Last update - 03:19 20/10/2006
Write of passage
First conference on U.S. aliyah in literature next week
Expanding the local audience for English-language writers is one of the aims of Israel's first conference on American aliyah in literature, which will take place next week at Tel Aviv University. The conference, which will also focus on current research about Anglophone immigrants, is being hailed by organizers as a major step in creating a broader community of English-language writers here.
"There are little communities of writers in English across Israel and people need to be in small groups to write, but there is no local audience," says Karen Alkalay-Gut, chair of the Israel Association of Writers in Israel and faculty member of Tel Aviv University's department of English and American studies, who organized the conference.
"The small communities are integral and important to each other, but part of this conference is getting them to have a wider audience and dialogue with the general community."
The conference, which is open to the general public, will deal with some of the frustrations and occasional sense of shame faced by some English-language writers who work within the dominant Hebrew culture.
"A lot of people [who immigrate here] either stop writing or leave because they don't have an audience here. The whole point of writing is that you are communicating and if there's no audience, you are not communicating and giving a voice to people. Many of us are writing for an audience abroad and so often, there's no one to talk to, no one who gives you feedback. Some people I know have either turned to other arts like photography and painting, or just shut up," Alkalay-Gut said.
Prof. Michael Kramer, the acting director of Bar-Ilan University's English-language creative writing program and chair of university's English department, is also scheduled to speak about the importance of English as a bridge between Israel and Diaspora communities, as well as some of the problems faced by English writers here. "English, and not Hebrew, is the most shared language among Jews around the world," he said.
He will also address the sense of "dislocation" often prominent in English-language writing in Israel, which "gets creative juices flowing," he says.
Other speakers include Shirley Kaufman and Riva Rubin, who were awarded the President's Award for literature in 2006 and 2000, respectively.
Karin Amit, a researcher at the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration at the Ruppin Academic Center, will also present the results of a recent study that focused on North American immigrants in Beit Shemesh. Conducted together with Ilan Riss from the Central Bureau of Statistics, the study dealt with the role of social networks and leadership in the decision to immigrate from developed countries.
The conference begins at 9:30 A.M. on Wednesday, October 25 at Tel Aviv University, Gilman 496.