News Release
October 2003
A graduate of the Sorbonne, she is the author of
15 books, novels, non-fictions and children's books. Her personal
favorite is her novel "Lilith." She
has also written "Lilith's divorce" a short story published
in an American anthology called "Which Lilith," Other novels
include Lovend, and Soap Opera, which won the Jerusalem Literary Prize.
Gal also is an eminent translator; she speaks English,
French, some Arabic, as well as Hebrew. She was a journalist in Israel
for many
years writing as a film critic and a food writer. She later wrote about
women’s issues and about politics. “I was what they call "a
color writer" meaning I had to go out there and give a vivid,
personal account of events,” said Gal. “When it became
too many bomb sites, funerals, and grieving parents, I choose to leave
journalism and begin writing novels and children’s books.”
Gal finds comfort teaching at Moravian, away from
the bombs and terror that hangs over Israel. “The peace and serenity here are soothing
and people are extremely kind. There is no way I could ever take that
for granted,” said Gal. “It is a great honor for me to
be Professor Comenius: John Amos Comenius was a renovating and courageous
educator.”
“I find teaching at Moravian very gratifying and enriching,
the students are to some extent more innocent than the kids their age
in Israel, their lives are—thank heaven—more protected,
but they are very open, responsive and I keep marveling at the originality
of their ideas.”
Gal is a music lover and an opera buff who has
been enjoying the richness of the Moravian College music department’s
offerings. Her husband, Joseph Ben-David, is an electrophysiologist
who has joined Valley Cardiology
Associates of Bethlehem.
(Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) - Israeli writer and
translator Naomi Gal is spending the year at Moravian College as Comenius
Professor of Language and Literature. This fall, Gal is teaching English
104: Experience of Literature. She will be teaching at least one section
of Writing 100 in the spring.
