In this episode of Jewish Crossroads, journalist Tamar Ish Shalom sits down with Maya Tevet Dayan for a deeply reflective conversation. Tevet Dayan is an Israeli poet, writer, and public intellectual, widely regarded as one of the most important voices in contemporary Israeli literature and feminism. A recipient of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Award for Literature, she holds a PhD in Indian philosophy and literature and has taught and lectured at leading universities in Israel and abroad for many years.

The conversation unfolds across geographies and states of mind. Tevet Dayan speaks about her time as a visiting poet in the United States in the aftermath of October 7, where she confronted the difficulty, often the impossibility, of translating Israeli grief, fear, and moral clarity in academic and cultural spaces that could feel alienating or dismissive. At the same time, she reflects on an unexpected encounter with Jewish peoplehood in the Diaspora, experienced not as an abstraction but as a living and vulnerable bond.

Upon her return to Israel, the questions intensified rather than receded. Tevet Dayan recounts a harrowing night spent sheltering at her father’s home as an Iranian missile landed nearby, an experience that sharpened her thinking about safety, home, exile, and what it means to remain rooted when instability becomes a permanent condition. This episode weaves poetry and philosophy with lived experience, tracing how language, identity, and belonging are reshaped in moments when history presses in on the most intimate spaces of life.

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Maya Tevet Dayan website: https://www.mayatevetdayan.com/en/

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