Hebrew scholars Benjamin and Barbara Harshav to lecture at Syracuse University Nov. 19

Hebrew scholars Benjamin and Barbara Harshav to lecture at Syracuse University Nov. 19November 12, 2003Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Hebrew scholars Benjamin and Barbara Harshav will visit Syracuse University to deliver two lectures on Nov. 19.

Barbara Harshav will speak on “War and Theater in the East: The Plays of Hanoch Levin” from noon-1:30 p.m. in Room 320 of the Hall of Languages. The Judaic Studies Program will provide sandwiches and beverages during her lunchtime lecture.

Benjamin Harshav will lecture on the life and works of Jewish-Russian-French artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) at 7:30 p.m. in the Kilian Room, 500 Hall of Languages. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.

Both events are sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program in The College of Arts and Sciences and are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Pamela Paul at 443-5671 or papaul@syr.edu

Barbara Harshav is a highly respected translator of several languages, most significantly Hebrew but also Yiddish, German and French. Among her many translations are Hebrew poems by Yehuda Amichai and Yiddish poems by A. Sutzkever. Ms. Harshav has also translated recent Israeli fiction, including S. Y. Agon’s “Only Yesterday,” Yehudit Katzir’s “Closing the Sea,” and Meir Shalev’s “Esau” and “The Loves of Judith.”

Her most recent book is a collection of Hanoch Levin’s works titled “The Labor of Life: Selected Plays,” which will be available for purchase after the lecture.

Since 1987, Benjamin Harshav has taught at Yale, where he is the J. & H. Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature, as well as a professor of comparative literature and of Slavic languages and literatures. He was the 1999 B. G. Rudolph Lecturer in Judaic Studies at SU.

He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1928. He lived and studied in the Soviet Union during World War II, was active in the Zionist-Socialist movement in Europe after the Holocaust, and fought in the Israeli War of Independence. He taught Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1954-66), then built a new department for Poetics and Comparative Literature and the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics for the study of literature and culture at Tel Aviv University, where he taught from 1965-1987. Benjamin Harshav has published widely in Hebrew, English and other languages on literary theory and Hebrew literature.

His most recent books, “Marc Chagall: On Art and Culture” and “Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative,” will both be available to purchase on Nov. 19.