Where did you grow up?
I was born and raised in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a city full of eagerness and symbolism.
I come from Jerusalem
I am J e r u s a l e m.
Tali Cohen SHabtai, Jerusalem
Where did you go to school?
I attended a neighborhood school in south Jerusalem, in Gilo. Gilo is named after a Biblical city of the same name, identified with the town of Beit Jala, which is south of Gilo: “and Goshen and Holon and Gilo” (The Book of Joshua, Chapter 15, Verse 51).
What do you do Jewish now?
My entire existence is Jewish.
In 2007, while I was living in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, the Norwegian author of “Sophie’s World,” Jostein Gaarder, wrote a visibly anti-Semitic article called “God’s Chosen People”.
I was asked by the editor of the country’s largest-circulation newspaper Aftenposten to express my opinion as a Jewish poet with Israeli citizenship – from a country where the total population was roughly the number of people killed in the Holocaust.
Here is the link to the interview>>
I expect as a poet from an author to know, as written in the Bible:
“You can hurt a person harder with words than with the sword.”
Tali Cohen Shabtai
What is your favorite Jewish Chicago event?
Rosh Hashanah Eve at Chabad House in Skokie, where Rabbi Menachem welcomed us so hospitably.
What do you do for fun/to relax and What do you for work?
I am a poet. For fun, I have my writing.
I have written four bilingual poetry books so far: “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick” (2007), “Protest” (2012), “Nine Years From You” (2018), and “Naked” to be published in 2022. Right now I’m proofreading the fourth book – the bilingual edition will consist of about 350 pages of impressions and poems in the spirit of biography, contemplation, and challenges – and have already begun to write the fifth book.
When the Tribe Gathers: A Poem
Only then did they go for 40 years in the desert until the end, and have not seen what the Creator promised to them, the land that the Creator swore to their ancestors to give them, the land of milk and honey yet they practiced idolatry.
Tali Cohen Shabtai
