An academic lunchtime lecture with Michael Weingrad on Letters to America: Selected Poems of Reuven Ben-Yosef.

Reuven Ben-Yosef is the great unknown poet of the American aliyah. While he wrote in Hebrew about his American family back in the United States, they composed their own literary works about him and his decision to immigrate to Israel. Can the family divide between American and Israeli promised lands be bridged in poetry?

Michael Weingrad is the editor and translator of Letters to America: Selected Poems of Reuven Ben-Yosef (Syracuse UP, 2015) and author of American Hebrew Literature: Writing Jewish National Identity in the United States (2011). He is a frequent contributor to the Jewish Review of Books and Mosaic, and is a professor of Jewish studies at Portland State University in Oregon.

513 Fayerweather Hall at Columbia University.

For more details, email aml2271@columbia.edu. RSVPs are appreciated, as a kosher lunch will be served.