“Living in English, Writing in Hebrew: A Conversation with Ruby Namdar”

Join Ruby Namdar, winner of Israel’s Sapir Prize in 2014, in conversation with Professor Nancy Sinkoff, academic director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, for a special program. Ruby Namdar’s provocative book “The Ruined House” explores the enduring power of the ancient purification ritual of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement through the life–and unraveling–of a successful professor of comparative literature at New York University at the beginning of the 21st century. When is a “vision” a mental breakdown?  When is a gourmet cut of steak not the ingredient of a fancy meal but the symbol of rites associated with the Temple in Jerusalem? Can the Hebrew and Aramaic languages of the Talmud seep into the consciousness of a thoroughly acculturated and sophisticated New Yorker?