Rachel Tzvia Back

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Photo by David H. Aaron

Rachel Tzvia Back has published eleven books. Her poems and verse translations have received awards and recognitions, including the Times Literary Supplement Award, PEN Translation Prize, and finalist for the National Poetry Award in Translation. She is the recipient of various fellowships, including the Brown Foundation Fellowship at the Dora Maar House (France). Back is a professor of English literature at Oranim College in the Galilee.

I want to follow Naomi

July 2024
Rachel Tzvia Back
Photo by ongap / Stock.adobe.comfor Naomi Shihab Nye Eid al-Fitr Shavuot Pentecost 2021 I want to follow Naomi to walk in her footsteps to gather with her only the gentle words like fallen…
I want to follow Naomi

June 10, 2024 Rachel Tzvia Back
for Naomi Shihab Nye Eid al-Fitr Shavuot Pentecost 2021 I want to follow Naomi to walk in her footsteps to gather with her only the gentle words like fallen wheat stalks gleaned from…
The Last Poems of Lea Goldberg

May 30, 2017 Rachel Tzvia Back
Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia Ruebner Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was characteriz…
After the War

March 2017
Rachel Tzvia Back
Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams History moves darkly and we are small, soft things. –…
Two Poems

May 2016
Rachel Tzvia Back
Photo by Zvika Melamed Song of the Younger Brother 1 I can think of nothing but the little one, the younger brother. He holds his father’s hand. Peering into the camera, he…
“A Species of Magic”: The Role of Poetry in Protest and Truth-telling (An Israeli Poet’s Perspective)

May-August 2014
Rachel Tzvia Back
The opening lines of Lea Goldberg’s poem “A god once commanded us,” from Found in Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets (2006), tr. Robert Friend, ed. Gabriel Levin. Israeli poetry of protest…