel only as far as nearby towns. As the novel progresses they fall into the hands of Jewish kidnappers, who take advantage of their naiveté to sell them into the czarist army. They are caught when they try to escape, ...

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Fiction, Literature, Satire

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Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921) was a Ukrainian-born Hebrew-language author, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature. Born to a poor family, Brenner grew up in grinding povery. Brenner immigrated to Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in 1909. He worked as a farmer, eager to put his Zionist idelogy into practice. Later he devoted himself to literature and teaching at the Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He was murdered in southern Tel Aviv in May 1921 in the course of the anti-Jewish Arab riots known as the massacres of 1921. Brenner was very much an experimental writer, both in his use of language and in literary form. With Modern Hebrew still in its infancy, Brenner improvised with an intruiging mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, English and Arabic. In his attempt to portray life realistically, his work is full of emotive punctuation and ellipses. Out Of A Gloomy Valley was his first book pulished in Warsaw 1900. It is a collection of 6 short stories about Jewish life in the diaspora. (Summary by Wikipedia and Omri Lernau)...

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Short stories

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Mendele Mocher Sforim (Literary name for Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch) (1835 - 1917, b. Kapulye, Belorussia), one of the first modern Jewish writers, wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish throughout his career. In his work he described with sharp satirical criticism the traditional life in small Jewish towns, as well as tendencies for assimilation of learned Jews at the time. He was regarded as the grandfather of Yiddish literature, but the Hebraic-Zionist atmosphere in Odessa influenced him, and in 1886 he turned to writing Hebrew fiction. The Book of Beggars, or Fishke the Lame, was one of the first romances written in Hebrew in Eastern Europe. It was published in Yiddish in 1869 and later translated into Hebrew by the author. Mendeli used a satirical style mixed with tears and compassion to describe Jews of the lowest classes in small poor communities in Eastern Europe of the second half of the 19th century, organized to look for food and charity. This was the background for an entangled story of theft, rape and sentimental love, with an emphasis on suffering and hardships of women. (Summary by Omri Lernau)...

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Literature, Fiction, Satire

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Abraham Mapu was born in 1808 near Kaunas, today in Lithuania. He worked as a teacher and later joined the Jewish enlightenment movement. In 1853 he published his first book, Love of Zion , which has been regarded as the first secular novel written in biblical Hebrew. It takes place at the time of the First Temple covering love stories of Yoram, his wives and his children. The book had a profound influence on Jewish youth in Eastern Europe at the time of the emergent Zionist movement. (Summary by Omri Lernau)...

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Literature, Romance

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This reading is in Hebrew.Yosef Haim Brenner (murdered by Arab terrorists in 1921 at the age of 40) presented in his book From Here and There a piercing, soul searching portrayal of the second aliyah, the dominant immigration into Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century. The following words have influenced many at the time, and are still thought to represent Brenner's literary will: Life is bad, but always secret ... Death is bad. The world is conflicted, but also diverse, and sometimes beautiful. The world is miserable, but can also be wonderful. The nation of Israel, by the rules of logic, has no future. One must, nonetheless, work. So long as you have a soul, there are sublime acts and uplifting moments. Long live Hebrew human labor! (Summary by Omri Lernau)...

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Fiction

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Uri Nissan Gnessin was a Russian Jewish writer, generally considered a pioneer of modern Hebrew literature. His first book was published in 1904. In 1906 he co-founded the Hebrew-language publishing house Nisyonot (Attempts), and after moving to London in 1907, he co-edited (with Hayim Yosef Brenner) Ha'Meorer , a Hebrew periodical. Later he emigrated to Palestine but returned to Russia, then moved to Warsaw, where he died in 1913 of a heart attack. Gnessin wrote in a unique style of prose notable for its expressionistic language form. The story Etsel is about a young man suffering severe heart disease, unable to love or accept the love of several women around him. (Summary by Wikipedia and Omri Lernau)...

Excerpt Details
Literature