Honourable Lord Mayor of Jerusalem
Distinguished guests
Dear Yoel
Dear friends
It would probably take me a life-time, or at least the time to write a book, if I wanted to sum up what Jerusalem means to me, and therefore, what this award means to me.
But don’t worry, I know I’m only allowed a little speech to try to get to the core of it, and I promise I will keep it down to five minutes.
First of all: thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This means the world to me, and I will actually allow myself to feel a little proud today.
Let me try to explain in a few words why.
My story with Jerusalem is quite simple. I came here as a book-lover and an editor, and I discovered a Book Fair which was unlike any other book fair in the world, in a city unlike any other city in the world. I discovered the people organizing the Fair, Zev Birger of course – may his memory be blessed – and Yoel, already, then.
Believe me, when your encounter with a city starts by meeting such wonderful human beings, and is then being continued by getting to know writers or philosophers like Michal Govrin, Dov Hercenberg, Eliane Amado Levy-Valensi – may her memory be blessed –, Zeruya Shalev, then it means love at first sight. Because what is a city, however holy it might be? It’s an urban landscape of course, it is buildings, places, sights, but it is also its inhabitants, the people you meet, the discussions you have, and the smiles and the warmth you get.
Well, I guess I met the right people, and I saw the right places. The overwhelming beauty of the old city. The density of questions you can’t avoid there. Where do I come from? Where am I heading to? What story of God do I decide to believe in, and what do I make of it?
Maybe this is what Jerusalem means to me, in the end: questions made stone, questions embodied, revived.
And maybe it is because the answers to all these questions are never simple, or changing all the time, evolving over the years, that I came back for every single book fair since, and sometimes also in between.
But I didn’t only come back, each time more engrossed with the city, the incomparable light on its stones. I also started publishing more and more Hebrew writers: Zeruya Shalev to start with, then Amos Oz, Alona Kimhi, Amir Gutfreund, Eshkol Nevo, Meir Shalev.
My modest contribution in this field is probably what I am most proud of in my life as an editor, and I would like to thank publicly Antoine Gallimard – whom I have brought to the Fair with me in 2011 – for letting me do this, with the help of my advisor Semyon Mirsky, and for giving so much space to Israeli literature. It is a blessing to be able to publish all these wonderful living writers, and also, to try to publish or republish Samuel Joseph Agnon’s incomparable work of genius in French.
Agnon, whose house in Talpiot I was shown by Michal Govrin on my first visit to Jerusalem...
Throughout the years, I enjoyed meeting more and more friends at the Fair, from here, and from abroad. But I must admit that I enjoyed just as much sneaking out of the Fair and discovering the city by myself. Strolling around, getting lost, discovering a fascinating, colourful city. Not always pleasant - Jerusalem can be harsh – but always intense, and different. I started to have my favourite places, the café Tichon, or the Tmol Shilshom of course, the Hurva synagogue with its lonely ark reminding you of how fragile things are (that was before it was reconstructed), Nahlaot and the market, but also Rehavia where I went to see Zeruya Shalev. I started to know my way round.
As an editor and as a writer, I know about coincidences, the game of luck and chance life plays with us. But here in Jerusalem, I witnessed a coincidence which none of us would ever dare put into a novel. Nobody would simply believe such a story: during one of my stays here, at the occasion of a shabbat dinner, I met a young man, about my age, actually. Well, yes, I was still a young man, then. We sympathized, he had worked as a jazz musician and studied psychology, was a great reader, in short, we had a lot in common and became great friends. We stayed in touch, corresponded, but it was only some time after that first meeting I discovered that we were actually cousins. Distant cousins, I must admit that – we had never heard of each other before, and both our families come from mixed, half Christian half Jewish backgrounds - but we had a family link nevertheless: we were cousins! Our friendship somehow deepened through this unexpected connection, and when he got married five years ago at the Khan Theatre here in Jerusalem, I was his best man.
In that sense – and this is why I dare tell you an almost intimate story here in public – my Jerusalem is maybe not so different from the eternal city described by Agnon in his little masterpiece Tehila: full of miracles.
And today, being bestowed this wonderful honour and becoming very officially what I have been very privately for the last twenty years already, A Friend of Jerusalem, is like another marvelous, overwhelming little miracle to me.
Ani mode mé-omêk libi al ha-kavod shé atem ossim li ha-yom. Af paam lo eshkakh.
Toda raba!
(I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the honour you bestow on my today. I will never forget. Thank you so much).
Distinguished guests
Dear Yoel
Dear friends
It would probably take me a life-time, or at least the time to write a book, if I wanted to sum up what Jerusalem means to me, and therefore, what this award means to me.
But don’t worry, I know I’m only allowed a little speech to try to get to the core of it, and I promise I will keep it down to five minutes.
First of all: thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This means the world to me, and I will actually allow myself to feel a little proud today.
Let me try to explain in a few words why.
My story with Jerusalem is quite simple. I came here as a book-lover and an editor, and I discovered a Book Fair which was unlike any other book fair in the world, in a city unlike any other city in the world. I discovered the people organizing the Fair, Zev Birger of course – may his memory be blessed – and Yoel, already, then.
Believe me, when your encounter with a city starts by meeting such wonderful human beings, and is then being continued by getting to know writers or philosophers like Michal Govrin, Dov Hercenberg, Eliane Amado Levy-Valensi – may her memory be blessed –, Zeruya Shalev, then it means love at first sight. Because what is a city, however holy it might be? It’s an urban landscape of course, it is buildings, places, sights, but it is also its inhabitants, the people you meet, the discussions you have, and the smiles and the warmth you get.
Well, I guess I met the right people, and I saw the right places. The overwhelming beauty of the old city. The density of questions you can’t avoid there. Where do I come from? Where am I heading to? What story of God do I decide to believe in, and what do I make of it?
Maybe this is what Jerusalem means to me, in the end: questions made stone, questions embodied, revived.
And maybe it is because the answers to all these questions are never simple, or changing all the time, evolving over the years, that I came back for every single book fair since, and sometimes also in between.
But I didn’t only come back, each time more engrossed with the city, the incomparable light on its stones. I also started publishing more and more Hebrew writers: Zeruya Shalev to start with, then Amos Oz, Alona Kimhi, Amir Gutfreund, Eshkol Nevo, Meir Shalev.
My modest contribution in this field is probably what I am most proud of in my life as an editor, and I would like to thank publicly Antoine Gallimard – whom I have brought to the Fair with me in 2011 – for letting me do this, with the help of my advisor Semyon Mirsky, and for giving so much space to Israeli literature. It is a blessing to be able to publish all these wonderful living writers, and also, to try to publish or republish Samuel Joseph Agnon’s incomparable work of genius in French.
Agnon, whose house in Talpiot I was shown by Michal Govrin on my first visit to Jerusalem...
Throughout the years, I enjoyed meeting more and more friends at the Fair, from here, and from abroad. But I must admit that I enjoyed just as much sneaking out of the Fair and discovering the city by myself. Strolling around, getting lost, discovering a fascinating, colourful city. Not always pleasant - Jerusalem can be harsh – but always intense, and different. I started to have my favourite places, the café Tichon, or the Tmol Shilshom of course, the Hurva synagogue with its lonely ark reminding you of how fragile things are (that was before it was reconstructed), Nahlaot and the market, but also Rehavia where I went to see Zeruya Shalev. I started to know my way round.
As an editor and as a writer, I know about coincidences, the game of luck and chance life plays with us. But here in Jerusalem, I witnessed a coincidence which none of us would ever dare put into a novel. Nobody would simply believe such a story: during one of my stays here, at the occasion of a shabbat dinner, I met a young man, about my age, actually. Well, yes, I was still a young man, then. We sympathized, he had worked as a jazz musician and studied psychology, was a great reader, in short, we had a lot in common and became great friends. We stayed in touch, corresponded, but it was only some time after that first meeting I discovered that we were actually cousins. Distant cousins, I must admit that – we had never heard of each other before, and both our families come from mixed, half Christian half Jewish backgrounds - but we had a family link nevertheless: we were cousins! Our friendship somehow deepened through this unexpected connection, and when he got married five years ago at the Khan Theatre here in Jerusalem, I was his best man.
In that sense – and this is why I dare tell you an almost intimate story here in public – my Jerusalem is maybe not so different from the eternal city described by Agnon in his little masterpiece Tehila: full of miracles.
And today, being bestowed this wonderful honour and becoming very officially what I have been very privately for the last twenty years already, A Friend of Jerusalem, is like another marvelous, overwhelming little miracle to me.
Ani mode mé-omêk libi al ha-kavod shé atem ossim li ha-yom. Af paam lo eshkakh.
Toda raba!
(I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the honour you bestow on my today. I will never forget. Thank you so much).
© S. Fischer Verlag GmbH /