So Many Things are Yours

Poet and scholar Admiel Kosman is the author of nine books of Hebrew poetry, six academic books on Talmud and Midrash, and two bilingual Hebrew-English collections, So Many Things Are Yours (forthcoming, Zephyr Press, 2022) and Approaching You in English (Zephyr, 2011), both translated by Lisa Katz. Born in Haifa, Israel, he has lived in Berlin since 2003. He is Professor of Jewish Studies at Potsdam University, and academic director of the Abraham Geiger College, the first Reform rabbinical seminary to open in Continental Europe since the Holocaust. Translator and poet Lisa Katz has published two collections of her own poems and translated several volumes of Hebrew poetry. Late Beauty, by Tuvia Ruebner, which she co-translated with Shahar Bram, was a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She also translated The Absolute Reader, a chapbook by Miri Ben Simhon (Toad Press, 2020); Approaching You in English, co-translated with Shlomit Naim-Naor (Zephyr, 2011); and Look There, by Agi Mishol (Graywolf, 2006). She lives in Jerusalem.

“ I’ve long admired the poetry of Admiel Kosman, one of the leading poets of Israel, yes, certainly, but truly of the world… The passions are real in his poetry, and send a current through his vision of history, ancient to now, as if the Bible itself could dream. In these expert translations by Lisa Katz, Kosman’s poems come alive in English, al dente, with a delicious firmness and urgency, a tart quickness full of pleasure.” — Joshua Weiner, Tikkun“ Admiel Kosman’s poems are surreal and real, playful and serious, simple and complex. Reading them recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald’s comment: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’ In these poems, replace ‘function’ with ‘sing,’ and rejoice.” — Natasha Saje, author of Vivarium and Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory“ Kosman is called to teach: he is the poet rebbe who patiently, bravely, instructs his reader about the obstacles that must be overcome and the risks that must be taken if one is truly to encounter the Other, that person who is wholly apart from the self.” — Maeera Y. Schreiber, AJS Review