Nodding in Hebrew
Ihave a confession to make. After living 50 years in Israel, my Hebrew is stillnot up to par. I watch the nightly newscast on television and read an articleor two in the weekend newspapers, but most of my life is in English. I work inan English-speaking environment and I talk with my wife and my children in English(with my granddaughters, I do speak Hebrew). My creative writing is in English(this article, for example), and I read for pleasure in English.
Recently,I made an exception to my reading habits. I read Mrs. Lilienblum's CloudFactory, the debut novel of the award-winning Israeli author Iddo Gefen, inHebrew. I had previously enjoyed his short story collection, Jerusalem Beach,a book that won the $100,000 2023 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Icouldn't wait for his novel to be published in English (sometime next year?),so I read it in Hebrew, the language in which it was written.
Mrs.Lilienblum's Cloud Factory is thoroughly enjoyable, very witty, with fullydeveloped characters and an amazing plot. I highly recommend reading it in anylanguage.
Anotherconfession to make. There was an occasional word or two in the book with whichI was not familiar. I did understand the meaning of those words in the contextof how they were used and if I chose to do so, I could simply skim thosesentences without losing the essential beauty of the writing. In one case, however,I really wanted to know a word's meaning as it was used repeatedly in the text.
להנהן
Tonod. How could I not know the translation of such a simple word?
AsI continued to read, I couldn't get that particular word out of my mind. To mysurprise, it appears in every chapter of the book, sometimes more than once. Inpresent tense, in past tense. He nodded; we nodded.
הנהנתי
מהנהנים
הנהונים
The author will have to excuse me, butpossibly the word was overused? Reading in bed at night (another confession tomake – I usually read on my tablet but in this case, I was actually reading apaperback), I said the word aloud every time I came across it in the book. Thisannoyed my wife. She is now reading the book herself, also noticing the excessivenodding taking place.
Ifinished reading Mrs. Lilienblum's Cloud Factory and uncharacteristically,dived right into another book in Hebrew. Eshkol Nevo's excellent new short storycollection is entitled לב רעבin Hebrew, which translates as 'Hungry Heart', based on the song by BruceSpringsteen. For some reason, the first page of the book suggests that it willbe published in the future in its English edition as Attachments.
Tomy surprise, I came across a familiar word.
להנהן
Insome of the stories, the word appears more than once. In different tenses, ingender feminine, or in plural. I nodded. She nodded. We nodded.
Afterreading two Israeli books in their native language, both of which I highlyrecommend, I have learned one thing about Hebrew literature. Your characters mustbe nodding as much as possible if you want readers to enjoy your writing.
Originallyposted on The Times of Israel
Related article:
Review of Iddo Gefen’s ‘Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory’
