{"id":426982,"date":"2019-10-31T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=426982"},"modified":"2019-10-31T16:09:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T20:09:16","slug":"the-teacher-by-michal-ben-naftali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2019\/10\/31\/the-teacher-by-michal-ben-naftali\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Teacher&#8221; by Michal Ben-Naftali"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-427002\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/9781948830072_FC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"330\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The Teacher <\/em>by Michal Ben-Naftali<em><br \/>\n<\/em>Translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir<br \/>\n138 pgs. | pb | 9781948830072\u00a0 | $14.95<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.feministpress.org\/books-n-z\/the-naked-woman\">Open Letter Books<\/a><br \/>\nReview by Kira Baran<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Michal Ben-Naftali\u2019s background in philosophy shines through in her debut novel, <em>The Teacher<\/em>. Originally published in Hebrew in 2015, the work was awarded the 2016 Sapir Prize and is set to be published in several other languages, and is forthcoming from Open Letter Books (tr. Daniella Zamir) in January 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Packing a philosophical journey into a modest 135 pages, <em>The Teacher<\/em> is not told from the perspective of Elsa Weiss\u2014\u201cthe teacher\u201d\u2014but from that of one of Weiss\u2019s former students. This student sets out to pen an engaging, albeit fictionalized, conglomeration of scenes that strive to piece together the story of Weiss\u2019s actual life\u2014and death.<\/p>\n<p>Grounded in the universally relatable context of the teacher-student relationship, the author rises above this to address topics of not only interpersonal conflict, but the ongoing impact of the Holocaust generations later on people\u2019s everyday lives. In doing so, Ben-Naftali challenges the equally relatable idea which every student seems to share at some point: that history, the classroom, and one\u2019s personal life are parallel realms that never actually intersect. She disproves this notion through her soul-searching account of one teacher\u2019s impact on one student\u2019s life\u2014and vice versa.<\/p>\n<p>Like navigating a maze of mirrors, perspectives get distorted and turned upside-down as we learn more about Elsa Weiss. And, like a mirror, the novel forces us to reflect\u2014not just on the characters, but on ourselves in relation to them. As the characters drift in and out of focus, strangers become familiar, while those we think we know best become unfamiliar. Like the narrator, we find ourselves looking behind us to see and clearly understand our present selves.<\/p>\n<p>At its heart, <em>The Teacher<\/em> is a tender tale that delves into the significant way in which our seemingly insignificant acquaintances impact our lives and legacies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Teacher by Michal Ben-Naftali Translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir 138 pgs. | pb | 9781948830072\u00a0 | $14.95 Open Letter Books Review by Kira Baran &nbsp; Michal Ben-Naftali\u2019s background in philosophy shines through in her debut novel, The Teacher. Originally published in Hebrew in 2015, the work was awarded the 2016 Sapir Prize [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":427012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[69522,18886,69752,69512,28166,69502],"class_list":["post-426982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-daniella-zamir","tag-hebrew-literature","tag-kira-baran","tag-michal-ben-naftali","tag-open-letter-books","tag-the-teacher"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427022,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426982\/revisions\/427022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}