Named after Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s own sharp self-description, Vulture in a Cage is the most extensive collection of the 11^th century Hebrew poet’s works ever to be published in English. Weighty poems of praise, lament, and complaint sit alongside devotional poetry, love poetry, descriptive meditations on nature, and epigrams.

Raymond P. Scheindlin, translator and editor of Vulture in a Cage, will sit down with Judith Baumel, poet, critic, translator and director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University, to discuss the life and work of Ibn Gabirol and his long affection for the poet. Please join us and our friends at the Community Bookstore for what will be a delightful and captivating evening.

Raymond P. Scheindlin is a renowned expert on Hebrew literature in its Golden Age and a master translator of biblical and medieval Hebrew poetry. A professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary and director of JTS’s Shalom Spiegel Institute of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, Dr. Scheindlin has been a Guggenheim Fellow (1988) and a fellow of the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library (2005-2006). He is also a member of the editorial boards of the journals Jewish Quarterly Review and Near Eastern Literatures. He received the Cultural Achievement Award of the National Society for Jewish Culture in 2004.

Judith Baumel is a poet and translator. She is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University.  She has served as president of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs and is a former director of The Poetry Society of America. Her books of poetry are The Weight of Numbers, for which she won The Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, Now, and The Kangaroo Girl  which was named a top five poetry book of 2011 by The Forward weekly.