Admiel Kosman

Admiel Kosman studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Bar-Ilan University. The recorded working language is Hebrew. Employment is recorded with Bar-Ilan University, University of Potsdam and Abraham Geiger College. Distinctions recorded are Bernstein Prize, Brenner Prize and Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works.

Admiel Kosman was born in Haifa, Israel to an Orthodox Jewish family. His father hailed from a German Jewish family living in France, and his mother immigrated from Iraq. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces in an artillery unit and attending Yeshivat Hakotel in the Old City of Jerusalem, he studied graphic art and pottery at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. He did his Ph.D. in Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. Kosman has four children from his first marriage. Since relocating to Berlin, Kosman is a professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam and the academic director of Abraham Geiger Reform Rabbinical Seminary. Kosman is the author of eight books of poetry. His poems often deal with the tension between his religious faith and artistic sensibilities. Kosman has also written three volumes of post-modern scholarship on gender in traditional Jewish texts. In 2000, he was invited by Nobel Prize–winning Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska to participate in an interfaith festival in Kraków, Poetry – between Prayer and Song.

• And Then the Act of Poetry, 1980 [Ve-Aharei Mora`ot Ma`ase Ha-Shir] • The Prince's Raiment, 1988 [Bigdei Nasich] • Soft Rags, 1991 [Smartutim Rakim] • What I Can, 1995 [Ma Ani Yachol] • We Reached God, 1998 [Higanu Le-Elohim] • Forty Love Poems and Two Additional Love Poems to God, 2003 [Arbaim Shirei Ahava Ve-Shnei Shirei Ahava Nosafim Le-Elohim] • Proscribed Prayers, Siddur Alternativi, Seventy One New Poems), Hakibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv 2007 • You’re Awesome! (Ktaim Itcha), Hakibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv 2011 • Approaching You in English: Selected Poems of Admiel Kosman, translated by Lisa Katz and Shlomit Naim-Naor (Zephyr Press, 2011)