Michal Peles-Almagor

Comparative Literature · Jewish Cultural History

Dr. Michal Peles‑Almagor

Literature at the threshold: between Hebrew and German, page and stage, home and migration.

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Scholar, lecturer, poet and theater-maker.

סף saf · threshold
  • 2025Jordan Schnitzler First Book Publication AwardAssociation for Jewish Studies
  • 2025Rachel Negev Prize for a First Poetry BookThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • 2026David Baumgardt FellowshipLeo Baeck Institute, New York / Berlin
About

Biography

I study how Jewish writers make a home in language, and what happens to a voice when it crosses borders.

I am a scholar of comparative literature and Jewish cultural history, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My work moves between Hebrew and German literature, modernism, migration, and theater and voice studies.

I received my PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago. My dissertation, The Place of Writing: Language and Home in Twentieth-Century Hebrew and German Literature, won the Leo Baeck Prize for the History and Culture of German Jewry. It is now becoming my first book, forthcoming with Indiana University Press.

Before and alongside academia I worked in theater, as a director, playwright, translator and dramaturge, at venues including Tmuna, Habima and the Bialik Museum. That background shapes how I read, teach and speak: I treat texts as things that are performed, heard and passed between people.

I lecture and teach in Hebrew, English and German, for universities, cultural institutions, Jewish education programs and general audiences.

Research

Current work

First book · Indiana UP, fall 2027

Writers at the Threshold

German, Hebrew, and the Paradoxes of the Jewish Home. How Hebrew writers shaped by German language and culture, from Agnon and Leah Goldberg to David Vogel and Dan Pagis, wrote "home" in a language that was never simply their own.

Second book · in progress

Voice and Migration in Jewish Women's Writing

Leah Goldberg, Else Lasker-Schüler and Mascha Kaléko. Reading recorded performance alongside the written text, the project follows what migration does to a poet's voice, and how performed poetry reshaped Jewish public spaces.

HebrewEnglishGermanYiddish (reading)Italian
Speaking

Lectures & talks

Talks for festivals, cultural institutions, communities, schools and universities. Each can be given as a keynote, a seminar session or a short series.

Theater · Israel today

Why the Stage Matters: Israeli Theater at a Time of War

What theater does for a society under pressure, from Greek tragedy to Hanoch Levin and today's Israeli stage.

Poetry · migration

Voices Displaced: Mascha Kaléko and the Poetry of Exile

A Berlin poet forced into exile, heard through her own recorded readings. On what it means to lose, and keep, a voice.

Jewish peoplehood · education

Imagining Home: Why Jewish Leadership Needs a Literary Imagination

How reading literature trains the empathy and complexity that leaders and educators need, drawing on modern Hebrew and Jewish writing.

German-Jewish culture

The Wandering Library: Agnon between Hebrew and German

The Nobel laureate's German years and the books he carried, and how they shaped the Hebrew masterpieces we know.

Poetry · rediscovery

The Celebrated German Poet Forgotten in Israel

Erich Kästner, beloved worldwide for Emil and the Detectives, and the poetry Israeli readers never met.

Jewish identity · history

Jewish Peoplehood at a Time of Crisis

From the Bible to October 7: how Jewish texts have imagined belonging, responsibility and a shared fate.

Audiences

Universities, festivals and theaters, Jewish education and leadership programs, museums, communities abroad.

Languages

Hebrew, English and German. In person or online.

Formats

Keynotes, single lectures, workshops, reading groups and semester courses.

Recent engagements

  • 2026Why the Stage Matters: Israeli Theater at a Time of WarCelebrating Jewish Plays Festival, Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, Massachusetts
  • 2026Epistolary Theater: German Poetry and Migration in Leah Goldberg's FictionHebrew Literature Department, Ben-Gurion University
  • 2026Jewish Peoplehood: Perspectives on Belonging Panel organizer, First International Conference on Jewish Education in Israel and the Diaspora, Hebrew University
  • 2025Voices Displaced: On Migration PoetryBaeck Home: 70 Years of the Leo Baeck Institute, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem
  • 2025Voice as Interruption: Mascha Kaléko's Performed PoetryInternational Workshop in Memory of Paul Mendes-Flohr, Bar-Ilan University
  • 2025The Performative Power of Mascha Kaléko's PoetryBucerius Institute, University of Haifa
  • 2024Erich Kästner's Forgotten PoetryLeo Baeck Institute Jerusalem

Planning an event, a festival or a course?

Get in touch
Publications

Books & writing

Writers at the Threshold: German, Hebrew, and the Paradoxes of the Jewish Home

Indiana University Press, German-Jewish Cultures series. Forthcoming fall 2027.

Jordan Schnitzler First Book Publication Award, Association for Jewish Studies, 2025

Instructions for Measuring Pulse · הוראות למדידת דופק

Poetry, Hebrew. Edited by Anat Levin. Forthcoming.

Rachel Negev Prize for a First Poetry Book, 2025 · Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts publication grant, 2026

Selected articles

  • 2027"Staging Multilingualism: Language, Migration, and the Epistolary Form in Leah Goldberg's Novel."Modernism/modernity 34.1 forthcoming
  • 2026"The Bluma Effect: Toward a Poetics of Disruption (Shibush) in S.Y. Agnon's Sipur Pashut."'Iyunim 44 forthcoming
  • 2025"Queer Macaronic: Hebrew-German 'Married Life' in David Vogel's Prose."Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 43.3: 95–116
  • 2023"'I Seek the Stars in the Daylight': Citation, Recitation, and Leah Goldberg's Hidden German Poem."Naharaim 17.1: 33–50
  • 2022"Theater in Jewish DP Camps in Italy: A Stage for Political and Ideological Debate on Aliya, Zionism, and Jewish Identity." With Achinoam Aldouby and Chiara Renzo.Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History

Chapters

  • 2027"And Thou Shalt Tell Your Father: Home and Belonging in Dan Pagis' Abba."Leo Baeck Institute, Jüdischer Almanach [German] forthcoming
  • 2027"The Letter in Kafka's 'The Judgement'."Essays in honor of Dan Miron's 90th birthday, eds. Galili Shachar, Roy Greenwald and Lilach Nethanel [Hebrew] forthcoming

Essays & public writing

  • 2025"The Celebrated German Poet Who Was Forgotten in Israel."Ynet
  • 2024Review of Women Writing Jewish Modernity, 1919–1939 by Allison Schachter.Modernism/modernity 30.4: 856–858
  • 2023"Beyt Bialik: A Guided Tour."Moznaim 97.2
  • 2023"I Admit, You Can Say I Abandoned You Twice."Haaretz, Culture & Literature [Hebrew]

Translations

  • 2022Adi Keissar, "I Am the Mizrachit"Hebrew to English
  • 2009Harold Pinter, NightEnglish to Hebrew, in Memory Plays, ed. Avraham Oz (Resling)
Teaching

Courses

  • 2027Where's the Drama? Theater's Role in Society from Oedipus Rex to Hanoch LevinMandel Program, Tel Aviv University · Amirim Honors Program, Hebrew University
  • 2026–27Jewish Peoplehood at a Time of Crisis: From the Bible to October 7Lowy International School, Tel Aviv University
  • 2026Introduction to Twentieth-Century German ModernismGerman Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • 2025Introduction to Jewish Peoplehood: History, Culture, ThoughtKoret Center for Jewish Civilization, Tel Aviv University
  • 2024–25Jewish History, Heritage, and IdentitiesExperiential course at ANU – Museum of the Jewish People, Lowy International School
  • 2023–24Introduction to Israeli TheaterLowy International School, Tel Aviv University
  • 2019–20Hebrew Literature and CultureMA Program in Israel Education, George Washington University
Arts

Theater, poetry, film

  • NowBluma in JerusalemDocumentary on S.Y. Agnon, co-created with filmmaker Shiry Price
  • 2025Instructions for Measuring PulseFirst poetry collection
  • 2011With a Year Passing ByPlaywright, Tzavta Theater
  • 2010Shadow theater after BialikPlaywright and co-director, Bialik Museum
  • 2009Harold Pinter's NightDirector and translator, Tmuna Theater & Habima

In the media

  • Why the Stage Matters · BroadwayWorld
  • Erich Kästner's Forgotten Poetry
  • Mascha Kaléko's Poetry, an interview
  • The Wandering Library: Agnon between Hebrew and German
  • Three Languages Under One Roof
  • Literature, Theater, and the Hebrew Language
  • Michal Peles' Bookshelf
Contact

Get in touch

For lectures, courses, collaborations and press, write to me directly.

I usually reply within a few days. Please include the date, the audience and the language of the event.

Email
[email protected]
Affiliation
The Martin Buber Society of Fellows
Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus