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From Miriam's extemporaneous song celebrating the miracle at the Red Sea to the traditional penning of the Psalms by King David, from the lilting devotional poetry of the Golden Age of Spain to the yearning for Zion expressed by Bialik, the Jewish people have always been poets, and Jerusalem has often been their focus. The Jews looked towards Jerusalem from afar, and their longing expressed itself as verse. And when they weren't stringing together pearls of poetry, they were writing down their stories, their folkways, their laws and ambitions, laying the foundations of other religions, of literature, and of more than one intellectual discipline. Little wonder the Jews were dubbed "People of the Book."

And little wonder that Jerusalem's Mishkenot Sha'ananim cultural center, which faces the Old City, would host Kisufim: The Jerusalem Conference of Jewish Writers and Poets starting on December 7, a gathering of the Jewish people's modern-day Roths and Rachels, a place where they can let their hair (or yarmulkes) down and discuss what informs and motivates the Jewish wordsmith of today.

According to Hava Pinhas-Cohen, poetess and Kisufim's academic director, "To be a Jewish writer means to write from an awareness of identity. People write with an awareness of their past, which for a Jewish writer could mean a connection to Jewish history and texts, depending on their knowledge. There's also a lot of attention paid to issues relating to family."

Panels will explore what common threads unite Jewish writers across communities, countries and languages, and the changes Jewish literature has undergone during the momentous events of the last century, which emptied Europe of most of its ancient Jewish population and gave world Jewry the unprecedented choice to leave the Diaspora that had been its home for 2000 years, allowing - or forcing - the community to express itself once again in a Hebrew language that was not the ossified tongue of liturgy, but a thriving vernacular, living and evolving before the world's eyes.

"I hope this Conference will serve as a meeting point between Israeli writers and writers from abroad," explains Pinhas-Cohen. "So that the two groups see there is a lot connecting them. Ultimately, I hope the Conference leads to the translating of international Jewish literature into Hebrew and works in Hebrew into other languages. I want to open up the world of Israeli writers and open the world of Jewish literature to Israelis."

Workshops and meetings will allow the next generation of Jewish writers to meet their idols (or rivals), and the luminaries in attendance will hold readings of their work. Participants hail from Israel, the United States, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Spain and Argentina, writing in Hebrew, German, Russian, Serbia, English, French, Romanian and Hungarian.

"I can't say who I'm the most excited to meet," says Pinhas-Cohen, "There are many authors who I am interested in meeting including Norman Manea, a Romanian Jew who now lives in the United States, Lisa Ginzburg who is coming from Italy with her baby daughter, and Alessandro Piperno, an Italian Jew who is very popular in Italy. I am also excited to meet Marcelo Birmajaer, a relatively young writer from Argentina who writes about Jewish life in South America - their interactions with the dictators there, their relationship with Israel, community dynamics. While his work is very rooted in South America, it also speaks to the Jewish experience. We will also be having a video conference with Cynthia Ozick that I think is very important. She's an integral part of global Jewish literature."

The writers and readers will all converge in early December for three days of panels, meetings and readings, to be held both at Mishkenot Sha'ananim and at Beit Avi Chai downtown.