About
Kisufim
The 2015 Jerusalem Conference for Jewish Writers and Poets
Kisufim, the Jerusalem conference for Jewish writers and poets, is a singular event of its kind, the only conference anywhere that brings together Jewish authors, poets and intellectuals from Israel and around the world to attend a four-day journey into Jewish time and the Jewish spirit. The gathering attracts a considerable audience from Jerusalem and all over Israel, keeping our halls crowded from morning till night. During the conference, the prestigious Matanel Award is presented to two promising writers or poets: one of them Israeli, writing in Hebrew, and the other writing in jobitel xjobs another language. As a lead-up to the conference, an anthology of short stories, essays and poems written by conference participants will be published. Initially, this publication will include the pieces in their original languages; later they will be translated and republished as a Hebrew collection.
The conference serves as a unique encounter among the finest Jewish writers and poets active around the globe today, as well as among the best Israeli authors writing in Hebrew, and in other languages. It is an encounter about characters and characteristics that emphasize the significance of Jewish culture in the life of the Jewish people. So far, there have been three such gatherings, in 2007, 2009 and 2013. These took place in Mishkenot Sha’ananim and Beit Avi Chai. Past participants include authors such as Aharon Appelfeld, A. B. Yehoshua, Yoel Hoffman, David Albahari (Serbia-Canada), Cynthia Ozick (US), Norman Manea (Romania-US), Robert Pinsky (US), Jonathan Rosen (US), Bernard-Henri Lévy (France), Myriam Anissimov (France), Zeruya Shalev, Meir Shalev, Raquel Chalfi, Eli Amir, Miron C. Izakson, Haviva Pedaya, Esther Discereit (Germany), Marcel Bénabou (France-Morocco), Yaniv Hagbi (Israel-Amstedam), Esther Bendahan (Spain), Haim Gouri, Joshua Sobol, Mario Levi (Turkey), Sharon Green (Canada), Angel Wagenstein (Bulgaria), Ágnes Heller (Hungary-US), Ruby Namdar (Israel-US), Admiel Kosman (Israel-Germany), David Shapiro (US), Nessa Rapoport (US), Rachel Atlan (Yiddish-France), Naïm Kattan (Baghdad-France-Canada), Hagit Grossman, Avirama Golan, Etgar Keret, Nathan Englander (US), Isser Appel (Russia), Dina Rubina (Soviet Union-Israel), Miriam Gamburd (Soveit Union-Israel), David Markish (Soviet Union-Israel), Esther Orner (France-Israel), Filip David (Serbia-Israel) and many more.
The conference is an opportunity for a meeting of minds, for discussing textual and cultural issues, for broaching the most urgent questions regarding Israeli and Jewish culture– matters of identity and current events, the nature of Jewish literature after the Holocaust, contemporary Jewish writing and art, the role of translation in Jewish literature, and confronting the new anti-Semitism in a world that has a Jewish state. These “Kisufim” meetings are attended by those who are now writing the next section of the Jewish bookshelf.
The Course of the Conference
Throughout the four days of the conference, we hold public readings of poetry and prose and workshops with poets and writers in various languages, such as Russian, English, Spanish, Hungarian, French, Serbian, Romanian, Greek, Italian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Arabic, Ladino and Yiddish. The conference also offers more intimate meetings among visiting authors and readers, who share their language, as well as between authors and translators and among magazine editors from all over the Jewish world and their readership.
The subject of this year’s conference is “Identity and Otherness” and its stated purpose is to strengthen and tighten the bonds between and the awareness of various Jewish literatures, to bring together the creative and intellectual prowess of Jewish authors and poets worldwide.
This is no doubt one of the most avant-garde cultural events devoted to the contemporary and emerging Jewish culture in Israel and around the world today. It is grounded in the assumption that contemporary Jewish literature is a treasure trove containing the memory of Jewish life and culture after the Second World War and the destruction of Jewish communities in the Levant. We find it a matter of both interest and responsibility to examine the transformations undergone by Jewish culture since then, and leave a chronicle of testimony and knowledge for the coming generations.
