Misafa Lesafa

Plot

"It is not a language that flows out of you", an immigrant writer says of Hebrew, which he first learned when he moved to Israel. "It's more like shoveling gravel out of your mouth."

Hebrew might be Israel's national language, but the nation has always had a large number of immigrants who arrive speaking their own native tongues. According to Misafa Lesafa, these Israeli immigrants face a conflict between the reflexive language of their childhood and the new language that surrounds them, and no one feels this conflict more sharply than the artists whose passions rely on words.

Misafa Lesafa explores the inner workings of writers’ minds to reveal how each handles their craft differently and responds to the common linguistic conflict they all face: How do you find your voice when two languages pull you in different directions? One Russian poet says he felt that being bilingual would threaten his writing because instead of using one language perfectly, he would rely on two watered-down, imperfect languages. He speaks violently when explaining how he had to force Russian out of his mind once he learned Hebrew. Although Russian words were eventually lost, he grew to realize that his poems borrowed their musical rhythm from Pushkin and Lermontov—the great Russian writers who had first impressed him.

Many of the poets share this intensity when they speak about language. One woman describes her relationship to her first language in terms of a primal, infantile love. Like a little girl crawling into her mother’s lap, she says, she sinks into her native tongue when she is emotionally strained. And when she hears it spoken, it feels like drinking motherly milk.

Cast