Honoring David Grossman – recipient of the Erasmus Prize, 2022

uitreiking Erasmusprijs

De Erasmusprijs 2022 is toegekend aan de Israëlische schrijver David Grossman (Jeruzalem, 1954). Het thema van de prijs is dit jaar ‘Verbinders in een verdeelde wereld.’ In zijn werk wil Grossman de mens van binnen uit begrijpen, en de ander liefdevol bezien over grenzen van oorlog en geschiedenis heen.

Stichting Rainbow and Grossman in 2015

David Grossman
David Grossman

We enjoyed working with David Grossman, back in 2015, when his novel ‘Komt een paard de kroeg binnen’ was just published in the Netherlands, by publishing house Cossee.

We collaborated then on the book launch event, that took place at the large theatre of the OBA, the Amsterdam Library.

It was a full house event, with a music group, formed specifically for this occasion, by Roy Shabbat, with the singer Yasmin Kedar and musicians Anan de Boer and Olaf Keus. You can see a clip from that performance here.

It was a very exciting and touching event. Maria Vlaar was the moderator, Hans Smit and Robert Vuijsje read from the translated book, David Grossman read the original Hebrew book, while we projected the translation into Dutch, on the screen.

process of translating the book

Answering questions from the public, David told us about the background of writing this novel, and the more challenging process of translating it.

Those who haven’t read the book yet – you’re in for a treat!

Text, whiteboard

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The book is laced with very funny jokes, telling a very dramatic, heart-breaking story. Indeed, translating the jokes posed a real challenge, to all the translators who were translating the book into their languages.

The solution was to have a sort-of-author-and-translators-residency, in which, for a couple of weeks, David read aloud from the book, and they all discussed each paragraph and each joke. In different languages and different cultures, sometimes new jokes had to be invented.

The idea of making another Israeli Stage Festival, focused on Grossman’s works and tilted ‘Literature on Stage’ is still alive, and we hope to realize it in the foreseeable future!

Stay tuned! The Erasmus-Prize ceremony will take place in November, and by then our plans of this ‘mini-festival’ will be announced.

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Stichting Rainbow is celebrating this year its 25th anniversary, 25 years of social and cultural activities.

As part of the celebrations, I’m happy to share with you all the unknown stories about our projects – and the impact they created on people’s lives.

I’m Erga Netz, the initiator and director of Stichting Rainbow. In our early projects, I was the producer and editor and later became the director, too.

Thank you for participating in our celebrations and if you have any questions –

I’ll be happy to answer them and tell you more!

You can enjoy watching our past productions, via this link: https://www.stichting-rainbow.org/future

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Stichting Rainbow is now headed by a board of 3 Israelis who live in the Netherlands: Nir Geva, Gilad Nezer, and Yankale Bader.

Our activities in the past years focused on Israeli cultural and societal activities for the Israeli, Dutch Jews, and the general Dutch public.

In the coming weeks, I will reveal more background stories of our projects, here.

In the meantime, you can read all about the foundation, its mission, and projects, here


cover: uitreiking van de Erasmuspijs Paleis op de Dam, zie meer meer info over de Erasmusprijs

Over Erga Netz 24 Artikelen
Erga Netz is a cultural entrepreneur, producer, actress, and author. Her debut novel Oh, Gulliver! (2023) is an historical, satirical, feminist, and at times, erotic novel, revealing what REALLY happened to Gulliver in his travel to Lilliput, and what did his loyal wife do in the meanwhile. https://www.mrsgulliversecret.com/the-book Erga Netz is also part of the board of Stichting Rainbow, along Nir Geva and Sarah Whitlau, with Gilad Nezer as director and producer. In recent years we focused our activities on Israeli cultural and societal activities for the Israeli, Dutch Jews, and the general Dutch public.

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