April 16, 2007
Organized by Israeli author Aharon Applefeld (see https://israeled.org/aharon-appelfeld-born/) and politician Natan Sharansky, the Kisufim Conference opened in Jerusalem. The name of the conference came from the Hebrew acronym for “Jerusalem Conference of Jewish Writers and Poets.” Created in part as a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of S.Y. Agnon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature (Israel’s first Nobel Prize winner), the conference was the largest ever gathering of Jewish writers.
Participants at the inaugural conference represented Jewish writers from around the world. Panels and sessions were held in ten different languages, including Hebrew, English, Russian, Serbian and German. Among the authors who presented at the inaugural conference were A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Megged and Elaine Feinstein. The four-day event has since been held in 2009 and 2013. According to Kisufim’s artistic director Hava Pinchas Cohen, “Jewish literature written after World War II is the treasury of memory of the Jewish cultural world. We have a major interest to touch upon and engage ourselves in this subject and to add a layer of knowledge for the benefit of future generations.”
The photo shows writers Eva Hoffman (left), Jonathan Rosen (right), and Ruth Fainstein at Kisufim in Jerusalem, April 18, 2007. (Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency)