It must be the substance of God’s light, For otherwise it would be fading As my years and strength decline.“Detached and cut off from the logical connection of the religious poem, those lines referred inadvertently to what she was thinking, was afraid of, dreaded, and expected.”GOLDBERG WAS born in East Prussia in 1911, was raised in Lithuania, and received her further education, including a PhD in Semitic languages, from Bonn University, but she managed to leave Germany for British Mandate-period Palestine in 1935. She became a wellestablished figure in the Tel Aviv cultural milieu, where she worked as a theater critic, editor and translator, before founding and heading the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Comparative Literature, a position she held for some 20 years. She was posthumously awarded the Israel Prize for Literature in 1970, a few months after her death.The centennial of her birth is being celebrated by many events, and next year her image will appear on Bank of Israelissued banknotes, an obvious sign of her lasting influence. The Toby Press, which also publishes a translation of Goldberg’s Selected Poetry and Drama, should be commended for making her novel finally available to English speakers.And This Is the Light illuminates many aspects of the multifaceted woman and writer who is so much a part of the Hebrew-speaking cultural landscape. It is also a sensitive, poignant story worth reading in its own right.
The light shines on
Lea Goldberg’s only novel is published in English for the first time, in honor of the centennial of her birth.
It must be the substance of God’s light, For otherwise it would be fading As my years and strength decline.“Detached and cut off from the logical connection of the religious poem, those lines referred inadvertently to what she was thinking, was afraid of, dreaded, and expected.”GOLDBERG WAS born in East Prussia in 1911, was raised in Lithuania, and received her further education, including a PhD in Semitic languages, from Bonn University, but she managed to leave Germany for British Mandate-period Palestine in 1935. She became a wellestablished figure in the Tel Aviv cultural milieu, where she worked as a theater critic, editor and translator, before founding and heading the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Comparative Literature, a position she held for some 20 years. She was posthumously awarded the Israel Prize for Literature in 1970, a few months after her death.The centennial of her birth is being celebrated by many events, and next year her image will appear on Bank of Israelissued banknotes, an obvious sign of her lasting influence. The Toby Press, which also publishes a translation of Goldberg’s Selected Poetry and Drama, should be commended for making her novel finally available to English speakers.And This Is the Light illuminates many aspects of the multifaceted woman and writer who is so much a part of the Hebrew-speaking cultural landscape. It is also a sensitive, poignant story worth reading in its own right.