Gali-Dana Singer facts for kids

Gali-Dana Singer (born April 23, 1962) is a talented poet, artist, photographer, and translator. She was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. She studied theater, music, and cinema for three years in her hometown. In 1988, she moved to Israel from what was then called Leningrad. She lived in Riga with her husband, Nekod Singer, for three years before they settled in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, her writing career and involvement in Russian and Hebrew culture really grew.

Gali-Dana started writing poetry in Russia. She only shared her poems with her father and an older friend. She didn't publish her work in Russia because she planned to move to Israel. She didn't want to cause problems for publishers. Her artistic journey truly began in Israel. There, she started expressing herself through visual arts, photography, and illustrating books. She also began writing poetry in other languages, like English and Hebrew, and translating books.

Two years after moving to Israel, Gali-Dana showed her book illustrations at children's book exhibitions. These were held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, alongside her husband's work. Most of her career and awards are related to Russian and Hebrew literature, poetry, and translations. In 1992, she published her first poetry book, Collection. Another book, Adel Kil'ka. From, followed in 1993.

Since 1993, Gali-Dana has been a member of the General Union of Writers in Israel. She is also part of the Jerusalem Literary Club, where she leads a Poetry Seminar. She was the main editor for two Russian literary journals, IO and Dvojetochie, from 1994 to 1995, and again since 1997. She has published many literary magazines in Israel. She also edited the Russian journal Dvojetochie, which later included Hebrew writings, making it a bilingual journal.

In 2001, she published another Russian poetry collection called To Think: River. This was the first of her own works that she translated into Hebrew. A year later, Singer became the main editor of another Russian-Hebrew journal, Dvojetochije-Nekudataim. She also published more poetry books: Blind Poems and Yarusarim Besieged.

Moving to a New Home

In the late 1980s, Gali-Dana and her husband found it hard to leave the Soviet Union from Leningrad. So, they became Refuseniks, meaning they were denied permission to emigrate. They moved to Riga, where it was easier to leave the country.

Gali-Dana Singer has shared that Israeli life and culture were different from what she expected. However, this did not stop her from fitting in. A big challenge for her was the language barrier and finding the right words. Since moving to Israel, her goal has been to blend in and see her Russian and Israeli cultures work together in her new home.

Singer worked hard to integrate, even during the 1990s post-Soviet aliyah. This was a time when many people moved from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Some newcomers thought Russian culture was better than Israeli culture. Gali-Dana Singer felt sad about this. She said that people would go to shows from Russia but not buy tickets for Russian shows made in Israel.

She believes in embracing Hebrew culture and wants to integrate fully. She also works to connect with her Jewish heritage while keeping her Russian identity. By doing this, she helps create a new culture that she values just as much as her old one. For example, she made sure to learn Hebrew. This helped her avoid staying only within the Russian cultural group and connect with the majority in Israel.

Learning a New Language

Adia Mendelson-Maoz, in her book Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives, writes about Singer's thoughts on learning a new language. Gali-Dana knows she is culturally different from most Israelis. This made her believe that Russian immigrants should change culturally and linguistically in their new environment. She noted that we don't choose where we are born or our first language. So, the hard work of finding new words to express oneself is both artistic and cultural.

In an interview for Poetry International, Gali-Dana talked about learning Hebrew. She said that her strong connection to language in her Russian poems helped her connect with Hebrew. She felt the same way about the new language. She explained that she is the same poet, but she writes different things in a different language. The experience of language itself is what inspires her to write.

Her love for language has helped her master Hebrew. It has also shaped how she approaches fitting into Israeli life and culture. This love has also been a main idea in her views on multiculturalism.

Being a Translator

Years after settling in Jerusalem, Gali-Dana started focusing on translating works between Russian and Hebrew. In her interview with Lisa Katz, Gali-Dana said that translating poems changes their original meaning. She believes that a translated poem gets a new and unique life. She feels that when she translates, she is "creating something parallel." She credits this to the complex structures of Russian and Hebrew.

Gali-Dana has led workshops to create Russian and Hebrew poetry collections. She was also the main editor of the bilingual Russian and Hebrew journal Dvojetochije-Nekudataim. She has translated many poems between these languages, and sometimes into English too. She has learned a lot about translation from this work.

She explained that she doesn't just switch from Russian to Hebrew. Instead, she moves back and forth between them. She realized that translating a poem exactly as it was in the original often doesn't work. What sounds good in Russian might not sound good in Hebrew.

Mendelson-Maoz writes that Gali-Dana believes learning a language is more about how you think and feel than just about intelligence. Singer's observations show that languages are a unique way of experiencing the world. This idea is connected to her belief that the roots of our first language are always with us. Mendelson-Maoz links Singer's artistic struggle to find new words to her dislike of Russian cultural supremacy in Israel. These ideas explain how Gali-Dana's experience with language, especially as a translator, shaped her views on multiculturalism in Israel.

Many Languages, Many Cultures

Gali-Dana Singer is highly respected in the Russian-Israeli writing community. She is praised for learning Hebrew and stepping out of her language comfort zone. Another Israeli poet, Ya'ara Ben David, said that some Russian immigrants find it hard to learn Hebrew. She praised Gali-Dana Singer for her willingness to learn and integrate. She noted that Singer's sensitivity to poetic language and her skill with Hebrew explain her use of wordplay and rhyme.

Her efforts to fit into Israeli culture, her disapproval of Russian cultural supremacy, and her ideas about language have led to many poetry books in English, Hebrew, and Russian. According to Maoz, this "multilingual and intellectually desirable and balanced" approach to literature shows her support for multiculturalism. Gali-Dana promotes this idea through her art.

In her interview with Lisa Katz, Gali-Dana was asked why English poetry has influenced Hebrew literature more than Russian poetry in recent decades. She replied that she is not worried about English influence. She believes everything happens in its own time. She said the main drive for poetry is the language a person feels. She believes it doesn't matter where we live or even which language we hear. Her open and welcoming views on cultural influence are clear in both her opinions and her poetry.

Works and Awards

Gali-Dana Singer's work has been featured in every major literary magazine in Israel. [Poetry International] also features her poem 'The one whose silence is the world'. She is also included in a University of Iowa collection of English translations of Russian-language women poets.

• 1992, Collection
• 1993, Adel Kil'ka. From
• 1998, Shalom Aleichem (a collection of Israeli Poetry she translated)
• 1999, “Poets’ Dialogue” Anthology (edited with Peter Kriksunov)
• 2000, To Think: River (in Hebrew)
• 2002, Blind Poems (in Hebrew) and Yarusarim Besieged
• 2006, The Coiner of Incidents (in Hebrew)
• 2013, Two poems featured in An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets
• 2014, Savely Grinberg. Beh-do-ir, Ra'anana, Even Hoshen (as a translator)
• 2017, Translucent (in Hebrew)
• N/A, "I'm Not Christina Rossetti But I Also Read Tennyson, Told Cecilia in Praise of Lesser Gods" (in English)

As of 2025, she is working with American poet Stefan Ellis on a project called "Other or Some: A Collaborative Poetry Project."

She has published seven books in Russian and four in Hebrew. She has also translated many poems and led workshops for creating Russian and Hebrew poetry collections. Her own poems have been translated into English, Spanish, Yiddish, Latvian, and Georgian.

Awards

• 1997 -- Absorption Ministry's Prize for Israeli immigrant writers
• 2000 -- Teva Poetry Prize at the Israeli Poetry Festival in Metula
• 2004 -- Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Literary Prize (Israel)