Award-winning Israeli-American author Ruby Namdar joined us at the Institute on April 25, 2023 for the Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature for an engaging talk titled “To the Land That I Will Show You: The never-ending journey of Hebrew language and literature and its fraught relationship with geographic and political boundaries.”
Namdar’s lecture honors the legacy and contributions of Professor Dan Miron, Leonard Kaye Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at Columbia University. Prof. Miron is the author of over 20 books in Hebrew and English. In 1980, he received the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought and, in 1993, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Hebrew literature. Across his vast and impactful career, the uniting thread has been a deep passion for Hebrew and Jewish literature, a devotion similarly visible in Namdar’s work and espoused in this lecture.
Ruby Namdar is an Israeli-American author born and raised in Jerusalem to a family of Iranian-Jewish heritage. His latest novel, The Ruined House (2013), won the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award. The English edition of The Ruined House (translated by Hillel Halkin) was published in the US by Harper Collins in November 2017. The French edition of the novel (translated by Sarah Tardy) was published in September 2018 by Belfond, and was nominated for the Prix du premier roman étranger 2018. He currently lives in NYC with his wife and two daughters, and teaches Jewish literature, focusing on Biblical and Talmudic narrative.
Ruby Namdar’s lecture at the Institute is available to view in full below.
This event was made possible by the generosity of the Knapp family.
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