Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second-Generation Religious Zionist Settlers 9781618111043

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BEYOND POLITICAL MESSIANISM: THE POETRY OF SECOND-GENERATION RELIGIOUS ZIONIST SETTLERS

Israel: Society, Culture and History Yaacov Yadgar (Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University), Series Editor

Editorial board Alan Dowty, Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Notre Dame

Allan Silver, Sociology, Columbia University

Tamar Katriel, Communication Ethnography, University of Haifa

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Ethnicity, London School of Economics

Avi Sagi, Hermeneutics, Cultural studies, and Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University

Yael Zerubavel, Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University

BEYOND POLITICAL MESSIANISM:

THE POETRY OF SECOND-GENERATION RELIGIOUS ZIONIST SETTLERS David C. Jacobson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jacobson, David C., 1947Beyond political Messianism : the poetry of second generation religious Zionist settlers / David C. Jacobson. p. cm. -- (Israel, society, culture, and history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934843-72-7 (alk. paper) 1. Israeli poetry--History and criticism. 2. God in literature. 3. Prayer in literature. I. Title. PJ5024.J3 2011 892.4'1708--dc22 2010054449

Copyright © 2011 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN: 978-1-934843-72-7 Book design by Olga Grabovsky Published by Academic Studies Press in 2011

28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

In memory of my parents Clarence Norman Jacobson and Dorothy Cortell Jacobson

CONTENTS

w

Preface

ix

Introduction

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Chapter One:

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING Chapter Two:

PRAYER AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD Chapter Three:

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION  Chapter Four:

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113 157 181

POETRY AND EROS 

Chapter Five:

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

205

Bibliography

269

Index

283

Index

of

289

Biblical Passages

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PREFACE w

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his book is, in a sense, a sequel to my book, Creator, Are You Listening? Israeli Poets on God and Prayer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), in which I examine poetry on religious themes by six Israeli writers with a range of birth dates from 1914 to 1957: Zelda Mishkovsky, Yehuda Amichai, Asher Reich, Rivka Miriam, Hava Pinhas-Cohen, and Admiel Kosman. After completing the book, I became curious about poems on religious themes by younger Israeli writers about whom I had not written. In the course of two research trips to Israel, I discovered that among the many Israeli poets born since the 1950s who write on religious themes, there exists a culturally coherent group of poets who belong to the second generation of religious Zionists associated with the settlement of the territories occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. The more I examined the history of this group and read the poetry they had written, the more I realized that I had come upon a significant new trend in contemporary Israeli poetry which had not yet received any serious scholarly attention. This trend, I realized, has been important not only as a new development in the history of Israeli poetry, ix

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but also as a prime example of the many ways in which the boundaries between religiosity and secularism in Israel have been blurred in recent times. On the one hand, as these religious poets have sought to enter the mainstream of secular Israeli poetry, they have reflected an openness on the part of some religious Zionists to contemporary currents in secular Western culture. On the other hand, the acceptance of these religious poets into the mainstream of secular Israeli poetry has reflected an openness on the part of secular Israelis to exploring the world of Jewish tradition which plays such a central role in these poets’ works. I was drawn to write about this new generation of poets not only because of their historical and cultural significance, but also because I identify with their struggle to find a creative balance between loyalty to traditional Jewish culture and the freedom to think thoughts, embrace values, and adopt a worldview that is, in part, the product of contemporary Western culture. Although I am neither a citizen of the State of Israel nor the product of the religious Zionist settler culture, I share with these poets a commitment to exploring a range of themes central to Jewish existence in our time: the search for religious faith and a relationship with traditional Jewish practice, an affirmation of the erotic dimension of human existence tempered by ethical and religious values, the need to find personal contemporary relevance in the Bible and in all post-biblical Jewish literature, and the desire for reconciliation and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, I am deeply appreciative of their ability to capture in the framework of poetic forms a range of responses to these issues that speak volumes in ways that prose statements cannot. There was one barrier between me and these poets that I needed to overcome in order to complete this project. Ever since the occupation of Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights by Israel in 1967, I have supported the so-called dovish position that Israel should be prepared to return these territories to Arab control for the sake of arriving at peaceful relations with its neighbors (although initially I did support the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem). For many years, I have considered the development of Jewish settlements in these areas to be a misguided policy and the settlers themselves to constitute an obstacle to x

PREFACE

peace, albeit not the only obstacle. As I began to interview these poets, I had to overcome my prejudice about the political world in which they were raised and about the fact that all but one of them live in the West Bank. I asked myself how I could write about poets and analyze their works if I could not identify with an aspect of their worldview that was central to them. The biggest sticking point for me was the gap between my support for Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and poems written by some of these writers mourning the disengagement as a great tragedy of Jewish history. In the end, I was able to overcome this barrier for two reasons: (1) As I got to know them in the course of interviewing them, the complexity of their humanity overcame my stereotyped view of religious Zionist settlers, and (2) I came to realize that their attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not as uniformly extreme as I thought they would be. Some even indicated a degree of empathy for Palestinians that I had assumed did not exist among religious Zionist settlers. This book is both a study in cultural history and a poetry anthology. It begins with an Introduction that tells the story of how this group of second-generation religious Zionist settlers, who had found their way to poetry as individuals, came together with two purposes: (1) to develop within their social and cultural setting an appreciation of the writing of poetry, a cultural activity which had mainly been associated with secular Israelis, and (2) to introduce into the mainstream of Israeli poetry themes and language drawn from the traditional educational and life experiences in which they were raised. In subsequent chapters, I explore differences and similarities in these poets’ approaches to concerns central to their generation. Each chapter begins with an introduction that seeks to place the writing of poetry by this group about a particular theme in the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which they are living. The introduction is followed by a selection of poetry related to that theme in the original Hebrew versions of the poems and in my translations of the poems into English. Each poem is accompanied by my analysis, which includes the identification of allusions to biblical and post-biblical Jewish texts and, when relevant, the historical and/or biographical context xi

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in which the poem was written. The poems were selected on the basis of three criteria: that they were related to the thematic focus of the chapter in which they were to appear, that I personally liked them, and that I felt confident I could competently translate and interpret them. I do not want my focus on these religious Zionist settler poets to create the impression that their poetry, so infused with religious themes and allusions to the Bible and classical Jewish texts, is a unique phenomenon in the history of modern Hebrew literature. Although modern Hebrew poetry has often been viewed as essentially secular in nature, many modern Hebrew poets, most of whom have not been fully observant Jews, have explored religious themes and have drawn on traditional Jewish literature throughout the ages. This central role of religiosity in the history of modern Hebrew poetry in general and Israeli poetry in particular has been amply demonstrated by two recent studies, my book Creator, Are You Listening? Israeli Poets on God and Prayer and Hamutal Bar-Yosef’s book Mistiqah bashirah ha’ivrit bame’ah ha’esrim (Mysticism in Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poetry, Tel-Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2008). I mentioned above that the poetry on which this book focuses is a prime example of the many ways in which the boundaries between religiosity and secularism in Israel have been blurred in recent times. My commitment to the notion that in Israel today the terms ”religious” and ”secular” do not represent two self-contained realms forced me to struggle with the question of how to refer in this book to the cultural identities of Israelis. In popular parlance, Israeli Jews are generally thought of by other Israeli Jews as either ”religious” (dati) or ”secular” (ḥiloni), the distinction being that the ”religious” are committed to living in accordance with the authority of traditional Jewish law and the ”secular” are not. This distinction, however, does not take into account the degree to which many ”religious” Israelis are fully immersed in the secular world and many ”secular” Israelis have a personal religious identity and a commitment to observing at least some religious traditions. In the end, it seemed less cumbersome to stay within the framework of popular parlance and refer to poets and other figures as either ”religious” or ”secular” in terms of the nature of their commitment to traditional Jewish observance. Readers should, howxii

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ever, keep in mind that I am fully aware that these terms do not adequately capture the complexity of Israeli cultural identity. Throughout the book, the reader will find references to the biographies of the poets and to ideas and feelings they have expressed. All such references that are not directly credited should be understood to be based on interviews with each of the poets that I conducted in Israel during the academic year 2008-2009 or on my e-mail correspondence with them. I want to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to the poets in this study for generously agreeing to be interviewed by me and then continuing our conversations electronically: Eliaz Cohen, Avishar Har-Shefi, Sivan Har-Shefi, Shmuel Klein, Elhanan Nir, Yoram Nissinovitch, Nahum Pachenik, and Naama Shaked. Their willingness to talk about their upbringings, their lives to date, and how they view the world provided me with invaluable information. Also, although it is not always comfortable for poets to discuss the meaning of their writing, they did agree to such discussions of selections of their poetry, and the insights that they provided me have played an important part in my analyses of their works. My English versions and analyses of their poems have often been enriched by their thoughtful comments. In the final analysis, only I am responsible for the accuracy of my presentation of the lives of these poets, the history of their emergence as a group, and the translations and interpretations of their poems I have composed. It is my hope that each poet will come to believe that I have done justice to the group and to each as an individual in this book. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the following who provided me with important insights into the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the poetry I discuss in the book: Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Tamar Biala, Rav Yair Dreyfus, Shlomo Fischer, Shimon Fogel, Motti Inbari, Yonadav Kaplun, Rav Binyamin Kelmanson, Yehudah Mirsky, Haviva Pedaya, Yuval Rivlin, Avinoam Rosenak, Shlomo Shilo, and David Sperber. In addition, I thank members of the Brown Judaic Studies Faculty Seminar, as well as my adult education students, for their insightful comments on material from the book that I shared with them. I am particularly grateful to Yaakov Yadgar, Editor of the Academic Studies Press Series on Isxiii

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rael: Society, Culture, and History, for his support for the publication of this book. I thank Brown University for a research leave in the academic year 2008-2009, during which I conducted the research for this book and completed its writing, and for granting me funds to cover expenses associated with this project. The last work I dedicated to my parents, Clarence Norman Jacobson and Dorothy Cortell Jacobson, was my doctoral dissertation, at a time when they were alive and providing me with so much support and love. This is the first major work that I have completed since they both passed away, and so it is fitting now to honor their memory by dedicating it to them. Last but not least, I want to express my love and appreciation to my wife, Shelly Greene, for being such a wonderful partner. In the words of Sivan Har-Shefi: and when I bend a bit,

and when you do. A delicate balance.

Acknowledgment is made for permission to include the following material: •

The editors of Mashiv Haruaḥ for the original Hebrew version of ”From Poems of the Tunnels,” by Shmuel Klein, Mashiv Haruaḥ 10 (2001/2002), and for the original Hebrew version of ”From there I will separate…,” by Naama Shaked, Mashiv Haruaḥ 11(2002), copyright 2002, Mashiv Haruaḥ.

•

Even Hoshen Publishers Ltd. for the original Hebrew versions of ”Two Poems on Ishmael,” ”A Palestinian Passover,” ”Snow,” ”Sitting in a bus that ticks…,” ”Among the pieces of the bus…” in Eliaz Cohen, Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2004), copyright 2004 by Even Hoshen Publishers, Ltd., and for the original Hebrew versions of ”On the Way to Nes Harim,” ”The Yeshiva,” ”Sabbath on Agripxiv

PREFACE

pas Street,” ”Jewish Figures,” ”Contact,” and ”Kerem Maharal,” in Yoram Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2008), copyright 2008 by Even Hoshen Publishers, Ltd. •

Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd. for the original Hebrew versions of ”Sarah 4,” ”Neighbors­—A Meditative Dialogue,” ”The Secret of Oneness,” ”A Delicate Balance,” ”Face,” ”Snow,” ”Zebras,” and ”Permission” in Sivan Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), copyright 2005 by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd., and for the original Hebrew versions of ”You Know,” ”Running to You,” ”And Suddenly He Spread,” ”He Who Betroths Half a Woman,” and ”To Jump and Not to Flee” in Elhanan Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008), copyright 2008 by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd.

•

Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd. and Mashiv Haruaḥ for the original Hebrew version of ”Within the peeling plaster…,” by Naama Shaked, in Eliaz Cohen, Yoram Nissinovitch, Shmuel Klein, Uzi Shavit, and Leah Snir, eds., Mashiv haruaḥ: mivḥar shirim 5755-5765 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), copyright 2005 by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd. and Mashiv Haruaḥ.

•

Keter Books for the original Hebrew versions of ”The Hidden Moon in Guang-Si,” ”The Home,” ”The Stranger,” ”Four Yeshiva Boy Poems,” ”My Eyes,” ”Fear Not!,” and ”Tefillin, Morning” in Nahum Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), copyright 2007 by Keter Books.

•

Schocken Publishing House, Israel for the original Hebrew versions of ”Isaac, Rebecca,” ”When You are not…,” ”People Go to Work,” and ”And When You Asked From Where the Sabbath Will Come” in Avishar Har-Shefi, Susei esh (Jerusalem and Tel xv

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Aviv: Schocken, 2004), copyright 2004 by Schocken Publishing House, Israel. •

The Toby Press for the original Hebrew version of ”The Breaker of Barriers” in Eliaz Cohen, Hear O Lord: Poems From the Disturbances of 2000-2009, trans. Larry Barak (New Milford, CT.: The Toby Press, 2010), copyright 2010 by The Toby Press.

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ith the founding of Gush Emunim in 1974, a year after the traumatic events of the Yom Kippur War, a significant segment of religious Zionist Israelis left the comfort of their lives within the pre-1967 borders of Israel to revive the move to establish Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that had begun shortly after they were conquered by Israel in the Six-Day War. These religious Jews saw themselves as acting in the spirit of the early Zionist ideal of settling the Land of Israel. They hoped that through their actions they would expand the borders of Israel permanently, thereby providing more security for Israel and affirming the right of the Jewish people to control as much of the original biblical Land of Israel as possible. In keeping with the religious Zionist conviction that the State of Israel is ”the first flowering of [messianic] redemption” (in the words of the Prayer for the State of Israel), these settlers saw themselves as contributing to the fulfillment of the messianic hopes they placed in Zionism. For some, there was an urgency to the settlement 17

INTRODUCTION

project because they believed that the messianic redemption was near and that the establishment of settlements in the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 would help to hasten redemption even in their lifetimes.1 The children of these settlers spent all or part of their childhood in the settlements in the 1970s and 1980s. As they began to reach maturity in the 1990s, some turned to poetry as a mode of self-expression, a pursuit that had little value in the Gush Emunim culture of their parents and teachers. Inspired by the largely secular modern Hebrew literary tradition, and in some cases by works of Western poetry in general, and drawing on centuries of traditional Jewish sources, they have explored in their poetry a wide range of concerns central to them as religious Zionist Israelis toward the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The main vehicle for poetic expression by members of this generation of religious Zionists is the literary journal Mashiv Haruaḥ, which has been published on a regular basis since 1994.2 The journal also sponsors a well1

Although a high percentage of religious Zionists have strongly supported the Gush Emunim ideology, most religious Zionists have continued to live within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Furthermore, in response to the founding of Gush Emunim, a small minority of religious Zionists began to question the Gush Emunim ideology and to favor alternative approaches to the occupied territories. This position is advocated by an organization called Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom and has also been part of the platform of a small religious Zionist party, Meimad. A series of discussions among religious Zionists supporting and opposing the settlements in the 1980s and early 1990s may be found in Qera bein hakippot: ḥeshbon nefesh shel dor hakippot haserugot, ed. Ze’ev Galili (Jerusalem: Merkaz Sapir, 1993). As Michael Feige notes, there have also been a substantial number of Jewish settlers who were not motivated to move to the occupied territories by the Gush Emunim ideology. Many, in fact, are secular Jews and some are ultra-Orthodox Jews. See Michael Feige, Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), 35. See my Bibliography for a selection of additional scholarly studies of Gush Emunim and religious Zionist approaches to the settlement project in the West Bank and Gaza by Gideon Aran, Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Shlomo Fischer, Yoni Garb, Gershom Gorenberg, Motti Inbari, Ian S. Lustick, David Newman, Aviezer Ravitzky, Yishai Rosen-Zvi, Yair Sheleg, Ehud Sprinzak, Gaudi Taub, and Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.

2

Mashiv Haruaḥ has been the journal that has played the most central role in fostering the writing of poetry by this new generation of religious Zionist poets. Other periodicals connected in various ways to religious Zionism have published poetry by religious writers, including Hatsofeh, the newspaper of the National Religious Party (founded in 1937), Mabua (founded in 1963), Nequdah (founded in 1980), Dimui (founded in 1990), Maqor Rishon (founded in 1997), and Erets Aḥeret (founded in 2000). Some writers have had their poems accepted for publication in the mainstream newspapers and literary journals. See

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INTRODUCTION

attended creative writing workshop, Kitat Mizmor (Class of Song), in which younger new poets are mentored, and an annual poetry festival, Yemei Ahavah Leshirah (Days for the Love of Poetry) in Jerusalem. This book will explore the lives and writings of eight religious Zionist poets who are closely associated with Mashiv Haruaḥ: Yoram Nissinovitch (1965-), Naama Shaked (1970-), Shmuel Klein (1971-), Eliaz Cohen (1972-) Nahum Pachenik (1973-), Avishar Har-Shefi (1973-), Sivan Har-Shefi (1978-), and Elhanan Nir (1980-). Mashiv Haruaḥ has always had a system of rotating editors, and Nissinovitch, Shaked, Klein, Cohen, Pachenik, and Avishar Har-Shefi have been among the most prevalent of those involved in editing issues. Sivan Har-Shefi, the wife of Avishar Har-Shefi, and Elhanan Nir have actively participated in the Mashiv Haruaḥ project by regularly contributing poems to the journal.3 While many other writers with a variety of cultural orientations have published their poetry in Mashiv Haruaḥ, I believe that the works of these eight poets represent well the central poetic trends of the Mashiv Haruaḥ project. Most of the eight poets on which this book will focus spent at least part of their childhood in settlements, and those who did not were exposed to the settler ethos in yeshivot located in the settlements. They live today in settlements in Gush Etzion, in the West Bank, with the exception of one poet who lives in Jerusalem. Drawing on interviews I conducted with these eight poets, I will tell the story of how they began writing poetry as individuals and how together they introduced to the religious Zionist settlement culture an appreciation of the value of poetry and literary creativity in general and established themselves as participants in the ongoing development of contemporary Israeli poetry. Yair Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim: mabbat akhshavi al haḥevrah hadatit beyisra’el (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), 59-60. See also Yael Shenker, ” ‘Ein lanu yotsrim’ – qehilah datit le’umit mekhonenet yotsreha: bein zehut qehilatit lesifrut datit bereshit shenot hashemonim,” in Hatsiyyonut hadatit: iddan hatemurot: asuppat meḥqarim lezekher Zvulun Hammer, ed. Asher Cohen and Yisrael Harel (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2004), 283-322. 3

The editors of the first issue of Mashiv Haruaḥ in 1994 were Aya Somekh, Nahum Pachenik, and Shmuel Klein. Aya Somekh has not participated in editing any issues of the journal since then. Others who have served as co-editors of issues of Mashiv Haruaḥ on more than one occasion include the poets Shur Antebi, Shimon Fogel, and Yosef Ozer.

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INTRODUCTION

How Compatible Are Religion and Poetry? Based mainly on the teachings of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891-1982), Head of Yeshivat Merkaz Harav from 1952 until his death, the central values of the Gush Emunim religious Zionist settler culture have been traditional Jewish text study, strict observance of religious rituals, an emphasis on modesty in dress and conduct with the purpose of preventing sexual impropriety, and especially the establishment of new settlements in the Land of Israel.4 Artistic creativity in general, and poetry in particular, were not valued in the early years of the establishment of the settlements. This attitude toward art and literature was in keeping with the suspicious view of such forms of creativity held by traditional Jews in the modern era due to their association with anti-traditional trends in Jewish life. In addition, it stemmed from the political and cultural priorities set by Rav Kook. As Gideon Aran notes, Rav Kook was convinced after the Six-Day War that historical developments in Israel were clear indicators that the Jewish people were on the way to the final redemption. For him, political messianism took precedence over any cultural activity that might take away from the central task at hand, and therefore, as Aran argues, ”it [was] impossible [for Gush Emunim adherents] to find positive value in the contents of secular culture such as literature and art.”5 Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook drew for his teachings on those of his father, Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel.6 It turns out, however, that the teachings of the son were 4 Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 27-28. 5

Gideon Aran, ”The Father, the Son, and the Holy Land: The Spiritual Authorities of Jewish-Zionist Fundamentalism in Israel,” in Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, ed. R. Scott Appleby (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 307.

6

There has been considerable discussion about the relationship between Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook’s teachings on the religious significance of Israel and the settlements and the teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, who formulated his theological approach to Zionism before the establishment of the State. The consensus among scholars has been that there are considerable differences between the teachings of the father on the one hand and those of the son and his followers on the other hand. See, for example, Aran, ”The Father, the Son, and the Holy Land, 294-327; Ella Belfer, ”BeTzipiyat HaYeshuah HaShelemah: The

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INTRODUCTION

based on a selective reading of the teachings of the father, and that in fact Rav Avraham Yitzhak had been a strong advocate of literary and artistic creativity by religious Jews. Rav Avraham Yitzhak’s support for literature and the arts became very important for second-generation religious Zionist settler poets, for it allowed them to argue that their literary expressions did not constitute a rebellion against their spiritual heritage, but rather a rediscovery of a repressed teaching that could be considered to be just as legitimate as any of the other teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak that Rav Zvi Yehuda promulgated. Rav Avraham Yitzhak challenged his fellow religious Jews to overcome the prevalent assumption in his day that artistic expression was not compatible with traditional Jewish religiosity. ”Literature, drawing, and sculpture,” he declared, ”have the potential of expressing all of the spiritual concepts that are planted deep in the human soul. And whenever even one line hidden deep in the soul is not expressed art has the obligation to express it.”7 Art and literature, Rav Kook was arguing, can Messianic Politics of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook and Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook,” in Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2002), 311-361; Moshe Hellinger, ”Political Theology in the Thought of ‘Merkaz HaRav’ Yeshiva and its Profound Influence on Israeli Politics and Society Since 1967,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9, no. 4 (2008): 533-550; Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonthan Chipman (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), chapter 3; Aviezer Ravitzky, ”Religious Radicalism and Political Messianism in Israel,” in Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East, ed. Emmanuel Sivan and Menachem Friedman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), chapter 1; and Avinoam Rosenak, ”Tsiyyonut datit bein Harav Kook letalmidav: mehatsharat Balfour ve’ad lahitnattequt,” Mifneh 56-57 (2008): 36-42. Despite the many scholarly arguments that Rav Zvi Yehuda’s teachings depart in significant ways from those of Rav Avraham Yitzhak, it has been important to followers of Rav Zvi Yehuda to stress the points of continuity between the teachings of the father and the son. See, for example, such an argument presented in Shlomo Aviner, Nesikhei adam: ishim beyisra’el (Jerusalem and Beit El: Sifriyyat Havvah, 2000), 242-261. See also the overview of this issue in David Singer, ”Rav Kook’s Contested Legacy,” Tradition 30, no. 3 (1996): 6-20. 7

This passage is best known as it appears in the introduction to Rav Kook’s interpretation of the Song of Songs found in his commentary on the traditional Jewish prayer book in Avraham Yitzhak Kook, Seder tefillah im perush olat rayah (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1949), 3. The language of the first few words of this passage, as it appears in this work, is a censored version of Rav Kook’s original words, which appeared in an article published in

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INTRODUCTION

be a valuable asset for religion in that it can serve as a means for the human soul to express itself. He was not willing to accept the fact that as new forms of art and literature emerged among Jews in the modern era, religious Jews had, for the most part, refrained from participating in this aesthetic creativity, leaving it to be dominated primarily by those who abandoned traditional Jewish observance and belief or were not brought up as religious Jews in the first place. In keeping with his commitment to breaking down the perceived barriers between religion and art, Rav Kook himself wrote poetry.8 Furthermore, despite the widespread assumption of religious Jews that the biblical prohibition against making graven images (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8) prohibited Jewish engagement in the the journal Hamizraḥ in 1903. In the censored version it reads: hasifrut, tsiyyurah veḥituvah (literature, its drawing and its formation), while in the original version it reads: hasifrut, hatsiyyur vehaḥituv (literature, drawing, and sculpture), which is the basis for my English translation here. The passage was changed presumably because in the original formulation, Rav Kook advocated self-expression through the visual arts, a potentially controversial position, while in the censored version Rav Kook advocates the less controversial position of self-expression through literature. See David Sperber, Ipkha mistabra: tarbut beit hamidrash veha’omanut hayehudit ha’akhshavit (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2008), 92n.62. This censorship is also mentioned in footnotes in an article by Ronen Luvitz, ”Omanut ve’emunah – hatelakhnah shetehen yaḥdav? al shetei gishot ve’arba sugyot beshe’elat hayaḥas hara’ayoni-ḥinnukhi la’omanut,” http://www.daat.ac.il/, and in Yuval Sherlo, ”Siaḥ ahavah torani pumbi – efshari?” in: Qovets hatsiyyonut hadatit: me’ah shenot ḥinnukh tsiyyoni dati, ed. Simhah Raz (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organzation Center for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora, 2006), 806n4. See also the report on the research of Udi Abramovitz for his doctoral dissertation in which he determined that Rav Zvi Yehudah Kook had submitted his father’s writings to a significant degree of censorship because he felt the need ”to limit the light of his father’s daring thinking.” Tzofiyah Hirshfeld, ”Meḥqar: Harav Zvi Yehuda tsinzer et kitvei aviv,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 3 August 2009. 8

For selections of poetry by Rav Kook, see A. M. Haberman, ”Shirat harav,” Sinai 17 (1945): 6-22 and Avraham Yitzhak Kook, Orot harayah: peraqim ishiyyim kelal yisra’eliyyim (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1985), 5-63. Translations into English of some of Rav Kook’s poems may be found in Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, ed. and trans. Ben-Zion Bokser (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978), 369-386. For discussions of Rav Kook’s poetry, see Avi Bahat, ”‘Laḥashei hahavayyah:’ iyyun beshir shel Harayah Kook,” Aqdamot 2 (1997): 51-66; Yair Dreyfus, ”Or mitpalesh banitpas: al shirato shel Harav Kook,” Dimui 3 (1991): 39-41; Jerome I. Gellman, ”Poetry of Spirituality,” in Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality, ed. Lawrence J. Kaplan and David Shatz (New York and London: New York University Press, 1995), chapter 4; and Zvi Kaplan, ”Harav Kook kemeshorer,” http://www.daat.ac.il.

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INTRODUCTION

visual arts, Rav Kook even expressed his support for the establishment of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem in 1906.9 In the twentieth century, two European-born religious writers living in Israel were noteworthy in their attempt to synthesize religiosity and literary creativity in their Hebrew poetry: Yosef Zvi Rimon (1889-1958), a younger contemporary and associate of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook,10 and Zelda Mishkovsky (1914-1984).11 Later on, other religious Israeli writers, born in the 1950s and 1960s, established themselves in the world of Israeli poetry, including: Yosef Ozer (1952-); Miron Isaakson (1956-); Admiel Kosman (1957-); Yonadav Kaplun (1963-), and Haviva Pedaya (1965 -). One of those poets, Hava Pinhas-Cohen (1955-), was raised in a secular family and was drawn to traditional religious observance and faith as a young adult. On the basis of her experience of both the secular and religious worlds, in 1990 she founded a literary journal, Dimui, which has brought together secular and religious Israelis engaged in literature and art on Jewish themes. These poets have followed the example of Yosef Zvi Rimon and Zelda Mishkovsky of challenging both the tendency of the religious establishment to discourage the writing of poetry for fear of its leading to secularization and the assumption held by the secular literary establishment that religious Jews do not possess the imaginative openness to create great 9

The school is currently named the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Significantly, in his letter endorsing the establishment of the Bezalel School, dated 1908, Rav Kook expressed his opinion that none of the art produced at the school should be related to what he considered the idolatrous art of pagans or of Christians: ”Pictures that are specifically of idols, whether in the pagan world of past or present or in the Christian world, are despised by the people of Israel and cannot be borne by them.” Avraham Yitzhak Kook, Igrot harayah, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1985), 206. It is important to note that despite the biblical prohibition against making graven images, there has been much visual artistic representation since antiquity in synagogues and in illuminated manuscripts and later in printed books produced by religious Jews.

10 See the monograph devoted to Rimon, Dror Eydar, Aḥaron meshorerei ha’Elohim: mitos, etos umistiqah beyetsirato shel Yosef Zvi Rimon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009). 11 For a more detailed analysis of the poetry of Zelda Mishkovsky, see Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Al Shirat Zelda, 2nd ed. (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2006) and David C. Jacobson, Creator, Are You Listening? Israeli Poets on God and Prayer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), chapter 1.

23

INTRODUCTION

works of art.12 They also have published poetry that is different from that of the secular Jewish poets in that they write from within the religious framework of the observance of traditional Jewish law, a lifestyle that is often the setting of their poetry, and they draw on their study of traditional Jewish texts in a religious setting.13 In recent decades, religious Israelis have turned to self-expression not only in poetry, but in a variety of other areas once dominated by secular Israelis, including fiction, theater, dance, film, and television. Prose fiction 12 As an example of the skepticism of a secular Israeli regarding the artistic endeavors of religious Israelis, I would cite the secular art historian Gideon Ofrat, who has argued that the faith of religious Israeli artists has kept them from producing great art, and that only those religious artists who are capable of seeing beyond their faith will produce art worthy of attention. Ofrat believes that ”[h]igh quality religious Jewish art will be born if the artist (secular or religious) will approach Judaism from the point of view of a crack in his faith, into which will infiltrate the existential psychological individual aspect….[Artistic] redemption is by means of the sewer, and if not the sewer then at least a tear, doubt, pain, that crack the walls of the religious fortress. For only from these cracks will grow real art.” Gideon Ofrat, ”Ha’im mitḥolelet ‘mahpekhat tarbut’ omanutit beqerev ḥovshei ‘hakippot haserugot,’” Kivvunim Ḥadashim 17 (2008): 175-176. In an earlier article, Ofrat makes the bold statement that ”Good art has not grown and will not grow on the other side of the green line [i.e. in the settlements].” The nationalist religious political orientation of the settlers, he believes, prevents them from creating art which is aesthetically signficant. ”Loyalty to the covenant of nation-land-Torah contradicts all the principles of good art,” he asserts, ”since the nation is preferred over the individual, since the land negates a unversalistic expression, and the Torah strengthens the superiority of law and tradition over freedom and creative anarchy.” Gideon Ofrat, ”Ha’im tittakhen etslenu omanut shel hayamin,” Kivvunim Ḥadashim 9 (2003): 140, 147. In response to both articles by Ofrat, Dror Eydar rejects his claim that the religious right is, in effect, incapable of producing great art. Eydar bemoans the fact that Ofrat and other left-wing secularists approach art by religious Israelis from what he considers to be a prejudiced perspective. He believes that the extreme rejection of religion by secular Zionism has led secular Israelis to dismiss art produced by religious Israelis. He also critiques Ofrat’s approach as based on a simplistic binary opposition in which he ”labels the right-wing religious settler as not modern, while [he labels] people like himself as progressive and avant-garde.” Dror Eydar, ”Shomrei hasaf,” Nequdah 316 (2008): 52. In keeping with Eydar’s approach, religious Zionist art historian David Sperber has opposed what he considers to be the misconception by many ”that the world of faith lacks in its essence the possibility of a critical view and the freedom of creativity.” David Sperber, ”Omanut im kippah,” Nequdah 317 (2009): 55. 13 For a discussion of the emergence of Israeli poetry by religious writers and its relationship to secular Israeli literature, see Shachar Pinsker, ”And Suddenly We Reached God? The Construction of ‘Religious’ and ‘Secular’ in Israeli Literature,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 1 (2006): 21-41.

24

INTRODUCTION

has been published by a significant number of religious writers, including Hanna Bat-Shahar, Yehoshua Grinberg, Mira Kedar, Hayim Sabato, and Michael Schonfeld, to name a few.14 The actor Shuly Rand was raised as a secular Israeli, but even after taking on the identity of an ultra-Orthodox Jew, he continued his professional acting career, as the lead actor in a feature film about traditional Jewish life, Ushpizin (2004), and in solo theater performances with a focus on elements of the traditional world he has embraced. A religious theater company named Aspaklaria was founded in Jerusalem in 1999 by Hagay Lober. In 2002, Lober added an acting school to the Aspaklaria project.15 In 2007, a dance and movement school attended largely by religious men, Kol Atsmotay Tomarna, was founded.16 The Ma’ale School of Television, Film, and the Arts in Jerusalem, founded in 1989, has trained a large number of religious Israelis for various aspects of the media industry.17 A popular dramatic television series, Serugim, about thirty-something religious single men and women in Jerusalem, was created by Eliezer (Leyzi) Shapira and Hava Divon, both graduates of the Ma’ale School, and it debuted in 2008.18 The religious Zionist director Joseph Cedar has directed two feature films that take place in religious Zionist settings, Hahesder (Time of Favor, 2000) and 14 See Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 60. See also two works with a religious orientation issued by established Israeli publishing houses: an anthology of prose fiction, Ahavah umitsvot aḥerot, ed. Adi Garsiel and Esti Ramati (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2008) and a new journal of prose modeled after Mashiv Haruaḥ, Ashmoret: Ketav Et Lesipporet Yehudit Yisre’elit 1 (2008), published by Reuven Mass. See the laudatory review of this journal, Tsur Ehrlich, ”Mashiv haruaḥ umorid haniqqud,” published originally in Maqor Rishon, http://tsurehrlich.blogspot.com. 15 Hayah Mandelkorn, ”Lehaḥaziq marah mul hametsiyyut,” Nequdah 321 (2009): 45-49. See the theater’s web site, http://www.aspaklaria.org. For a study of theater productions by religious Jewish women, see Reina Rutlinger-Reiner, Azzut shebeqedushah: te’atron nashim datiyyot beyisra’el (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2007). 16 Peninah Gefen, ”Ḥazon ha’atsamot,” Maqor Rishon 6 October 2008. See the school’s web site, http://www.othermove.com. 17 See David C. Jacobson, ”The Ma’ale School: Catalyst for the Entrance of Religious Zionists into the World of Media Production,” Israel Studies 9, no. 1 (2004): 31-60; Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 61-63; and the Ma’ale web site, http://www.maale.co.il. 18 Ben Jacobson, ”Tightly Stitched Stories,” Jerusalem Post 22 September 2008.

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INTRODUCTION

Medurat hashevet (Campfire, 2004). His feature film, Beaufort (2007), about Israel’s military withdrawal from Lebanon, was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film in 2008. Religious Israelis, however, have had less of an impact on the visual arts in Israel. Religious Zionist art historian David Sperber considers the Orthodox rabbinical establishment to be largely responsible for the limited ways in which religious Israelis have produced works of visual art. Orthodox rabbis are largely ignorant of art and art history, he argues, and therefore they are not well equipped to decide how to apply traditional religious law to artistic creation. As a result, these rabbis impose many restrictions on free artistic expression, which are not necessarily required by traditional Jewish law, thereby severely limiting the possibility of the emergence of a truly sophisticated art by religious Jews. ”The religious art schools,” he complains, ”are still designed as factories for pedagogy”19 and not for the development of the creative talents of the students. Sperber does discern recent changes in the attitude toward art of some rabbinical authorities, a trend which might open up the visual arts to the creative expression of religious Israelis. In a conference devoted to art in the religious schools in Israel in 2008, he notes, there were rabbinical heads of yeshivot who challenged the prevailing limitations on artistic creativity. 20

19 David Sperber, ” ‘Tsorerot zo lezo:’ al siaḥ ha’omanut vehaḥevrah hadatit,” http://www. kolech.org. The tension between artistic expression and religious norms came to a head during the academic year 2007-2008, when the religious women’s college Mikhlelet Emunah in Jerusalem experimented with the appointment of a secular artist to direct their art program. He and the teachers he hired for the program reportedly came up a number of times against the religious sensibilities of some of the students, especially in the areas of nudity and the erotic, and at the end of the year they were all fired. Tamar Rotem, ”Omanut hatseni’ut,” Ha’arets 11 September 2008. 20 Sperber, Ipkha mistabra, 22. Like David Sperber, Rav Mordecai Vardi of the Ma’ale School is disappointed with the slow development of religiously oriented visual art. Citing Rav Abraham Yitzhak Kook’s strong support for the development of all artistic and literary expression, Rav Vardi declares, ”I have no doubt that if Rav Kook would land here today he would be disappointed. There is no [religious] school of higher learning for the plastic arts that is not a teacher’s seminary, and there is no institution for the study of music in the spirit of the Torah.” Mordecdai Vardi, ”Torato yesh. omanuto heikhan?” Yediyot Aḥaronot 5 April 2009.

26

INTRODUCTION

The Emergence of Poetry in Religious Zionist Settler Culture Before the Mashiv Haruaḥ project began to develop, it was generally recognized by religious and secular Israelis that the religious Zionist settler culture was lacking in significant artistic and literary creativity. In a report of a round-table discussion among settlers on why more secular Israelis have been active in literature and the arts than religious Israelis, published in the settler journal Nequdah in 1983, settler Zvika Slonim offered his opinion that the steadfast loyalty to tradition of the religious settlers precludes their interest in artistic creation. ”The [secular] labor Zionists, who rebelled [against Judaism],” he suggested, ”have had new paths of creativity. But there is nothing to rebel against in Judaism unless you lose your religious faith….Apparently…there has not been anything to rebel against, and there is no need to rebel. In Judaism you have a path; either you follow it or you do not.”21 Zippora (Zippi) Luria (1948-2008), a religious Zionist settler who was an artist, art critic, and art educator, was one of the most outspoken advocates for the development of artistic creativity among religious Zionist 22 settlers. Writing in Nequdah in 1983, Luria bemoaned the lack of art education in religious schools, which she attributed to a fear of exposure to modern thinking. Art, she conceded, contained much that was objectionable in terms of religious values. ”The God-fearing person will choose, undoubtedly, to distance himself from messages of extreme sensuality, nihilism, and existential doubt, which have penetrated the various artistic media,”23 she declared. That did not mean, however, that religious Israelis should therefore distance themselves from art. In another context she 21 ”Profil tarbuti,” Nequdah 65 (1983): 19. 22 In one of my interviews of Eliaz Cohen, which took place not long after Luria’s death in 2008, he spoke with great gratitude for the role she played encouraging the emergence of Mashiv Haruaḥ. In a statement written shortly after her death, Elhanan Nir compared her impact on religious culture to that of the poet Zelda Mishkovsky: ”In the way that Zelda contributed to the entrance of poetry into the religious world, so Zippi did with art.” Elhanan Nir, ”Ha’ishah she’amrah gedal,” Maqor Rishon 17 December 2008. 23 Zippora Luria, ”Hapaḥad mipnei hitmodedut,” Nequdah 64 (1983): 19.

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INTRODUCTION

argued that in order for religious Zionism to constitute ”a cultured society” it would have to have within it ”writers, poets, [and] painters.”24 During a visit to the West Bank settlement of Ofra in the fall of 1982, secular leftist Israeli novelist Amos Oz anticipated Luria’s criticism of the lack of artistic creativity among religious settlers. ”And what, in truth, has happened to you in the sphere of humanistic creativity?”25 he asked his hosts. ”Why are most of the creative people in the country, heaven help us, [secular] ‘leftists?’…How do you explain the fact that the artistic, ideological, and philosophical creativity in Israel is these days taking place – not all of it, but most and perhaps even the best of it – in a defeated, wounded, crumbling camp [i.e. the secular leftists as viewed by the religious rightists]?…Why is your world a barren desert of creativity?”26 Eliaz Cohen was an eleven year old boy growing up in the West Bank settlement of Elkana when the book containing Oz’s challenge to the residents of Ofra was published. When he later, as an adolescent, began to devote himself seriously to creative writing, he came across the book in which Oz’s challenge was recorded, and he recalls that when he read it he wanted to shout out to Oz, ”Hey, Amos, I’m here,” as if to say a new generation of writers had arisen to challenge Oz’s assumption that religious Zionist settlers are incapable of contributing to the development of Israeli literature. Cohen has sought to explain why, although some members of the first generation of settlers began to raise questions about the lack of literary and artistic creation in their culture, it was his generation, the second generation of settlers, that took the lead in developing a new religious poetry. One factor that he cites is the very common occurrence of the rebellion of young members of a new generation against the ideological commitments of their parents. Such a rebellion was a well-known element in the history of the Israeli kibbutz movement, when members of the second-generation native24 ”Profil tarbuti,” 17. 25 Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel, trans. Maurie Goldberg-Bartura (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 151-152. 26 Ibid. A transcript of what Oz said to the residents of Ofra may be found in ”Be’ozneikhem, ha’akhshavistim ha’amitiyyim: devarim she’amar Amos Oz be’ofrah umah sheheshivu lo,” Nequdah 53 (1983): 16-24.

28

INTRODUCTION

born Israelis and subsequent generations resisted the ideological purity of the European-born immigrant kibbutz founders. The Gush Emunim generation of the parents, who led the efforts to establish settlements, Cohen notes, strongly devoted their energy to nationalistic purposes. The more spiritually sensitive members of the next generation therefore felt hemmed in by the politically-oriented ideological fervor of their parents and were driven to pay more attention to that which was happening within their individual souls. Elhanan Nir has formulated the distinction between his and the previous generation along similar lines. ”My generation,” he observes, ”grew up in the settlements and encountered very collectivist and ideological thinking from the school of Rav [Zvi Yehuda] Kook. In effect, our innovation in the traditional study houses is to find new rooms and new places within the Torah that make a deep connection to the personal and the self. Therefore, there is also room for art, theater, cinema, and also poetry.”27 In keeping with Cohen’s and Nir’s analysis, Shlomo Fischer observes that the exciting ideals that led their parents to political action came to be seen by the second-generation settlers as not very interesting and as largely irrelevant abstractions which led to a way of life that stifled the individual: [T]he idealistic slogans and the flowery visions [of Gush Emunim on which they were brought up] became an established reality with boring classes, imperious rabbis, a limiting community, and intrusive

neighbors. While from the perspective of the Gush Emunim project, the challenge, the excitement, and the vitality did not end – not least

of all because of the opposition of the Palestinians – the institutional

and religious communal perspectives [of Gush Emunim] lost some of

their charm. Thus, the current [second] generation did not abandon the project completely, but some of its members shifted the emphasis toward the personal and the concrete.28

27 Shiri Lev-Ari, ”Peras Wertheim lameshorer Elhanan Nir,” Ha’arets 30 January 2008. 28 Shlomo Fischer, ”Teva, otentiyyut, ve’alimut bahagut hatsiyyonit hadatit hardiqalit,” in Dorot, merḥavim, zehuyyot: mabbatim akhshaviyyim al ḥevrah vertarbut beyisra’el leShmu’el Noah Eistenstadt behaggiyo legevurot, ed. Hanna Herzog, Tal Kohavi, Shimshon Zelniker, Ronna Brayer-Garb (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad; Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2007), 452.

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INTRODUCTION

With the dream of establishing settlements fulfilled, notes Fischer, the second generation was less interested in focusing on the ”abstract and distant” themes of ”nation, state, and history” and more on the themes of ”the individual, his body, his personality, his sexuality, and his interpersonal relations,”29 themes which lend themselves to the writing of poetry. Another factor in the emergence of poetry among the second generation of settlers, according to Cohen, was the series of political setbacks experienced by the settler movement, which undermined some of the ideological fervor of its earlier stages. For many years, the settlers were convinced that they were the vanguard of the nation, playing the role that the original Zionist pioneers had played in settling the Land of Israel in the decades preceding the establishment of the State of Israel. Beginning in the late 1970s, a series of government actions made it increasingly clearer to the settlers that the people of Israel were no longer completely behind them in their settlement project. In 1979, the government of Prime Minister Menahem Begin agreed to return Sinai to Egypt in exchange for Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab state. Sensing that this was a potentially dangerous crack in the people’s support for the settlements, religious Zionist settlers traveled to the Jewish settlement of Yamit in the Sinai in a futile attempt to prevent its dismantling. The introduction of the Oslo peace process in the early 1990s, endorsed by the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which was based on the premise of territorial compromise with the Palestinians, was seen by the settlers as an even greater threat to their project than the return of Sinai to Egypt. The most direct attack on the settlers to date occurred when the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a political figure who had once been a major supporter of the settlers, approved the dismantling of all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces from that area, and the destruction of some settlements in Samaria in the West Bank in 2005.30 29 Ibid. 30 For discussions of the impact of these events on the religious Zionist settlers, especially since the disengagment from Gaza in 2005, see Hillel Ben Sasson, ”Iyyun besiaḥ hakoaḥ ha’adkani shel ḥugei Harav Kook al reqa hanitnattequt meretsu’at azza utsefon hashomron, Alpayim 31 (2007): 60-99 and Motti Inbari, ”Fundamentalism in Crisis: The Response

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INTRODUCTION

For his generation, Cohen observes, it was the Oslo peace process that played the most crucial role in undermining their belief in the viability of the settlement project. It raised serious questions about the ideological certitude of Gush Emunim at the very time that these young men and women of the second generation were moving into the period of early adulthood in which they were establishing their worldviews and identities. They were at that time forced to face the fact that the ideology in which they were raised was no longer synchronized with political realities. Previously, explains Cohen, Gush Emunim operated within an interpretive framework which took into account reversals of fortune, such as the loss of the support of the Israeli government for their movement. Although the ideology maintained that their settlement efforts were helping to advance the process toward messianic redemption, it taught that reversals were an inherent part of that process and that one should never despair when they occur, but rather one should pick oneself up and remain loyal to the ultimate messianic goal.31 One response to the difficulty of members of Cohen’s generation to accept this approach to political setbacks was to distance themselves from political activism and direct their energy to the more individualized self-expression of poetry. As Cohen explains it, of the Gush Emunim Rabbinical Authorities to the Theological Dilemmas Raised by Israel’s Disengagement Plan,” Journal of Church and State 49, no. 4 (2007): 697-717. 31 Gideon Aran explains the process as follows: ”The Kookist system is built on the experience of believers who refuse to accept the verdict of history proclaiming their belief to be false.” He compares this to other messianic movements in Jewish history: ”As in the cases of early Christianity and the Jewish millenarian Sabbateans, a historic development that appeared to demonstrate the failure of faith becomes the cornerstone of a new religious conception and religious vitality.” Gideon Aran, ”A Mystic-Messianic Interpretation of Modern Israeli History: The Six-Day War as a Key Event in the Development of the Original Religious Culture of Gush Emunim,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry 4, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 272. This tendency to fit setbacks into a larger historical framework can be traced back to the ways that Gush Emunim ideologues explained the occurrence of the Yom Kippur War, following which Gush Emunim was founded. As Michael Feige observes, ”[T]he Yom Kippur War was defined by the Gush Emunim leadership and supporters, including by those who actively fought in it, as an integral and logical part of the long war for the land of Israel….It was framed as a normal part of Jewish history, bestowed on the people because of its unusual destiny and sacred role, and part of the process of redemption.” Feige, Settling in the Hearts, 63.

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INTRODUCTION

”[T]he Oslo process… aroused in religious society terror and undermined the narrative of ‘home,’ which liberated the young from speaking in slogans and brought them to choose their own language. The young religious Jew ‘discovered himself,’ and from this was born art. Not from a process of the collective but from individuals who chose to enter into their [private worlds] and to create from within their souls.”32 Cohen also argues that there was something about being raised in the settlements that inspired the writing of poetry. Growing up in a settlement meant to be ”exposed to extremely immediate experiences,” he explains, which were very conducive to the development of a poetic imagination. Those who were raised in the settlements experienced the excitement of the pioneering efforts of nation building as their settlements expanded the borders of Israel. Living in the heartland of ancient Israel, these youths felt a direct connection to biblical history, feelings experienced by the original Zionist pioneering settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seemed to them as if they were reviving the land of the Bible and resurrecting the biblical patriarchs. It was as if they were growing up with Abraham, as if they actually knew him, as if they were reliving the mythic origins of the Jewish people. With every archeological dig in the vicinity of where they lived, they were reminded that beneath them were ancient layers of the very history about which they were taught in school. This sense of a return to the biblical past was reinforced, as it was for the original Zionist settlers 32 Yakir Englander, ”Higia hazeman lehitnatteq meharabbanim Shapira ve’Eliyahu,” De’ot 22 (2005): 12. Moshe Meir locates this trend toward individualism in a number of phenomena that have become prevalent among younger religious Zionists in Israel in general. This individualism has included a greater identification with institutions and communities that meet the particular needs of a small sector of the religious Zionist community and foster smaller communities of identity that supplant the more collectivist religious Zionist identity and institutions, as well as the emergence of increasing numbers of ”religious writers of poetry and prose [and] artists.” Moshe Meir, ”Midegel letallit: tsiyyonut ule’umiyyut be’et qehilatit ve’individu’alit,” De’ot 41 (2009):5. In addition, younger religious Zionists have expressed an openness to contemporary Western values such as feminism, ecology, spirituality, and social justice. For discussions of these trends, see also Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 25-112, and Hillel Ben Sasson, ”Post-tsiyyonut datit,” in Sefer Mikha’el: bein hazeman hazeh layamim hahem: meḥevah leMikha’el Bahat, ed. Avi Sagi (Jerusalem, Keter, 2007), 399-417.

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INTRODUCTION

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by the romantic landscape of a seemingly unspoiled land populated by Arab farmers and shepherds living a pre-modern existence, filled with agricultural terraces and ancient olive trees.33 In one article, Cohen nostalgically recalls his childhood growing up in the settlement of Elkana. He recalls lying all night on the ground with his friends near a well, gazing at the stars: We were waiting for the stirrings of morning that would arrive, for the

sun that would rise and bring with it a flock of deer that we wished to

see up close….In the morning, after the deer would quench their thirst and disappear again until the next spring, the Arab shepherds would come and water their flock from the well.34

In another article, Cohen puts it this way: ”The pioneering atmosphere… the nature and the biblical landscape of the hills of Samaria, and even the feeling that good neighborly relations with our Arab neighbors were being formed, were to me formative bases for becoming a creative person, and their traces can be discerned in my poetry.”35 Similarly, Elhanan Nir has spoken of the important connection between his childhood in the settlement of Mikhmash and his writing: ”The proximity to the Judean Desert and to Wadi Kelt and my many wanderings in the surrounding mountains 33 ”The Bible is omnipresent in the settlers’ world….The emotional attachment to the Bible [in settler culture] adds power and impetus to the commandment of settling the land. The connection to the Bible-as-history adds a romantic flavor to the [Gush Emunim] movement. The return to the land of Israel is conceived not only as an abstract religious precept, but as an answer to the wishes of the people who lived and acted on the sacred land in the past….As the early Zionists were also enchanted by the Bible and ancient Jewish history, through their attachments to those stories the settlers see themselves imitating, at times even emulating, both: the Hebrew settlers of ancient times, as well as the first Zionists, whose national feelings were also guided by their careful reading of the Bible.” Feige, Settling in the Hearts, 48-49. See also Feige’s discussion of the interest of Gush Emunim settlers in the archaeology of the Land of Israel as a means to ascertain the biblical basis for their settlement project, in Settling in the Hearts, chapter 4. 34 Eliaz Cohen, ”Yo’av qavur bemaqom nehdar, Nequdah 214 (1998): 56. 35 ”Eliaz Cohen,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 24.

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INTRODUCTION

were engraved in me during those years and began to ripen and to give forth fruit when I began to write at fifteen.”36 Readers will note that of the eight poets whom I have identified in this book as central to the Mashiv Haruaḥ project, six are men. This reflects the reality that from the beginning, and to a great extent to this day, Mashiv Haruaḥ has been primarily a male project. Eliaz Cohen has addressed this issue of gender imbalance in Mashiv Haruaḥ in a recollection of conversations on this topic he had with Zippora Luria. Luria observed to him that historically it was the girls in the religious Zionist schools who were given the most education in the arts (presumably because of the heavier emphasis on the study of religious texts in the boys’ curriculum which took precedence over art education). As a result, some girls began to develop their own unique artistic ”voice,” but in Cohen’s paraphrase of her argument, ”they very quickly accepted the social norms [in religious Zionist culture] of marriage and motherhood at a very early age, and the creative passion gradually lessened and in the best cases was exchanged for teaching in the field of art education.”37 Cohen suggested to Luria, and she agreed, that there was an additional reason for the reluctance of religious Zionist girls to get involved in the arts. To be an artist means to expose to the world at least some aspects of one’s inner self. Religious Zionist girls, however, are educated to be extremely wary of intimate self-revelation, especially in the public sphere. This is true in the area of sexual modesty that dictates wearing clothes that are not revealing, as well as in other areas of sharing thoughts and feelings with others. In contrast, as boys the early participants in the Mashiv Haruaḥ project had been less socialized to be limited by the taboo of self-revelation. In addition, Cohen notes, at the time that Mashiv Haruaḥ was founded, the institutions for traditional Jewish learning for women were relatively undeveloped, but in the yeshivot which the men attended there was an atmosphere of ferment that lent itself to literary creativity. The world of 36 ”Elhanan Nir,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 36. 37 In an e-mail correspondence with me, 15 June 2009.

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INTRODUCTION

the yeshivot, which the male Mashiv Haruaḥ poets attended, was felt by some to be spiritually stifling, and therefore it was filled with tension and the search for new spiritual horizons. Shmuel Klein characterizes the emergence of poetry writing among the members of his generation as ”a kind of rebellion in the yeshiva world.”38 That world, he argues, ”spoke much about creativity, but it did not encourage self-definition and self-actualization, except in the defined framework of the study of Talmud and Jewish law.”39 He also suggests a more positive contribution of the yeshiva world, which is that those who began to write poetry were inspired by their study of the teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook and by the relatively recent addition of the study of Midrash, Kabbalah, and Hasidism to the curricula of some yeshivot. Since the founding of Mashiv Haruaḥ, the editors have always been open to publishing poetry by authors of both genders, and as Cohen has observed, in Mashiv Haruaḥ 28 (2008/2009) eleven out of seventeen of the authors included are women, a possible indication that over time the gender imbalance is being overcome.

Supporters and Role Models With little or no exposure to contemporary poetry and with a sense that their inclination to write was alien to the cultural norms in which they were raised, the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets generally came to poetry as individuals. While some of their parents accepted and in some cases encouraged their writing of poetry, a number of poets looked to rabbis who were their teachers to validate their literary creativity. Those figures included Rav Moshe Zvi Neria (1913-1995), who encouraged Eliaz Cohen to write, and Rav Haim Sabato (1952-), who supported Shmuel Klein’s writing. Both of these rabbis had themselves had experience as creative writers. One of the most important and influential rabbis who supported the writing of poetry was Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (known by the acronym Rav Shagar, 195038 ”Shmuel Klein,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 47. 39 Ibid., 47-48.

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INTRODUCTION

2007), who together with Rav Yair Dreyfus (1949-) founded Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in 1996. Three of the poets in this study, Avishar Har-Shefi, Elhanan Nir, and Nahum Pachenik, studied at Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, and Har-Shefi and Nir have continued their association with the yeshiva, now located in Efrat in the West Bank, by living there and serving on its faculty. In addition, Sivan Har-Shefi is currently connected with Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak by living on its campus with her husband Avishar, and she has directed Uri, the study center for women in Jerusalem sponsored by the yeshiva. The educational and spiritual philosophy of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak has made it a most hospitable context for the development of creative writing. In an interview with Rav Shagar posted at the Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak web site, he expresses his concern about the ways that yeshivot typically present themselves to students as alternative worlds to which they must adjust even as they repress the worlds from which they came. The problem, he believes, begins with yeshivot at the high school level, which only value Torah study and do not view positively ”the values, thoughts, and modern habits (including cultural expressions such as music, literature, and poetry) [which the students bring to the yeshiva].”40 In contrast, Rav Shagar asserts his belief that ”even in the modern world there are ‘sparks’ that must be raised, and the word of the Lord is found also in ‘the worldly life.’”41 It therefore is not advisable to try to force students to repress the elements of their lives that are not in accordance with the narrowly defined limits of the yeshiva world. Rav Shagar’s belief in the potential integration of yeshiva and worldly values led to the founding of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in which, as he has put it, ”the atmosphere…is one of freedom and openness. There is no imposed form of ‘this is how you must behave’ or ‘this is how you must think.’ Beyond that, the learning in the yeshiva is conducted in such a way as to allow the creation of a dialogue between the Torah world and the modern world.”42 Furthermore, in this yeshiva Talmud, which is at 40 ”Re’ayon im Harav Shagar,” http://www.siach.org.il. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

36

INTRODUCTION

the heart of the curriculum of traditional yeshivot, is taught in terms of its relevance to the concerns of the students. Hasidism is added to the curriculum, explains Rav Shagar, because of its emphasis on the value of the inner spiritual world of the individual. In addition, students study modern thought and contemporary issues of Jewish law. There are even optional creative writing workshops at the yeshiva, led by Shlomo Shok, a poet and teacher of Hasidism.43 In keeping with his commitment to the integration of the religious world with the inner world of the individual and with elements of modern culture including artistic creativity, Rav Shagar was a strong supporter of Mashiv Haruaḥ. In an early issue of the journal, Rav Shagar published an essay titled ”Shirah ve’avodat hashem” (”Poetry and the Worship of God”).44 In the spirit of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook’s defense of the value of poetry in religious life, Rav Shagar declares in this essay that he values poetry for it can ”insert a positive, free, secular element into the realm of the religious, a healthy element, for it has within it a way to make us closer to ourselves and to reality.”45 For the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets, the most important role model of a religious Jewish poet was Zelda Mishkovsky. Zelda (as she was known to her readers) was born in Russia to a family with connections to Habad Hasidism going back several generations. Her father was a direct descendant 43 For a discussion of new approaches to the religious Zionist yeshiva curriculum, see Eytan Abramovitz, ”Talmudah shel erets yisra’el, Maqor Rishon 9 January 2009; Adam Tzahi, ”Gemara aḥeret,” http://www.kipa.co.il; Yehuda Brandes, ”Ligol et limmud hatorah,” Nequdah 314 (2008): 55-58; Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Betorato yehgeh: limmud gemara kevakashat Elokim (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2009); Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Nehalekh beregesh: mivḥar ma’amarim (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2008), 59-72; and Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 80-85. Other yeshivot that share a more intellectually open curriculum include Yeshivat Otniel, headed by Rav Re’em Hacohen and Rav Binyamin Kelmanson, and Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa, headed by Rav David Bigman, Rav Yehuda Gilad, and Rav Shmuel Reiner. 44 Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, ”Shirah ve’avodat hashem,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 8 (2000/2001): 23-30. It is a written reconstruction by Nahum Pachenik of a talk presented by Rav Shagar at an evening event devoted to the journal. 45 Ibid., 30. For additional information about the approach of Rav Shagar to Judaism see Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Kelim shevurim: torah vetsiyyonut-datit besevivah postmodernit (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2003) and Rosenberg, Nehalekh beregesh.

37

INTRODUCTION

of Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Habad dynasty, and one of her mother’s forebears had been a disciple of Schneur Zalman. Zelda immigrated as a child with her parents to the Land of Israel, and she began publishing poetry in periodicals in the early 1940s. After the publication of her first collection of poems in 1967, Zelda’s poetry gained wide acceptance in religious and secular circles, thereby establishing an inspiring precedent for this younger generation of writers of a religious writer entering the world of poetry. Perhaps even more significantly, her tendency to write about her inner being, as opposed to the more nationalist collectivist concerns of the religious Zionism of the settler movement, provided a model for the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets to express themselves in a very personal manner in their poetry. 46 Avishar Har-Shefi pays explicit homage to Zelda’s influence by alluding directly to her in one of his poems, in which the speaker expresses the desire to resemble an image found in a poem by Zelda: ”and like the poet Zelda / to be one bird dying / and singing only You exist.”47 In a poem dedicated to the memory of his teacher Rav Shagar, Elhanan Nir writes, ”and Zelda said that even on the death bed / the fog does not melt at the place / the soul goes out to that which is torn.”48 I witnessed the reverence for Zelda as a role model for religious Zionist poets when during an interview with Shmuel Klein at the Elul study house in Jerusalem, he proudly pointed out to me that the study house possessed the original desk on which Zelda wrote her poetry. Zelda died when the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets in this book were children or adolescents and had therefore not begun their poetic careers in any significant way. Yonadav Kaplun, a religious poet with close ties to Zelda, became for some of them an important living model of a religious poet. Born, like Zelda, into a Habad Hasidic family, when Kaplun was fifteen he began writing poetry and that same year came across the poetry of Zelda. As he tells the story, when he turned sixteen he gave himself a 46 The religious poets who preceded the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets can also be said to have followed Zelda’s example of writing on a personal level. See Shenker ”‘Ein lanu yotsrim,’ ” 317. 47 Avishar Har-Shefi, Susei esh (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2004), 30. 48 Elhanan Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008), 64.

38

INTRODUCTION

birthday present of calling her on the telephone and asking if he could visit her. Over time, they developed a very close relationship. ”Zelda was for me a critical example,” he has said. ”I could not imagine myself creating poetry without her as a model – a person who grew up in a Habad reality and wrote poetry from within it.”49 He became so close to her that after her husband died and Kaplun was married, she asked him to live near her so that he could recite the Sabbath Kiddush for her every Friday night. The vision that Kaplun received from Zelda that one could remain an observant Jew and also a poet was reinforced for him by a rabbinical authority following the publication of his first collection of poetry. As he relates in an interview, when he brought a copy of his new book to one of his most important teachers at the time, Rav Yitzchak Ginsburgh, the latter pointed out to him that the Hebrew word for poetry, shirah, and the Hebrew word for prayer, tefillah, are numerically equivalent in the traditional Jewish system of gematria in which each Hebrew letter has a numerical value, ”and from this [Kaplun realized] one can understand that prayer too is poetry.”50 At the age of twenty-one, Kaplun began offering workshops in creative writing and Shmuel Klein,Yoram Nissinovitch, Nahum Pachenik, and Naama Shaked, all of whom were involved as editors of Mashiv Haruaḥ in its early days, studied poetry writing with Kaplun.

49 Tamar Nesher-Rati, ”Hashadkhan,” Yesha News 5 August 2004, http://yeshanews.com. 50 Ibid. In an interview with Yonadav Kaplun that I conducted in Jerusalem in January 2009, he told me that he spent three years studying Kabbalah with Rav Ginsburgh. Eventually, Kaplun disassociated himself from his teacher because he opposed Rav Ginsburgh’s political views, among the most extreme on the political spectrum of the settlers.

39

INTRODUCTION

Mashiv Haruaḥ: A Journal of Jewish Israeli Poetry Unlike most of the religious poets who preceded them, the founders of Mashiv Haruaḥ saw themselves as more than talented creative individuals.51 They envisioned their journal as having a major impact on the cultures of both religious and secular Israelis. They sought to reinvigorate secular poetry with the language, experiences, and perspectives of religious Zionists. As Shmuel Klein has explained, they believed that out of ”the Jewish language of young creative writers who live the traditional prayer book, the Talmud, and the Bible an attractive and engaging voice could arise” in the world of Israeli poetry.52 At the same time, they saw their journal as a vehicle for encouraging the development of an appreciation for the value of poetry writing among religious Zionists. With the establishment of the journal, no longer would religious Zionist youths drawn to poetry feel that there was no cultural support for their literary creativity. They would have available to them a journal in which to publish their works. Furthermore, the creative writing workshop run by Mashiv Haruaḥ has provided an institutional framework within the religious Zionist world for studying writing. An important feature of the workshop is that on a regular basis issues of Mashiv Haruaḥ, in whole or in part, have been devoted to publishing the works of the workshop participants who are at the early stages of their writing careers. Shmuel Klein has marveled at the tremendous success of the Mashiv Haruaḥ project to bridge the gap between secular poetry and traditional Jewish culture. As a result of the efforts of the editors of Mashiv 51 As Nahum Pachenik has observed, ” Mashiv Haruaḥ turned poetry in the religious world from a phenomenon of individuals, such as Yonadav Kaplun and Admiel Kosman, to a rapid stream, which entered into a large number of yeshivot.” Yair Sheleg, ”Shirat Nahum,” Ha’arets 13 June 2007. Uzi Shavit notes that ”[i]n recent decades there were religious poets like Zelda, Yonadav Kaplun, Admiel Kosman, and Hava Pinhas-Cohen, but each one acted as an individual. [The founding of Mashiv Haruaḥ made it possible that] for the first time a group of people has arisen who represent a younger element who write modern poetry that is interwoven with the mainstream of modern Israeli poetry.” Nadav Shragay, ”Meshorerei hahitnattequt,” Ha’arets 23 March 2005. 52 Dafni Shehori, ”Shigat mekhonot hadefus,” Ma’ariv 24 February 2006.

40

INTRODUCTION

Haruaḥ, secular Israelis interested in poetry have come to appreciate the works published by religious poets in Mashiv Haruaḥ and many religious Zionist educational institutions offer creative writing workshops. The full title of the journal, Mashiv Haruaḥ: Ketav Et Leshirah Yehudit Yisre’elit (Mashiv Haruaḥ: A Journal of Jewish Israeli Poetry), signals its aspiration to close the gap between religiosity and secularism. The expression mashiv haruaḥ has clearly religious associations that would appeal to the religious Zionist reader. It is taken from the liturgical expression which praises God for causing the wind to blow (mashiv haruaḥ) at the time that He brings down the rain on earth (umorid hageshem), which is said during the rainy season in Israel as part of the daily liturgy.53 Since the word ruaḥ (wind) can also mean ”spirit” and the word mashiv (causes to blow) sounds much like the word meshiv (restores), the title suggests the goal of reinvigorating Israeli poetry with a new spirit. Furthermore, while the connotation of the word ruaḥ as ”spirit” in a spiritual sense can appeal to religious readers, another connotation of the word, ”spirit” in a more general cultural sense, can appeal to secular readers. In a review of the seventeenth issue of Mashiv Haruaḥ, Ziva Shamir speculates that in formulating the subtitle of the journal, ”A Journal of Jewish Israeli Poetry,” the editors may have sought to avoid the adjective ”religious” in order not to scare off secular Israelis to whom religion, especially in its institutional forms, is alien. At the same time, she argues, the term ”Jewish Israeli” may be seen as a challenge to the materialistic culture of secular Israelis and perhaps also to the post-modern tendency of negating the value of national identity and celebrating universalism.54 The drive of the journal’s founders to have a major impact on Israeli society as a whole resembles a similar drive of the previous generation of settlers, who also aspired to influence Israeli society. As Yair Sheleg has noted, the previous generation of religious Zionists in general, and 53 In a sense, notes Shmuel Klein, the act of naming the journal after an expression that describes God was somewhat pretentious. Shmuel Klein, ”Al haruaḥ vehamashiv bah,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 15 (2004): 123. 54 Ziva Shamir, ”Efshar likhtov shirah no’ezet gam bema’uzei hatsiyyonit hadatit,” Ha’arets 13 October 2005.

41

INTRODUCTION

followers of Gush Emunim in particular, saw Israeli secular culture as coming increasingly under the influence of Western culture and therefore more characterized by ”crime, a pleasure-seeking life style, a high divorce rate, the undermining of family life, sexual permissiveness…the culture of decadent night clubs and rock music, along with the decline in motivation to serve in the army and in general the phenomenon of emigrating from Israel.”55 Religious Zionists, in turn, began to see their culture as superior to that of secular Israeli culture, and thus they became motivated to enter the mainstream of that culture in order to save it from degeneration. Similarly, the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets have operated with the conviction that they can save Israeli culture from its secular alienation from Judaism. ”The primary purpose [of the journal],” Klein has stated, ”was to establish a quality vehicle for Hebrew poetry, after we felt that there were not on the cultural map of Israel at the time any journal or literary circle with a great creative passion that could lead the Israeli poetic experience in its various manifestations to connect with Jewish tradition and experience.”56 Even while holding the conviction that they have much to contribute to the world of secular Israeli poetry, an essential element in the emergence of Mashiv Haruaḥ has been a receptivity to that secular poetry and to elements of secular Israeli culture. Ziva Shamir observes that the Mashiv Haruaḥ project asserts, in effect, that ”it is possible to find hidden connecting threads between opposing worlds: that it is possible to write daring poetry, sprinkled with contemporary slang…. in the fortress of religious Zionism, that religious youths can be liberal and humanistic no less than their backpacking contemporaries to whom the paths of Thailand are fully known, that men can write in a ‘feminine voice’ and women can give expression to their hidden erotic desires, that the young religious person also knows the poems of [the secular poet] Yona Wollach, who challenged all that is holy in Judaism, that he loves and is influenced by [those poems].57 55 Sheleg, Hadatiyyim haḥadashim, 15. 56 Shehori, ”Shigat mekhonot hadefus.” 57 Ziva Shamir, ”Efshar likhtov shirah no’ezet.”

42

INTRODUCTION

In keeping with this openness to secular poetry, the journal has never restricted itself to publishing only the works of religious Zionist poets. As they state in their web site: ”The writers who participate in the journal come from the whole range of orientations in Israel, and its subtitle, ‘Jewish Israeli Poetry’ is not intended to limit our selection of poetry or writers but rather to signal a cultural orientation.”58 In that same web site statement, they provide a list of Hebrew poets who were their inspiration when they founded the journal, which includes not only the religious poet Zelda, but a wide range of other poets not identified as religious: Yehuda Amichai, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Yonatan Ratosh, Dalia Ravikovitch, and Yona Wollach. In this same spirit, the editors devoted Mashiv Haruaḥ 21 (2006) to a tribute to both the religious poet Yosef Zvi Rimon and the secular poet Amir Gilboa. Throughout the history of the journal, poetry by Jewish Israelis with a wide range of relationships to traditional Jewish faith and practice have been published on a regular basis. Furthermore, on a number of occasions Mashiv Haruaḥ has published Hebrew translations of world poetry, including works by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, the British poet Philip Larkin, the American poet James Wright, and the Arab poet Fawzi Karim. Given the potential of the poetry of Mashiv Haruaḥ to challenge traditional religious norms, it is not surprising that its publication aroused the strong opposition of a major religious Zionist leader, Rav Zvi Yisrael Tau, a close disciple of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook who at the time was affiliated with Yeshivat Merkaz Harav.59 According to Eliaz Cohen, when a copy of the first issue of the journal reached Rav Tau, he came across a passage from a poem in which the speaker imagines his wife committing adultery.60 Horrified at what he saw as a violation of the traditional Jewish value of modesty in the realm of sexuality, Rav Tau tore up the issue, declaring it to be pornographic and therefore forbidden to be read by students in the yeshiva. As Eliaz Cohen notes, this of course guaranteed great interest in 58 http://www.mashiv.org.il/. 59 Later Rav Tau left Yeshivat Merkaz Harav to found his own yeshiva, Yeshivat Har Hamor. 60 Moshe Ben-Harush, ”Shapa’at,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 1 (1994): 31-32.

43

INTRODUCTION

the journal among the yeshiva students.61 Not every yeshiva rabbi opposed Mashiv Haruaḥ. Eliaz Cohen reports that the first issue of the journal was readily available in the library of the yeshiva in which he studied, Or Etzion, and as mentioned above Rav Shagar of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak enthusiastically endorsed its establishment. Mashiv Haruaḥ has been warmly received by a number of prominent secular Israeli poets, who have been pleased to discover quality poetry published in the cultural context of religious Zionism, which had not until recently been known for its literary creativity. The openness of secular poets to works by the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets can be attributed, in part, to what Baruch Kimmerling characterizes as the end of Israel’s ”hegenomic secular Zionist metaculture” and ”[t]he appearance and persistence of a new system of competing cultures and counter cultures.”62 As secular Zionist culture has lost much of its sense of purpose and meaning, the religious Zionist settler poets who founded Mashiv Haruaḥ have constituted one of a variety of cultural trends that have emerged in Israel to provide new viable alternatives to the reigning cultural establishment. Indeed, one senses in the positive responses of secular poets to the Mashiv Haruaḥ writers a need these secular poets have felt to revitalize secular poetry by infusing it with elements found in traditional culture. Elhanan Nir relates that as a youth at the beginning of his literary career, ”when I was in touch with [secular Israeli] poets and writers like Natan Yonatan, Dalia Ravikovitch, and Moshe Shamir, they all said to me, ”We expect so much from poetry from [the West Bank],” because of its historical connection to the ancient biblical past.63 In response to the establishment of Mashiv Haruaḥ, the secular poet Natan Yonatan declared, ”For many years religious poets have not appeared in the realm of modern Hebrew poetry, thus this journal is a great surprise in that it has restored a new spirit to the realm of poetry. As a result of this I discovered a young group that succeeded in pulling along with it some of the veterans of 61 Linora Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim,” Ha’arets 19 November 2003. 62 Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: Society, Culture, and the Military (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 112. 63 Tsur Ehrlich, ”Meshorer habayit,” Maqor Rishon 13 February 2009.

44

INTRODUCTION

poetry and in inserting a special quality into the veins of Israeli poetry, while combining a deep inspiration from the [traditional Jewish] sources with modern ways of expression in contemporary poetry.”64 In an essay published in Mashiv Haruaḥ, the secular poet and literary scholar Hamutal Bar-Yosef declared that as a result of the kind of poetry now being written by religious poets, ”it is now impossible to say that secularity is the central quality of Hebrew literature in our time. Alongside secular Israeli literature stands today a literature that puts forth additional varied spiritual possibilities.”65 In a number ways, Mashiv Haruaḥ has entered the mainstream of Israeli culture. The initial funding for the publication of Mashiv Haruaḥ came from money Shmuel Klein and his wife received on the occasion of their marriage. However, by the time they published the third issue of the journal they began to receive government culture grants, which have continued to support the journal to this day. Mashiv Haruaḥ has avoided the fate of other literary journals, which have not succeeded in maintaining themselves over a significant period of time. During the first fifteen years of its existence, from 1994-2009, thirty issues, an average of two issues per year, were published. Mashiv Haruaḥ reached an important milestone when, on the occasion of the tenth anniversay of the journal, the prominent Israeli publisher Hakibbutz Hameuchad published its seventeenth issue as a book.66 In a foreword to the book, Uzi Shavit and Leah Snir, representing the publisher, wrote that they decided to publish the collection because at the end of the first decade of the existence of the journal, ”[o]ne can already clearly sense the significant contribution of Mashiv Haruaḥ to the expansion and variation in the circle of writers, styles, and the reading public of modern and post-modern Israeli Hebrew poetry.”67 Subsequently, its twentieth issue, an anthology of Hebrew poems on biblical themes, was published as a book by the respected Israeli publisher 64 Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim.” 65 Hamutal Bar-Yosef, ”Yesh inyan,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 17 (2005): 170. 66 Eliaz Cohen, Yoram Nissinovitch, Shmuel Klein, Uzi Shavit, Leah Snir, eds., Mashiv haruaḥ: ketav et leshirah yehudit yisre’elit: mivḥar shirim 5755-5765 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005). 67 Ibid., 7.

45

INTRODUCTION

Even Hoshen.68 In addition, in recent years individual poets associated with Mashiv Haruaḥ have had collections of their poetry accepted for publication by major Israeli publishers, including Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Schocken, Keter, and Even Hoshen.69 While the collections of poetry by Mashiv Haruaḥ poets have received positive reviews in the Israeli press and journalistic articles have appeared discussing the Mashiv Haruaḥ phenomenon, often based on interviews of the poets, this study presents the first scholarly monograph on Mashiv Haruaḥ. Indeed, when I was discussing my plans for this book with Eliaz Cohen, he lamented the fact that Israeli academics have not undertaken studies of the group’s poetry. This lack of scholarly attention to Mashiv Haruaḥ may be due in part to the fact that it often takes time for individual writers and new literary trends to be considered as topics worthy of academic study. It is my hope that this study will stimulate scholarly interest in Mashiv Haruaḥ and that over time this poetry will play a more central role in academic Hebrew literary discourse.70 Each chapter of this book will explore the new, and in some cases, radically challenging ways that these poets write about their religious Zionist identities and issues of central concern to Israeli and human existence in their poetry. In Chapter One, I present brief biographies of the eight Mashiv Haruaḥ poets. I also explore the ways that some of these poets sought to 68 The book includes drawings on biblical themes by Israeli artist Nahum Guttman. Avishar Har-Shefi, Eliaz Cohen, Shur Antebi, Yoav Dagon, eds., Ad petaḥ hagan: Nahum Guttman umeshorerim ivriyyim be’iqvot hatanakh (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2006). 69 In the fall of 2007, a younger group of religious Zionists published the first issue of a journal titled Bein Hatippot, which features works of poetry and prose. In a review of the first issue, Elhanan Nir relates that one of the editors criticized other literary journals oriented toward Jewish religiosity, presumably including Mashiv Haruaḥ, as religiously problematic due to: ”1. lack of sexual modesty, 2. disrespect toward the Bible, [and] 3. utterances in relationship to God that lack awe.” Elhanan Nir, ”Al ketav et ḥadash, yehudi legamrei,” Maqor Rishon 7 November 2007. These were the same objections to Mashiv Haruaḥ that were expressed to me by Shimon Hed, editor of the journal, and Yishai Shor, poetry editor of the journal, in an interview with them I conducted in Jerusalem in January, 2009. 70 A hopeful sign of this change is the fact that while writing this book I received communications from two Israeli graduate students, each of whom was writing an M.A. thesis on Mashiv Haruaḥ, one at Ben-Gurion University and the other at Bar-Ilan University.

46

INTRODUCTION

come to terms in their poetry with the feelings of alienation that they experienced from their religious upbringings and how some attempted to develop a relationship to the Jewish tradition on their own terms. Chapter Two examines poems that deal with the nature of prayer rituals and with the ways that human-divine relations may be problematic or spiritually fulfilling. Two of the poems in that chapter compare approaches to religious issues in Judaism with those of other religious traditions. In Chapter Three, I discuss works of poetry in which the writers imaginatively retell biblical stories in ways that link those stories to contemporary concerns. In Chapter Four, I survey poems in which the authors explore the nature of erotic experience. Chapter Five is devoted to poems that convey a variety of responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the authors explore their approaches to Palestinian violence, as well as their yearning for reconciliation with their Palestinian enemies.

47

CHAPTER ONE

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING w

F

rom their reading of modern poetry by Israelis and by authors of other national identities, the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets became aware of the extent to which poets reveal personal intimate experiences and feelings in their writing. While it is true that for most poets it is not easy to reveal their deepest struggles, fears, and longings, the cultural setting in which the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets were raised presented additional barriers to writing poems that are of a particularly personal, even sometimes confessional nature. In writing such poetry, these poets have challenged the premium placed on personal privacy in religious Zionist culture as well as the collectivist political ethos of the Gush Emunim ideology which has tended to downplay the value of the inner life of the individual. On two occasions during my interviews of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets, I was told of the poet’s discomfort at publishing a poem about an intimate personal experience. In one 49

CHAPTER ONE

instance, a poem by Naama Shaked, contains a description of the experience of the menstrual period of a woman.1 In the other instance, a poem by Nahum Pachenik, the speaker complains bitterly about how his father related to him while he was growing up.2 Shaked told me that despite the fact that she was revealing intimate physical details of her experience as a woman about which she would not normally speak in public, in the end she decided to publish the poem because she thought it was important to provide her insights to those who would read the poem. Pachenik told me that as difficult as it was to reveal what he felt about his father, especially since his father is still alive, this was the price he felt he had to pay as a poet, suggesting like Shaked that he had an obligation to share his perspective with the world. The dilemma of Shaked and Pachenik and other Mashiv Haruaḥ poets about how much of the personal to reveal in poetry is captured in the observation of the religious Zionist literary scholar Yehuda Friedlander that ”true belles-lettres seek to come to terms with [personal] problems that penetrate to the depths,” but this challenges the assumption held by religious Jews that ”’one does not wash one’s dirty linen in public,’ out of fear of ‘what will people say.’” 3 Indeed, one may argue, it was not possible for poetry of a high aesthetic quality to be produced by religious Israelis until writers with this background could move beyond the tendency to discourage public consideration of personal matters, whether because of the value of personal privacy or the emphasis placed on a collectivist identity. A number of works by Mashiv Haruaḥ poets present very personal expressions of alienation from the religious Zionist upbringing the author experienced at home and in educational institutions. In some cases, these self-revelations constitute radical critiques of teachers and/or parents that challenge the cultural norms in which the poet was raised. In a world 1

Naama Shaked, ”Maḥzor,” in Mashiv haruaḥ: ketav et leshirah yehudit yisre’elit: mivḥar shirim 5755-5765, ed. Eliaz Cohen, Yoram Nissinovitch, Shmuel Klein, Uzi Shavit, Leah Snir (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), 53.

2

Nahum Pachenik, ”Abba,” Sus ha’emunah (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 9-10.

3

Avraham Blatt, Diyoqan veqatedra: bemeḥitsatam shel anshei hagut umadda (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1991), 155.

50

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

steeped in political and religious ideology these poets have dared to assert that their discomfort with how they were raised is valid and that there are alternative forms of religiosity that may be superior to those held in high esteem by their elders. Before turning to examples of poetry that explores the personal responses of the author to his or her religious upbringing, I will present a brief biography of each of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets in this study, in chronological order of birth, focusing on their family backgrounds; their educational experiences, which for the men included at least some time in what is known as a hesder yeshiva program combining traditional Jewish text study and army service; how they came to write poetry; and the nature of their current religious identities. This information makes, I believe, an important contribution to understanding the selections of poetry considered throughout this book and, in particular, those poems in which the author reflects on his or her early training in matters of religious faith and observance.

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Biographical Backgrounds Yoram Nissinovitch Yoram Nissinovitch (1965-) was born in Ashdod to a family identified as religious Zionist, but, as he reports, not very stringent in its religious 4 observance. When his father, who was born in Poland, was two and a half years old, he and his mother and one-year-old sister traveled eastward in order to escape from the Nazis. His father’s father stayed behind and died in a concentration camp, and the younger sister died in the course of their flight. Nissinovitch’s father and grandmother wandered around from place to place in Kazikstan, and when the war was over they returned to Poland. There, his grandmother married a widower and the family emigrated to Israel in 1956. Nissinovitch’s mother was born in Morocco and immigrated to Israel with her family as a child. Nissinovitch attended the hesder yeshiva Yamit in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, named after the Israeli Sinai settlement evacuated as part of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. While he was studying in yeshiva, he relates, he became drawn on his own to certain contemporary Israeli poets, especially Yehuda Amichai, Zelda Mishkovsky, and Natan Yonatan. He did not, he reports, always understand these writers’ poems, but he was fascinated by their sound and rhythm. Another discovery of his at that time was the autobiography of the non-observant religiouslyoriented Israeli poet Pinhas Sadeh, Haḥayyim kemashal (Life as a Parable, 1958), which radically challenged his religious upbringing. Sadeh’s autobiography, which tells of the author’s search for meaning in the realms of the secular and the religious, was, Nissinovitch says, ”the opposite 4

The biographical information on Yoram Nissinovitch is based on Linora Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim,” Ha’arets 19 November 2003; a statement prepared by him for a web site of the Israeli Ministry of Education, http://cms.education.gov.il; biographies at Leqsiqon hasifrut ha’ivrit haḥadashah, http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1, and at http:// he.wikipedia.org; an interview with him conducted by Asa Zvi in the Jerusalem Cinematheque in January, 2009, which I attended; and an interview with him I conducted in Tekoa in January, 2009.

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of all of the education I had received and I felt that [Sadeh] was right.”5 When Nissinovitch went to discuss with one of the rabbinical teachers at the yeshiva what he had discovered in the Sadeh autobiography, to his surprise the rabbi was actually familiar with the book, but he told Nissinovitch not to read it because of erotic passages contained in it. Nissinovitch believes that by focusing on the book as a dangerous source of sexual arousal, the rabbi was attempting to avoid coming to terms with the more substantive philosophical issues raised by Sadeh. ”This shut me up, but [as a result] I understood that the world of Torah was open only to a certain limited degree.”6 In general, Nissinovitch felt stifled in the yeshiva by what he saw as the intellectual narrowness of the institution in its refusal to even consider any degree of historical consciousness that could be provided by a more academic approach to traditional Jewish texts. He recalls that when he showed the head of the yeshiva a book on the Talmud by the Orthodox Rav Adin Steinsaltz, in which the author suggests that Jewish law has changed over the course of history, the head of the yeshiva dismissed it. It also bothered Nissinovitch that the rabbis of the yeshiva set for their young students impossibly high standards of learning and of moral rectitude. They were expected to study all day long and to constantly work on their ethical qualities. Anyone who could not live up to the ideals of becoming a talmid ḥakham (master of the wisdom of traditional texts) and of achieving moral perfection was deemed a failure. Nissinovitch took his inevitable falling short of the mark in these areas very badly and it led him to feelings of depression. Following the completion of hesder yeshiva, Nissinovitch audited courses at the Hebrew University, where he was particularly drawn to the teaching of Dan Miron, one of the leading scholars of modern Hebrew literature in Israel, but Nissinovitch did not complete an academic degree program. In addition, he studied for brief periods at two institutions for traditional Jewish study in Jerusalem, Elul, a pluralistic study house for 5

Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim.”

6 Ibid.

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religious and secular Israelis, and Beit Morasha, a religious Zionist educational institution. At Beit Morasha he came into contact with Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar) with whom he had influential conversations about his religious identity. At one point, Nissinovitch received training as an organic gardener. Nissinovitch began to write poetry on his own, and when he discussed his poetry writing with Rav Yaakov Ariel of Ramat Gan, the latter told him about the religious poet Yonadav Kaplun. When Nissinovitch showed Kaplun his poems, the latter invited him to participate in a creative writing workshop he was leading, and, Nissinovitch reports, it was from that point on that he began to write seriously as a poet. When asked about the potential conflict between free poetic expression and a divine authority that might not approve of what he is writing, Yoram Nissinovitch presented the following answer: ”The Holy One Blessed be He is for me a friend and not an enemy. He does not examine me. Faith is a challenging, not a fearful dimension. I do not have in me a ‘Jewish detective’ who examines my writing to see if it is ideologically appropriate. Poetry is free of such constraints. Poetry perfected my religious perception and it is in itself spiritual and religious worship, and God has no anger at the widely open places of the soul.”7 Nissinovitch was among the founders of Mashiv Haruaḥ, with which he has continued to be involved as an editor, a contributor of poetry, and an organizer of the journal’s workshops for beginning poets and of its annual poetry festival. Nissinovitch’s first collection of poetry, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshuah (The Low Table of Salvation) was published in 2008. For a few years, Nissinovitch lived in the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, where he was associated with an urban kibbutz. He and his wife and children were one of twenty-five religious and secular families who contributed, along with the core members of the kibbutz, to the welfare of the surrounding community. This experience with the urban kibbutz fostered in him a greater commitment to issues of social justice than he had felt previously, and it evoked within him a certain degree of skepticism about the 7 Ibid.

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significance of the religious Zionist ideology in which he had been educated. ”Living in an urban kibbutz,” Nissinovitch has stated, ”brought me into contact with the other Israel, whose problems are not Zionist principles but having enough bread to eat…This new reality…caused my opinions to veer to the left, including in a social sense.”8 Nissinovitch now lives with his wife and children in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa.

Naama Shaked Naama Shaked (1970-) is the daughter of Rav Shlomo Aviner, a disciple of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook and one of the leading rabbinical figures in religious Zionism.9 During her childhood, the family lived in three locations where her father served as a community rabbi: Kibbutz Lavi in the Galilee, Moshav Keshet on the Golan Heights, and finally in the West Bank settlement of Beit El. Currently her father is the rabbi of one of the neighborhoods of Beit El and the head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim (formerly Yeshivat Ateret Kohanim) in Jerusalem. As she was growing up, Shaked identified strongly with the religious Zionist values in which she was educated. ”At a certain stage,” she reports, ”cracks began to appear in that which was understood to be true with which I grew up, and with that a path of searching began.” Her questioning of the religious education she was given became so strong that at one point she thought she might leave the identity of being religious (datit) and declare herself to be secular (ḥilonit). The identity which she holds as an adult is, in certain respects, the least conventionally religious of the poets in this book. ”I am not Orthodox,” she has declared, ”but I feel myself to be very much a datiyyah.” I understand that statement to mean that she is not committed to a complete observance of religious ritual and that she does not see herself as part of any religious Zionist community, 8 Ibid. 9

The biographical information on Naama Shaked is based on Asa, ”Ruaḥ Peratsim,” as well as email correspondence with her and an interview with her I conducted in Jerusalem in January, 2009.

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but that religion is still very central to her life. Furthermore, as a divorced mother of three, she is more the exception than the rule in religious Zionist culture, which is so firmly committed to marital stability. Shaked’s religious identity and community is based in Elul, the pluralistic study house in Jerusalem in which Yoram Nissinovitch studied. She was initially attracted to Elul as a place where she could study the tradition in an atmosphere that would allow her to question and freely clarify all the religious issues with which she had begun to struggle. She felt that Elul was a place which would allow her to make the world of tradition truly her own and to stop following it simply on the basis of what she had been taught. Over time, Shaked found her study of traditional Jewish texts to be her main source for literary creativity. Much of her poetry emerges from her immersion in text study, and she regularly leads a class at Elul in which students engage in a similar process of creative writing. Beit Midrash Kotvim (Study House for Writers), as it is called, consists of a group of about fifteen to twenty participants who spend the academic year interacting with one particular traditional text and producing their own literary responses to that text. ”In [this class],” she explains, ”we engage in the study of sources and in creative writing in response to them, out of a desire to create a ‘new midrash,’ the renewal of Torah, literary creativity immersed in the sources, and reacting to them in a deep manner.” Nahum Pachenik, one of the founding editors of Mashiv Haruaḥ, who knew Shaked from their childhood together in Beit El, invited Shaked to participate in the editing of the journal. Her involvement in the journal has included being the person in charge of vocalizing the poems, co-editing issues of the journal, overseeing its production, and contributing to it her own poems. Although she has produced a fairly large body of poetry to date, she is one of only two poets in this study who has not yet published a collection in book form. She explains that she has not done so because she is hesitant to move on to the higher degree of exposure to the public that a book would entail. Shaked is the only poet in this study who does not live in the West Bank. She has made her home in Jerusalem, where her work at Elul is located. 56

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Shmuel Klein Shmuel Klein (1971-) was born and grew up in Herzliah in a religious Zionist family.10 Although he did not experience life in the territories during his childhood, he attended the hesder yeshiva Birkat Moshe in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, and he relates that it was there that he became immersed in the worldview and values of the settler experience. When he was first drawn to the writing of poetry, Klein knew nothing about the world of modern Israeli poetry, and he felt very alone because poetry was not part of the culture in which he was raised. At this early stage of his poetic career, he attended an evening of religious poets organized by the journal Dimui and moderated by the religious Zionist artist and art critic Zippora Luria, and it was an eyeopening experience for him to discover that there really existed other religious Zionist poets. Unlike Nissinovitch, Klein found his yeshiva to be hospitable to his interest in poetry. This was primarily because Rav Haim Sabato, one of the most popular religious Zionist writers of prose fiction in Israel today, was a central figure there. While still a student in yeshiva, with the support of Rav Sabato, Klein became a founding editor of Mashiv Haruaḥ. Like Naama Shaked, Klein has not yet published a book-length collection of his poetry. After hesder yeshiva, Klein studied Political Science and Communications at Bar-Ilan University. At one time, he worked in radio and television journalism, and he now earns his living in the field of public relations. He currently lives in the West Bank settlement of Neve Daniel with his wife and children.

10 The biographical information on Shmuel Klein is based on ”Shmuel Klein,” Pesefas 61 (2005): 46-48; a biography at http://he.wikipedia.org; and an interview with him I conducted in January 2009.

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Eliaz Cohen Eliaz Cohen (1972-) was born in Petah Tikva.11 In 1979, he moved with his parents to the West Bank settlement of Elkana. He describes the religious Zionist family in which he grew up as open minded and pluralistic in outlook, due in part to differences in the political and religious orientations of his grandfathers. His paternal grandfather grew up in a Hasidic home in Europe, left traditional observance, and became a fervent follower of the right-wing revisionist Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky. Although this grandfather had stopped observing in his youth, he was never actively anti-religious, and when he began to have grandchildren, he returned to traditional observance. His maternal grandfather was a supporter of the left-wing Haganah in the struggle against the British and a devotee of the Hapoel Hamizrahi movement, which sought to integrate religious Zionism with the socialist orientation of labor Zionism. Cohen has noted that his parents ”belonged to the national-religious camp without being part of the Rabbi [Zvi Yehuda] Kook revolution that swept other members of their generation.”12 He considers himself fortunate that his parents were not fervent supporters of Rav Zvi Yehuda, because, as he puts it, ”it kept me a sane, individual thinker who makes his own choices.” 13 In his childhood, Cohen was exposed to cultural content beyond that found in religious Zionism. He recalls nostalgically the large amounts of time he spent in the library of Elkana, where the librarian encouraged him and other children to read a wide variety of books. Cohen attended hesder yeshiva at Yeshivat Or Etzion in Merkaz Shapira between Kiryat Malakhi and Ashkelon. Due to the open mindedness that characterized his family upbringing, he was able to avoid the difficulties 11 The biographical information on Eliaz Cohen is based on Talya Halkin, ”Writing Beyond the Green Line,” Jerusalem Post 11 June 2004; ”Eliaz Cohen,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 24-26; biographies at Leqsiqon hasifrut ha’ivrit haḥadashah, http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1, and at http://he.wikipedia.org; an interview with him I conducted in September, 2008; and an interview with him I conducted in January, 2009. 12 Halkin, ”Writing Beyond the Green Line.” 13 Ibid.

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that some of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets had with their yeshiva studies. Cohen recalls that he was always encouraged by his father to be true to himself and not to fall under the sway of anyone. In particular, his father was very much opposed to the tendency in religious circles to glorify rabbis to the point of worshiping them. Cohen is grateful for his father’s attitude, which he considers to have provided him with spiritual ”antibodies” that kept him from becoming overly enamored of the rabbinical authorities in his yeshiva. He therefore came to the yeshiva prepared to take from it that which he considered to be valuable and to reject the rest. Cohen began writing at a young age, and initially his focus was on prose. Like Shmuel Klein, Cohen had the good fortune to be exposed to a rabbinical figure who supported his writing, Rav Moshe Zvi Neria, a teacher at Yeshivat Bnei Akiva in Kefar Haroeh, which Cohen attended before he studied in hesder yeshiva. Rav Neria, who was then the spiritual leader of the religious Zionist Bnei Akiva yeshivot, Cohen recalls, ”spoke much about the importance of literature.”14 Indeed, Rav Neria himself wrote poetry of a political as well as a personal nature, including the official hymn of the Bnei Akiva youth movement.15 When Rav Neria learned that Cohen was committed to writing, he arranged to meet with Cohen regularly to encourage him and to give him guidance. In one of his collections of poetry, Cohen expresses his warm regard for Rav Neria by dedicating a poem in his memory, identifying him as mori verabbi (my teacher and rabbi). That same collection includes poems inspired by words of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook that Rav Neria had displayed in the yeshiva. ”Around the dome of the study hall in Yeshivat Kefar Haroeh,” recalls Cohen in the introduction to those poems, ”Rav Neria engraved four sayings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook. At times even to this day, when I close my eyes, these sayings are engraved above my head.”16 Eventually, through a family friend who lived in Elkana, the religious Zionist scholar of Hebrew literature Hillel Weiss, Cohen 14 Nira Klein, ”Mehashir na’aseh gam niggun,” Amudim 620 (1998): 24. 15 ”Moshe Zvi Neria,” http://he.wikipedia.org. 16 Eliaz Cohen, Negi’ot rishonot (Tel Aviv: Milo, 2000), 39.

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became connected with one of the senior Israeli novelists of the time, Moshe Shamir, who served for a while as his mentor, as did the Israeli novelist Haim Be’er. Cohen switched to focusing on the writing of poetry as the result of a trip he took as an emissary from Israel to Jews in the Caucuses during the summer of 1994. This meeting with the mountain Jews of the Caucuses had a very deep effect on him. During the course of the visit he read from a collection of poems by the nineteenth-century Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov in Hebrew translation, which he had bought in Israel shortly before the trip, and he was swept away by the rhythm of the poetry. When he returned to Israel he began to write poetry in Hebrew, and shortly after his return the first issue of Mashiv Haruaḥ was published. Cohen recalls the excitement he felt on reading this issue in the yeshiva where he was studying: ”I will never forget the electricity that ran through me then,” he writes. ”How I grabbed the first Mashiv Haruaḥ from the hands of the librarian [and] escaped to the depths of the library.... There, leaning against one of the bookcases, standing up, with no connection to time ticking on or to the loud sounds of Torah [study] from the nearby study house, I recited the poems. I kept reading over and over, rolling lines and words on my tongue and into my soul… I don’t know how much time passed then but I remember my blood boiling up in my veins, the music growing stronger within me.”17 Beginning with the third issue of Mashiv Haruaḥ, Cohen became an editor of the journal, and he has remained one of the core editors to this day. As he began to build his career as a poet, Cohen consulted with a number of Israeli poets, including Yehuda Amichai, Haim Guri, Dalia Ravikovitch, Itamar Yaoz-Kest, and Natan Yonatan. Cohen studied social work at Bar-Ilan University, and he has worked as a social worker in a variety of settings. Lately, he has held the position of coordinator of cultural events for the region of West Bank settlements known as Gush Etzion . Of the eight poets in this study, Cohen has published the most collections of poetry: Meḥumashim (poems based on the weekly Torah portions, 1997); 17 Eliaz Cohen, ”Kemo berega hitgabber haniggun,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 13 (2003):143.

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Negi’ot rishonot (First Touch, 2000), Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 57615764 (Hear O Lord: Poems of the Disturbances of 2000-2004, 2004); and Hazmanah levekhi (An Invitation to Cry, 2005).18 Cohen has been deeply affected by losses experienced by members of his family in the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict. His grandparents’ cousins were among those who had to flee Gush Etzion when it was attacked by Arab forces during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. His uncle Eliezer, for whom Eliaz was named, was a medic in the Israeli army during the 1956 Sinai Campaign. In the course of the battle at the Mitla Pass, his uncle was wounded in his leg. Nevertheless, he insisted on staying at the front to treat other soldiers, and he died. Eliaz once revealed to an interviewer, ”I feel that I carry [Eliezer’s] life on my shoulders. And I can do it. He is not a burden; his wings lift me. My uncle’s memory is conscious, an awareness and also a tension in me: could I put my life at risk for my… buddies or not?”19 Cohen goes on to say that he had begun thinking about this question as early as when he was six years old. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the son of his grandparents’ cousins settled in Gush Etzion, returning to the place from which his parents had fled. That man, however, died fighting in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This family history led to the decision of Cohen and his wife to settle in Kibbutz Kefar Etzion in Gush Etzion, where they are members together with their children. Cohen is very critical of the tendency of religious Zionists to adopt what is closer to an ultra-Orthodox worldview in matters of ritual observance, public policy, and morality, and he supports efforts by religious Zionists to challenge the more conservative religious positions of established rabbinical authority. In an interview with him conducted around the time of the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Cohen called for a ”disengagement” from Rav Avraham Shapira, the former 18 A bilingual Hebrew-English edition of Cohen’s poetry, comprised mainly of the poems in his last two collections, was published as Eliaz Cohen, Hear O Lord: Poems From the Disturbances of 2000-2009, trans. Larry Barak (New Milford, CT: The Toby Press, 2010). 19 Nathan Szajnberg, Reluctant Warriors: Israelis Suspended Between Rome and Jerusalem (New York: Xlibris Corporation, 2006), 26.

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Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi who became the head of Yeshivat Merkaz Harav after the death of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook, and Rav Mordecai Eliyahu, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi. These two rabbinical figures were leaders in the trend toward ultra-Orthodoxy among some religious Zionists, who have come to be known as ḥardelim, a term that is compounded from the terms ḥaredi (ultra-Orthodox) and dati le’umi (religious Zionist). In commenting on the approach of these and like-minded rabbis to issues of Jewish law (halakhah), Cohen complains that ”The problem is that [this kind of] rabbinical thinking remains within the boundaries of past Jewish legal rulings to this day, and in the best cases they discern precedents from the rabbinic legal responsa literature.”20 Missing from their approach, argues Cohen, is ”meta-halakhic thinking,” which involves a deep discernment of the principles by which Jewish law should be applied, and so these rabbis prevent Jews from arriving at creative approaches ”in many areas, from conversion to marriage and divorce, and even [in the area of] coming to terms with homosexuality.”21 To Cohen, this is not an acceptable situation. ”The lack of halakhic courage and the rigidity of thought both harm us,” he declares, ”and there must arise an alternative discourse.”22 Cohen favors the creation of a broad body of Jews who would search for ways to interpret Judaism in our time: ”We must establish a council of great people of the spirit of this generation, philosophers, writers, and rabbis – a council of the Sanhedrin consisting also of ‘common people,’ from the less empowered classes.”23 In particular, Cohen is anxious for a group such as this to develop a greater commitment to social justice. He hopes that some day the spiritual teachings of religious Zionism and the socially conscious teachings of labor Zionism will come together to develop a vision for the future of Israel. 20 Yakir Englander, ”Higia hazeman lehitnatteq meharabbanim Shapira ve’Eliyahu, De’ot 22 (2005): 11. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid.

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Nahum Pachenik Nahum Pachenik (1973-) was born in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, outside of Hebron, and as a child he moved with his family to 24 the West Bank settlement of Beit El. His father’s grandfather was the zaddik Rav Nahum Yehoshua Pachenik, of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty, who died in the Holocaust and after whom Pachenik was named. His father’s father, the son of Nahum Yehoshua, became disaffected with Hasidism and so did not assume his father’s position of zaddik, as has been customary in Hasidic dynasties. Pachenik’s father grew up in the U.S., where he was educated in the modern Orthodox institutions Ramaz High School and Yeshiva University. As a young man, Pachenik’s father emigrated to Israel, where he met the woman who was to be his wife, Pachenik’s mother. She had survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp with her mother at the age of four, and having been reunited with her father after the war, emigrated with her parents to Israel. Pachenik began studying in the hesder yeshiva Yeshivat Shavei Hevron in Hebron, but he stopped studying in the yeshiva after half a year and went directly into the army. He left the yeshiva because he could not accept the fact that it focused so much on matters of the mind, to the exclusion of the inner spiritual and emotional life of the students. In later years, he recalled with bitterness the degree to which he and the other yeshiva students were expected to pay what he now considers to be excessive deference to the rabbis who taught them, thereby encouraging those students to devalue their own worth as individuals.25 From age twenty, while he was still in the army, to age twenty-six, Pachenik abandoned the ritual practices of traditional Judaism, although, he has stated, during that time he continued to possess a religious faith. While he was still single, like many secular and some religious young Israelis, Pachenik spent six 24 The biographical information on Nahum Pachenik is based on Yair Sheleg, ”Shirat Nahum,” Ha’arets 13 June 2007; a biography at http://he.wikipedia.org; and an interview with him I conducted in Jerusalem in January, 2009. 25 Nahum Pachenik, ”Nifgatem merav? al tiheyu kamoni,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 18 February 2010; Nahum Pachenik, ”Ḥappes lekha rav,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 25 February 2010.

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months in India, and he later returned for another six-month visit there with his wife and children. Pachenik eventually returned to yeshiva study at Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, where he became close to Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar) and to Rav Shagar’s student, Rav Dov Zinger, who later became the head of Yeshivat Makor Chaim.26 Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak provided Pachenik with a place to study traditional texts and reconnect with traditional practice where he felt respected for who he is and not pressured to fit into an ideological straight jacket in the way he felt he had been in his earlier life. At the age of seventeen, Pachenik began to write poetry. He characterizes this turn to poetry as an anti-ideological act. For him, ideology and creativity are inimical, for ideology forces the individual into something beyond him, while creativity is an expression of one’s independent individuality. Eventually, Pachenik moved beyond his commitment to write poetry as an individual and became one of the editors who established Mashiv Haruaḥ. In Pachenik’s approach to religious observance, he has related, he avoids the excessive preoccupation with the observance of every detail of ritual law, which was what drove him away from religion when he was a young adult. He calls himself ”one who tries [to observe] the 613 [commandments]” (mishtaddel taryag).27 By this label he means that, as he puts it, ”I try to observe all of the commandments, but if it occurs that I did not put on tefillin [a ritual prayer object] some morning because I was very busy I don’t necessarily feel guilty.”28 He is still highly critical of aspects of religious Zionist culture that bothered him in his youth. ”It was a very ideological society,” he has stated ”and an ideological world has nothing to offer children.” 29 In that culture, he relates, human relations are stifled by the inability of people to relate and by their preoccupation with their public image: ”People do not know how to meet each other. Human encounters are not relaxed. They lack laughter; they lack humor. People are 26 Pachenik expressed his admiration for Rav Zinger in his dedication of a poem to him, whom he called mori verabbi (my teacher and rabbi). Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 68. 27 Sheleg, ”Shirat Nahum.” 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

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always checking themselves to see how they will appear, whether their behavior broadcasts a fear of heaven.”30 He also complains about the excessive focus on issues of sexual modesty in the world in which he was raised: ”I remember having an inner conflict about whether to say hello to a girl, because to say hello was almost as if I touched her.”31 Pachenik lives with his wife and children in Sde Boaz, a West Bank settlement in Gush Etzion that is not officially recognized by Israel. The settlement has a strong ecological consciousness, and Pachenik himself insists that acting in an ecologically correct manner is a religious imperative. In an opinion piece on the weekly Torah portions of Genesis and Noah, he warns his fellow Israeli Jews of the ecological disaster, on the scale of Noah’s flood, that will come if humanity does not start paying more attention to violations of the environment. He even suggests that the date in the Hebrew calendar of 17 Heshvan, which Jewish tradition teaches is the day that the flood began in Noah’s time, be declared as ”a day of ecological awareness.”32 In another opinion piece, he advocates a change from the traditional practice of storing worn out holy texts in a genizah storage place to a more ecologically sensitive one in which these texts would be recycled into paper that would be used to print new holy texts. He even received some support for his position from the religious Zionist rabbis Rav Shlomo Aviner and Rav Yuval Sherlo.33 Pachenik conducts workshops in creative writing and Laughter Yoga.34 He has also worked as an educator in a school at the religious kibbutz Rosh Zurim in Gush Etzion. His first collection of poetry, Sus ha’emunah (The Horse of Faith) was published in 2007.

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Nahum Pachenik, ”Parinu veravinu, ulay day?” Yediyot Aḥaronot 29 October 2008. 33 Nahum Pachenik, ”Qeri’ah: hafsiqu lignoz, hatḥilu lemaḥzer!” Yediyot Aḥaronot 1 April 2009. 34 Laughter Yoga is a method founded by Manan and Madhuri Kataria designed, according to the official web site, ”for complete body-mind wellness.” See http://www.laughteryoga.org. Pachenik’s web site about his Laughter Yoga workshops may be found at http://tzchok.com/ Home.aspx. In the web site he links Laughter Yoga with the teaching of Rav Nahman of Bratslav that one should always try to be happy (mitsvah gedolah liheyot besimḥah tamid).

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Avishar Har-Shefi Avishar Har-Shefi (1973-) was born in Netanya and spent his early 35 childhood in Bnei Brak. He spent the rest of his childhood in the West Bank settlements of Shavei Shomron and Beit El. Although his family was very devoted to traditional Jewish study and practice, he was also exposed to broader cultural influences. He recalls that as a young child in Bnei Brak he attended an ultra-Orthodox school, but he also went to a summer camp which took him on trips to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and to concerts and other cultural productions. When he was a child, he relates, before going to bed at night his mother would read to him a book on ancient mythology. Har-Shefi’s hesder yeshiva studies were in Kiryat Shemona, in northern Israel, after which he went to study at Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, which he entered the year it was founded. He is now on the faculty of the yeshiva, teaching courses in Zohar, Hasidism, and literary approaches to the study of Talmud. Having received an M.A. in Zohar studies at Bar-Ilan University, Har-Shefi is now working on a Ph.D. there in the same field. Although typically the poets in this study were the first in their families to engage in the writing of poetry, during Har-Shefi’s childhood his grandfather, Pinhas Peli (1930-1989), a member of the faculty of Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva, published a collection of religiously oriented poetry.36 In his youth, Har-Shefi was active in the political support of the settlements, but around the time that he finished hesder yeshiva, he withdrew from political activities and channeled his energy into his three major pursuits: scholarship, teaching, and the writing of poetry. Har-Shefi is very committed to integrating his interests in traditional Jewish text study with his interests as a reader and author of contemporary poetry. One can discern this commitment clearly in a collection of ten essays and one 35 The biographical information on Avishar Har-Shefi is based on biographies at Leqsiqon hasifrut ha’ivrit haḥadashah, http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1, and at http:// he.wikipedia.org, as well as interviews with him I conducted in September, 2008 and in January, 2009. 36 Pinhas Peli, Ilan mehuppakh shorashav bashamayim (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1979).

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poem which he edited.37 Most of the selections in the book are written by members of a group that met in Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak to engage in an intensive study of the talmudic tractate Ta’anit. These selections all focus on passages in Ta’anit that deal with approaches to issues related to rain. In the course of their study of Ta’anit, the group occasionally discussed poems which, according to Har-Shefi, ”assisted us in reaching the inner place to which the discussion was directed, or alternatively, presented a different point of view about it.”38 They even engaged in creative writing workshops in which they expressed themselves in relationship to the issues dealt with in Ta’anit. In the essay that Har-Shefi contributed to the book, he introduces his discussion of a passage in the Talmud with a poem by the contemporary Israeli poet Rachel Chalfi. This approach of using contemporary poetry as a means to discover and express religious truths may also be found in essays written by HarShefi in 2007 that were posted at the Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak web site. One is an essay included in a booklet in memory of the late co-founder of the yeshiva, Rav Shagar, in which Har-Shefi’s moving words of appreciation for his late teacher are interspersed with selections of poetry by the religious writer Zelda Mishkovsky and by Yehuda Amichai, who was raised in a religious family but abandoned traditional ritual practice in his youth. The other is an essay on the Sabbath before Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. This essay discusses the issues of loss and mourning that are central to the fast day by interpreting a poem by the secular Israeli poet Dalia Ravikovitch about a woman whose son was killed in battle while serving in the Israeli army. Har-Shefi lives with his wife, Sivan Har-Shefi, and their children on the campus of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in Efrat in the West Bank. His first collection of poetry, Susei esh (Horses of Fire), was published in 2004.

37 Avishar Har-Shefi, ed., Geshem: al ta’anit ugeshamim be’iqvot massekhet ta’anit (Efrat:Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2004). 38 Ibid., 5.

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CHAPTER ONE

Sivan Har-Shefi Sivan Har-Shefi (1978-) was born in Jerusalem to a religious Zionist 39 family. Due to her father’s work, she spent part of her childhood in the U.S. with her family. When they did not live in the U.S. she grew up in the West Bank settlements of Mikhmash and Efrat. When she was five years old, her parents gave her a diary, and from then on she has written with the full support of her parents. In high school and as an adult she participated in creative writing workshops. She received an M.A. in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew University, focusing on the poetry of Yona Wollach, a well-respected secular writer whose poetic vision often challenges the conservative social values of traditional Judaism. Wollach’s most controversial poem was ”Tefillin,” in which she portrayed a woman and a man involved in sado-masochistic love making that included the use of the ritual prayer object known as tefillin. It was this poem that was said to have caused a breach between Wollach and the religious poet Zelda Mishkovsky, with whom she had developed a relationship. Whatever religious objections Zelda had to the poetry of Wollach did not prevent Har-Shefi from studying Wollach’s poetry, although Har-Shefi acknowledges that when she tells fellow religious Zionists that she wrote about Wollach, she does get some raised eyebrows in reaction. Har-Shefi is very devoted to traditional Jewish learning. She relates that the trend among some religious Zionists to move away from viewing the Bible only through the lens of rabbinic commentaries and the growing openness to subjects not previously emphasized in religious Zionist circles, such as the Zohar and Hasidism, opened up for her new sources of inspiration for the writing of poetry. Like Naama Shaked, she sees the encounter with traditional texts as a catalyst for the writing of her poetry. ”The contact with words [in traditional texts],” she explains, ”arouses new 39 The biographical information on Sivan Har-Shefi is based on a biography at Leqsiqon hasifrut ha’ivrit haḥadashah, http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1, and interviews with her I conducted in September, 2008 and in January, 2009.

68

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

words.” When I asked her in an interview to what extent she censors what she writes, she told me that at first she writes without censorship. Then, she does submit her writing to some degree of self-censorship before submitting it for publication. Har-Shefi has worked as the coordinator of Uri, an organization sponsored by Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak that offers classes in traditional Jewish text study for women in Jerusalem. She has also worked as a creative writing instructor at Herzog College, a religious Zionist educational institution. Har-Shefi lives with her husband, Avishar Har-Shefi, and their children on the campus of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in Efrat in the West Bank. She has published two collections of poems, Galut halivyatan (Leviathan’s Exile, 2005) and Tehillim leyom ra’ash (Tehillim for a Day of Thunder, 2010). She has also engaged in the writing of prose fiction.40

Elhanan Nir Elhanan Nir (1980-) was born in Jerusalem.41 When he was ten years old, his parents moved with him to the West Bank settlement of Mikhmash, where his father had been appointed to serve as the community rabbi. Although he knew nothing about poetry, at the age of fifteen Nir started writing poems. At an event to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg in Jerusalem, Nir met the Israeli novelist Moshe Shamir. After he showed Shamir some poems, the latter sent him to the poet Reuven Ben Yosef, and every two months Nir would travel to see him in Jerusalem so that they could work together on his poems.42 He also received encouragement from the Israeli poet Natan 40 See her short story ”Entropyah,” Ashmoret 1 (2008): 7-16. 41 The biographical information on Elhanan Nir is based on Shosh Vig, ”Re’ayon im hameshorer Elhanan Nir,” http://bsh.co.il; ”Elhanan Nir,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 36-38; biographies at Leqsiqon hasifrut ha’ivrit haḥadashah, http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1, and at http://he.wikipedia.org; and an interview with him I conducted in January, 2009. 42 See Nir’s tribute to Ben Yosef written shortly after his death, Elhanan Nir, ”Dam, emunah ve’emet: ledemuto shel hameshorer Reuven Ben Yosef zal,” Nativ 14, no. 6 (2001): 102-103.

69

CHAPTER ONE

Yonatan, and he was drawn to the poetry of Amir Gilboa, Zelda Mishkovsky, and Pinhas Sadeh. Nir began to study in a hesder yeshiva in Mitzpe Ramon which is affiliated with Yeshivat Merkaz Harav. He chose it because the Talmud study there was serious, but it was very difficult for him there. The head of the yeshiva made a point of studying directly with him in order to keep an eye on him, because he wrote poetry. While studying in the yeshiva, he would go to the library in nearby Dimona for books that would expand his intellectual horizons. Nir’s father did not support his writing, because he believed that his son should either pursue the study of Torah or train for a good profession in which he could earn a living, such as engineering. Nir reports that when he showed his father a poem he had published, his father asked him why the poem was not accompanied by footnotes that would indicate the sources that supported his words, since his father could not see any value in his just making something up without scholarly support. His mother supported him, not because she understood why he was writing poetry, but because they had a special relationship. After he completed hesder yeshiva, Nir began studying at Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in Efrat, where he currently teaches Talmud, Hasidism, and Jewish Thought and lives with his wife and child. When he was twenty-three years old, Nir’s mother died an untimely death after a protracted illness. This event had a strong emotional impact on him. To commemorate the illness and death of his mother, Nir published a poem cycle which appeared as the final section of his collection of poems, under the title ”Ha’intimiyyut” (”The Intimacy”). The pain of losing his mother was compounded by the fact that Nir’s father remarried six months after his wife’s death and Nir was not allowed to live with his father and stepmother. As a result, he stayed at a variety of homes, with no fixed place to live. At that time, Nir decided to take a leave from Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak and travel to India, where many Israeli youths go after compulsory military service to undertake a spiritual search. He also made a second trip to India when he was engaged to his future wife. Nir has been a cultural critic for the settler journal Nequdah and the literary editor of the religious Zionist newspaper Maqor Rishon. 70

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

Nir sees no inherent conflict between writing poetry and living the life of a religious Jew. In one interview he mentions the midrashic statement, ”If [biblical King] Hezekiah had uttered a poem…he would have become the Messiah” (Shir Hashirim Rabbah 4:20).43 He takes that to represent a much broader truth, declaring, ”Every person who utters poetry…is in effect something of a messiah. A small messiah but a messiah. But a messiah in that he does not keep the endless intimacy within him only to himself but involves others in it, and thus, as [Israeli poet] Natan Yonatan repeatedly said to me, he contributes to the general catharsis of the world.44 While Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar) was still alive, Nir was very close to him. An indication of their connection is the fact that Rav Shagar allowed Nir to edit some of his writings, a task that Rav Shagar did not entrust to many people. As a member of the faculty of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, Nir is continuing the tendency of Rav Shagar to push religious Zionism beyond the narrow intellectual and spiritual confines it tends to inhabit. Nir believes that he has the strength to continue this kind of radical challenging because when Rav Shagar was alive, he felt that his teacher trusted him to think for himself. Nir considers religious doubts to be a potential source of strength for the believer. ”The doubts,” he asserts, ”lead to a strong, surprising, and deep faith that cannot be compared with classical faith. This is a faith for which nothing is taken for granted….Every day I continue [my devotion to] the faith and on the other hand I renew it all the time.”45 He is careful to qualify his statement by declaring that when he refers to doubt, ”I do not mean atheism, but rather a lack of religious commitment. Many times this generates creativity and freedom and a deep seriousness in one’s learning.”46 Nir feels that ”the world of Torah is completely stuck.” In defiance of the usual traditional assumption that the Torah contains all truths, he takes the bold position that one cannot understand the Torah without knowledge 43 Vig, ”Re’ayon im hameshorer Elhanan Nir.” 44 Ibid. 45 Tsur Ehrlich, ”Meshorer habayit,” Maqor Rishon 13 February 2009. 46 Ibid.

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CHAPTER ONE

of teachings from other cultures, especially those found in the Far East. In keeping with his prescription for the revival of the world of Torah, on a personal level Nir feels the need for greater intellectual stimulation. One of the ways he seeks to achieve this is by means of a group he formed with the Israeli poet Rivka Miriam, named Kannah. The name refers to a plant in an early stage of development, but it is also associated by sound with the Hebrew word kenut, which means ”honesty.” The group, financially supported by Rav Adin Steinsaltz, includes Yehuda Libes, professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University, and the artist Meir Appelfeld. One year the group studied the relationship between the individual and the community. Another year they studied the book of Esther, and their activities have included meeting with Japanese religious figures in Jerusalem and some religious thinkers from Holland with whom Nir is acquainted. Nir’s spiritual restlessness allows him to be open to the development of more than one way to attract Israeli Jews to Judaism. In one article he expresses much appreciation for an organization he visited on the night of the holiday of Shavuot, called Bayit Balev – Bayit Patuaḥ Layahadut Velaruaḥ (A Home in the Heart – A Home Open to Judaism and the Spirit) located in the northern Israeli town of Metula. Although it was founded by religious Zionists students from the hesder yeshiva in Tekoa, it allows for a pluralistic approach to the exploration of Judaism. Nir characterizes it as ”a place where the emphasis is on the family, the home, honest dialogue and less on a monologue dictated from above.”47 In his description of what happens there on the night of Shavuot he relates that after dinner, ”there are those who say tiqqun shavu’ot [the text traditionally recited by some Jews during that evening]; there is also a group class studying the holiday – nothing is required. Some just smoke slowly, with a kind of muted continuous sigh; others drink black coffee quietly; some also begin extensive conversations about the Torah and God and if there is such a thing at all as God.”48 Nir's first collection of poetry, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Begging for Intimacy), was published in 2008. 47 Elhanan Nir, ”Bayit, muziqah, vezehu,” Maqor Rishon 12 June 2009. 48 Ibid.

72

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

Despite the good intentions of their parents and teachers to provide them with an effective traditional Jewish education, as we have seen not all of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets took well to what or to how they were taught, and thus one finds among their works penetrating explorations of the impact of their religious training on their lives. Poems by Yoram Nissinovitch, Nahum Pachenik, and Elhanan Nir portray the psychologically and spiritually difficult experiences they had as students in yeshiva. Nahum Pachenik and Elhanan Nir have written poems in which each portrays a visit to a prominent rabbi with his father during childhood. As they recall these visits as adults each conveys a very strong dissent from his father’s admiration for that rabbi. Possible ways of redefining on one’s own terms one’s relationship to the tradition as an adult are captured in poems by Naama Shaked and Yoram Nissinovitch.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Spiritual Wasteland of the Yeshiva Of the six male poets in this study, all of whom were educated in a yeshiva, three of the poets, Yoram Nissinovitch, Nahum Pachenik, and Elhanan Nir, spoke to me of the difficulties they had with the yeshiva experience. As was mentioned above, each eventually sought alternative institutions for study – Nissinovitch in the pluralistic study house Elul and the religious Zionist study house Beit Morasha, both in Jerusalem, and Pachenik and Nir in the unconventional Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in Efrat. In the following poems, these poets explore a range of issues that arise for at least some boys and young men in the yeshiva world: a spiritually deadening atmosphere , excessively high standards of study and behavior, intellectual narrowness, repressed sexuality, limited views of male gender identity, and disconnection from nature.

‫ַהיְ ׁ ִש ָיבה‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬



.‫ְּכנָ ִעים ְ ּביַ ַעד ְמ ֻבצָּ ר ִה ְת ַה ַּלכְ נ ּו ִ ּב ׁ ְשנַ יִ ם‬ ‫ סוֹ ֲע ִדים ֶאת ַה ֵּלב‬,‫ׁ ְשחו ִּחים ֶאל ַהדַּ ּ ִפים‬ ‫ ְמגִ ִ ּנים ְ ּבלַ ַהט ַעל ַה ֵ ּגו ַה ָּסדוּק וְ נִ ׁ ְש ָ ּב ִעים‬,‫ְ ּבכַ ָ ּונוֹ ת‬ ‫ֶאל מוּל ַה ׁ ּ ַש ָ ּבת ַה ְ ּנגוֹ זָ ה ְּכמו ָּע ָקה לִ ְבכּ וֹ ת וְ לָ ׁ ִשיר‬ ‫ ְ ּב ֻחלְ צוֹ ת ְמכֻ ְפ ָּתרוֹ ת ו ְּמג ָֹר ִבים ַעד‬.‫ְּכהוֹ זִ ים‬ ‫ ּ ִפ ְענַ ְחנ ּו ְצ ָפנִ ים ָ ּבאוֹ ִת ּיוֹ ת וְ ׁ ַשלְ וָ ה ְ ּגדוֹ לָ ה ִמדַּ י‬,‫ְּכ ֵאב‬ .‫יתה ֶאת ָהרו ַּח‬ ָ ‫ֵה ִמ‬

5

‫הוּא לֹא אוֹ ֵהב‬ ‫הוּא לֹא אוֹ ֵהב‬ ּ ּ .‫ ָחזַ ְרנ ּו וְ לַ ׁ ְשנ ּו ַ ּב ִגלוּי ְּכ ְמכֻ ׁ ּ ָש ִפים‬10 ‫ָהיָ ה לָ נ ּו ּגוּף וְ ֵעץ ָאדֹם ׁ ֶש ָּס ַתר ֶאת ׁ ְשמוֹ ָתיו‬ ‫יָ ְפיוֹ ִה ׁ ְש ִחים וְ נֶ ֱעלַ ם מוֹ ִתיר ֲע ֵקבוֹ ת ִ ּב ְתלוּלִ ית‬ ‫ֶה ָע ָפר ַה ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ֶר ׁ ֶשת ְ ּבזַ ַעם‬ ‫ָחשׂ וּף וּלְ ַבדִּ י‬ ‫ ֲאנִ י נִ ׁ ְש ָ ּבע לִ ְחיוֹ ת‬15 74

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING



The Yeshiva



As if moving in a fortified rampart we walked along in pairs.



with devotion, protecting with fervor our cracked backs and vowing

5

as dreamers. In buttoned shirts and socks painfully







Yoram Nissinovitch

Bent over folios, feasting our hearts

in the presence of the Sabbath its burden lifting to cry and to sing

tight, we deciphered codes in the letters and too great a tranquility put our spirit to death. He does not love He does not love

10 again and again we kneaded this discovery as if enchanted.

We had a body and a red tree that refuted His names



of dust rustling in fury





His beauty darkened and disappeared leaving traces in the hillock exposed and alone

15 I vow to live49

The poem begins with an evocation of the main mode of yeshiva study, know as ḥevruta, in which the students study Talmud ”in pairs” (1). The speaker likens this to the experience of soldiers patrolling a military fortified rampart, as if the yeshiva students feel that they have been called upon to fight off alien cultural influences, likened here to enemy forces.50 The long hours they devote to study are physically punishing. As they bend unnaturally over the large folio pages of the talmudic tractate they are studying (2), they feel as if their backs have been ”cracked” (3). They wear the typical white ”buttoned shirts” (5) of the yeshiva student and physically restricting socks that fit tightly on their feet (5-6). And yet the 49 Yoram Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2008), 42. 50 I thank Uri Cohen for his suggestion that the expression ya’ad mevutsar in line 1 is a military term meaning ”fortified rampart.”

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CHAPTER ONE

yeshiva students, ironically, are dedicated to defending the pain they feel against anyone who might question what they are doing (”protecting with fervor our cracked backs” [3]). Each one feels as if his experience of study, so full of ”devotion” (3), is a spiritual feast for his heart (lev, which can also connote ”mind” [2]). In reality, the speaker makes clear, this is far from the truth. As they seek to understand the difficult Aramaic language of the Talmud, they do nothing more than mechanically ”decipher…codes” (6). The state of intense tranquility at which they have arrived in the course of this intense study overwhelms them to such a degree that it destroys whatever passions of the spirit they have inside them: ”and too great a tranquility / put[s] [their] spirit to death” (6-7). At the third Sabbath meal, eaten toward the end of the day, the Sabbath feels like a burden that is in the process of being lifted (4). As they lose themselves in the slow mournful songs associated with that meal, the yeshiva students feel obligated to vow to live up to the high standards of learning and moral integrity set by the yeshiva, a goal about which one may dream but will never reach: ”and vowing, / in the presence of the Sabbath its burden lifting to cry and to sing / as dreamers” (3-5). 51 In the second stanza, the speaker continues his description of the spiritually limited experience of studying in the yeshiva. Since they cannot live up to the religious standards of the yeshiva, the students become convinced that God does not love them (8-9). However, rather than struggle with this most disturbing ”discovery” they become spiritually paralyzed, as if they are enchanted by some spell that dooms them to a frustrating experience analogous to endlessly kneading dough that will never be baked (10). The tension between the spiritual ideals of the yeshiva and the punishing effect 51 The poet has related that he would feel very depressed at the final Sabbath meal in the yeshiva, because in facing the new week he wanted to commit himself to the high standards of learning and moral integrity taught in the yeshiva, but he knew he never would. This depression would keep him from joining in with the slow, somewhat mournful tunes traditionally sung at that meal. Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar) once observed that ”Many of the students in the hesder yeshiva suffer from depression in their studies.” The Hebrew word Rav Shagar uses for ”depression” is mu’aqah, the same word that the poet uses to signify ”burden” in line 4. Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Nehalekh beregesh: mivḥar ma’amarim (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2008), 66. It would appear from Rav Shagar’s comment that Nissinovitch’s experience in yeshiva is not atypical.

76

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

of yeshiva study on the bodies of the students comes to a head when the speaker refers to the physical world (”a body and a red tree” [11]) as being opposed to the divine (”refut[ing] [God’s] names” [11]), while the world that reflects the divine beauty has been ”darkened and disappeared” (12). According to Genesis 2, after God created the first human out of dust, He blew into that human the divine spirit of life. In this not truly spiritual yeshiva, however, the students have only ”traces” of the divine spirit and so they are left as ”hillock[s] / of dust” in a state of constant agitation (”rustling in fury” [12-13]). The speaker himself feels vulnerable and lonely (”exposed and alone” [14]). In this state, rather than vow to live up to the impossible standards of the yeshiva, as he felt he was supposed to do when he sat at the third Sabbath meal (3-4), he vows to escape the death-like confines of the yeshiva and discover how to truly live (15).

‫דְּ ֻמ ּיוֹ ת יְ הו ִּד ּיוֹ ת‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬



‫ָאנ ּו נִ ְת ַ ּג ֵ ּבר ַעל ָה ֱאמוּנָ ה‬ :‫וְ נִ ַ ּגע ָ ּב ַע ְצמוּת ַה ֶ ּנ ְח ֶשׂ ֶפת‬ ָ‫ִא ׁ ּ ָשה קוֹ ַר ַעת ֶאת ַה ְ ּגוִ ילִ ים ִמ ּ ָפנֶ יך‬ ‫ו ְּד ֻמ ּיוֹ ת יְ הו ִּד ּיוֹ ת ְמ ִצ ּלוֹ ת ַעל ַה ַּמ ַָּמ ׁש ְּכ ֶדמוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּ ָפלְ ׁש ּו לִ ְמל ְֹך ִמן ַה ְּס ָד ִקים‬ ‫ַא ָּתה ֵאינְ ָך ֵמ ִטיל ַא ְר ָצה ֶאת ַה ַּת ְר ִמיל‬ ‫ִּכי ִאם אוֹ ֵחז ַ ּב ׁ ּ ְשנָ ִצים ִמ ְתיָ ֵרא לִ ְפ ּג ׁש‬ ‫ַ ּבדְּ ֵבקוּת וּלְ ִה ְת ַא ֵהב‬ ‫נָ ע וְ נָ ד ְ ּבתוֹ ְך ַה ַּמלְ כוּת ָה ֲע ִת ָידה‬





Jewish Figures



We shall overcome faith



A woman rips the parchment from your face





Yoram Nissinovitch

and we shall touch the exposed essence:

and Jewish figures overshadow reality like demons 77

5

CHAPTER ONE

5

that invaded to rule from the cracks

you do not throw your backpack on the ground but hold the straps afraid to meet devotion and to fall in love

wandering within the future kingdom52

Rather than following the imperative to overcome religious doubt, which he was taught in the yeshiva, the speaker has ironically called on others to join him in overcoming religious faith (1). It is important to do so because the faith in which he is being instructed in the yeshiva tends to oversimplify reality, and only when one goes beyond that simplicity can one begin to come into contact with ”the exposed essence” of truth (2). In order for the speaker to be able to understand the complexities of reality, the parchment on which the Torah is written needs, in a figurative sense, to be ripped away from his face, an act accomplished by a woman, who one is taught in yeshiva can easily seduce you from your religious obligations (3). Without this parchment blinding his vision, the speaker can now see reality in a fearless manner. Others, ”Jewish figures” (4), respond to his challenge by desperately trying to ”overshadow” for the speaker the complexities of reality he has discovered by reasserting the simplifying perspective of traditional faith. In so doing they resemble insidious demons of folklore narratives that invade a house from within cracks in a wall (4-5). Returning from a trip away from the yeshiva, the speaker decides not to ”throw [his] backpack on the ground” (6) and settle into his living quarters, thereby stating that he is not going to stay at the yeshiva. At the same time, he is not fully ready to leave. He holds on to the straps of the backpack in a state of fear of the possibility of transcending the limiting perspective of the yeshiva and opening himself up to either true spiritual ”devotion” to God (devequt) or to ”fall[ing] in love” with another person (7-8). Caught between the limited perspective of traditional religious faith and the fear of interacting with reality in a sophisticated manner, like the biblical Cain, 52 Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah, 50.

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COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

the speaker feels cursed to ”wander” (in Hebrew: na vanad, the expression used in connection with Cain in Genesis 4:12 [9]). Just as Cain was judged by God for killing his brother Abel, so the speaker feels that having defied divine authority by searching for an alternative to the worldview of the yeshiva he too deserves the punishment of lifelong wandering. In the end, however, perhaps his wandering will be for the good and he will find the truth he seeks in an alternative ”future kingdom” (9).

‫ַא ְר ָ ּב ָעה ׁ ִש ֵירי ַ ּבחוּר־יְ ׁ ִש ָיבה‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬



‫ דַּ ע‬.‫א‬





ֹ‫דַּ ע ׁ ֶש ַה ֵּמ ֵפר ְ ּב ִריתו‬ ְ‫יִ ְת ָ ּב ַרך‬ ‫ֵעינָ יו לֹא ְמ ֻס ָ ּגלִ ין לִ ְד ָמעוֹ ת‬ ‫ִּכי הוּא ְ ּב ִחינַ ת ִמ ְד ַ ּבר ׁ ְש ָמ ָמה‬ .‫ ׁ ֶש ֵאין בּ וֹ ַמיִ ם וְ ִח ּיוּת ְּכלָ ל‬5 :‫(וְ הוּא ִ ּבלְ ׁשוֹ ן ַה ּק ֶֹד ׁש‬ .)‫יָ ֵב ׁש ַא ְּכ ָ ּבר ַּכ ֶח ֶרס ַה ִ ּנ ׁ ְש ָ ּבר‬ ‫וַ ֲאזַ י הוּא נִ ְק ָרא ָרחוֹ ק‬ ‫ׁ ֶשהוּא ָרחוֹ ק ְמאֹד ִמ ְּמקוֹ ם יִ ׁ ּשוּב‬ ּ ְ 10 .)‫(ב ִחינַ ת יִ ׁ ּשוּב ַהדַּ ַעת וְ ׁ ַשלְ וַ ת ַה ֶ ּנ ֶפ ׁש‬ ,‫וִ ֵיב ׁ ִשין ַמ ַעיְ נוֹ ָתיו ְּכ ֶא ֶרץ ִצ ָ ּיה‬ ‫וּבוֹ ְד ִדין ָעלָ יו יָ ָמיו‬ .‫ְמאֹד‬ ‫יטב‬ ֵ ‫וְ עוֹ ד ַה ֲע ֵמק ֵה‬ ,‫ ׁ ֶש ַה ִּמ ְס ַּת ֵּכל ִ ּב ְר ִק ַיע ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬15 ‫ׁ ֶשהוּא ִענְ יָ ן ָּתכֹל ָּתכֹל‬ ‫ו ִּמ ׁ ּ ָשם ָ ּבאוֹ ת ַה ְ ּנ ׁ ָשמוֹ ת ְּכ ׁ ֶש ֵהן ְטהוֹ רוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ ַה ׁ ּ ְשכִ ינָ ה יוֹ ׁ ֶש ֶבת ׁ ָשם‬ ‫צוֹ ָפה לָ ּה‬ ‫ וּבוֹ ֶד ֶקת ַמ ֲע ֵשׂ ֶיהן‬20 79

CHAPTER ONE

,‫בּ וֹ ֶד ֶדת ו ִּמ ְצ ַט ֶע ֶרת ְמאֹד ַעל ָה ָר ִעים‬ ‫דַּ ע ׁ ֶש ַה ִה ְס ַּת ְּכלוּת ַה ֶּזה‬ ‫ְמ ֻס ָ ּגל לִ ְבכִ ָ ּיה ְ ּגדוֹ לָ ה ְמאֹד‬ ָ ֶ‫ְּכגֶ ׁ ֶשם ַה ּנוֹ ֵטף ָעל‬ .‫יך ּ ִפ ְתאֹם ְ ּב ֶא ְמ ַצע ַה ַ ּבצּ ֶֹרת‬



‫ וְ ַה ַּמ ִ ּביט ִמ ְּמקוֹ ם ַה ִּמ ְד ַ ּבר ׁ ְש ָמ ָמה‬25 ‫ָחזוֹ ר וְ ָחדוֹ ר וְ ַה ֵ ּבט‬ ‫ֶאל ְּתכֵ לֶ ת ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬ ‫הוּא הוּא ְמ ֻס ָ ּגל לַ ֲחרֹט‬ ‫ׁ ִש ָירה ְמ ַצ ֶע ֶקת ְ ּבקוֹ ל ָ ּגדוֹ ל‬ .‫ ו ְּביָ ַדיִ ם ּ ְפרוּשׂ וֹ ת לְ ֵע ֶבר ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬30 .‫יעין ַה ְר ֵ ּבה ַ ּב ֵּלילוֹ ת‬ ִ ‫וּבוֹ כִ ין ָעלָ יו ְר ִק‬

Four Yeshiva Boy Poems



1. Know



Know that the desecrater of the covenant



has eyes that can’t shed tears



5

Nahum Pachenik

of the Blessed One

for he is in a sense a wilderness wasteland with no water or life force at all. (And he is in the holy tongue:

extremely dry like broken pottery). And then they say he is far away

for he is very far from a settled place

10 (in the sense of a settled mind and tranquil soul).

And dry are his springs like arid land, and his days are very

lonely.

And so inquiring more deeply 80



COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

15 he who looks at the heavenly sky,

which is most azure



and the Shekhinah dwells there



from where come the souls when they are pure

observing

20 and checking their deeds

she is lonely and so sorry for those who are evil,



may lead to much crying



know that this looking

like rain that drips on you suddenly in the middle of a drought.

25 And the one who looks from the desert wasteland

repeatedly looking penetratingly



only he is capable of engraving



at the azure of Heaven

poetry that cries out in a loud voice

30 with hands outstretched toward Heaven.

And the firmament cries so much about him at night.53

This poem is about the sense of alienation experienced by a yeshiva student who is wracked with guilt about masturbating. There is no explicit prohibition against masturbation in the Bible. The rabbinic prohibition against masturbation derives from a reading of the biblical story of Onan, who was put to death by God after he ”spilled his seed upon the ground” (Genesis 38:9) rather than fulfill his responsibility to his dead brother by fathering children with his brother’s widow. According to the Talmud, Onan was guilty not only due to his unwillingness to honor his fraternal obligation, but also because he committed the sin of ”releasing semen in vain” (hamotsi shikhvat zera levatalah), that is inducing a seminal emission that was not for the purpose of procreation, which is the sin committed by any male who masturbates. In one talmudic 53 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 28-29.

81

CHAPTER ONE

passage, four rabbis make clear how seriously they take this sin. Rabbi Yohanan declares that ”anyone who releases semen in vain should be put to death (kol hamotsi shikhvat zera levatalah ḥayyav mitah). Following that statement, Rabbi Yitzhak and Rabbi Ami state that anyone who does such an act has committed the equivalent of murder (ke’illu shofekh damim) and Rabbi Asi states that the act is the equivalent of idolatry (ke’illu oved avodah zarah [Nidah 13a]). The classic work of medieval Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, adds a sense of urgency to this prohibition by stating that improper seminal emissions can have a negative impact on the cosmos in a mystical sense. This mystical understanding of the effect of masturbation became the basis for a very strict prohibition against masturbation and a discomfort with nocturnal emissions found in the sixteenth-century Jewish law code, Shulhan Arukh.54 Single adolescent yeshiva students, with a naturally emerging erotic drive, usually find it extremely difficult if not impossible to live up to this religious standard, although they are taught to make every effort to do so. One of the most forceful proponents of the prohibition on improper seminal emissions was the Hasidic master Rav Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810).55 A passage about this issue found in Rav Nahman’s book Liqutei etsot contains imagery that is central to the poem.56 In this passage, Rav Nahman refers repeatedly to hapogem et berito (literally: the one who spoils his covenant). The term refers to a man who masturbates or has a nocturnal emission, and it is associated with the term ni’uf, which refers to having intercourse with one’s wife without the proper attitude of sanctity, as well as to the sin of adultery. The notion of ”spoiling the covenant” would appear to derive from the fact that this sin is done with the male sexual organ which has been circumcised 54 David Feldman, ”Onanism.” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), Vol. 15, 426-427.  55 Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 37-39, 167-170, 179-180n60. 56 The poet indicated to me that this book served as a source for the poem. The quotes are from the passage ”Berit” in Nahman of Bratslav, Liqutei etsot. The edition I consulted had no information about location, publisher, or date.

82

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

as a sign of God’s covenant with the people of Israel. Rav Nahman delineates a number of consequences suffered by a man who is guilty of ”spoiling the covenant” or of any improper acts of sexual intercourse. ”All humiliations and shame that come upon a person are caused by spoiling the covenant,” he declares. ”All suffering that a person has,” he asserts, ”are because of spoiling the covenant,” including ”becoming ill with epilepsy.”57 The style of the poem imitates Rav Nahman’s Hebrew style. In many passages of his teachings, Rav Nahman begins a thought with ”Know that…” (da she…), found in line 1, and he also uses the term beḥinat (”in a sense” or ”in the sense of”), found in lines 4 and 10. In line 22, the poet even preserves the kind of grammatical mistake of inconsistency in the use of gender forms that one frequently finds in the Hebrew of Hasidic texts. Rather than using the feminine form for ”this” (hazot) with the feminine noun hahistaklut (”looking”), the speaker uses the masculine form for ”this” (hazeh). The poet does change Rav Nahman’s term hapogem et berito (he who spoils the covenant) to hamefer berito (he who desecrates [or breaks] the covenant). He may have made this change because the term mefer berit is more commonly used in modern Hebrew in the sense of ”breaking a covenant” than pogem berit. The term mefer berit is used in rabbinic literature to refer to a male Jew who does not accept the obligation to be circumcised or tries to cover up the sign of the circumcision, thereby disassociating himself from the covenant between God and the

57 Yair Dreyfus, the head of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak where Nahum Pachenik studied during the process of his return to traditional observance, wrote an essay in which the concept of hapogem et berito is seen not as a way of inducing guilt feelings in single adolescent males who masturbate or have nocturnal seminal emissions, but rather as a concept related to issues of sexual ethics. ”Covenant (berit),” he writes, ”is the communication of a person with everything in the world: objects, phenomena, and mainly the human other from a position of affability, of positivity in actual practice. Here becomes clear the extremely important significance of [hapogem et berito]: turning pure communication into a relationship which is exploitive, oppressive, covetous.” Yair Dreyfus, ”Haberit vehayetser: al qedushah, yitsriyyut, tseni’ut veḥerut rigshit be’ishut” in Vayiqra et shemam adam: zugiyyut umishpaḥah memabbat yehudi ḥadash, ed. Zohar Maor (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2005), 126.

83

CHAPTER ONE

people of Israel.58 The poem’s allusion to such a Jew implies that the yeshiva boy sees masturbation as a severe rejection of the Jew’s relationship with God.59 A number of terms and images which Rav Nahman uses in his statement about spoiling the covenant made their way into the poem. In order to keep oneself from sexual desire, writes Rav Nahman, one should ”shed tears as one accepts the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, that is arouse oneself until one cries and sheds tears at the time that one says Shema [the biblical passages at the center of the traditional morning and evening prayers].” In the poem, the person who spoils the covenant ”can’t shed tears” (3). Rav Nahman states that as a result of ni’uf ”breathing stops which is the soul which is the main life force of a person and because of this the liquidity of the body is dried and because of this the mind becomes spoiled” and that ”ta’avat [the desire of] ni’uf can bring one to insanity.” Similarly in the poem we read that the sinner ”is in a sense a wilderness wasteland / with no water or life force at all. / (And he is in the holy tongue: / extremely dry like broken pottery). / And then they say he is far away / for he is very far from a settled place / (in the sense of a settled mind and tranquil soul). / And dry are his springs like arid land, / and his days are very / lonely” (4-13). In the Hebrew, ”extremely dry” (7) is yavesh akbar. The word akbar is from Arabic and it is used in Hebrew slang to emphasize something. When the speaker says that this is an expression in ”the holy tongue” (6), meaning Hebrew, he is undermining its import because one of the two words is in Arabic, not Hebrew. According to Rav Nahman, one method of overcoming such sexual sins, a process he calls tiqqun haberit (fixing, or re-establishing the covenant), is to engage in ”crying out aloud.” In the poem the yeshiva stu58 Sanhedrin 99a. 59 The speaker’s language also reflects his immersion in classical rabbinic texts by frequently using the letter nun to signify the masculine plural form, which is characteristic of classical rabbinic Hebrew, rather than the letter mem, which is characteristic of biblical and modern Hebrew: musuggalin rather than musaggalim (3), veyeveshin rather than veyeveshim (11), uvodedin rather than uvodedim (12), uvokhin rather than uvokhim (31), and reqiyin rather than reqiyim (31)

84

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

dent attempts to turn away from the ”desert wasteland” (25) in which he dwells in his sinful state and he looks to ”the azure of Heaven” (2627), the place where souls, before coming into the world, ”are pure” (17). The student composes poetry in an intense manner analogous to engraving and ”cries out in a loud voice / with hands outstretched toward Heaven” (28-30). Even worse than the individual suffering of a person who engages in sexual sins is the fact that, according to Rav Nahman, a person’s sin of spoiling the covenant may have cosmic implications as well: ”As a consequence of breaking this prohibition one induces, as it were, menstrual blood of the Shekhinah and causes a separation between the Holy One Blessed be He and the Shekhinah.” In mystical terms, the very well-being of the cosmos depends on the joining of the masculine side of divinity, the Holy One Blessed be He, and the feminine side of divinity, the Shekhinah. If the Shekhinah becomes like a woman whose menstrual blood prohibits her from engaging in sexual intercourse with her husband, this mystical joining of the two sides of divinity is impossible. In the poem, the Shekhinah suffers a state of isolation similar to that of the sexual sinner, in loneliness and grief, as she observes the person engaged in sexual sin: She is ”lonely and so sorry for those who are evil” (21). It is significant that the male rabbinical authority figures who have denounced the ”spoiling of the covenant” by their adolescent students are replaced in the poem by the female image of the Shekhinah who is ”observing / and checking their deeds” (19-20). Rather than engage in the kind of condemnation the students would expect from their rabbis if they were caught in the act of satisfying their sexual desires, the motherly Shekhinah figure just cries (23), as does the firmament (31). Indeed, her concern for the students violating the prohibition against masturbation opens up the possibility of their escaping from feelings of guilt and alienation. When the tears of her sorrow fall to the earthly realm, the sinners discern the possibility of escaping the dry feeling of living in a wasteland of sin: ”know that this looking / may lead to much crying / like rain that drips on you suddenly in the middle of a drought” (22-24). 85

CHAPTER ONE

‫ב‬

2

‫ֲאנִ י ַ ּבחו ַּרת־‬ ,‫הפ ָ ּיה‬ ִ ‫יְ ׁ ִש ָיבה ְמגַ ָּלה נָ ׁ ִש ּיוּת יְ ֵפ‬ ‫ַרגְ לַ י ִמ ְת ָא ְרכוֹ ת ו ִּמ ְת ַעדְּ נוֹ ת‬ ‫ֲאנִ י‬ 5 ‫ ְרגִ ׁישוּת לִ ְפ ָר ִחים‬,‫ַ ּבחו ָּרה יָ ָפה ׁשוֹ כֶ נֶ ת ִ ּבי‬ ‫ ְרגִ ׁישוּת לָ ֲאגַ ִּמים ַה ְּקפו ִּאים ַהבּ וֹ ֲה ִקים‬,‫ׁ ְש ָמ ּה‬ ,‫ׁ ְש ָמ ּה‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ַ ּבחו ָּרה‬ ‫ה־צ ּפוֹ ר ִמי יֵ ַדע‬ ִ ‫ְמ ַח ּ ֶפ ֶשׂ ת ַא ֲה ָבה ְמ ַח ּ ֶפ ֶשׂ ת ִא ׁ ּ ָש‬ ‫ ֲאנִ י ַ ּבחו ַּרת־‬10 ‫יְ ׁ ִש ָיבה אוֹ ֶה ֶבת ַע ְצ ָמ ּה‬ ‫סוֹ לַ ַחת לְ ַע ְצ ָמ ּה ַעל ָּכל ֲעווֹ נוֹ ֶת ָיה‬ ‫ַּכף יָ ד ְמלַ ֶּט ֶפת ַּכף יָ ד לִ ְרפו ָּאה‬ ‫ׁ ְשלֵ ָמה‬



I am a yeshiva



my legs lengthen and become delicate



girl discovering very beautiful femininity,

I 5

a pretty girl dwells within me, sensitivity to flowers is her name, sensitivity to shining frozen lakes is her name, I am a girl

seeking love seeking a woman-bird, who would know?

10 I am a yeshiva

girl loving herself



a hand caressing a hand for healing





forgiving herself for all her sins that is complete 60

60 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 30.

86

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

Written during a visit by the poet to Nepal in 1996, the poem challenges the intense masculine identity of the typical yeshiva student. The self-identification by the speaker as ”a yeshiva / girl” (1-2) is rather startling, for in traditional Jewish culture a male youth can be referred to as a ”yeshiva boy” (baḥur yeshivah), but there is no such thing as a ”yeshiva girl” (baḥurat yeshivah). This is true even for the increasing number of religious Zionist girls who are studying Talmud and other texts that are part of the yeshiva curriculum; the institutions in which they study are referred to by terms other than yeshivah, such as ulpanah or midrashah. The speaker finds within himself a feminine identity with qualities to which a typical yeshiva boy would never admit: beauty and delicacy (”discovering very beautiful femininity, / my legs lengthen and become delicate / I / a pretty girl dwells within me” [2-5]); sensitivity to nature (”flowers /… shining frozen lakes” [5-6]); a longing for love and for a connection with a ”woman-bird” figure with which to fly off to freedom (9). In place of the constant self-criticism experienced by the yeshiva boy who is told to live up to very high standards in the areas of learning and moral qualities, as a girl the speaker can actually love and forgive himself for all that he has done wrong (10-12). Instead of the masculine handshake between yeshiva students, the speaker longs for the more reassuring experience of a hand caressing his hand, bringing a healing wholeness to his soul (13-14).

‫ג‬



‫ֲאנִ י ַח ָ ּיה טוֹ ֶר ֶפת י ִֹפי‬ ּ ּ .‫ין־כ ֶרם‬ ָ ‫ִבכְ ַפר ֵע‬ ּ ‫ֲאנִ י ַח ָיה זוֹ לֶ לֶ ת ׁ ֶש ֶמ ׁש‬ .‫ְ ּבצו ֵּקי ַהיְ ׁשו ָּעה‬ ּ 5 ‫ָ ּב ֲע ָמ ִקים ַה ִּמ ְת ַפ ְּתלִ ים ְס ִביב ּגו ִּפי‬ ּ ‫ֲאנִ י ַח ָיה ִּכ ְמ ַעט וְ צוֹ ֶע ֶקת‬ ּ .‫ְמ ׁ ֻשלְ ֶה ֶבת ֵמ ַה ׁ ּ ְש ֵק ִדיוֹ ת ַהבּ וֹ ֲהקוֹ ת‬ .‫ֲאנִ י ַח ָ ּיה הוֹ לֶ כֶ ת לְ ִאבּ וּד ַ ּב ִּס ְמ ָטאוֹ ת‬ ‫ ּגוֹ ַמ ַעת ַמיִ ם ִמן ַה ַּמ ְעיָ ן‬,‫ַח ָ ּיה ְצ ֵמ ָאה‬ .‫ לוֹ ֶק ֶקת ְ ּבכָ ל ָה ְרחוֹ בוֹ ת ַה ַּל ִחים‬10 87

CHAPTER ONE

.‫ֲאנִ י ַח ָ ּיה בּ וֹ ֶד ֶדת‬ ּ ‫ַעל ַק ׁ ְשתוֹ ת ַה ַח ּלוֹ נוֹ ת ַה ּטו ְּר ִקיזִ ִיים‬ .‫יטה‬ ָ ‫ִמן ַהחוּץ ַמ ִ ּב‬ .‫ַח ָ ּיה ְמא ֶֹה ֶבת ַח ִ ּיים‬ ,‫ ַח ָ ּיה נָ ׁ ִשית ַ ּג ְב ִרית ְמאֹד‬15 .‫ַ ּב ַּמ ֲעלוֹ ת ַה ְמד ָֹרגִ ים ִמ ׁ ְש ָּת ָהה ו ְִּמ ׁ ְש ּתוֹ לֶ לֶ ת‬ 3

I am an animal preying on beauty



I am an animal gorging on the sun



5

in the village of Ein Karem. in the cliffs of salvation.

In the valleys that twist around my body I am almost an animal and shout

excited by the shining almond trees.

I am an animal getting lost in the alleys.

A thirsty animal, swallowing water from the spring

10 licking all of the streets that are wet.

I am a lonely animal.



from the outside I look in.



At the turquoise arches of the windows An animal in love with life.

15 A very feminine masculine animal,

at the ascending heights wondering and boisterous.61

In contrast to the yeshiva student, who is expected to be self-controlled, civilized, and spiritual, the speaker is a very physical wild animal (1). He spends his time not in the holy city of Jerusalem but ”getting lost in the alleys” (8) in the more natural setting of the village of Ein Karem, on the outskirts of Jerusalem (2). The word for ”wild animal” in Hebrew, ḥayyah, is feminine, and so in accordance with Hebrew grammar all of the verbs and adjectives associated with it are in the feminine form. Thus, as in the 61 Ibid., 31.

88

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

previous poem, the speaker is removing himself from the strictures of his male gender. The speaker’s salvation will not come by means of an active engagement in the divinely ordained religious commandments, but rather in the context of nature (”in the cliffs of salvation” [4]). Instead of a restrained civilized appreciation of the beauty of nature, he approaches it aggressively with an animalistic appetite: ”preying on beauty” (1); ”gorging on the sun” (3); ”[a] thirsty animal, swallowing water from the spring / licking all of the streets that are wet” (9-10). Nature itself, not the intense study of Talmud, is what brings him alive (”In the valleys that twist around my body / I am almost an animal and shout / excited by the shining almond trees” [5-7]). In his lonely individuality (11), he appears to be the opposite of the yeshiva boy looking from inside the yeshiva out to the world of nature to which he might wish to escape; as a wild animal he is on the outside looking in, yearning not for anything that is going on, just appreciating the beauty of ”the turquoise arches of the windows” (1213) typically found in the houses that dominate the Ein Karem landscape, which were once lived in by Arabs. In this poem, as the speaker gets in touch with his nature as ”[a]n animal in love with life” (14), he feels his bisexual self as containing both masculinity and femininity (”A very feminine masculine animal” [15]), and he feels that he is at the highest level of wonder, able to let go and act in the very kind of boisterous manner that would be forbidden to him in the yeshiva (16).

‫ ׁ ֶשל ַ ּבחוּר־יְ ׁ ִש ָיבה‬Subtext .‫ד‬



.‫ַה ּגוּף‬ ‫ֲאנִ י צוֹ ֵעק ִמ ּתוֹ ְך ַה ּגוּף ַה ִ ּנ ְס ָּתר‬ .‫ ּגו ִּפי ׁ ֶש ִּלי רוֹ ֶצה לְ ִה ְתעוֹ ֵרר‬,‫ ַח ִ ּיים‬,‫ֲאלֵ יכֶ ם‬ .‫ִעם ָה ָא ִביב ַאלְ ֵפי ּ ְפ ָר ִחים זוֹ ְר ִמים ִ ּבוְ ִר ַידי ַה ְּסמוּיִ ים‬ ‫ֵאלַ יִ ְך ֲאהו ָּב ִתי ַה ּגוּף דַּ יְ ָקא ַה ׁ ּ ָשחוּם ִמ ְתעוֹ ֵרר‬ ‫ׁשו ִּטי ׁשו ִּטי ֲאהו ָּב ִתי ׁשו ִּטי ׁשו ִּטי ֵאלַ י‬ ‫ַה ּגוּף יְ גַ ֶּלה לָ נ ּו ּ ְפלָ אוֹ ת וְ עוֹ ד ּ ְפלָ אוֹ ת‬ ‫ַא ְּת ַח ִּכי לִ י‬ ‫ָ ּב ָא ִביב ַה ַּמ ְק ִסים ׁ ֶש ְּל ָפנֵ ינ ּו וְ ֶא ְחזֹר‬



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5

CHAPTER ONE

‫ ִמ ּתוֹ ְך ַה ּגוּף ֲאנִ י צוֹ ֵר ַח‬10 ‫בּ ֶֹקר טוֹ ב עוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫וְ ַה ּגוּף ְ ּב ִא ְת ָערו ָּתא דִּ לְ ַת ָּתא‬ ‫אוֹ ר ָ ּגנוּז ֵמה׳‬ ‫רוֹ ֵטט ִמ ַּכ ּפוֹ ת ַרגְ לָ יו‬ .‫ וְ עוֹ לֶ ה ִ ּב ְצ ָע ָקה לָ ָר ִק ַיע‬15 ‫בּ ֶֹקר טוֹ ב לָ כֶ ם נוֹ ְס ִעים‬ ‫ימה ו ְּבטו ָּחה‬ ָ ‫ַה ְמ ָר ָאה נְ ִע‬ ‫לֵ יל ַה ֵּס ֶדר ָק ֵרב ו ָּבא‬ .‫ַה ַּליְ לָ ה ַה ֶּזה ּגו ֵּפינ ּו ְ ּבנֵ י חוֹ ִרין‬



4. Subtext of a Yeshiva Boy



The body.



to you, life, my body wants to awake.

5

I cry out from within my hidden body In spring thousands of flowers flow in my unseen veins. To you62 my love my body so swarthy awakes



sail sail my love sail sail to me



wait for me



our bodies will reveal to us wonders upon wonders in this enchanting spring before us I’ll return

10 from within my body I scream

good morning world



a hidden light from God



my body in an arousal from below trembling from the bottom of my feet

15 and rising in a cry to the sky.

Good morning to you passengers



the seder night will soon arrive



a pleasant and safe take off

this night our bodies are free. 63

62 In lines 5-8 the speaker addresses his lover in the second person feminine singular. 63 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 32.

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COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

This is a poem about the awakening of a yeshiva student to the beauties of spring and to the desire for love, both of which he is taught to avoid so that he can fully devote himself to his studies and his religious obligations. In rebellion against the yeshiva ethos, his body, the needs of which he is supposed to hide (1-2), becomes very infused with the growth of spring (”thousands of flowers flow in my unseen veins” [4]), and he wishes to wake up to ”life” (3) and to discover a female partner (”To you my love my body so swarthy awakes,” [5]). He calls upon his love to sail directly to him, for together they can discover wondrous bodily pleasures (6-7). He urges her to continue to wait for him ”in this enchanting spring before us” (8-9). The speaker has been taught in yeshiva that his body is a barrier to the holy. Despite that teaching, he finds within that body the power to greet the world with passion (”from within my body I scream / good morning world” [10-11]). He finds that his physical passion, which he refers to as an ”arousal from below” (12) actually connects him to the mystical ”hidden light” (or haganuz) that is of divine origin (13). The expression ”an arousal from below” appears in Aramaic: be’itaruta diletatta, which is a mystical term that refers to the power of human beings on earth to arouse God. This term is found in the Gush Emunim theology conveyed by Rav Shlomo Aviner. Rav Aviner distinguishes between the rapid redemption of the Exodus from Egypt as be’itaruta dile’ella (arousal from above, that is from God) and the slower, less consistent process of redemption in our time which involves settling the territories as be’itaruta diletatta (arousal from below, that is based on human action). It would appear that the poet is using this theologically charged term to reject its political use in favor of a use in the realm of human love.64 The rise of the speaker’s body to the sky in an intensely physical excitement (”trembling from the bottom of my feet / and rising in a cry to the sky” [14-15]) is presented as if he were taking off in an airplane, in which the captain announces over the loudspeaker, ”Good morning to you passengers / a pleasant and safe take off” (16-17). Just as the trusted 64 The speaker also makes use of the Aramaic word dayka in line 5, reflecting his immersion in the study of Talmud, which is written largely in Aramaic.

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CHAPTER ONE

airplane pilot speaks reassuringly to the passengers that all is well, so does the speaker feel assured that this experience of physical and spiritual stimulation is proper. Passover occurs in the spring, and the Haggadah read at the seder on the first night of the holiday contains the Four Questions, which ask why ”this night” (halaylah hazeh) is different from all other nights. It also contains a call to the needy to participate in the seder, which concludes with the wish that Jews will become ”free” (benei ḥorin) when the final redemption arrives. In this personal celebration of a Passover-like liberation, it is the body of the speaker and his lover that ”this night” (halaylah hazeh) will finally be ”free” (benei ḥorin [18-19]). The word ”subtext” appears in English in the title. It would seem that the subtext that lies beneath the traditional text studied in the yeshiva is the body, whose needs the yeshiva boy is expected to repress, but which he rebelliously insists on fulfilling. The fact that the word is in English emphasizes how foreign the realm of the body is to the yeshiva world.

‫לִ ְק ּפֹץ וְ ל ֹא לִ ְבר ַֹח‬ ‫אלחנן ניר‬



‫ַמ ׁ ּ ֶשה ּו ִ ּבי ָּכאן‬ ‫נוֹ ֵפל ַע ְצמוֹ לָ ַד ַעת‬ ‫ ֶאל‬,‫ֶאל ַה ִ ּנ ְפ ָּתח‬ ‫ַה ּקוֹ ֵפץ ְּתהוֹ ם נִ ׁ ְש ָּכח‬ ּ 5 ‫ִמ ָכל נו ַּע ִקירוֹ ת ָה ִעיר וְ ַהחוֹ מוֹ ת‬ ֹּ‫ְמזַ ֵ ּנק ֶאל ַא ֲה ַבת יוֹ נָ ה ֲאסו ָּרה ׁ ֶשלו‬ ‫וּבוֹ ֵר ַח‬ ּ .‫ֵמ ַה ַח ִיים ַה ְ ּבגָ ִדים ַה ְּת ֵאנָ ה‬ ּ .)‫ ֲעבוֹ ָדה״‬.‫ ֲעבוֹ ָדה‬.‫(״זוּגִ יוּת ִהיא ֲעבוֹ ָדה‬ ּ ‫יתי ּפֹה‬ ִ ִ‫ ֱאל ִֹהים ַה ֶילֶ ד ׁ ֶש ָהי‬10 ְ ,‫ְמ ַק ֵ ּבל ְֶאת ַה ׁ ַש ָ ּבת נֶ ֶאנְ ָחה ִמ ּתוֹ ך ַה ְּס ָפ ִרים‬ ְ ‫יתי בּ וֹ ֵער‬ ִ ִ‫ִמ ּתוֹ ך ֵא ׁש ׁ ֶש ָהי‬ .‫לְ לֹא ֵע ִצים לְ לֹא חוֹ ף וְ ׁ ֶש ֶמן‬ ,‫ֲא ָבל ַעל ְשׂ ַפת ַה ַמכְ ֵּת ׁש‬ 92

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING



To Jump and Not to Flee



Something in me here



to that which is open, to



5

‫ ו ַּמ ְמ ׁ ִש ְיך לַ ֲעמֹד מוּל ַה ַ ּג ְע ּגו ַּע‬15 ‫ִּכי לֹא רוֹ ֶצה לַ ֲעזֹב ַהכּ ֹל מוּל ָהרו ַּח‬ ‫מוּל טוֹ ֵרף ַהצְּ ָעקוֹ ת וְ ַה ַּמ ְעיָ נוֹ ת‬ ‫ְ ּביוֹ ם‬ ְ‫ָרגִ יל ָּכל ָּכך‬

Elhanan Nir

falls away from knowing one who jumps into a forgotten abyss

from all movement dividers of the city and its walls leaping to his forbidden love of Jonah and fleeing

from life clothes and the date palm.

(”Relationships are work, work, work.”)

10 God, the child I was here

greeting the Sabbath that was sighing from within the books,



without wood without shore and oil.



from within a fire I would burn But at the edge of the crater,

15 and continuing to stand facing longing

not wanting to leave everything facing the wind



on a day



facing that which stirs up cries and fountains so regular as this 65

This poem captures the difficult experience of the poet as a student in the yeshiva in Mitzpe Ramon affiliated with Merkaz Harav, where he studied for a period of time. Mitzpe Ramon is a town named after the lookout spot from which one can see the marvelous Ramon Crater. The 65 Elhanan Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008), 66.

93

CHAPTER ONE

poem refers explicitly to ”the edge of the crater” (14), and it contains images of the speaker looking over this vast wonder of nature, imagining himself falling into the open space, jumping into ”a forgotten abyss” (1-4). This fantasy of jumping represents a desire to escape that in the yeshiva which closes him in (”dividers of the city and its walls,” [5]) and the regularity of life there (”life clothes and the date palm,” [8]). It is an escape from misguided lessons the yeshiva students are taught, such as that ”[r]elationships are work, work, work” (9), that is that you should not think of marriage as the culmination of a romantic love affair, but rather you should choose a mate who is ideologically compatible and then if you both try very hard, love will come to you and her after you marry. The speaker’s desire to flee, later referred to as the urge ”to leave everything” (16), has been characterized by the poet as the desire to escape the spiritually demanding world of the yeshiva, ”to flee the great message [of the yeshiva] that falls on the young shoulders of those who are just nineteen years old.” 66 As a not very mature yeshiva student (”God, the child I was here” [10]), when the Sabbath arrives, it seems to the speaker as if together with him the books he has studied sigh in relief after a long week at the yeshiva during which his soul burned with the passion of traditional study (”from within a fire I would burn / without wood without shore and oil” [11-13]). The speaker refers to his desire to jump to escape the yeshiva as a ”forbidden love of Jonah” (6). In the Bible, Jonah’s flight from God’s command to prophesy to Nineveh is portrayed as distancing him from the divine; in the poem, the speaker’s desire to abandon the yeshiva is portrayed as a way to come closer to that which is truly alive. As the speaker stands on the edge of the crater outlook, on the one hand he declares himself to be one who is ”longing / not wanting to leave everything” associated with the yeshiva, and yet he is fascinated with an alternative world so very vital: ”facing the wind / facing that which stirs up cries and fountains” (14-17). The speaker knows, however, that if he does not leave that with which he is familiar

66 In an e-mail correspondence with me, 30 June 2009.

94

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

at the yeshiva, he will spend yet another spiritually deadening ”day / so regular as this” day on which he contemplates fleeing (18-19). Early in the poem the speaker suggests that the escape from the yeshiva would be a kind of suicide. The poem begins with a statement: ”Something in me here / falls away from knowing”(1-2). In Hebrew the expression ”falls away from knowing” is nofel atsmo lada’at, which is a play on the Hebrew expression me’abbed atsmo lada’at (commits suicide), thereby suggesting that even though he knows, on some level, that to jump, that is to escape, would be the more life-affirming choice, the speaker must come to terms with the feeling that to do so would be to cut himself off from the only society and culture he has known since birth. The title of the poem, ”To Jump and Not to Flee,” indicates that to immerse himself in a world of vitality is actually not a flight from something to which he should be loyal, which would be comparable to Jonah’s flight, but rather a movement toward something that he has the legitimate right to desire.

95

CHAPTER ONE

A Visit With Father to an Important RABBI Nahum Pachenik and Elhanan Nir each write of a formative childhood experience of going with his father to visit a highly respected rabbi, Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook, in the case of Pachenik, and Rav Asher Arieli, in the case of Nir. In both of their poems, one can discern that as a child the speaker was too young to fully appreciate the significance of the teachings the rabbi imparted at that visit. Now that he is an adult, the speaker in each poem finds the rabbi’s teachings to be highly problematic.

‫״ל ֹא ָּתגוּרוּ!״‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬



‫ ּפו ִּרים תשמ״א ִהיא ׁ ְש ָמ ָמה‬,‫ֶא ְצלְ ָך ַ ּב ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫וְ נַ ֲהפ ְֹך הוּא ּפו ִּרים ְּת ֵהא ׁ ְשנַ ת ִמ ְד ַר ְך ַא ְר ֵצנ ּו‬ ‫יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל וְ עוֹ ד ּ ַפ ַעם ֶא ֶרץ יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל וְ ׁשוּב ֶא ֶרץ יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל ָּכל דְּ ָר ׁ ָשה ָּכל‬ ‫יחה ָּכל ׁ ִשעוּר ֶא ֶרץ יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל עוֹ ד וְ עֹוד ַעד ַה ּסוֹ ף‬ ָ ׂ‫ִש‬



.‫ְמכֻ ׁ ּ ָש ִפים ָהיִ ינ ּו ִמן ָה ְרגָ ִבים‬

5

‫ נִ ְפ ַּת ַחת ַהדֶּ לֶ ת ַה ּ ְפ ׁשו ָּטה ְּכיָ ד‬,‫ יָ ד ְ ּביָ ד ִעם ָא ִבי‬,‫ֶא ְצלְ ָך ַ ּב ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫ִ ּב ְרחוֹ ב עוֹ ַב ְדיָ ה הוּא ֶע ֶבד ה׳ ִ ּב ׁ ְשכוּנַ ת‬ .ּ‫יחת ְ ּג ֻא ָּל ֵתנו‬ ַ ‫אשית ְצ ִמ‬ ִ ׁ ‫ְ ּג ֻא ָּלה ִהיא ְמ ִדינָ ֵתנ ּו ִהיא ֵר‬ ,‫ֹאשי ְ ּב ַרכּ וּת‬ ִ ׁ ‫ַר ֵ ּבנוֹ ְמלַ ֵּטף ֶאת ר‬ ‫ ַּכף יָ דוֹ ַה ּטוֹ ָבה לְ ָבנָ ה ו ׁ ְּשקו ָּפה ְּכזִ ְקנָ ה‬10 ‫ֶא ְצ ְ ּבעוֹ ָתיו ַח ְסרוֹ ת ׁ ַש ַחר‬ ּ ּ ‫ נָ ׁ ַשף ִמלוֹ ָתיו ַה ְקדוֹ ׁשוֹ ת‬,‫לֹא ָּתגוּר ּו ֵמ ֶהם‬ ְ ‫ֶאל ּתוֹ ך יַ לְ דו ִּתי ְמ ַאגְ ֵרף ֶא ְצ ָ ּבעות‬ ‫ית־אל ֵּכן ָּתגוּר ּו‬ ֵ ‫לֹא ָּתגוּר ּו ו ְּב ֵב‬ ‫אשוֹ ן ִמ ַּמ ְחמוּד רוֹ ֵעה ַהצּ ֹאן‬ ׁ ‫ ו ַּפ ַחד ִר‬15 .‫ָס ַדק ֶאת לִ ִ ּבי ַה ַ ּילְ דִּ י‬

96

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING



”Fear Not!”



At your house, Purim 5741 it’s desolate





Nahum Pachenik

all is opposite on Purim may it be the year of gaining 

a foothold in our Land of



Israel and once more Land of Israel and again Land of Israel 



discourse every lesson Land of Israel more and more 

5

We were enchanted by those clods of earth.



At your house, hand in hand with my father, the door opens 



on Obadiah Street he was the servant of the Lord in the 



Geula which is our State the first flowering of our redemption.



every sermon every

from beginning to end

like a hand outstretched neighborhood of

Our Rabbi caresses my head softly,

10 his good hand white and transparent like old age

his fingers insubstantial



into my childhood with clenched fingers



Do not fear them, he breathed out his holy words Do not fear and in Beit El you shall live

15 But a first fear of Mahmoud the shepherd

cracked my childish heart.67

In the late summer of 1967 (14 Elul in the Hebrew calendar), Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook issued a public statement opposing the withdrawal of Israel from any of the territories it had captured during the Six-Day War the previous June. At the top of the printed statement were the Hebrew words lo 67 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 59.

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CHAPTER ONE

taguru (fear not) in large letters followed by two exclamation points. In the declaration, Rav Zvi Yehuda stated unequivocally that it was a violation of the laws of the Torah to return any of the territories to Gentiles, and he called on all Jews to oppose such a return, assuring them that they would receive heavenly help for their efforts. In his study of Gush Emunim, Danny Rubinstein writes that this declaration ”became a kind of founding document and platform for the young religious [Zionists] who were opposed to Israeli withdrawal.” In effect, this document helped to create an alliance between Rav Zvi Yehuda and a core group of religious Zionists, some of whom had already become his followers even before 1967, that was to give birth to Gush Emunim after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.68 The rallying cry lo taguru (fear not) that was the title of Rav Zvi Yehuda’s declaration is also the title of this poem. In the poem, the speaker recalls being taken by his father to visit Rav Zvi Yehuda on the holiday of Purim. The year in the Jewish calendar is 5741, (taf shin mem alef), and in keeping with the traditional Jewish custom of using the letters of the Hebrew year as abbreviations for words, these letters are said in the poem to stand for the words tehe shenat midrakh artsentu (”may it be the year of gaining a foothold in our Land,” [2]). There is an allusion here to the biblical verse: ”Do not challenge them [the descendants of Esau] for I will not give to you of their land until even a foothold [ad midrakh kaf ragel], for I have given Mount Seir to Esau” (Deuteronomy 2:5). It is interesting that the expression midrakh kaf ragel is used in God’s statement that he has not given to Israel the land of Esau. By choosing to allude to this verse the speaker presents an ironic contrast between the Torah’s recognition that other peoples have a right to land and the Gush Emunim ideology of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook that recognizes only Jewish land ownership in the area. In the biblical Book of Esther, the expression found in line 2, ”all is opposite” (venahfokh hu [Esther 9:1]) conveys the fact that Haman’s plans to destroy the Jews of Persia were reversed and the Jews triumphed over him. 68 Danny Rubinstein, Mi lashem elay: gush emunim (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1982), 30-31. For the text of the declaration, see Erets hatsevi: rabbenu harav Zvi Yehuda Hakohen Kook zatsal bema’arakhah al shelemut artsenu, ed. Zalman Barukh Melamed (Beit El: Netivei Or, 1995), 19-20.

98

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

In the context of the Gush Emunim rabbi’s home, the reversal would seem to refer to the transformation of the wasteland (”it’s desolate” [1]) of the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 into developed settlements that will help the Jews to the achievement of ”gaining a foothold in [the] Land” (2). By repeating the term ”Land of Israel,” the speaker refers sarcastically to Rav Zvi Yehuda’s obsession with settling the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, to the exclusion of any other religious topic: ”Land of Israel and once more Land of Israel and again Land of Israel every sermon every / discourse every lesson Land of Israel more and more from beginning to end” (2-4). The tone of sarcasm is extended when the speaker reduces the entire Gush Emunim ideology to a process in which people were enchanted to be loyal to ”clods of earth” (5). The obsessive nature of the settlement ideology comes through in lines 7-8, when the street on which the rabbi lives, Obadiah, brings to mind the biblical prophet by that name, and the name of the neighborhood in Jerusalem in which the rabbi lives, Geula, means ”redemption.” Redemption, for Rav Zvi Yehuda, means the State of Israel, which is, in the words of the officially sanctioned Prayer for the State of Israel, ”the first flowering of [Israel’s] redemption” (8). During this visit, Rav Zvi Yehuda sends the speaker and his family off to settle in Beit El with his blessings and encouragement: ”Do not fear them, he breathed out his holy words /… Do not fear and in Beit El you shall live” (12-14). The speaker enters the rabbi’s house ”hand in hand” with his father (6), but when the rabbi reaches out to caress his head softly with his very old hands (9-11) and speaks to him and his father, the boy’s fingers are ”clenched” (13), for he is holding back his receptiveness to the rabbi’s message. The message the rabbi conveys to the child, ”Do not fear and in Beit El you shall live (lo taguru uveveit el ken taguru [14]),” has a paradoxical meaning based on the fact that the Hebrew word for ”you shall fear” is taguru and the Hebrew word for ”you shall live” is also taguru. So, the rabbi is telling them that the boy and his family should not be afraid to move to the territories (lo taguru) and should be ready to live in the West Bank settlement of Beit El (ken taguru). The child, however, seems to have been more affected by the rabbi’s statement ”do not fear” than by his 99

‫‪CHAPTER ONE‬‬

‫‪statement ”you shall live,” for it was this reference to fear that planted in‬‬ ‫‪him the realization (”cracked my childish heart” [16]) that to move to the‬‬ ‫‪territories is to put oneself in danger of violent opposition by the local‬‬ ‫‪Palestinian population, and so of the stereotypical ”Mahmoud the shep‬‬‫‪herd” the speaker will always be afraid (15-16).‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַה ְמ ַקדֵּ ׁש ֲח ִצי ִא ׁ ּ ָשה‬ ‫אלחנן ניר‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫התקדשי לי לחציי מקודשת‬ ‫״אמר רבא‪:‬‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫חצייך מקודשת לי אינה מקודשת…‬ ‫אשה אמר רחמנא ולא חצי אשה״‬ ‫(קידושין ז‪ ,‬א)‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ימי ׁ ִש ׁ ּ ִשי ָה ֵהם ֶט ֶרם ְּת ִפ ָּלה‬ ‫ִ ּב ֵ‬ ‫אשר‬ ‫ְ ּבאוֹ טוֹ בּ וּס ִר ׁ‬ ‫אשון לִ ׁ ְשמ ַֹע ֶאת ֶרבּ ׁ ֶ‬ ‫ַ ּב ּסוּגְ יָ ה ְ ּב ִקדּ ו ׁ ִּשין‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ַה ְמ ַקדֵּ ׁש ֲח ִצי ִא ׁ ּ ָשה‬ ‫וְ ַא ַחר ְמנַ ׁ ּ ֵשק‪ ,‬נֶ ֱא ָחה ַ ּב ּ ָפרֹכֶ ת‪,‬‬ ‫וְ ׁשוֹ ֵאל אוֹ ִתי ָ ּב ֲע ִדינוּת ׁ ֶש ּלוֹ ‪ ,‬ו ְּבגוּף ַר ִ ּבים‪:‬‬ ‫ַמה ׁ ּ ְשלוֹ ְמכֶ ם‬

‫‪ 5‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ ‬ ‫ו ַּב ַּליְ לָ ה וְ ַה ַ ּביִ ת ַחם וְ ִא ָּמא ֲע ַדיִ ן‬ ‫ ‬ ‫וְ ָהיִ ינ ּו ְמ ַט ְ ּילִ ים ְ ּבלָ ָבן וְ חוֹ זֵ ר ַעל ַמה ׁ ּ ֶש ָא ַמר‬ ‫‪ּ ְ 10‬ב ׁ ֵשם ַה ׁ ּ ְשוֶ ֶער ׁ ֶש ּלוֹ ‪ֶ ,‬רבּ נ ֶֹחם ּ ַפ ְרצוֹ ִביץ׳‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫וְ ׁ ֶש ִא ׁ ּ ָשה ִהיא ַק ְר ָקעוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫ַק ְר ָקעוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫יֶ לֶ ד ָקרו ַּע ְ ּבאוֹ ִתיוֹ ת נֶ ְעלָ ם‬ ‫ ‬ ‫אשר ֲע ַדיִ ן ַ ּב ֲח ִצי יִ ִיד ׁיש‬ ‫ַעכְ ׁ ָשיו‪ ,‬וְ ֶרבּ ׁ ֶ‬ ‫‪ 15‬וַ ֲאנִ י ְּכ ָבר ַ ּב ּסוּגְ יָ ה ׁ ֶשל ִא ׁ ּ ָשה ׁ ְשלֵ ָמה‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ו ְּבלֵ יל ׁ ַש ָ ּבת‬ ‫ׁשוֹ ֵאל אוֹ ִתי‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ְ ּבגוּף‬ ‫‪100‬‬

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING



He Who Betroths Half a Woman



Elhanan Nir



”Rava said: ‘Be betrothed to half of me,’ she is betrothed.



‘A woman’ the Merciful One said and not ‘half a woman.’”



‘Half of you is betrothed to me,’ she is not betrothed… (Kiddushin 7a)



On those Fridays before prayer



on the topic in Kiddushin

5

on the first bus to hear Reb Osher of one who betroths half a wife

and afterward, in close contact with the ark cover, he kisses and asks me in his gentle way, and in plural form: How are you

And at night the house so warm and Mommy’s still there we would stroll in white clothes and review what he said

10 in the name of his father-in-law Reb Nohum Partzovitz,

and that a woman is the ground of the earth



a child torn among the letters disappears



the ground of the earth



Now, while Reb Osher’s still half in Yiddish



and on Sabbath night



in bodily form 69

15 I’m already studying the topic of a whole woman

I am asked

When I discussed this poem with Elhanan Nir he told me, in a somewhat bemused manner, that when he was growing up his father’s idea of a recreational outing was to go to lessons given by great rabbis. In the 69 Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut, 47.

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poem, early in the morning, before the father and the speaker as a child have recited their prayers, they go to hear a lesson in Talmud by the ul70 tra-Orthodox rabbi Rav Asher Arieli (1-4). On a linguistic level, this experience is strange for the native born Israeli son, because the discourse is ”half in Yiddish” (14). When Rav Asher refers to his father-in-law the speaker recalls that he made use of the Yiddish word for ”father-in-law,” shver (10). Furthermore, the speaker recalls that the Hebrew of the ultraOrthodox circles in which the rabbi lived was spoken with an Eastern European Yiddish accent: Rav Asher was pronounced Reb Osher (2), Rav Nahum was pronounced Reb Nohum (10), and the two-word expression qarqa olam (”ground of the earth” [11, 12]) was pronounced as if it were one word: qarqa’olam. The passage which the rabbi teaches, part of which appears before the beginning of the poem, comes from a talmudic discussion in which it is stated that a man can betroth a woman to half of himself, because he has the intention of marrying another woman in addition, but a man cannot betroth half of a woman to himself, because a woman is only permitted to be married to one man (3-4). The passage comes across as so hypothetical and detached from the reality of human relations today as to border on the absurd, to say nothing of the fact that it is completely irrelevant at a time when all Jews now practice only monogamy. The speaker then recalls that after the lesson the rabbi spoke to him, asking him how he was ”in his gentle way,” but in the more formal ”plural form” (5-7). In the second stanza, the father and son have returned home. Nir’s mother died an untimely death, and so it is significant that in the poem the speaker recalls that his mother was still alive at the time (”and Mommy’s still there” [8]). Her presence in the poem brings the hypothetical talmudic discussion back to the reality of a real woman, the wife of the speaker’s father, and the mother of the speaker. During the speaker’s 70 Rav Asher Yehudah Leib Arieli is an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who teaches in Yeshivat Mir and in Yeshivat Tiferet Zvi in Jerusalem. He is the son-in-law of Rav Nahum Partzovitz, who was at one time the Head of Yeshivat Mir. ”Asher Arieli,” http://he.wikipedia.org.

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COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

discussion with his father of the lesson by Rav Asher, we learn that the rabbi’s father-in-law declared that ”a woman is the ground of the earth” (9-12). This expression is found in a talmudic discussion about whether the biblical Queen Esther violated Jewish law when she cohabited with a Gentile, King Ahasuerus. One of the arguments put forth in support of the idea that she was not violating Jewish law is that she was like ”the ground of the earth,” meaning that in the sexual act Ahasuerus was like a person actively planting seeds and she was like the ground passively receiving the seeds, and thus she did not directly commit a sin (Sanhedrin 74b) – another talmudic passage of questionable value and relevance to the speaker. As a child the speaker was ”torn among the letters,” completely confused about the way that the rabbi talked about women, but at that time he ”disappear[ed],” unable to share his concerns with his father or the rabbi (13). As an adult, however, the speaker has moved beyond the rather strange notion of betrothing half a woman, as well as the disturbing image of a woman as a passive participant in sexual relations. Just as his discussion with his father about Rav Asher’s lesson was on Friday night, as an adult the speaker finds himself on Friday night contemplating his relationship with the woman to whom he is married (15-16). He is committed to having a full mutually active relationship with her, in sharp contrast to the talmudic discussion of the hypothetical situation of betrothing half a woman (”I’m already studying the topic of a whole woman,” [15]). Furthermore, instead of the rabbi asking about his welfare in plural form (beguf rabbim [6]) when he was a child, the speaker feels that now that he is an adult he is being asked about his actual body, ”in bodily form” (sho’el oti / beguf [17-18]). It is the synthesis of body and spirit, achieved by means of marital relations with his wife on the Sabbath, that is of central concern to the speaker now.

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Discovering a New Relationship to the Tradition At a certain point in their lives, Naama Shaked and Yoram Nissinovitch began the study of traditional Jewish sources outside the framework of a traditional yeshiva, which was not open to Shaked as a woman, and which Nissinovitch attended but did not find satisfying. For many years, Shaked has been associated with Elul, a pluralistic study house in Jerusalem attended by observant and nonobservant Israelis. Nissinovitch spent some time at Elul and also studied at the liberal religious Zionist study house Beit Morasha in Jerusalem. In each of the following poems, one sees the speaker seeking to connect with a religious experience that is more personally fulfilling than the religious experiences to which he or she was exposed in earlier educational settings.

‫נעמה שקד‬



‫יח ַה ִ ּנ ְקלָ ף ׁ ֶשל ַה ַח ִ ּיים‬ ַ ‫ְ ּבתוֹ ְך ַה ִּט‬ ‫ נִ ְבנֵ ית קוֹ ָמה‬,‫ַהדָּ ִת ִ ּיים ׁ ֶש ִּלי‬ ‫ ׁ ֶשל‬,‫ׁ ְשלֵ ָמה ַר ָּכה ׁ ֶשל ַא ֲה ָבה‬ ‫יצים‬ ִ ִ‫ ַ ּב ִדבּ וּר ַה ּ ְפנ‬,‫ֱאל ִֹהים ַח ִ ּיים‬ ִ ‫ ָ ּב ֲע ִצ‬,‫ימי‬ ‫ַ ּב ּגוּף ַהנִ ְפ ָּתח ִמ ׁ ְש ָּת ֶאה‬

5

‫לָ ׁשוּב ִ ּב ׁ ְש ֵאלָ ה‬ ‫ׁ ְשלֵ ָמה‬ ָ ‫ ִעם יָ ַדי ַה ְּמלֵ אוֹ ת דְּ ַב ׁש‬,‫לְ ָפנֶ יך‬ ‫וּמו ִּס ָיקה ְסדו ָּקה‬ ‫ וְ ֵח ְטא‬10 ‫ו ְּד ָב ִרים נִ חו ִּמים‬

104

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING



Naama Shaked



Within the peeling plaster of my religious



is taking form of love, of



life, a whole soft construct



a living God, in my inner speech, in flower pots

5

in my body that is opening full of wonder



to return with questions



before You, with my hands filled with honey





whole

and cracked music

10 and sin

71

and words of comfort

The poem begins with a metaphor in which the speaker’s religious life is compared to a wall with peeling plaster. Once the wall was new and strong; plaster had been applied to it to preserve it and to create a sight pleasing to the eyes. Now, showing its age, it is in need of a good scraping and replastering, like the religious way of life in which she was raised that has lost its meaning for her (1-2). The Hebrew word for ”peeling,” niqlaf (1), shares a root with the word qelaf, which means parchment. Parchment is used as the medium on which traditional Jewish sacred texts are written, in particular Torah scrolls and the biblical passages placed into the ritual objects tefillin and mezuzot. This association between sacredness and deterioration reinforces the sense of loss experienced by the speaker as she contemplates the problematic state of her religiosity, which most likely has its source in her childhood education. The alternative image to the peeling plaster is the new ”whole… construct,” which unlike the original plaster that represents the tradition is not hard, but soft and full of love and of the living God (2-4). She discovers this living God not in prophetic revelation, as in the Bible, 71 Cohen, et al., Mashiv haruaḥ: ketav et leshirah yehudit yisre’elit: mivḥar shirim 5755-5765, 49.

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CHAPTER ONE

or in rabbinic exegetical readings of biblical texts, but within herself, in ”inner speech” (4) and in other places someone brought up with a traditional Jewish education would not expect to find God: in ”flower pots” and in the experience of the body opening up to pleasure ”full of wonder” (4-5). The speaker characterizes her new religious experience as ”return[ing] with questions / whole ” (lashuv beshe’elah / shelemah [6-7]). Here the poet is making use of the term lashuv beshe’elah, synonymous with laḥzor beshe’elah, which has come to mean the process of leaving traditional Jewish observance and faith, in contrast with the process known as lashuv beteshuvah, synonymous with laḥzor beteshuvah (sometimes translated as ”to repent”), in which one begins to accept a traditional Jewish life style. The speaker, however, does not see herself as abandoning religion. The Hebrew word for ”whole,” shelemah, may refer to the speaker herself or to the Hebrew word for question, she’elah. Thus, she asserts that the religiously heretical questions she asks are valid and whole in themselves and that in allowing herself to ask them she feels a sense of inner wholeness. In effect, she has returned to be before God by asking questions. As she approaches God, the speaker’s hands are ”filled with honey” (8), which may allude to the traditional Jewish custom of placing honey on the Hebrew letters first taught to children so that they can lick them off and feel a close connection to the language. She feels as if she is going back to the earliest stages of her childhood study of Judaism, but this time without the rigid ideological framework transmitted to her, which she now needs to discard. Nevertheless, together with this positive image come the negative images of ”cracked music” (9) and ”sin” (10), which indicate that all is not whole with her. Still, she also discovers ”words of comfort” (11), perhaps for herself and perhaps for God.

106

‫‪COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 5‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ּ ִפגּ ו ַּע‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬ ‫ָסמוּי ו ְּמ ֻס ָּכן ֲאנִ י‬ ‫ְמ ַה ֵּל ְך ִעם ְר ָפ ִאים ָ ּב ְרחוֹ ב‬ ‫ִמ ְט ָען ָ ּגדוֹ ל ֻמ ָ ּנח ְ ּבתוֹ ְך‬ ‫ַה ֵּלב‬ ‫ָחגוּר ְ ּב ֵאזוֹ ר ַה ֶ ּנ ֶפץ‬ ‫ֲאנִ י עוֹ ֵמד לְ ֵה ָאכֵ ל‬ ‫ִעם ּ ְפ ִתיל וְ ַה ׁ ְש ָהיָ ה‬ ‫יָ ַדי רוֹ ֲעדוֹ ת לָ ַד ַעת‬ ‫ְס ִביב ּגו ִּפי ַה ְ ּגוִ ילִ ים בּ וֹ ֲע ִרים‬ ‫ית־ה ָּק ֶפה‬ ‫וּלְ יַ ד ֵ ּב ַ‬ ‫ֲאנִ י נֶ ֱע ָצר ו ִּמ ְתבּ וֹ נֵ ן‬ ‫יח ָארוֹ ָמה ׁ ֶשל‬ ‫ֵמ ִר ַ‬ ‫יִ ְר ָאה‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ְמ ַב ֵּק ׁש ְ ּב ִרית ֲח ָד ׁ ָשה‬ ‫יתי לְ ַעם‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ָאז ְּכ ׁ ֶש ִ ּנ ְהיֵ ִ‬ ‫וַ ֲא ִצילוּת‬ ‫וְ עוֹ ר ּ ָפנַ י קוֹ ֵרן‬ ‫לִ ְפנֵ י ׁ ֶש ָ ּנ ַת ִּתי ָעלָ יו ַמ ְסוֶ ה ו ַּמ ֵּסכָ ה‬ ‫ֲאנִ י רוֹ ֶצה לִ ְפ ּג ַֹע‬ ‫בּ וֹ ‪ ,‬לִ ְראוֹ ת ַמ ֲע ֵשׂ ה לִ ְבנַ ת‬ ‫ַה ַּס ּ ִפיר‬ ‫ְ ּב ְ‬ ‫תוך ַה ּקוֹ לוֹ ת וְ ַה ְ ּב ָר ִקים ׁ ֶשל ַה ֵּלב‬ ‫ִּכ ְמ ַעט ַא ְפ ִעיל ֶאת‬ ‫ַה ַּמנְ ָ ּגנוֹ ן‬ ‫ׁ ֶשיַ ֲעצֹר ִא ׁיש‬ ‫ַא ֲה ָבה ְמגַ ְמ ֵ ּגם‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ֶ ּג ָחלִ ים לוֹ ֲח ׁשוֹ ת‬ ‫ְ ּבתוֹ ְך ּ ִפיו‬

‫‪107‬‬

CHAPTER ONE

Contact

Yoram Nissinovitch



Unseen and dangerous am I



a large explosive charge placed within

5

walking about with ghosts in the street my heart

girded in the area of explosion I’m about to be consumed with the fuse delay

my hands trembling to know



Around my body the parchments burn



I stop and observe

10 and by the café

I smell the aroma of

fear

I seek a new covenant



and nobility



before I put on it a veil and a mask

15 like the one when I became a people

the skin of my face radiating I want to make contact

20 with Him, to see the pavement

of sapphire



I’m about to activate



within the thunder and lightning of my heart the mechanism

25 that will stop a man

of love who stutters



inside his mouth 72



with simmering coals

72 Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah, 52-53.

108

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

The Hebrew title of the poem, ”Piggua,” is primarily used in contemporary Israel to refer to a terrorist attack against Israel. 73 The root of the word piggua (peh-gimmel-ayin) also occurs in words related to a ”meeting” or a ”close encounter.” The poet has stated that he made use of the image of the suicide bomber to convey a longing for contact with others that he had one day in the streets of Jerusalem after engaging in traditional Jewish study in Beit Morasha. ”[T]he poem does not speak about a terrorist attack [piggua teror],” he has explained, ”but about piggua in the sense of meeting, coming close, as it is written about Jacob our forefather, ‘And he came upon the place [vayifga bamaqom, Genesis 28:11].’ The lines ‘a large explosive charge placed within / my heart’ [3-4] [refer to] my desire to meet, to establish a dialogue, to come close to the people sitting in the cafés and to reveal this explosive charge which is so exciting.” 74 The speaker, filled with the intense experience of traditional Jewish study, feels as if he represents an anonymous threat to others not as religiously inspired as he is (”[u]nseen and dangerous am I” [1]) while secretly carrying around an explosive charge (mitan, which can also mean a load or baggage [3]) ”within / [his] heart / girded in the area of explosion” (3-5). In this state of spiritual awakening, he has the potential to destroy not only everything around him but even himself (”I’m about to be consumed,” he declares [6]). He therefore smells not the aroma of coffee and good food in the café, but ”the aroma of / fear” (12-13). The intensity he feels is as alien and potentially harmful to the secular café world and to himself as a Palestinian suicide bomber would be, not because it would lead to anyone’s death but because it would induce in people a spiritual transformation that would change their lives. This sense of danger is also reinforced by the images of his ”walking about with ghosts” (2) and his ”hands trembling” (8). What the speaker seeks, unknown to others, is nothing less than a ”new covenant” (14), a renewal of the intensity of the original covenant 73 The poet mentioned in an interview at the Cinematheque in Jerusalem that I attended in January 2009 that the title of the poem and its use of imagery associated with suicide bombings have led some readers to misread the poem as expressing sympathy for Palestinians engaged in such an attack. 74 Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim.”

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CHAPTER ONE

into which the ancient Israelites entered with God at Mount Sinai. It is significant that he states, ”when I became a people” (15), suggesting that on one level this is a very personal experience. A comparison between the speaker and the legendary Rabbi Hanania ben Tradyon is conveyed by means of the words, ”Around my body the parchments burn” (9). Rabbi Hanania was one of the ten rabbis executed by the Romans for their commitment to the teaching of Judaism, known in Hebrew as aseret harugei malkhut. Talmudic legend relates that Rabbi Hanania’s execution consisted of his being burned to death wrapped in the parchment of a Torah scroll (Avodah Zarah 18a). The speaker’s identification with this rabbinic figure who was persecuted by the Romans for teaching Jewish tradition reinforces his sense that his commitment to traditional Jewish learning is most alien to his surrounding culture, which rejects all that inspires him. The speaker also describes himself with terminology used in the Bible to refer to Moses: ”the skin of my face radiating / before I put on it a veil and a mask” (17-18), an allusion to Moses’ need to cover his face after he returned from the top of Mount Sinai, because the divine light emanating from it was too much for the Israelites to bear (Exodus 34: 29-35). The speaker wants to have the same kind of divine revelation that Moses and the elders of the Israelites had on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:10): ”I want to make contact / with Him, to see the pavement / of sapphire” (19-21). Other terminology from the revelation at Sinai include the word ”nobility” (atsilut [16]), a reference to the leaders who went up on Mount Sinai with Moses [Exodus 24:11] ) and the ”thunder and lightning” (haqolot vehaberaqim [22]) which accompanied the divine revelation there (Exodus 19:16). In the poem, significantly, those sounds do not come from atop Mount Sinai but from within the speaker’s heart (22). At the end of the poem, the speaker is about to ”activate / the mechanism” of his explosive charge (23-24), which could be understood as exposing the world around him to his renewed sense of excitement about Torah study. This explosion ”will stop a man / of love who stutters / with simmering coals / inside his mouth” (25-28). This image alludes to Moses’ speech impediment which was caused, according to rabbinic leg110

COMING TO TERMS WITH A RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

end, by a burning coal he touched to his lips as a baby (Shemot Rabbah 1:26). The stuttering Moses may represent the not so articulate approach to Judaism taught lovingly but not that effectively in traditional educational institutions. This approach will be replaced with the emergence of a new Moses, the speaker, who will proclaim the spiritual vision that he has discovered.

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PRAYER AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD w

E

lhanan Nir argues that contemporary Jews should admit that in our time it is extremely difficult to pray. ”Many pray and many do not pray, but it seems that both [groups] feel the greatly expanding and deepening wound of the desire to pray and the contemporary near inability to do so. This is the great secret of the Jews today, someone once whispered to me.”1 In part, prayer is difficult for Nir and other religious Zionists because of the nature of organized communal prayer in the typical traditional synagogue. Nahum Pachenik recalls the synagogue of his youth as ”a very boring place, and until this day it remains so.”2 He recalls one time in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah when he heard ”someone crying under his prayer shawl but surrounding him [he] saw the rest of the participants standing desolate and bored.”3 In reaction to the spiritual limitations of the typical religious Zionist synagogue, Elhanan Nir has

1

Elhanan Nir, ”Bayit, muziqah vezehu,” Maqor Rishon 12 June 2009.

2

Yair Sheleg,” Shirat Nahum,” Ha’arets 13 June 2007.

3

Nahum Pachenik, ”Leshanot et nusaḥ hatefillah,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 8 October, 2008.

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written appreciatively of a summer tradition that has developed at the pluralistic study house Elul in Jerusalem, in which religious and secular Israelis get together at four o’clock in the afternoon, before the onset of the Sabbath, and sing a range of religious songs with musical instruments (which are not played in traditional synagogues on the Sabbath) in spiritual preparation for the holy day. One senses in Nir’s description a longing to incorporate the spirit of that prayer experience into the traditional synagogue: ”The congregation here is swept away, people hum the melodies, sing in full voice, participate, one with a recorder, another with a violin, another with her feet, and another with a guitar. Here are a few moments of grace within all the seriousness with which we do not cease to wrap ourselves.”4 A significant number of second-generation settlers, as well as other religious Zionists, have tended to focus on a more individualistic spirituality, in contrast to their parents’ notion of religious experience as expressive of collectivist ideals. As Elhanan Nir has noted, this search for a more individualistic spirituality has attracted members of his generation to explore the Jewish mystical tradition. ”The process began,” he explains, ”…about a decade ago [in the mid 1990s] when there was a breakthrough into religious society of the study of Hasidism and Kabbalah, which involves learning material that is relatively speaking individualistic, in comparison with the more collectivist teachings found in the writings of Rav [Zvi Yehuda] Kook that was preeminent in the generation of [our] parents.” 5 Yair Ettinger explains that Hasidism has begun to have an impact on religious Zionist culture, ”mainly because it presents a new exciting spiritual content. And as in the days of the Besht [the founder of Hasidism], so the students of Rav Kook are enchanted by personal religious experience and they are enchanted by mystical contents as an alternative to the learned elitism in 4

Nir, ”Bayit, muzikah vezehu.” Nir notes that one of the participants informed him that there is a traditional basis for this custom in a practice among Italian Jews to accompany with musical instruments the singing of the psalms said at the beginning of the Sabbath eve service before the Sabbath begins, and upon the onset of the Sabbath, they put away the instruments and continue to pray without them, in accordance with traditional practice.

5

Yanetz Levi, ”Hodu lashem ki tov,” Ma’ariv 19 July 2006.

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the yeshivot.”6 Hasidism has also served to introduce a new spiritual intensity to traditional organized prayer, as evidenced by the widespread use of tunes by the Hasidic composer Shlomo Carlebach as well as music from other Hasidic traditions in religious Zionist synagogues. On a personal level, Nir writes of his great yearning for a close relationship with God, which he considers, in some sense, to be analogous to how one relates to a person. ”If you give up on the possibility of contact and of a penetrating and true connection with the Holy One Blessed be He,” he declares, ”[the concept of God] becomes a kind of collection of slogans, processes that act in history, a God who is very great and foreign.”7 In contrast to that concept of God, Nir explains, ”I seek to encounter God intimately. As contact with someone, not just with something. With someone who has a face, with whom I have a secret speech, that there are between us periods of lows and highs and constant activity.”8 Like a number of their secular contemporaries, some religious Zionist youths of this generation have traveled to India to explore the spiritual teachings of the Far East, especially in the period following their army service. Micha Odenheimer has cited a number of reasons for religious Zionist youths to travel to India. India offers many selling points for the religious Zionist traveler: ”The user-friendly and pleasant atmosphere of hospitable guest houses, in addition to the abundant vegetarian ‘strictly kosher’ foods.”9 Furthermore, notes Odenheimer, India is inexpensive, not far from Israel, and a place to escape from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Odenheimer also argues that for religious Zionist youths India offers the kind of refreshingly new approach to religion that they seek: ”The old models of religious teachings are not as relevant as they once used to be. 6

Yair Ettinger, ”Lirqod im Elohim,” Ha’arets 13 December 2007. See also Hanokh Doam, ”Dor hakippot hagruziniyyot,” Nequdah 227 (1999): 12-15, in which he refers to a trend of a ”religious Zionist Hasidism” in the younger generation, and Adam Tzahi, ”Ḥasidut besandalim,” Nequdah 314 (2008): 39-44, in which he explores the influence of Hasidism on settlers living in Tekoa.

7

Tsur Ehrlich, ”Meshorer habayit,” Maqor Rishon 13 February 2009.

8 Ibid. 9

Sigal Konig, ”Spiritual Journeys,” Jerusalem Post 7 July 2006.

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They have become disillusioned with the religious beliefs and right-wing nationalistic politics on which they were molded and are searching for 10 something different to believe in.” He goes on to suggest that these religious Zionist travelers to India ”may be looking for what the New Age culture calls ‘spirituality,’ seeking some kind of post-Hasidic form of experimental religion, a religion that is more emotional, more devotional than what they have seen up till now. India beckons for them as a great place to see that kind of religion first-hand.”11 As I mentioned in each of their biographical backgrounds in Chapter One, Elhanan Nir and Nahum Pachenik both sought spiritual alternatives to their religious upbringings in visits to India. India provided Nir with the kind of intimate encounter with God that he had been seeking: ”I tasted God in India,”12 he declares. ”In India,” he relates, ”suddenly God becomes something so natural…to the extent that an Indian cannot at all understand a way of life without God. Even the tourists there suddenly discover to what extent God is available and close.”13 At one point during his stay in India, Nir saw a monk praying in a manner that he considered to be far superior to his own experience of ”literally feeling trapped when reciting my own prayers which I narrate three times a day.”14 He also was very taken by the fact that life is lived in India at a slower pace and by the sense that Eastern religions give of the human being as integrated into reality: ”The Hindu belief in Moksha and the Buddhist belief in Nirvana base their purpose on freedom from all obstacles and hardships in the world, that you are a part of a larger whole that you cannot control and will therefore ingrain yourself into this awesome reality of nature and the earth.”15 There is, he came to believe, a spiritual quality to religious life in India that resembles that experienced in the traditional 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Levi, ”Hodu lashem ki tov.” 14 Konig, ”Spiritual Journeys.” 15 Ibid.

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Prayer and the search for God

Jewish observance of the Sabbath. ”India, to my mind, is the Sabbath of the world,” he has stated.16 In addition, Nir came to admire the way that the religions of India teach one how to appreciate the spiritual depths of silence. ”After I traveled to India I learned silence,” he has observed. ”I learned the power in the ability to absorb and to listen to reality and not only to stir it up.”17 When Nir returned to Israel from his visit to India, he realized that much of the spirituality he discovered there is compatible with the highest spiritual ideals of Judaism and has much in common with Kabbalah and Hasidism. He acknowledges that the Jewish tradition considers the religious practices of Eastern religions to be a form of idolatry (avodah zarah). Nevertheless, he argues, this ”pagan idolatry succeeds in breaking up and melting a bit the…idolatry of the West, the ego, the feeling that the Torah describes as ‘my strength and the strength of my hands made this power for me’ [Deuteronomy 8:17]. In other words…the old idolatry [of pagan India] melts down the new [idolatry of the West].” 18 Nir was so moved by his experiences in India that he edited a collection of essays by Israelis 19 about the relationship that India has to their Jewish identities. In a few instances, works by Mashiv Haruaḥ poets have served for others as prayers that deal with contemporary issues in ways that are more relevant than traditional prayers. Nir sees a close connection between the writing of poetry and the act of prayer. ”In writing poems,” he has stated, ”I am actually praying.”20 He goes on to explain that as a poet ”[a]ll the time I am writing my new prayer book.”21 He does make a distinction between poems he writes with more personal concerns, to which he signs his name, and poems he writes with a more universal orientation, 16 ”Mifgash meḥudash im atsmi,” http://www.massculture.co.il. 17 Ibid. 18 Levi, ”Hodu lashem ki tov.” 19 Elhanan Nir, ed., Mehodu ve’ad kan: hogim yisre’elim kotvim al hodu ve’al hayahadut shelahem (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2006). For a more detailed account of Nir’s response to his trip to India, see his Introduction to this book, 7-31. 20 Ehrlich, ”Meshorer habayit.” 21 Ibid.

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to which he does not sign his name, thereby opening up the possibility that they could be adopted by others as prayers. 22 When his mother was undergoing treatment for cancer, Nir composed a prayer to be recited before chemotherapy and another to be recited after chemotherapy. His mother would recite it each time she underwent the treatment and the other patients in the cancer ward did so as well. He wrote another prayer on the occasion of his friend’s wedding. When he showed it to his friend, the friend asked if he could distribute it to the wedding guests. It then went into general circulation, and Nir reports that he has been at several weddings at which he heard it recited.23 Eliaz Cohen has also had the experience of composing a poem that eventually was recited as a contemporary prayer. During the Second Intifada, Tzahi Sasson, a member of a kibbutz near Kefar Etzion, where Eliaz Cohen lives, was killed by an Arab sniper on the highway of the tunnels that connects Jerusalem with Gush Etzion. ”I didn’t know him personally,” Cohen has stated, ”but we were both fathers to three young children. That bullet could have hit me, and the realization made all my defenses come down. I felt completely paralyzed….The [traditional] Prayer for the Road, which was once almost meaningless to me, suddenly became the most important prayer. But after Tzahi’s death I felt it wasn’t enough. I had to call out to God as an individual, and so I wrote my own version of the prayer in the singular form. For a while, I would whisper it silently to myself.” 24 Cohen found evidence that his ”Tefillah lanehag bekhevish haminharot” (”Prayer for the Driver on the Highway of the Tunnels”) had begun to be used by others when he hitched a ride with a driver in the West Bank and after the driver recited the traditional travel prayer, he read the poem that Cohen had composed. The driver could see in his rearview mirror that Cohen was smiling, so he asked whether Cohen had ever heard the poem before. ”I was too moved and embarrassed to tell him I had written it,” Cohen relates. 25 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Talya Halkin, ”Writing Beyond the Green Line,” Jerusalem Post 11 June 2004. 25 Ibid. The poem was published in Eliaz Cohen, Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2004), 24.

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Prayer and the search for God

Poems in this chapter by Sivan Har-Shefi and Nahum Pachenik explore the ways that a traditional Jewish ritual associated with daily prayer does not always produce an ideal spiritual experience. Other poems deal with the ups and downs of relations between humanity and the divine: In poems by Eliaz Cohen, Avishar Har-Shefi, and Sivan Har-Shefi, God’s tendency to abandon people is of central concern, while in other poems Sivan Har-Shefi and Elhanan Nir explore the ways that the search for the divine is sometimes rewarded by a feeling of closeness to God. Finally, poems by Elhanan Nir and Nahum Pachenik compare approaches to religious issues in Judaism and in other traditions.

The Ritual of Tefillin Tefillin are ritual objects that contain passages from the Bible encased in boxes that Jewish men traditionally attach to their head and left arm during the weekday morning prayer service. The casings and straps for attaching them are made out of leather dyed black. The following poems by Sivan Har-Shefi and Nahum Pachenik reflect a perspective of distance from the ritual of tefillin. As a traditional woman, Har-Shefi does not put on tefillin when she prays, and so her poem is written from the point of view of a spectator observing men performing this ritual in a not very spiritual manner. This experience is compared in the poem to viewing zebras in a zoo, in their natural setting in Africa, or on television. When I discussed the poem with her, Har-Shefi said that the idea of writing a poem about men wearing tefillin as if they were zebras derived in part from a statement by a secular friend of hers that she, as a religious Jew, was the most exotic person that the secular friend knew, and in part from watching a television nature film about zebras. Indeed, although her friend may not have thought specifically about the ritual of tefillin, to the modern Western eye, the daily wearing of tefillin is one of the strangest rituals practiced by Jews, since it resembles nothing else that is worn on one’s body in the West. As a man, according to traditional Jewish law, Nahum Pachenik is obligated to wear tefillin during morning prayers, but, as he told me, he does not feel fully comfortable with the ritual. His poem 119

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is about observing another man putting on tefillin in a manner that illustrates how ritual observance can distort the spirit in traditional religious life. Significantly, each poem begins with a problematic portrait of the ritual and concludes with a hopeful vision of spirituality that transcends what is disturbing about the way that the ritual of tefillin is presented at the beginning of the poem.

‫זֶ ְ ּברוֹ ת‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



‫א‬ ‫אר ֶיהן‬ ֵ ‫זֶ ְ ּברוֹ ת ִ ּב ְת ִפ ַּלת ׁ ַש ֲח ִרית ַמ ְר ִּכינוֹ ת ַצ ְ ּו‬ ‫ִה ׁ ְש ַּת ְּקפו ָּתן ִ ּב ְר ִאי ַה ַּמיִ ם‬ ‫ּפוֹ ֶר ֶשׂ ת לָ ֶהן ַמ ֲע ַבר‬ .‫ֲח ִצ ָ ּיה ֶאל עוֹ לָ ם ַא ֵחר‬



‫ב‬ ְ ‫כּ וֹ ֵרך ְרצו ַּעת עוֹ ר ׁ ְשחוֹ ָרה‬ .‫ְס ִביב זְ רוֹ ִעי ַה ְּל ָבנָ ה‬ ‫ַ ּגם ְּכ ׁ ֶש ֲאנִ י ּפוֹ ֵרשׂ יָ ַדי‬ ‫וּפוֹ ֵצ ַח ְ ּב ׁ ִש ָירה ְ ּגדוֹ לָ ה‬ ‫ַ ּב ְרקוֹ ד ׁ ֶשל ְּת ִפ ָּלה‬ . ֹ‫עוֹ ֵבר ַּת ַחת ֵעינו‬



‫ג‬ – ‫יסה יְ ֵב ׁ ִשים‬ ָ ‫קוֹ לוֹ ת לְ ִע‬ .‫ָק ׁ ָשה ְּת ִפ ַּל ְתכֶ ם‬ ‫וַ ֲאנִ י ִא ׁ ּ ָשה‬ ‫ִאם ֶא ְת ַע ֵּטף ְ ּב ִא ְצ ְטלָ ה‬ ‫ֶא ְת ַּכ ֵ ּנף ִ ּב ְת ִפ ָּלה ְּכמוֹ כֶ ם‬ ‫ֲהלֹא ַּת ִ ּניח ּו לִ י לָ בוֹ א ְ ּב ַרכּ וּת‬ ?‫לְ ֶעזְ ַר ְתכֶ ם‬

120

5

10

15



Prayer and the search for God

‫ד‬ ‫ְשׂ ַפת ַה ּגוּף ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו ִ ּבינָ ִרית‬ .‫ לָ ָבן‬.‫ׁ ָשחוֹ ר‬ ‫ה־סגֻ ּלוֹ ת‬ ְ ‫ֲא ָבל ַה ַּמ ְח ׁ ָשבוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו אוּלְ ְט ָר‬

25

‫ו‬ ‫ַ ּב ֲערוּץ ַה ֶּט ַבע ְמ ַד ְ ּב ִרים ַעל עוֹ לָ ם ׁ ֶש ּ ַפס‬ ‫ר־מה ֻפ ְס ַפס‬ ָ ‫יֵ ׁש ְּתחו ׁ ָּשה ׁ ֶשדְּ ַב‬ ‫ ֲא ָבל הוּא ָח ׁש מו ָּבס‬,‫ַא ֶּתם ְצמו ִּדים ֶאל ַה ִּמ ְר ָקע‬ .‫ֵע ֶדר זֶ ְ ּברוֹ ת דּ וֹ ֵהר ֶאל ָה ָר ִק ַיע ַה ּמו ָּפז‬



Sivan Har-Shefi

1

Zebras at morning prayer lower their necks



spreads forth for them a passage



their reflection in the water mirror a crosswalk to another world.

2 5

10

20

‫ה‬ .‫ַה ֶּז ְ ּברוֹ ת ָעפוֹ ת לָ ֲעבוֹ ָדה‬ ‫ֵהן ַמ ׁ ּ ִשילוֹ ת ּ ַפ ִּסים וְ נִ ְהיוֹ ת סו ִּסים‬ ‫ׁ ְשחוֹ ִרים‬ ‫ֵהן ַמ ׁ ּ ִשילוֹ ת ּ ַפ ִּסים וְ נִ ְהיוֹ ת סו ִּסים‬ .‫לְ ָבנִ ים‬

Zebras



Binding a black leather strap around my white arm.

Even when I spread forth my hands and break out in great song a bar code of prayer

passes under His eye. 121



CHAPTER TWO

3

Dry sounds of chewing –



And I a woman



hard is your prayer.

if I wrapped myself in a robe

15 and huddled in prayer like you

wouldn’t you let me come softly into your section?

4

Our body language is binary Black. White.

20 But our thoughts are ultra purple 5

The zebras fly off to work.



that are black



They shed their stripes and become horses they shed their stripes and become horses

25 that are white. 6

On the nature channel they speak of a world that has passed



you are glued to the screen, but it feels defeated



there’s a feeling that something was missed a herd of zebras gallops to the gilded sky. 26

In the first section of the poem, a female speaker is observing men praying with tefillin on the other side of the divider between men and women in a traditional synagogue. The black straps of the tefillin on the white arms of the men make them look like zebras with stripes (1). Just as a zebra seeing its reflection in water seems to be looking into another world, 26 Sivan Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), 72-73.

122

Prayer and the search for God

so the men who pray open up for themselves a passage to another, more spiritual world (2-4). This passage is referred to by the speaker as ma’avar ḥatsiyyah, which is the contemporary Hebrew term for a crosswalk in a street, which consists of white lines on a black asphalt background. The second section switches to a male speaker, who reflects on the experience of praying while wearing tefillin. He is aware of the contrast between the blackness of the tefillin straps and his white skin (5-6). And although he prays with great enthusiasm (”when I spread forth my hands / and break out in great song” [7-8]), the black lines of the tefillin straps on his arm seem to him as if they are a bar code one might find on a package of food one is buying in the supermarket. The image of a ”bar code of prayer / pass[ing] under [God’s] eye” (9-10) turns the prayer experience into a routine mechanical form of communication between the men and God. Their tefillin are the bar codes and God’s eye is the scanner. When in the third section the speaker returns to her observation of the men praying, she conveys to them her impression that their prayer service is not particularly inspired. As they recite their prayers, it reminds her of ”[d]ry sounds of [zebras] chewing” on something difficult to eat (11-12), as if to say that they are involved in a purposeless excercise that will not achieve the spiritual heights to which prayer could bring them. The speaker asks the men whether they would let her enter their section in the synagogue. She would not put on tefillin, but she would wrap herself in a robe, itstela, a garment worn by someone with important status which would resemble the prayer shawl in which the men wrap themselves. She would come ”huddled in prayer” like them, but she would enter ”softly,” in contrast to the hardness expressed in their prayer (13-17) . In the fourth section, the men express an awareness of the fact that the black and white image of the tefillin straps on their revealed arms suggests an outer expression of a binary way of relating to the world: everything is either/or (”Our body language is binary / Black. White” [18-19]), and yet inside they know that the world is more complex (”But our thoughts are ultra purple” [20]). When the morning prayer is over, no man lingers, for all must rush off to work in the mundane world, and as they take off their tefillin they seem to turn into horses, some of whom are white and some of whom are black 123

CHAPTER TWO

(21-25). The speaker concludes the poem with the image of people watching a show on the television nature channel from which the zebras leap out of the television and head up to the sky (26-29). As she addressed the men in the synagogue earlier in the poem, here the speaker addresses the viewers who are staring at this show, completely disconnected from the prayer rituals of the earlier sections of the poem. The Hebrew term for the television screen, mirqa has the same root as the Hebrew term for ”sky,” raqia.” Har-Shefi has explained the play on words as follows: ”’Screen’ vs. ‘sky’ [refers to] modern Western culture as symbolized by television watching vs. spirituality and religious faith as symbolized by the heavens. Whoever is glued to the [television] screen in this stanza feels some kind of missed opportunity in relationship to those ‘zebras,’ that ‘world that has passed,’ an entire world of tradition that has become ever distant from him, even if it is still hard for him to identify what was missed here. The television screen feels defeated because it cannot stand up to a comparison to the sky and does not include this herd of zebras that gallops from within it outside and up.”27 By now, what had appeared at the beginning of the poem as overly routinized ritual has been transformed into a vibrant spirituality that offers depths of experience unavailable to the secular person. With rhyming lines the speaker declares that the world of tradition may seem to some to have ”passed” (shepas [26]) and appears to have been missed (fusfas [27]) by those who live in the secular culture, and yet that secular culture has been defeated (muvas [28]) and replaced by the golden-like spirituality of religious culture (hamufaz 29]).

‫ בּ ֶֹקר‬,‫ְּת ִפ ִּלין‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬



‫ְרגָ ִעים ׁ ֶשל שׂ וֹ ֲחחוּת זַ ָּכה‬ ,‫ ְ ּב ֶרגַ ע ֶא ָחד‬,‫ִמ ְת ַה ּ ְפכִ ים ְּכ ֶח ֶרב‬ :‫לִ כְ ֵדי ׁ ְש ַעת ִמלְ ָח ָמה‬ ,‫ ַא ִּלימוֹ ת‬,‫ִ ּבכְ ִריכוֹ ת ַעזּוֹ ת‬



27 In an e-mail correspondence with me, 31 January 2010.

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Prayer and the search for God

,‫ְ ּב ֶהנֶ ף ָעגֹל וְ ַחד ׁ ֶשל יָ ד‬ ‫ִא ׁיש ְמלַ ּ ֵפף ְרצו ָּעה ׁ ֶשל ְּת ִפ ִּלין‬ . ֹ‫ַעל ְשׂ מֹאלו‬ ‫ימת ַהדָּ ם‬ ַ ‫ְ ּבכ ַֹח עוֹ ֵצר ֶאת זְ ִר‬ ְ,‫חוֹ ֵסם ֶאת ַה ַּמ ָ ּגע ַה ְמב ָֹרך‬ : ֹ‫ ַה ׁ ּשוֹ ֵצף ֶאל דָּ מו‬,‫ַה ׁ ּ ֶש ַפע ַה ֶּזה‬ ‫ֵמ ֱאלֹהוּת לְ טוֹ ָטפוֹ ת‬ ‫ֵמ ַה ָ ּב ִּתים לִ ְרצוּעוֹ ת ׁ ֶשל עוֹ ר‬ . ֹ‫נִ ׁ ְש ּ ָפ ְך לְ תוֹ ְך זְ רוֹ עו‬ .‫יְ ִהי ָ ּברו ְּך ָה ִא ׁיש ַה ָּק ׁ ֶשה ַה ֶּזה‬ ֹ‫ְּת ִהי נַ ְפ ׁשוֹ ִמ ְת ּ ַפ ֶ ּי ֶסת לִ ְק ָראתו‬ :‫ו ִּמ ִּלים ְמתוּקוֹ ת ו ְּמדוּדוֹ ת ְּתדוֹ ֵבב‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ְּת ֵהא ְּת ִפ ָּלתוֹ ִמ ְתלַ ְחלַ ַחת ְמ ַעט‬ ,‫ו ְּרצוּעוֹ ת ׁ ְשחֹרוֹ ת‬ , ֹ‫עוֹ ר ְ ּב ֵה ָמה ַ ּג ָּסה ַעל ַא ָּמתו‬ ‫יַ ַה ְפכ ּו‬ ‫לְ ַט ְ ּבעוֹ ת אוֹ ר‬ .‫ׁ ֶשל ֵארו ִּסין‬



Tefillin, Morning



Moments of pure speech



to become like a time of war:



5

Nahum Pachenik

turn like a sword, in one moment, with strong, violent wrappings,

a hand movement round and sharp, a man winds a tefillin strap on his left arm.

With a strength that stops the flow of blood blocking the blessed touch,

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5

10

15

20



CHAPTER TWO

10 this abundance, that floods his blood:

from divinity to signs



is poured into his arm.



from the encasements to leather straps



May this hard man be blessed.



so that sweet and measured words it will utter:



May his prayer become a bit more fluid



coarse animal leather on his arm,

15 May his soul be appeased before him



and may the black straps,

20 become

rings of light

and of betrothal.28

The man described in the poem approaches the practice of wrapping the tefillin straps on his arms in a way that is grim and determined. As he does so, the ”pure speech” of spiritually elevated prayer suddenly ”turns like a sword” and an atmosphere of war emerges (1-7). The term ”turns like a sword” (mithappekhim keḥerev) alludes to the turning sword blade (lahat haḥerev hamithappekhet) that guarded the way back to Eden when Adam and Eve were expelled from there (Genesis 3:24), thereby suggesting that the man is experiencing a form of spiritual exile. The man’s wrapping movement is ”strong” and ”violent” (4) to the point that he seems to stop the flow of blood from his heart through his arm to his finger tips, thereby closing off his sense of touch (8-9). In place of the natural flowing blood, into his arm is poured an ”abundance, that floods his blood” (10-13). This abundance is a mixture of the spiritual (”from divinity to signs” [me’elohut letotafot – totafot being a biblical term for the tefillin encasement placed on the head, 11]) and the physical (”from the encasements to leather straps” [mehabatim lirtsu’ot shel or, 12] and ”coarse 28 Nahum Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 65.

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Prayer and the search for God

animal leather” [or behemah gassah, 19]). It would appear, however, that in his extreme method of putting on the tefillin, the man has affirmed its physical dimension much more forcefully than its spiritual dimension. The speaker prays that this man will some day find an inner peace that will allow him to practice this ritual in a different spirit: ”May this hard man be blessed. / May his soul be appeased before him / so that sweet and measured words it will utter” (14-16). The speaker earnestly wants the man to develop the ability to pray in a manner that is ”a bit more fluid” and relate to the tefillin straps as if they are betrothal rings of light (17-22). This last image alludes to the custom to recite verses from the prophet Hosea about God becoming symbolically betrothed to Israel as one wraps the tefillin strap around one’s finger (Hosea 2:21-22). It is in that spirit of reconciliation between God and humanity that the speaker wishes the man could perform this ritual.

A God Who Abandons The experience of feeling abandoned by God has been a central element in Jewish theological writings, from the lament poetry in the book of Psalms to contemporary discussions of where was God during the Holocaust. It therefore should not surprise us that Mashiv Haruaḥ poets Eliaz Cohen and Avishar Har-Shefi have written poems in response to the feeling that God has betrayed them. Stopping short of an atheistic conclusion in the face of divine abandonment, each poet makes clear how painful it is to feel that God is not with you, especially since you want to continue to believe in His existence and in His caring for yourself and others.

‫אליעז כהן‬



ָ ‫ֵ ּבין ִ ּב ְת ֵרי ָהאוֹ טוֹ בּ וּס וִ יהו ֶּד‬ ‫יך‬ :‫ַה ּ ְשׂ רו ִּפים ֲאנִ י כּ וֹ ֵרת ִע ְּמ ָך ְ ּב ִרית לֵ אמֹר‬ ‫ זַ ְר ֲע ָך ׁ ֶש ִ ּי ָּס ֵפר וְ יִ ָּמנֶ ה ֵמרֹב‬,‫לְ זַ ְר ֲע ָך נָ ַת ָּת‬ ‫עוֹ נִ ים וַ ֲחרוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫ַּככּ וֹ כָ ִבים ַה ִ ּנ ְדלָ ִקים לִ ְפנֵ י נְ ִפילָ ָתם‬ )‫(ו ִּמי יוּכַ ל לָ ֵשׂ את ַה ִּמ ׁ ְש ָאלָ ה‬



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CHAPTER TWO

‫לְ זַ ְר ֲע ָך ׁ ֶשהוּא ַעכְ ׁ ָשו זָ ֵקן ׁשוֹ כֵ ַח ִמ ׁ ְש ָק ָפיו‬ ) ֹ‫ַ(ה ֻּמ ָ ּנ ִחים לוֹ ַעל ָחזֵ ה ּו אוֹ ִמ ְצחו‬ ‫וְ לֹא יוּכַ ל לָ ׁשוּב ֶאל ַה ֶה ְס ֵּכם אוֹ ֶאל‬ ‫דִּ ְב ֵרי ַה ַּמ ֲחזֶ ה ָה ֵהם‬

10

:‫ֵ ּבין ִ ּב ְת ֵרי ָהאוֹ טוֹ בּ וּס ֲאנִ י כּ וֹ ֵרת ִע ְּמ ָך ְ ּב ִרית לֵ אמֹר‬ ‫ַאל ִּת ׁ ְש ַחט ֶאת ַהצִּ ּפוֹ ר‬







Eliaz Cohen



Among the pieces of the bus and Your Jews



To Your seed You gave, Your seed that can be numbered and



5

who were burnt I make a covenant with You, saying:

counted due to excessive

affliction and wrath

like stars lit before they fall

(and who could bear this heart’s desire)

to your seed which is now an old man forgetting his glasses (placed on his chest or on his forehead)

who couldn’t return to the agreement or to

10 the words of that vision



Among the pieces of the bus I make a covenant with You, saying: Don’t slaughter the bird 29

In this poem, the speaker cries out in pain to God after a bus bombing was committed by a Palestinian terrorist during the period of the Second Intifada. From the beginning, the poet presents a relationship of tension between the contemporary event and the covenantal ceremony between God and Abraham presented in Genesis 15. The ”pieces of the bus” (1) allude to the pieces of the animals that Abraham cuts in two and places side by side in accordance with God’s command (Genesis 15:10). The covenant 29 Cohen, Shema Ado-nay, 61.

128

Prayer and the search for God

that the speaker proposes to God (2) alludes to the covenant God makes with Abraham in which He promises to grant the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 15:18-21). The image God uses of the descendants of Abraham being as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:5) appears in lines 3-5 of the poem. However, the biblical reference to Abraham’s descendants becoming as numerous as the stars, that are too great in number to be counted, is modified when the speaker declares in the poem that the stars are about to fall and when he says that the people can be counted because their ranks have been decimated by enemy attacks on them (”Your seed that can be numbered and counted due to excessive / affliction and wrath” [3-4]). These words (in Hebrew: zarakha sheyissafer veyimmaneh merov / onim vaḥaronim) allude to two other biblical passages that refer to great numbers. One is a prayer of King Solomon in which he celebrates the numerous population of Israel: ” a great nation that cannot be counted for it is too numerous” (am rav asher lo yimmaneh velo yissafer merov [1 Kings 3:8]). The other is a declaration of wonder by the prophet Isaiah at God’s power to reveal so many stars to humanity: ”He who takes out their host in numbers, who calls each by name, with His tremendous might and extensive power, none do not appear” (hamotsi vemispar tseva’am lekhulam beshem yiqra merov onim ve’amits koaḥ ish lo nedar ([Isaiah 40:26]). In the latter passage, the word onim begins with the letter alef, while the word onim in the poem is spelled with the letter ayin. There is a bitterly ironic contrast between, on the one hand, Solomon’s celebration of a well-populated ancient Israel and Isaiah’s praise of God’s power to create and reveal the stars that were a central symbol in God’s promise to Abraham, and on the other hand, the lessening of the number of Jews in Israel today because they are being murdered by terrorists. According to the speaker, the people have the reduced spiritual energy of an old man who cannot even find his glasses (7-8). It is sad for the speaker to realize that the great hopes of Abraham for his future descendants have been dashed by the cruelty of the enemies of Israel (”and who could bear this heart’s desire” [6]). The people have no more energy to ”return to the agreement or to / the words of that vision” (divrei hamaḥazeh hazeh [9-10]), an allusion to the biblical term used for the vision 129

CHAPTER TWO

that Abraham had: ”the word of the Lord came to Abram as a vision” (hayah devar Adonay el Avram bamaḥazeh [Genesis 15:1]). By juxtaposing the covenant between God and Abraham with the destruction of Jewish lives in the bus bombing, the speaker makes clear that something is wrong, that God has not lived up to His side of the covenant. In the biblical text, the only animal not cut in half during the covenant ceremony is a bird (ve’et hatsippor lo vatar [Genesis 15:10]). This fact inspires the speaker’s plea to God, ”Don’t slaughter the bird” (al tishḥat et hatsippor [12]), as if to say to Him that if He does not seem to care about the people with whom He is supposed to have a covenant, He should at least care about one of the animals He has created.

‫שפי‬-‫אבישר הר‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ֵאינְ ָך‬ ‫ַ ּגם ַה ַ ּי ְס ִמין‬ ‫וְ ׁש ֶֹבל ַה ִ ּניחוֹ ַח‬ ‫ַהדַּ ק ַה ָּל ָבן‬ ֹ‫ׁ ֶש ִה ְמ ִּתיק עוֹ לָ ם ו ְּמלוֹ או‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי‬ ‫ְצרוֹ ר ַה ּמֹר דּ וֹ ִדי לִ י‬ ‫(וְ ָאז ַ ּגם ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי‬ ‫ימנִ י ַּכחוֹ ָתם‬ ֵ ׂ‫ׁ ֶש ְּת ִש‬ )‫ׁ ֶש ּלֹא ָאזוּז‬ ‫ְּכ ָבר נִ ׁ ְש ַּכח‬ ‫ַּכ ָּמה ׁ ַשוְ ָעה‬ ‫וְ כַ ָּמה נֶ ָח ָמה יֵ ׁש ְ ּב‬ ‫״וַ ֲענֵ נִ י״ (וְ ׁ ֶש ִ ּי ְהי ּו לְ ָרצוֹ ן‬ ‫ִא ְמ ֵרי ִפי‬ ָ ֶ‫לְ ָפנ‬ )‫יך‬ ‫ְ ּב ֶע ֶרב ׁ ַש ָ ּבת‬ ‫ַא ֲח ֵרי לַ יְ לָ ה‬ ‫בּ וֹ ֲעזַ ְב ָּתנִ י‬ 130

5

10

15



Prayer and the search for God



Avishar Har-Shefi



When You are not



and the trail of aroma

5

even the jasmine

delicate and white

that sweetened the world and all that’s in it when I said

my beloved is myrrh bound together (and then I said as well place me as a seal

10 so I’ll not move)

was already forgotten



How much of a plea for help



”Answer me” (and May the words of my mouth



and how much comfort is there in

15 be acceptable

before You)



after the night



on Sabbath eve You abandoned me 30

As in the previous poem by Eliaz Cohen, this is a poem that deals with the sense of God abandoning humanity. However, whereas the poem by Cohen operated on the larger scale of the covenant between God and Israel, this is a very personal poem in which the speaker feels an individual sense of the loss of the divine presence. It is Sabbath eve, when there is a traditional custom to recite the Song of Songs, based on the rabbinic understanding of this collection of sensuous love poems as an allegorical portrayal of the close relationship between God and the people of Israel. In the first stanza of the poem, the memory that God 30 Avishar Har-Shefi, Susei esh (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2004), 39.

131

CHAPTER TWO

had abandoned the speaker on the night before causes him to forget whatever sensual pleasure he might have received from smelling a fragrant plant (”even the jasmine / and the trail of aroma / delicate and white / that sweetened the world and all that’s in it” [1-5]). The Hebrew term for ”aroma” in line 3, niḥoaḥ, alludes to the frequently used biblical expression reaḥ niḥoaḥ, which refers to the smell of the sacrifices in the Tabernacle that is said to be pleasing to God. The speaker, however, certainly cannot feel at this point that he is in God’s favor. Without God, the speaker has also forgotten the beautiful imagery that signifies the human-divine relationship which is conveyed in the words of Song of Songs such as ”my beloved is myrrh bound together” (Song of Songs 1:13 [7]) or ”place me as a seal” (Song of Songs 8:6 [9]). Furthermore, traditional words of prayer, such as ”Answer me” and ”May the words of my mouth / be acceptable / before You (14-16) are not able to provide the speaker with comfort. The poem begins and ends with words that convey the sense of God’s not being present. The first word of the poem, keshe’einkha (”When You are not” [1]), expresses the feeling that God is not with the speaker. The last word of the poem, azavtani (”You abandoned me” [19]) is a much more powerful expression of God deliberately withdrawing His presence, and it effectively alludes to the biblical verse, ”My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Eli Eli lamah azavtani (Psalms 22:2]).

Feeling Close to God A number of poems by Mashiv Haruaḥ authors tell of a sense of connection, even at times of intimacy, with God. In three poems by Sivan HarShefi, two poems by Elhanan Nir, and one poem by Naama Shaked, the authors seek to transcend traditional imagery about the human-divine relationship by inventing new metaphors and making use of new imagery to present a fresh sense of what it is like to feel that God is present in one’s life. In these poems, God is discovered in nature, in intimate human relations, and in inner states of transformation. 132

Prayer and the search for God

‫ְר ׁשוּת‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬

Permission

‫ֶאת ַה ִּמ ִּלים ׁ ֶש ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי ַה ּיוֹ ם‬ ָ ֶ‫לֹא ִ ּב ַּק ׁ ְש ִּתי ִמ ְּל ָפנ‬ ‫יך‬ ‫יתי נוֹ ִפים לֹא ׁ ְשאוּלִ ים ֵמ ִע ְּמ ָך‬ ִ ‫וְ ָר ִא‬ ְ ‫וְ ָהאוֹ טוֹ בּ וּס ָצפוֹ נָ ה ָהלַ ך וְ ִה ְת ַר ֵחק ִמירו ׁ ָּשלַ יִ ם‬ ‫יתי ַ ּב ֲח ַצר ָק ְד ׁ ְש ָך‬ ִ ִ‫וְ ִעם זֹאת ָהי‬ ‫ל־ה ָ ּגן‬ ַ ‫וְ נִ ְרדַּ ְמ ִּתי ַעל ַס ְפ ַס‬ ָ‫וְ כָ ל ַהדְּ ָב ִרים ׁ ֶש ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי ָהי ּו ׁ ִש ְמך‬ ֹ‫יתי – ּ ֵפרו ּׁשו‬ ִ ‫וְ כָ ל ַה ּנוֹ ִפים ׁ ֶש ָר ִא‬



Sivan Har-Shefi



The words I said today



I saw landscapes not borrowed from You

5

5



I did not request of You

the bus to the north went more and more distant from Jerusalem and even so I was in the courtyard of Your holiness and I dozed on the garden bench

and all the words that I said were Your name

and all the landscapes I saw – its interpretation. 31

‫ּ ָפנִ ים‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



ָ ֶ‫ֶאת ּ ָפנ‬ ‫ ִמ ִּס ְד ִקית‬,‫יך‬ ‫ימה‬ ָ ‫ִמ ִ ּנ ִּסים ׁ ֶש ֵאינָ ם עוֹ ְצ ִרים נְ ׁ ִש‬ ‫ֵמ ֲח ׁ ֵשכָ ה לַ ָחה ְ ּבגֻ ְמחוֹ ת ַה ְ ּברו ִּאים‬ ‫ֵמ ֵא ֶפר ָא ָדם נִ ְט ָרד ָ ּברוּחוֹ ת‬ ‫ְ ּב ַר ֲח ִמים ְ ּגדוֹ לִ ים ֲא ַק ֵ ּבץ‬



ָ ֶ‫ֶאת ּ ָפנ‬ ‫ ֵמ ֲח ָס ִדים ְקבו ִּעים‬,‫יך‬ 31 Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan, 78.

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CHAPTER TWO

‫ֵמ ִא ׁיש עוֹ ֵטף לִ י ַ ּב ַּליְ לָ ה‬ ‫ִמ ִ ּב ִּתי נִ ְרדְּ ָמה ַעל ְשׂ ַפת נְ ַהר ֶה ָחלָ ב‬ ‫ֲא ַב ֵּק ׁש‬ ָ ֶ‫ֶאת ּ ָפנ‬ ,‫יך‬ ‫ִּכי ּ ְפנֵ י ַה ַח ָ ּיל ִה ְת ַע ְ ּות ּו‬ ‫ּ ְפנֵ י ָא ִבי ִה ְת ּ ַפ ְּזר ּו‬ ‫ו ָּפנַ י ְּת ָר ִפים ְ ּב ַא ְמ ַּת ְח ִּתי‬ ָ ֶ‫וְ ַא ָּתה הוּא ו ָּפנ‬ ‫יך‬ Face

Sivan Har-Shefi



Your face, from finery



from moist darkness in the niches of all creatures



from miracles that do not stop one’s breath

from the ash of humanity stirred up in the winds

5

with great mercy I will gather



Your face, from constant kindnesses



from my daughter falling asleep at the shore of the milk river



from the man who envelops me at night I’ll seek

10 Your face,

for the face of the soldier has become distorted



and my face is an idol in my sack





the face of my father has dispersed

but You exist as does Your face 32

32 Ibid., 64.

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Prayer and the search for God

‫ׁ ֶשלֶ ג‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬ ‫ְ ּב ֶע ֶרב ׁ ַש ָ ּבת‬ ‫ִר ֲח ָפה וְ יָ ְר ָדה ֶאל ָהעוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫הפ ָ ּיה‬ ִ ‫ִמ ְט ּ ַפ ַחת ׁ ֶשלֶ ג יְ ֵפ‬ ‫וְ ָא ַחזְ ִּתי ְ ּב ָק ֶצ ָה ָה ֶא ָחד‬ ‫וֵ א־ל ִֹהים ַ ּב ָּק ֶצה ַה ׁ ּ ֵשנִ י‬ ‫וְ ָהיִ ינ ּו ׁ ְשנֵ ינ ּו רוֹ ְק ִדים‬ ‫ִ ּב ְצ ַמ ְרמ ֶֹרת ִרחוּק וְ ִק ְר ָבה‬ ‫ִ ּב ְס ַח ְרח ֶֹרת ִשׂ ְמ ָחה‬ .‫ׁ ֶשל ַא ֲה ָב ֵתינ ּו ַה ּ ִפ ְתאוֹ ִמית‬

5



Snow

Sivan Har-Shefi



On Sabbath eve



a kerchief of snow so very beautiful

5

down to the world floated and I grasped one end

and God grasped the other and both of us danced

with the shuddering of closeness and distance

with the dizziness of the joy of our sudden love. 33 These three poems by Sivan Har-Shefi, ”Permission” ”Face,” and ”Snow,” speak of the discovery of God in the world of the mundane. The Hebrew word for ”permission” in the title of the first poem, reshut can also refer to a kind of traditional Jewish liturgical poem (piyyut) in which the prayer leader in the synagogue asks God’s permission to present a prayer before Him. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker declares that 33 Ibid., 68.

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neither the words she has spoken nor the landscapes she has seen are of divine origin (1-3). As she travels on a bus northward away from the holy city of Jerusalem, in a certain sense she is further distancing herself from God (4). Yet, ”even so,” she declares, she knows that throughout this trip she has always been in the presence of God. Even far from Jerusalem it is as if she is in the holy ”courtyard” of God’s Temple (5). Once she falls asleep in a nature setting on a ”garden bench” (6), she knows that she has never been distant from God. She realizes now that all that she said is, in fact, the name of God, which is traditionally seen as containing His essence (7), and her view of the landscapes teaches her how to interpret that name (8). In biblical terms, to see God’s face is to be granted the most intimate revelation of the divine possible. And generally speaking, it is understood in the Bible that anyone who sees the face of God must die. In ”Face” the speaker discovers God’s face in a whole range of relatively mundane images: ”finery” (1), everyday ”miracles that do not stop one’s breath” (2), ”moist darkness in the niches of all creatures” (3), ”the ash of humanity” (4), acts of kindness (6), the love between her husband and herself (7), and the love between herself and her daughter (8). ”With great mercy” (5) she will gather up the mundane images so that she will have a sense of who God is. She has an urgent need to see God’s face, because there is much in the world that is missing and that puts forth a face that is counter to that of God: the distorted ”face of the soldier” (perhaps killed, wounded, or psychologically traumatized [11]) and the ”dispersed” face of her father, who can no longer be the focused source of love he was for her when she was a child (12). To worship her own face would be an act of idolatry, described in the poem as terafim be’amtaḥti (”an idol in my sack” [13]). This expression alludes to two stories in which biblical characters were suspected of stealing a valuable object: when Rachel stole the idols (terafim) of her father Laban (Genesis 31:19) and when Joseph had his special cup put into the sack of (amtaḥat) his youngest brother Benjamin (Genesis 44: 2). These stories involve the search for a hidden, precious object: Laban’s search for the idols Rachel stole and Joseph’s men’s search for the cup that Joseph wants to accuse Benjamin of having stolen. The objects for 136

Prayer and the search for God

which the owners search in these stories, however, are associated with falsehoods: the pagan gods Laban worshiped and Joseph’s deceit of his brothers. Thus, if the speaker were to search for her own face as a means to spiritual fulfillment, she too will have embarked on a false path. She knows that it is only the true God whose face she has discovered that is worthy of worship (14). In ”Snow,” the relatively rare experience of snowfall in Israel suggests a way for God and humanity to relate. The white snow coming down from the heavens and landing on earth on Sabbath eve is seen as a white kerchief of which the female speaker and God take hold and begin to dance (1-6). This dance has an intensity to it with erotic overtones: ”with the shuddering of closeness and distance / with the dizziness of the joy/ of our sudden love” (7-9). 34 It is a dance that enacts the paradox of God and humanity being close and yet so very far from each other, even as it affirms the fact that she and God have just discovered that they have fallen in love.

‫ַא ָּתה יוֹ ֵד ַע‬ ‫אלחנן ניר‬



‫יוד ַע לִ ְברֹא לֵ ב‬ ֵ ‫ַא ָּתה‬ ‫ֶא ֶבן ׁ ֶש ַא ָּתה יָ כוֹ ל ַ ּגם לְ ָה ִרים‬



‫ַא ָּתה יוֹ ֵד ַע לִ ְברֹא לֵ ב‬ ,‫ׁ ֶש ֵ ּי ַדע ַ ּגם לָ ֵצאת ִמבּ וֹ רוֹ ת‬ ‫ ׁ ֶש ִ ּנ ְמ ַּכר‬, ֹ‫ׁ ֶש ִה ּ ִפיל ַע ְצמו‬



‫ַא ָּתה יוֹ ֵד ַע לְ ָה ֵחם ְ ּבכַ ף יָ ְד ָך לֵ ב‬ ‫ָקפוּא ֵמרֹב‬



‫ַא ָּתה יוֹ ֵד ַע‬



34 I thank Adina Newberg for her interpretation of these lines.

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CHAPTER TWO



You Know



You know how to create a heart



You know how to create a heart

5

that cast itself, that was sold



You know how to warm with Your hand a heart



You know 35









Elhanan Nir

of stone that You can lift

that will know how to get out of pits,

frozen from too much

In Western philosophy, paradoxes have been presented to suggest that the notion of God being omnipotent is logically inconsistent. One of those paradoxes is: ”Can God create a stone too heavy for God to move? If God can, then there is something that God cannot do – move such a stone – and if God cannot, then there is something God cannot do – create such a stone.” 36 In this poem, the paradox is not presented as a challenge to the notion of God’s omnipotence, but as two different kinds of paradox related to God and humanity. The first paradox is that the very qualities of a person with a heart of stone that were given to that person by God can also be overcome by God’s ability to lift that heart (1-2). The second paradox is related more directly to what people do to themselves. Drawing on imagery from the biblical story of Joseph being cast into a pit and then sold into slavery by his brothers (Genesis 37), the speaker refers to the ways that a person can treat himself as destructively and disrespectfully as Joseph’s brothers treated him. The paradox is that that heart with its self-destructive qualities also knows how to overcome 35 Elhanan Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008), 11. 36 ”Paradoxes of Omnipotence,” The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, http://www.credoreference.com.

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Prayer and the search for God

the consequences of self-defeating acts: ”a heart / that will know how to get out of pits, / that cast itself, that was sold” (3-5). At the end of the poem, the speaker celebrates God’s power to revive people who have become spiritually frozen: His warm hand can unfreeze the heart from its pain (6-8). In these three instances, the human heart is heavy, trapped, or frozen and yet God has the power to overcome these limiting situations, and sometimes human beings have a heart that empowers them to help themselves.

ׂ‫ו ִּפ ְתאֹם ּ ָפ ַרש‬ ‫אלחנן ניר‬



‫ו ִּפ ְתאֹם ּ ָפ ַרשׂ ֱאל ִֹהים לְ ֵעינֵ ינ ּו‬ ‫ֶאת ַט ִּלית ַה ּי ִֹפי‬ ֹ‫וְ ִה ְב ִעיר ָ ּבנ ּו ֶאת ְּת ִפ ָּלתו‬ ‫ִ ּב ְדמוּת ַה ֶ ּג ֶפן וְ ַה ְּת ֵאנָ ה‬



‫וְ ַח ְסדּ וֹ ָהלַ ְך ִע ָּמנ ּו ְ ּבכָ ל ֶה ָה ִרים‬ ‫ְמ ַט ּ ֵפס ִע ָּמנ ּו לְ לֵ ב ַה ּק ׁ ִשי‬ ‫ַמ ְר ֶאה בּ וֹ בּ ו ְּס ָּתנִ ים נִ ְס ָּת ִרים‬ ‫וְ ֵאיזֶ ה ֵריחוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ ֵאיזֶ ה ְ ּב ֵארוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ כַ ָּמה ְקלִ ּפוֹ ת ָהיִ ינ ּו ְצ ִריכִ ים לְ ַק ֵּלף‬ ‫ִעם ָּכל ּ ַפ ָ ּגה ׁ ֶש ִה ְב ׁ ִשילָ ה‬ ‫ֶא ׁ ְשכּ וֹ ל ׁ ֶש ִ ּב ֵּכר‬ ‫ִעם ָּכל ַה ּי ִֹפי וְ ַה ַ ּייִ ן ׁ ֶש ּ ָפ ַרשׂ ֱאל ִֹהים לְ ֵעינֵ ינ ּו‬ ‫ְ ּביָ ֵמינ ּו ָהעוֹ לִ ים‬ ‫ ְ ּב ָע ׁ ָשן‬



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10

15



CHAPTER TWO



And Suddenly He Spread



And suddenly God spread before our eyes



and inflamed in us His prayer



5

Elhanan Nir

the prayer shawl of beauty

in the form of the vine and the fig tree His love went with us in all the mountains

climbing with us to the heart of the difficulty showing in it hidden gardens such smells such wells.

10 How many peels did we have to peel

when each new fruit ripened



with all the beauty and wine that God spread out before our eyes

15

each cluster ripened early in our days rising

in smoke 37

The traditional evening Jewish liturgy speaks of God spreading the tabernacle of His peace on the people of Israel. Here, God spreads a prayer shawl of natural beauty (1-2) ”in the form of the vine and the fig tree” (4), evoking in people the ability to pray (”and inflamed in us His prayer” [3]). In the Bible, an era of peace and tranquility is conveyed by the image of being at leisure to sit under one’s vine and fig tree (1 Kings 5:5 and Micah 4:4) or to eat from one’s vine and fig tree (2 Kings 18:31 and Isaiah 36:16). The expression ”when each new fruit ripened / each cluster ripened early” (11-12) evokes the wonder at nature providing its bounties. It alludes to a passage in the Mishnah that discusses the 37 Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut, 33.

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Prayer and the search for God

procedure for determining which is the first fruit to be offered to God: ”How does one set aside the first fruits? One goes down into one's field and sees a fig that ripened, a cluster that ripened, a pomegranate that ripened, ties a cord on it and says, ‘Behold these are the first fruits.’” (Bikkurim 3:1).38 A sense of ancient tranquility is captured as well in the speaker’s use in line 7 of the Persian loan word for garden, bustan, found in the Talmud. God cares so much for people that He becomes their companion as they try to deal with the difficulties of life (”His love went with us in all the mountains / climbing with us to the heart of the difficulty” [5-6]). As He joins with humanity to meet life’s challenges, God reveals to them in those very difficulties a richness of beauty, pleasant aromas, and an oasis with abudant sources of water, which they could not discover on their own (7-9). Now they have access to delicious ripe fruit they can peel and eat, as well as wine and beautiful sights (10-13). The poem, however, ends on the disturbing note that despite all that God has provided, the people’s ”days [are] rising / in smoke” (14-15).39

‫נעמה שקד‬



‫ִמ ׁ ּ ָשם ֶא ּ ָפ ֵרד לְ ַא ְר ָ ּב ָעה נְ ָחלִ ים‬ ‫ַה ּ ְפ ָרת‬ ‫וְ ַה ָּז ָהב ַה ּטוֹ ב‬ ‫וְ ַה ֲח ָר ָדה‬



‫ַא ְר ַ ּבע זְ רוֹ עוֹ ת בּ וֹ ֲערוֹ ת לְ תוֹ ְך ָהעוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫ַח ׁ ְש ַמל ַ ּג ְע ּגו ִּעים‬

5



38 Yehudit Winograd and Rivka Shaul Ben Zvi, ”Ufitom paras: shir me’et Elhanan Nir uferusho,” http://www.daat.ac.il. 39 In an e-mail correspondence with me on 30 June 2009, the poet suggested that the image of ”smoke” at the end reflects his consciousness of the legacy of the Holocaust as a third generation survivor. (His grandmother survived the Holocaust.) He also suggested a more esoteric interpretation, that in the Kabbalah the word for ”smoke,” ashan, is said to be an acronym for the Hebrew words olam (world, or eternity), shanah (year), and nefesh (soul).

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‫לִ זְ רֹם ָ ּגאֹה וָ ׁשוֹ ב ָ ּגאֹה וָ ׁשוֹ ב‬ ‫לָ גַ ַעת ְ ּב ֶע ֶצם ָה ֱאל ִֹהים‬



.‫ׁ ָשם ֶא ְת ּפוֹ ֵצץ‬ .‫יסים ֲעלֵ י ֵע ֶשׂ ב‬ ִ ‫ָאנו ַּח ְר ִס‬ ‫ֹאשי יִ ְמ ָצא לוֹ ֵחיק‬ ִׁ ‫ר‬ ִ ׁ ‫ֹאשי ר‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּלֹא יָ ַד ְע ִּתי‬



‫יְ ָס ְר ֵקנִ י ִ ּבנְ ׁ ִשיקוֹ ת ּ ִפיה ּו‬ ‫ְשׂ ָע ִרי יִ ְפ ַרח ָעלַ י יְ ֵהא ַח ׁ ְש ַמל ַ ּג ְע ּגו ִּעים‬ ‫חשת ַא ְר ַ ּבע נְ ָחלִ ים‬ ֶ ׁ ְ‫יְ ֵהא נ‬ ‫זָ ָהב ו ְּפ ָרת וַ ֲח ָר ָדה‬ ‫ֹאשי ֲעלֵ י ִפיה ּו‬ ִׁ ‫ר‬ ‫ְשׂ ָפ ַתי יִ ְבכּ ּו ְמאֹד‬ ‫ֶאת ַה ּ ְשׂ ֵר ָפה ֲא ׁ ֶשר ָ ּב ַער ִ ּבי‬ ‫ָּכל ַה ָ ּי ִמים ֲא ׁ ֶשר ִ ּב ַּק ׁ ְש ִּתיה ּו‬

Naama Shaked



From there I will separate into four rivers



the Good Gold



5

the Euphrates

and the Anxiety Four arms burning into the world electric currents of longing

to flow rising and ebbing rising and ebbing to touch the essence of God



There I will explode.



My head my head will find a bosom

10 I will rest shrapnel scattered on the grass.

I never knew

142

10

15

20

Prayer and the search for God



Let Him comb me with the kisses of His mouth

my hair will blossom upon me will be electric currents of longing

15 copper of four rivers

Gold and Euphrates and Anxiety



My head upon His mouth



His fire that burned within me



my lips will copiously weep

20 all the days I sought Him 40

At the beginning of the poem, the poet draws on the description in the Bible of four rivers that separate from the river that flows out of the Garden of Eden: The first is named Pishon, it winds through the land of Havilah where

there is gold. And the gold of that land is good, there is bdellium and lapis lazuli. The second river is named Gihon, it winds through the

entire land of Cush. The third river is named Hidekel, it flows east of Ashur, and Euphrates is the fourth river. (Genesis 2: 11-14).

Here, it is the speaker herself who ”separate[s] into four rivers” (neḥalim in the poem; roshim in the Bible [1]). The only name of the four biblical rivers to which the speaker refers is the Euphrates (2, 16). In the poem, the other three suggest a mixture of the fulfilling and troubling experiences that have made her feel divided within herself, ”Good” (3), ”Gold” (which is mentioned in the Genesis passage [3, 16]), and ”Anxiety” (4,16). This sense of being pulled in different directions is overcome as the speaker portrays an encounter she has with God in which it is as if they are lovers. The four rivers are transformed in the next stanza into the four arms of the male and female lovers, who represent God and the speaker, reaching out to each other (5). The sexual desire the lovers have for each other is presented as ”electric currents of longing / to flow rising and ebbing rising and ebbing” (6-7). Significantly, the Hebrew term for ”electric” (ḥashmal) 40 Mashiv Haruaḥ 11 (2002): 14.

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CHAPTER TWO

is also used in the description of a divine revelation to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:4, 1:27). The climax of their love making is presented as if the speaker has gone beyond her original experience of separation (1) to being blown apart into small pieces. This time, however, the division of herself leads to feelings of peacefulness and security as she lies with her lover, an experience that is so new to her: ”There I will explode. / I will rest shrapnel on the grass. / My head my head will find a bosom / I never knew” (9-12). The speaker’s erotic relationship with God is continued in the fourth stanza with the transformation of the biblical expression yishaqeni mineshiqot pihu (”let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” Song of Songs 1: 2), into yisarqeni beneshiqot pihu (”Let Him comb me with the kisses of His mouth” [13]). Having found the lover-like God she has sought, the speaker is, however, still filled with the sense of division and longing she felt before she found Him: ”my hair will blossom upon me will be electric currents of longing / copper of four rivers / Gold and Euphrates and Anxiety” (14-16). Furthermore, as she makes physical contact with God (”My head on His mouth” [17]), she cannot help but bemoan the period when she so desperately tried to find Him: ”my lips will copiously weep / His fire that burned within me / all the days I sought Him” (18-20).

Judaism, Islam, and Far Eastern Religions Each of the three traditional daily prayer services of the Jewish tradition concludes with the Aleinu prayer. This prayer begins by declaring the obligation of Jews to praise God for ”not making us like the nations of the world.” In the original version of the prayer, it is stated that the reason given for this praise of God is that Jews have been saved from the religious practices of the nations of the world, ”who bow down to idols in vain and pray to a god that will not bring them salvation” (shehem mishtaḥavim lehevel variq umitpalelim el el lo yoshia). That expression was censored from traditional Jewish prayer books in Christian 144

Prayer and the search for God

Europe because of its perceived delegitimization of Christianity, but it has found its way back into contemporary Israeli prayer books. The relatively recent restoration of the expression is very much in keeping with the way that religious Zionists are educated to believe that Judaism is the purest and truest path to God and that other spiritual traditions are not only of no use to Jews but also potentially harmful to their religious lives. In the following poems, Elhanan Nir and Nahum Pachenik challenge this attitude by suggesting that other religious traditions may at times have a spiritual intensity that is superior to the typical spirituality of religious Zionists. In Elhanan Nir’s poem, that spirituality is challenged by the religiosity of Palestinian Muslims as well as by that practiced by Jews in Israel who continue to live in accordance with the fervent devotion to God that once characterized the religious life of traditional Eastern European Jewry. In Nahum Pachenik’s poem, the religious traditions of the Far East provide the speaker with a welcome spiritual escape from what he sees as problematic in the religious Zionism in which he was raised.

ָ ֶ‫ָרץ ֵאל‬ ‫יך‬ ‫אלחנן ניר‬ ‫״שבעה חסידי ברסלב נפצעו בפיגוע ירי בשכם‬ ‫בדרכם חזרה מתפילה ללא אישור בקבר יוסף״‬ )‫ י״ז בכסלו תשס״ד‬,‫ יום שישי‬,‫(קול ישראל‬ ‫קוֹ לוֹ ת מו ַּא ִּזין ׁ ֶש ָּל ֶהם ָע ִפים ָ ּברו ַּח‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ֲאנַ ְחנ ּו ְּכ ָבר ְ ּבלָ ָבן ׁ ֶשל ִה ְת ַקדֵּ ׁש‬ ‫נִ ָּתכִ ים ֵאלֵ ינ ּו ְּכ ׁ ֶש ּ ֵשׂ ָער ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו ֲע ַדיִ ן ָרטֹב‬ ‫עוֹ לִ ים ִמ ְּל ַמ ָּטה‬ ,‫יתים‬ ִ ‫ ֵמ ַה ֵּז‬,‫ ֵמ ַה ׁ ּשוֹ ֵמרוֹ ת‬,‫ְּכ ִא ּל ּו ָצ ְמח ּו ֵמ ַה ֶּט ָרסוֹ ת‬ ,‫ֵמ ַה ְּת ֵאנִ ים ַהיְ ֵב ׁשוֹ ת ׁ ֶשל סוֹ ף ִּכ ְסלֵ ו‬ ‫ָ ּב ִאים ִמ ְ ּבלִ י לְ ִה ְתנַ צֵּ ל ִמ ְ ּבלִ י לְ גַ ְמ ֵ ּגם ִמ ְ ּבלִ י לְ ַחכּ וֹ ת‬ ָ ֶ‫כּ וֹ ְר ִעים לְ ָפנ‬ ‫יך ו ִּמזְ דַּ ְּק ִפים‬ ּ ְ ‫ִ ּבזְ ִקיפוּת ׁ ְשלֵ ָמה‬ )‫(בלִ י ַאף ַעל ּ ִפי וְ יִ ְת ַמ ְה ֵמ ַּה וְ ִעם ָּכל זֶ ה וַ ֲא ַח ֶּכה‬ 145

5



‫‪CHAPTER TWO‬‬

‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬

‫ ‬

‫וַ ֲאנַ ְחנוּ‪ַ ׁ ,‬ש ְבנ ּו וְ לֹא ׁ ַש ְבנ ּו ָ ּבאנ ּו וְ לֹא ָ ּבאנ ּו נָ גַ ְענ ּו וְ לֹא נָ גַ ְענ ּו‬ ‫וְ קוֹ לוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו ְמ ֻה ָּס ִסים‬ ‫ְמכַ ִ ּבים ֶאת ָהאוֹ ר מוֹ ִר ִידים ֶאת ַה ְּת ִריס וְ אוּלַ י לוֹ ֲח ׁ ִשים‬ ‫וְ אוּלַ י ׁ ֶש ּלֹא יִ ׁ ְש ַמע‬ ‫ׁשוֹ לְ ִחים ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫ימייל‪ּ ְ ,‬ב־‪ּ ַ ,sms‬ב ֲעלוֹ נֵ י ּ ָפ ָר ׁ ַשת ַה ׁ ּ ָשבו ַּע‪,‬‬ ‫יך ְּת ִפ ּלוֹ ת ְ ּב ִא ֵ‬ ‫ְ ּב ּ ִפהו ִּקים ׁ ֶשל ׁ ָשבו ַּע ָק ׁ ֶשה – ַרק לֹא ְ ּבקוֹ ל‪ּ ִ ,‬ב ְצ ָע ָקה‬ ‫ַרק לֹא ַ ּב ֲאנַ ְחנ ּו‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ַא ַחר נִ ְרקֹד ְ ּב ִא ִּט ּיוּת ׁ ֶש ּקוֹ ל ׁ ֶש ְּלך ַעל ַה ַּמיִ ם‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּקוֹ ל ׁ ֶש ְּל ָך ְ ּבכ ַֹח וְ חוֹ ֵצב ֵא ׁש וְ יָ ִחיל ִמ ְד ָ ּבר‬ ‫וְ יָ ִעיף ַא ָ ּילוֹ ת ְ ּב ָה ֵרי יְ רו ׁ ָּשלַ יִ ם וְ יַ ְחשׂ ף אוֹ ָצרוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּקוֹ ל ׁ ֶש ְּל ָך ׁשוֹ ֵאג‬ ‫ׁשוֹ ֵאג‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ַ ּגם ׁ ָש ַמ ְענ ּו ִּכי יֵ ׁש ִמי ׁ ֶש ָרץ ִּכי יֵ ׁש ִמי ׁ ֶש ִּמ ְתנוֹ ֵפף ֵאלֶ יךָ‬ ‫אטע״‬ ‫״ט ֵ‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ְ ּביַ ֲערוֹ ת או ְּק ָר ִאינָ ה וְ צוֹ ֵעק לְ ָך ַ‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ָרץ ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך וְ נוֹ ֵהם ְּכ ַח ָ ּיה ּ ְפצו ָּעה לֵ ילוֹ ת ׁ ְשלֵ ִמים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ָרץ ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך ָעטוּף ְ ּביוֹ ֵסף וְ צוֹ ֵעק‬ ‫צוֹ ֵעק‬ ‫וְ יֵ ׁש ִמי ׁ ֶש ּיוֹ ֵד ַע ׁ ֶש ַ ּגם ְצ ִריכִ ים לְ נַ צֵּ ַח אוֹ ְת ָך וּלְ ֵה ָה ֵרג ָעלֶ יךָ‬ ‫וּלְ ִה ְס ַּת ֵ ּב ְך ָ ּב ַרגְ לַ יִ ם ְּככִ ְב ָשׂ ה ַא ַחת‪,‬‬ ‫ְּכ ַאיִ ל ֶא ָחד וְ לִ ּפֹל‬ ‫ָעלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך‪ֶ ׁ ,‬ש ַּמ ֲא ִמין ׁ ֶשכּ ֹל נְ ִפילוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ְ ּיהו ִּדי נוֹ ֵפל הוּא נוֹ ֵפל‬ ‫ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך‬ ‫נִ ְד ָקר ִמ ּקוֹ לוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ָּל ֶהם ְמנֻ ָּקב ִמ ּ ִשׂ נְ ָאה‬ ‫יטב‬ ‫נוֹ ֵפל לְ תוֹ ְך ַמ ֲא ָרב ְמ ֻתכְ נָ ן ֵה ֵ‬ ‫ׁ ִש ְב ָעה נִ ְפ ְצע ּו ׁ ִש ׁ ּ ָשה ְ ּב ַמצָּ ב ֵ ּבינוֹ נִ י ֶא ָחד ְ ּב ַמצָּ ב ָאנו ּׁש‪,‬‬ ‫ְ‘מ ׁ ֻש ָ ּג ִעים׳ ֻּכ ָּלם ְּכ ָבר אוֹ ְמ ִרים‪,‬‬ ‫סוֹ ף סוֹ ף אוֹ ְמ ִרים‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ָרץ ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך ִמ ְ ּבלִ י לַ ֲהרֹג ִמ ְ ּבלִ י ַסיִ ף‬ ‫יטב‬ ‫ִמ ְ ּבלִ י ְמ ֻתכְ נָ ן ֵה ֵ‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ָרץ ֵאלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך‬ ‫ְ ּביָ ַדיִ ם ּ ְפ ׁשוּטוֹ ת‬ ‫ּ ְפ ׁשוּטוֹ ת‬

‫‪146‬‬

Prayer and the search for God



Running to You



Elhanan Nir

”Seven Bratslav Hasidim were wounded in a shooting attack in Shechem on their way back from unauthorized prayer at Joseph’s

Tomb”

(Kol Yisrael, Friday, 17 Kislev 5764)



The voices of their muezzin fly in the wind



flowing out to us while our hair is still wet

5

while we are already dessed in white and sanctified ascending from below

as if they grew from the terraces, from the watchmen’s huts, from



from the dry figs of the end of Kislev,



bowing down before You and standing



the olive trees,

arriving without apologizing without stuttering without waiting fully upright (without ”even though he tarry” and ”even so I wait”)

10 and we have returned and not returned arrived and not arrived

and our voices are hesitant



perhaps so He won’t hear



touched and not touched

we extinguish the light lower the shutter and perhaps we whisper



sending You prayers by e-mail, by SMS, by weekly portion pamphlets,



just not with a sense of ”we”



that Your voice is powerful lighting fire causing the wilderness

15 with the yawns of a difficult week—just not aloud, not shouting



afterward we will dance slowly that Your voice is on the water

to tremble

causing rams to fly on the hills of Jerusalem and uncovering treasures,

20 that Your voice roars roars

147

CHAPTER TWO



but we also heard there is someone running there is someone 



as in the forests of Ukraine and crying to you ”Tate”



rising up to You

who runs to You and roars as a wounded animal for entire nights

25 who runs to You enwrapped in Joseph and cries out



cries out and there’s someone who knows it’s necessary to defeat You and be killed for Your sake and become entangled in his legs like a lamb, like a ram and to fall 30 for Your sake, who believes that each time a Jew falls he falls toward You pierced by their voices punctured with hatred falling into a well-planned ambush seven wounded six in intermediate condition one in critical condition, 35 ”Crazy,” everyone’s already saying, finally, they say, but running to You without killing without a sword without it being well planned but running to You 40 with arms outstretched outstretched 41

In the West Bank city of Shechem there is a tomb believed by some Jews to be that of the biblical Joseph. In the early 1980s, a yeshiva and a synagogue were established at the site, and when the Israeli army withdrew from Shechem in 1995, the Palestinian Authority allowed the presence of Israeli forces to guard the tomb. After a fierce battle between Palestinians and the Israeli guards toward the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, Israel stopped guarding the tomb and the government prohibited Jews from visiting it.42 The radio news report at the beginning of the 41 Nir, Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut, 20-21. 42 Deborah Sontag, ”A Biblical Patriarch’s Tomb Becomes a Battleground,” New York Times, 4 October 2000.

148

Prayer and the search for God

poem tells of a group of Hasidim, followers of Rav Nahman of Bratslav, who in 2003 defied the government prohibition, went to the tomb to pray, and were shot at by Palestinians. Nir has given the following description of the experience that inspired this poem: The beginning of Winter 5764 (=2003). Friday, the Sabbath is spreading

out over the Bethlehem mountains. I come out of the shower, turn on the radio and hear that seven Bratslav Hasidim were wounded on their

way from the tomb of Joseph in Shechem. I dress in white, the cold of

twilight grabs my face, and I walk to the synagogue in the place where I live, Givat Hadagan in northern Gush Etzion. And suddenly, the voice

of the muezzin from the villages around Bethlehem assails my ears. A confident voice, strong, standing on its own, shouting out as it wishes.

”Allahu akbar [God is great],” he shouts. And suddenly, while I am at

the entrance to the synagogue, the voices of Kabbalat Shabbat [psalms recited at the onset of the Sabbath] mix with the voice of the muezzin,

and the two of them with the intensity of the uncompromising travel

of the Bratslavers to Shechem. On Saturday night, the poem ”Run-

ning to You” came to me.43

The poem begins on Friday, when the Jews are preparing for their Sabbath and the Muslim muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer on their holy day. The sounds of the Muslim call to prayer are naturally integrated into the local landscape: they ”fly in the wind / …ascending from below,/ as if they grew from the terraces, from the watchmen’s huts, from the olive trees, / from the dry figs of the end of Kislev” (1, 4-6). Furthermore, these Muslim sounds of prayer are uttered with no self-consciousness, with the conviction that they have every right to be heard throughout the land: ”arriving without apologizing without stuttering without waiting” (7). Even as these words call for complete submission to God, they also assert a proud sense of presence in the world: ”bowing down before You and standing / fully upright” (8-9).

43 ”Elhanan Nir,” Pesifas 61 (2005): 37.

149

CHAPTER TWO

In contrast, the Jews are less fully integrated into their surroundings. Before entering into their holy day they must sanctify themselves by bathing and wearing white clothing (2-3). In their voices one can sense that they are not sure they really belong where they are: ”and we have returned and not returned arrived and not arrived touched and not touched” (10). In contrast to the assertive and confident voice of the muezzin who knows that Muslims are in the presence of the God whom they worship, the Jews approach their prayer in a restrained manner: ”and our voices are hesitant, / we extinguish the light lower the shutter and perhaps we whisper/ perhaps so He won’t hear” (11-13). The Muslims have no need to say the words from Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith that Jews recite in acknowledgment that they do not feel fully redeemed and that they will patiently await the coming of the Messiah, ”’even though he tarry’ and ‘even so I wait’” (9). The way Jews pray in the synagogue is not more significant than if they were sending an e-mail message or an SMS message to God. Rather than pray, people sit in their seats and read pamphlets on the weekly Torah portion that are distributed in synagogues every Sabbath, while yawning in boredom (14-15). Furthermore, they pray softly without any feeling of community: ”just not aloud, not shouting / just not with a sense of ‘we’ ” (15-16). However, when they recite Psalm 29, which is part of the service inaugurating the arrival of the Sabbath, they begin a slow dance to celebrate the power of God, which is presented in the psalm in thirdperson references to Him (17): the voice of the Lord is on the water …the voice of the Lord lights flames of fire, the voice of the Lord causes the wilderness to trem-

ble…the voice of the Lord causes rams to quake and uncovers forests (Psalms 29:3-9)

In the poem, the speaker addresses God as he uses these images, with some modifications: that Your voice is on the water/ that Your voice is powerful lighting

fire causing the wilderness to tremble/ causing rams to fly on the hills 150

Prayer and the search for God

of Jerusalem and uncovering treasures,/ that Your voice roars/ roars. (17-21)

The voice of God is celebrated here as strong and forceful, more like that of the voice of the Muslim muezzin than that of the quiet, hesitant Jewish prayer described earlier in the poem. At this point in the poem, there emerges a Jewish figure of intense spirituality, a representative traditional Eastern European Jew who suddenly appears as if he is running ”in the forests of Ukraine,” presumably from the Gentiles who are chasing him (22-23). This Jewish figure desperately seeks God, for his existence is no better than that of a hunted animal (”who runs to You and moans as a wounded animal for entire nights” [24]). He has an intimate relationship with God, calling Him with the affectionate Yiddish term, Tate (Daddy [23]), yet he also has the status of the biblical Joseph whose tomb the Bratslav Hasidim have just visited, and he is therefore able to shout out to God in a more forceful manner than his Israeli descendants portrayed earlier in the poem (”who runs to You enwrapped in Joseph and cries out / cries out” [25-26]). Unlike the Jews of contemporary times, as a martyr who is willing to die for the sanctification of God’s name this traditional Eastern European Jew fully understands the significance of his relationship with God: ”and there’s someone who knows it’s necessary to defeat You and be killed for Your sake / and become entangled in his legs like a lamb / like a ram and to fall / for Your sake, who believes that each time a Jew falls he falls / toward You” (27-31). The Palestinian muezzin, whose Islamic religiosity had been presented as a positive spiritual role model for Jews, has been replaced by the Palestinians who attacked the Bratslav Hasidim at the tomb of Joseph, an act which recalls the attacks by Gentiles on Jews in Eastern Europe in previous generations. Now the voice of the muezzin is transformed into the voices of hatred and destruction: ”pierced by their voices punctured with hatred / falling into a well-planned ambush / seven wounded six in intermediate condition one in critical condition” (32-34). To the typical secular Jew, and even to many religious Jews, these followers of Rav 151

CHAPTER TWO

Nahman of Bratslav are crazy to have risked praying at Joseph’s Tomb in Palestinian territory (35-36). The religious devotion of the Bratslav Hasidim, in defiance of Palestinian hatred, and their willingness to endanger themselves without carrying weapons that they might use to kill the enemy, however, provide for the speaker a model of an admirable non-violent spirituality: ”but running to You without killing without a sword / without it being well planned / but running to You / with arms outstretched / outstretched,” (37-41). According to Nir, this poem evoked extreme reactions from readers when it was first published in the settler journal Nequdah. On the one hand, Rav Yisrael Ariel of the settlement of Yitzhar was so excited about it that he put up copies of it in bus stops throughout the West Bank. On the other hand, a relative of Nir’s from Saad, a religious kibbutz, told him that his writing of the poem was so irresponsible that he should be thrown into jail. Nir learned about another example of polarized reactions to the poem when a hesder yeshiva student told him that he displayed a copy of the poem in his yeshiva. The students became very excited by it, the student related to Nir, but the rabbis protested that the poem conveys what they considered to be a problematic preference for ”ecstatic prayer over life.”44

‫ג־סי‬ ִ ְ‫ֶּכ ֶסה ְ ּבגו ַּאנ‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬



‫ַה ֶּמלֶ ְך‬ ‫ַה ִּמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפט‬ ‫וַ ֲאנִ י‬ ְ ‫יָ ָצאנ ּו לְ ֶד ֶרך ֲא ֻר ָּכה‬ .‫ִ ּב ְמחוֹ ז ֲחלוֹ ֵמנ ּו ַה ִּמזְ ָר ִחי‬ ,‫ ָּכעוּס וּנְ ִקי כַ ּ ַפיִ ם‬,‫ַה ִּמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפט‬ ְ.‫ָהיָ ה ַמ ְפ ִריד ְ ּב ַמ ְר ּ ְפ ָקנוּת נוֹ ֶא ׁ ֶשת ֵ ּבינִ י ו ֵּבין ַה ֶּמלֶ ך‬ ,‫ֲא ָבל ַה ֶּמלֶ ְך‬



44 Ehrlich, ”Meshorer habayit.”

152

5



‫‪Prayer and the search for God‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַה ֶּמלֶ ְך ְ ּב ֶח ְמלָ תוֹ‬ ‫ָהיָ ה ַמ ׁ ְש ִּכין ׁ ָשלוֹ ם ֵ ּבינֵ ינ ּו‬ ‫ְמלַ ֵּטף‬ ‫ו ֵּמ ִאיר ֶאת נוֹ ֵפנוּ‪.‬‬ ‫ָּכ ְך ָק ְפ ָצה לָ נ ּו דַּ ְר ֵּכנוּ‪,‬‬ ‫נִ יחוֹ חוֹ ת ְמ ׁ ַש ְּכ ִרים ָחלְ פ ּו ָס ִביב‬ ‫וְ ָהי ּו לְ ַדת ִר ּגו ׁ ֵּשנ ּו ו ִּפנְ טוּזֵ נוּ‪.‬‬ ‫ֶאת ִסין ָה ֲע ָמ ִמית‬ ‫ָה ְפכ ּו ַה ְ ּנדו ִּדים ִ ּב ְרבוֹ ת ַה ָ ּי ִמים לְ ֶא ֶרץ יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‬ ‫וְ ֶאת ַּת ְר ִמילֵ נ ּו‬ ‫ַאט ַאט לְ ֶחלְ ַקת ַא ְד ָמ ֵתנ ּו ַה ֻּמ ְב ַט ַחת‪.‬‬

‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ֵמ ֶע ְמדַּ ת ִה ׁ ְש ָּתאו ֵּתנ ּו ַה ְּקסו ָּמה‬ ‫ַהצִּ ּפוֹ ִרית‬ ‫נִ ְצ ּפ ּו לְ ֶפ ַתע ַ ּב ֶּמ ְר ָחק ֲאנָ ׁ ִשים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ְּל ַמ ְר ֵאה ּגו ָּפם וְ יִ חוּל ְּתנו ַּעת ֵ ּגוָ ם‬ ‫יָ ַד ְענ ּו‬ ‫יָ ַד ְענ ּו ְ ּברוּרוֹ ת ִּכי ֵא ֶּלה יְ הו ִּדים‪,‬‬ ‫וְ ָהיִ ינ ּו ְ ּב ֶרגַ ע ֶא ָחד ְמאֹד לְ בוֹ כִ ים‬ ‫ו ְּבכָ ל זֹאת ָהיִ ינ ּו ְּכחוֹ לְ ִמים‬ ‫ִ ּב ְד ָרכֵ ינ ּו ַה ִּמזְ ָר ִח ּיוֹ ת‬ ‫ג־סי‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ָה ֵרי ֶח ֶבל ּגו ַּאנְ ִ‬ ‫ָהי ּו צוֹ ֲע ִקים‬ ‫ְ ּבעוֹ נָ ה ִמ ְס ּתוֹ ִרית ַא ַחת‪:‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ַה ֶּמלֶ ְך ַה ִּמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפט‪.‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪153‬‬

CHAPTER TWO



The Hidden Moon in Guang-Si Nahum Pachenik

King

Justice

and I

5

in the region of our eastern dream.



went off on a long path

Justice, angered and fully innocent,

would desperately elbow between the King and me. But the King,

the King in His compassion

10 would cause peace to dwell among us caressing

and lighting up our landscape.



Thus, our path went quickly,



intoxicating aromas passed by around us

15 and became the religion of our excitement and our fantasies.



The People’s Republic of China

was transformed by our wanderings after many days into the Land of Israel

and our backpacks

little by little into a parcel of our promised land.

20 From the standpoint of our enchanted wonder

from a bird’s-eye view



and from the appearance of their bodies and the expectant



we knew



and for a moment we became as those who cry



were sighted suddenly from the distance people

movement of their backs

25 we knew clearly that they were Jews,

but even so we were as those who dream 154

Prayer and the search for God



in our eastern ways

when the mountains of the Guang-Si district

30 were shouting

in one mysterious season:



King Justice.45

Guang-Si, as the poet indicates in a footnote to the poem, is a province in southern China. The Hebrew term in the title translated as ”hidden moon” is keseh, which appears in a biblical verse, ”Blow the shofar at the new moon hidden on the day of our holiday” (tiqu baḥodesh shofar bakeseh leyom ḥaggenu, Psalms 81:4). Jewish tradition understands this verse to refer to the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), a holiday during which the moon is barely visible and the shofar is blown. In Hebrew, the first two lines consist of the expression hamelekh hamishpat, which is the version of the concluding blessing of one of the Amidah prayers that is recited during the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and literarily means ”the king, the justice.” The poem is about the tension felt by the speaker between aspects of the Jewish tradition in which he was raised and aspects of an alternative religious tradition to which he has become exposed while traveling ”on a long path” (4) in the Far East, described as a ”region of…dream” (5). During the journey, ”Justice,” which is closer to the Judaism in which the speaker was raised, considers itself to be without fault, yet it seeks to condemn the speaker (”Justice, angered and fully innocent” [6]). It gets in the way of a relationship the speaker might have with God the King (”would desperately elbow between the King and me” [7]). The King, who is closer to the more easy going spirituality of the compassionate Far East, is very different from the judgmental Justice and therefore is able to find a way to restore peace and harmony among them, ”caressing / and lighting up our landscape” (8-12). Traveling through the People’s Republic of China (referred to in Hebrew with the term sin ha’amamit – the People’s China [16]) arouses an 45 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 5-6.

155

CHAPTER TWO

intense experience of both the physical and the spiritual: ”Thus, our path went quickly, / intoxicating aromas passed by around us / and became the religion of our excitement and fantasies” (13-15). The aromas to which the speaker refers are niḥoḥim in Hebrew, a word which alludes to the expression reaḥ niḥoaḥ, the smell of the sacrifices that is sent up to God to please Him in biblical accounts of worship in the Tabernacle. In the process of the speaker’s exposure to religion as practiced in the Far East, he experiences the undermining of the religious Zionist conviction with which he was raised, that the ultimate Jewish religious experience can occur only by settling in the Land of Israel (”The People’s Republic of China / was transformed by our wanderings after many days into the Land of Israel” [16-17]). Since this new religious experience is actually characterized by wandering rather than by settling in a land, portable ”backpacks” (18) have come to replace ”a parcel of [the] promised land [of Israel]” (19). Suddenly, the speaker and his companions discern below them people who, by the way they move their bodies, can be identified as Jews (20-25). This introduces a note of dissonance to the experience in China, inducing a temporary sadness which makes the travelers into ”those who cry” (levokhim [26]), for they fear that meeting the Jews will cause a reversion to the less spiritually satisfying Jewish tradition that has been transformed into a Far Eastern religious experience. Even so, the speaker and his companions arrive at a sense of being redeemed. Their redemption is expressed by means of an allusion to a biblical verse that declares that those who were redeemed from the Babylonian Exile and returned to the Land of Israel felt as if they ”were as those who dream” (keḥolmim, Psalms 126:1 [27]). In the poem, however, redemption is not based on a return to the Land of Israel, but rather on the ”eastern ways” (28) the speaker and his companions have learned. In the end, it would seem that the dichotomy between ”Justice” and Judaism on the one hand and ”the King” and Far Eastern religion on the other hand may be overcome. At the conclusion of the poem, at a time so permeated by esoteric knowledge acquired by the speaker (”in one mysterious season”), the mountain chain of Guang-Si shouts out in affirmation that ”the King” and ”Justice” are one (29-32). 156

CHAPTER THREE

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION w

I

n poems drawing on biblical sources, secular Israeli poets have exercised a great deal of imaginative freedom. Their approach to the Bible runs counter to that of traditional religious Jews primarily in its willingness to cast aside rabbinic readings of the Bible, such as those found in the Talmud, the midrashic literature, and the medieval commentaries, in favor of a more direct, unmediated encounter with the biblical text that is limited only by the creative imagination of the poet. Once these poets have felt free to ignore rabbinic readings of the Bible, they have written works with characteristics that would be seen as objectionable by many religious Jews: (1) These poems explore the possible inner lives of biblical characters beyond any explicit reference in the Bible or narrative expansions in rabbinic literature, even to the extent of fully humanizing biblical heroes by attributing to them highly problematic qualities. (2) Whereas for the most part the traditional religious approach assumes that tensions between biblical and contemporary perspectives are resolvable, these poets often focus on unresolvable tensions between the Bible and contemporary perspectives. (3) Works by these secular poets depart significantly 157

CHAPTER THREE

from the reverence toward the Bible of the traditional religious approach by sometimes bringing the sanctified world of the Bible into the very mundane world of everyday contemporary reality. (4) Perhaps the most radical departure from traditional approaches to the Bible by secular writers is that frequently God is eliminated from new versions of biblical narratives presented in their poetry.1 The Mashiv Haruaḥ poets, undoubtedly influenced by secular poets, have published many works on the Bible with at least some of the above mentioned characteristics, even though these characteristics may subvert traditional approaches to the Bible. A major factor supporting the writing by these religious Zionist poets of works on the Bible that resemble secular poems has been the willingness of leading religious Zionist rabbis and educators to embrace an approach to the Bible that has come to be known as tanakh begovah ha’einayim (literally: the Bible at eye level ), in which readers of the Bible are largely liberated from the obligation to view it through the lens of rabbinic interpretation and encouraged to apply their own minds to understanding the plain meaning of the text. In an introduction to a collection of essays by Rav Yoel Bin-Nun, one of the foremost proponents of tanakh begovah ha’einayim, his student, Rav Yuval Sherlo, presents a cogent analysis of why rabbinic interpretation was so central to traditional readings of the Bible in the past and why this reliance on the rabbinic understanding of the Bible persisted into the modern period 2 In the traditional yeshiva world, explains Sherlo, there was an assumption that previous generations of rabbis were on a much higher spiritual level than people are today, and so in order to understand the Bible, one should always turn to those interpretations and avoid try1

For studies of the relationship of Israeli literature to the Bible, see David C. Jacobson, Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); David C. Jacobson, Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997); and Malka Shaked, Lanetsaḥ anagnekha: hamiqra bashirah ha’ivrit haḥadashah – iyyun (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2005).

2

Yoel Bin-Nun, Pirqei ha’avot: iyyunim befarshiyyot ha’avot besefer bereshit (Alon Shevut: Tevunot, 2003), 7-28. See also Hayyim Angel, ”Torat Hashem Temima: The Contributions of Rav Yoel Bin-Nun to Religious Tanakh Study,” Tradition 40, no. 3 (2007): 5-18.

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THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

ing to understand the Bible on one’s own. Sherlo also argues that the vast differences between Jewish life in the Diaspora and the life of the ancient Israelites in the Bible made it difficult for traditional readers of the Bible to feel confident enough to understand the Bible without the aid of the Talmud, midrashic texts, or medieval commentaries. Finally, he makes the point that in the modern period there were a number of groups, most significantly Maskilim (followers of the Jewish Enlightenment movement), Zionists, and gentile and Jewish academic Bible critics, whose thinking was based on a direct reading of the Bible, and since their approach to the Bible seemed to lead to heretical conclusions, Jews in traditional circles have continued to be wary of such an approach to this day. Implicit in Sherlo’s anaysis is the notion that religious Jews living in contemporary Israel should allow themselves to read the Bible without necessarily resorting to rabbinic interpretations for the following reasons: it is not accurate to assume that their ability to understand the Bible is inferior to that of previous generations; as residents of Israel they can reconnect in direct ways with the original meaning of the Bible; and they need not fear the fact that direct readings of the Bible might lead to heretical conclusions.3 3

The term begovah ha’einayim (at eye level) can have the positive connotation of looking directly, in the sense of coming to terms with someone or seeing something exactly as it is. The term can also have the negative connotation of approaching someone or something in an inappropriately haughty manner. It can function therefore as a term to refer to this new approach to Bible study in the rhetoric of its proponents as well as that of its opponents. Rav Shlomo Aviner has been a strong religious Zionist opponent of tanakh begovah ha’einayim. In a question and answer format along the lines of the traditional rabbinic responsa literature, Rav Aviner was asked what he thought of tanakh begovah ha’einayim. The questioner suggests that there may be an advantage to such an approach, because it would allow people to view biblical figures as similar to people today, ”with struggles and difficulties, ups and downs… complex people like us, not like angels but like human beings. In that way we can identify with them, connect with them, and be influenced by them in good ways.” In his response, Rav Aviner objects strenuously to the notion of viewing biblical figures as normal human beings: ”First of all,” he argues, ”they are giants of the spirit and great people. ‘The forefathers are [God’s] chariot (Bereshit Rabbah 84:6),’ our rabbis taught. The Shekhinah [presence of God] dwells within them, in their deeds, in their personalities, in their souls, in their spirits, in their souls and limbs.…And it is not true that by lowering them we will connect better to them. On the contrary, we look at them and say, ‘When will my deeds arrive at the level of the deeds of my forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’…But if they are people like us, we have nothing to learn from them, we have no one to aspire to be like.” Shlomo Aviner, ”Tanakh begovah

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CHAPTER THREE

It is true that there is a significant difference between how religious Zionist rabbis and educators who advocate tanakh begovah ha’einayim interpret the Bible and the ways that religious Zionist poets create adaptations of biblical stories. The former are attempting to arrive at the truest possible understanding of what is actually being said in the Bible, while the latter are writing imaginative readings of the Bible that may not always be justified by a precise reading of the original biblical text. Furthermore, I would venture to say that even the most ardent advocates of the study and teaching of the Bible on the basis of tanakh begovah ha’einayim would argue that many poems written by religious poets go beyond any kind of biblical interpretation they would have in mind. Nevertheless, the presence in religious Zionist circles of a method of Bible study free of rabbinic overlays during the period that the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets were being educated opened up for them the possibility of writing poems based on the Bible with a wide range of imaginative latitude. Indeed, two of the poets in this study have credited this approach with contributing to their writing of works that draw on the Bible. As was mentioned in the biographical background to Sivan Har-Shefi, she has stated that the move away from viewing the Bible only through the lens of rabbinic commentaries among religious Zionists helped to open up for her new sources of inspiration for the writing of poetry. Eliaz Cohen has related that the poems in his first collection of poetry,4 each of which is a poetic reading of a weekly Torah portion read in synagogue during the year, were inspired in part by this new approach to the study of Bible to which he was exposed during his yeshiva studies: ”I studied the biblical text itself, without commentators. I felt a deep experience in this study. I became tied to the characters and to small corners in the portions of the week. I tried in this study to look at the Torah at eye level (lehistakel batorah begovah ha’einayim)…[and] to write poems that would bring the characters closer to us.”5 ha’einayim,” http://www.ateret.org. For an analysis of the polemical debates about tanakh begovah ha’einayim among religious Zionists, see Eliyahu Shay, ”Hatsiyyonut hadatit: bein ‘tsaddiq be’emunato yiḥyeh’ le’govah ha’einayim’” and Eliyahu Shay, ”Od al ‘tanakh begovah ha’einayim:’ hahashlakhot haḥinnukhiyyot,” http://www.kipa.co.il. 4

Eliaz Cohen, Meḥumashim (Tel Aviv: Tammuz, 1997).

5

Nira Klein, ”Mehashir na’aseh gam niggun,” Amudim 620 (1998): 25.

160

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

Despite the fact that the liberation from dependence on rabbinic interpretations of tanakh begovah ha’einayim gave the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets license to write in the more freely imaginative ways of their secular counterparts, it is true that the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets, all of whom have been educated in rabbinic sources, do at times draw on such sources when writing poems based on the Bible. In one of my interviews of Eliaz Cohen, he told me about at least one example in which he referred to a midrashic text when he was composing the poetry for his collection of poems based on the weekly Torah portions. In my analysis of the first poem in this chapter, by Avishar Har-Shefi, I note his use of a midrashic image within the poem, and this is one of many allusions to rabbinic literature that are present in Mashiv Haruaḥ poetry. This openness to rabbinic approaches to the text, however, does not undermine the freedom from dependence on rabbinic interpretation which is a basic assumption of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets who write works based on the Bible. Three poems will serve to illustrate some of the ways that Mashiv Haruaḥ poets approach the Bible in the spirit of tanakh begovah ha’einayim. In a poem cycle based on the narrative of the first meeting between Isaac and Rebekah, Avishar Har-Shefi imaginatively explores the emotional dependence of Isaac on Rebekah, thereby presenting a deeply penetrating meditation of contemporary relevance on how marital intimacy can contribute to a person’s healing from traumatic experiences. In another poem, Sivan Har-Shefi makes use of the story of the divine messengers who bring tidings of the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah to present an alternative vision validating female spirituality, which can be read as a strong critique of the Bible’s tendency to focus on the male characters’ relationship with God. In a third poem, Eliaz Cohen responds to the events of the Second Intifada by retelling the story of the night of the Exodus from Egypt as if it is taking place during that violent period, a connection that is striking in its contemporary relevance even as it subverts a story of redemption into one of divine abandonment. 161

CHAPTER THREE

Isaac and Rebekah: A Model of Marital Intimacy Avishar Har-Shefi’s poem cycle, ”Isaac, Rebekah,” presents an imaginative reading of the relationship between this patriarch and this matriarch primarily based on the biblical narrative that relates their meeting when Abraham’s servant brings Rebekah back from Aram-naharaim to marry Isaac: Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening and he raised his eyes and saw that camels were arriving. Rebekah raised her eyes and

saw Isaac and she fell from her donkey. She said to the servant, ”Who

is the man walking toward us in the field? The servant said, ”He is my

master.” She took her veil and covered her face. The servant told Isaac about everything he did. Isaac brought her to the tent of his mother Sarah and he took Rebekah to be his wife. He loved her and Isaac was comforted following the death of his mother. (Genesis 24:63-67)

As is typical of biblical narratives, we learn from this text very little direct information about what Isaac and Rebekah were thinking when they met. We are told of certain actions: Rebekah’s curious falling off of her donkey and her covering of her face and Isaac bringing her into the tent of his mother Sarah. We are given a glimpse into what Isaac was feeling, that he loved Rebekah and that she brought him comfort for his grief over the death of his mother. Har-Shefi makes use of the story to give us a more detailed look into the inner lives of Isaac and Rebekah. He describes how Rebekah sought to heal not only Isaac’s grief over his mother, but also traumas that Isaac experienced before they met: the rupture in his household when his half-brother Ishmael and Ishmael’s mother Hagar were expelled at the insistence of Isaac’s mother Sarah (Genesis 21) and his being bound on an altar and almost sacrificed to God by his father Abraham (Genesis 22).

162

‫‪THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫יִ ְצ ָחק‪ִ ,‬ר ְב ָקה‬ ‫(מחזור שירים)‬ ‫אבישר הר־שפי‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫‪ 1‬‬ ‫וְ גַ ם ָצ ַח ְק ִּתי לְ ִר ְב ָקה‬ ‫ֶאל ֵ ּבין נֵ רוֹ ת ָשׂ ָרה ִא ִּמי‬ ‫ַעל ֵֶא ֶדן ַה ַח ּלוֹ ן‬ ‫נָ חוֹ ת יוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫נָ ָחה ִא ִּמי‬ ‫נָ ִחים נֵ רוֹ ת‬ ‫ַ ּב ַּמכְ ּ ֵפלָ ה‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫אתי ֶאת ִר ְב ָקה‬ ‫ׁ ָשם ֵה ֵב ִ‬ ‫(וְ ַא ְר ַ ּבע ַה ְ ּי ִריעוֹ ת ׁ ֶשנִ ְפ ְרשׂ וּ)‬ ‫ֶאל ֵ ּבין ָשׂ ָרה‬ ‫ֶאל ֵ ּבין יוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫נָ חוֹ ת ִע ּסוֹ ת יָ ֶד ָיה‬ ‫וְ ָהרוּחוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ ַה ְ ּג ַמ ִּלים‬ ‫‪2‬‬

‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ָהי ּו יוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫וְ יִ ְצ ָחק‬ ‫ִה ִ ּג ַיע וְ נָ ׁ ַשם‬ ‫ֶאל ּתוֹ ְך ַה ֵּלב‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬ ‫ֶאל ּ ִפ ּנוֹ ַתי‬ ‫ַ ּג ְע ּגו ִּעים‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ִא ְּמ ָך‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ִר ְב ָקה‬ ‫ֵּת ֵצא לָ שׂ ו ַּח ַ ּב ּ ָשׂ דוֹ ת‬ ‫ֵּת ֵצא לִ ְבכּ וֹ ת‬ ‫ֶאל יִ ׁ ְש ָמ ֵעאל וְ ֶאל ָהגָ ר ִא ּמוֹ‬ ‫‪163‬‬

‫‪CHAPTER THREE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 45‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫לִ ְצעֹק ַ ּב ְ ּב ֵארוֹ ת‬ ‫ימים‬ ‫ׁ ֵשמוֹ ת ְּת ִמ ִ‬ ‫וּכְ ׁ ֶש ָּת ׁשוּב‬ ‫ָא ׁשוּב לִ ּפֹל ִמ ּתוֹ ְך ְ ּג ַמ ִּלים‬ ‫יפים‬ ‫לְ ִה ְת ַּכ ּסוֹ ת ִ ּב ְצ ִע ִ‬ ‫ֶאל ּתוֹ ְך לִ ְ ּב ָך‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬ ‫ֶאל ּתוֹ ְך ָה ֵא ׁש‬ ‫וְ ָה ֵע ִצים‬ ‫‪3‬‬

‫ַא ְּת חוֹ ֶפ ֶרת‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ְר ׁ ֵשי זְ ָקנִ י‬ ‫ַא ְּת חוֹ ֶפ ֶרת‬ ‫ַ ּב ְּס ַב ְך‬ ‫וְ ֵא ְיך ַא ְּת ַמ ְר ִע ָידה‬ ‫ימים ַהדַּ ִּקים ׁ ֶש ַּל ְ ּנ ׁ ָש ָמה‬ ‫ַ ּב ִ ּנ ִ‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ַא ְּת חוֹ ֶפ ֶרת‬ ‫ַ ּב ְּס ַב ְך‬ ‫‪4‬‬

‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ְר ׁ ֵשי זְ ָקנִ י‬ ‫יתי נֶ ֱאלָ ם‬ ‫וְ ָהיִ ִ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ַה ִ ּי ְר ָאה ׁ ֶש ְב ֵעינַ י‬ ‫וְ ר ְֹך ּ ָפנַ יִ ְך‬ ‫ַ ּב ְּס ַב ְך ׁ ֶש ְּליַ לְ דו ִּתי‬ ‫נִ לְ ָּכד ַאיִ ל‬

‫‪164‬‬

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION



Isaac, Rebekah



Avishar Har-Shefi



(A poem cycle)

1 6

And I also laughed with Rebekah



on the window sill



between my mother Sarah’s candles



doves rest

5

my mother rests candles rest

in the cave of Machpelah There I brought Rebekah

(and the four flaps spread out)

10 between Sarah

between doves



and the winds



the dough of her hands rests and the camels

2 7

15 There were doves

and Isaac



into the heart



arrived and breathed of heaven

20 into my corners longings

I am your mother I am Rebekah

6

The voice of the speaker is male.

7

The voice of the speaker is female and the person addressed is male.

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CHAPTER THREE



go out and meditate in the fields



to Ishmael and his mother Hagar



innocent names

25 go out and cry

cry out in the wells

and when you return

30 I’ll go back to falling from camels

to veiling myself



of heaven



into your heart into the fire

35 and the wood 3 8

You dig



you dig



at the roots of my beard in the thicket

40 and how you cause

the thin strings of my soul to quiver



in the thicket



when you dig

4

9



at the roots of my beard



the awe in my eyes



in the thicket of my childhood

45 and I was mute

and the softness of your face a ram is caught 10

8

The voice of the speaker is male and the person addressed is female.

9

The voice of the speaker is male and the person addressed is female.

10 Avishar Har-Shefi, Susei esh (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2004), 10-13.

166

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

In the first part of the poem, Isaac recalls Rebekah’s entrance into his mother’s tent: ”There I brought Rebekah / (and the four flaps spread out)” (8-9). He presents a series of images that indicate the mixed emotions he experienced at the time: his joining with Rebekah in laughter (”And I also laughed” [in Hebrew: tsaḥaqti, in keeping with his name Yitsḥaq, which literally means ”he will laugh” (1)]); the candles of his mother ”on the window sill” (2-3); and images of rest associated with doves (4), candles (6), and his mother lying in her burial place in the cave of Machpelah (5, 7). Other images presented are the dough kneaded by his mother (12), winds (13), and the camels that were in the caravan that brought Rebekah to him (14). The images of the candles and the dough allude to a midrashic passage which gives examples of how Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah restored in his life something of the spirit of Sarah. These examples include: ”As long as Sarah was alive a candle burned from one Sabbath eve to another and when she died the candle went out, but when Rebekah arrived it returned” and ”As long as Sarah was alive the dough was always blessed and when she died that blessedness stopped, but when Rebekah arrived it returned” (Bereshit Rabbah 60:16). In the second part of the poem, Rebekah also speaks of doves (15). She observes Isaac expressing to God (”and Isaac / arrived and breathed / into the heart / of heaven” [16-19]) and deeply to her (”into my corners” [20]), his ”longings” (21), perhaps for his lost half-brother Ishmael (Genesis 21), or for the trusting relationship he once had with his father that was called into question by Abraham almost sacrificing him to God (Genesis 22), or for his deceased mother. In her attempt to comfort him, she declares to him that she will replace his mother (”I am your mother / I am Rebekah” [22-23]). She encourages him to ”go out and meditate in the fields” (24), which is what he had been doing when she first met him, and to cry out to his half-brother Ishmael and to Ishmael’s mother Hagar, who had been expelled from their household (25-26). When Rebekah suggests to Isaac that he ”cry out in the wells / innocent names” (27-28), the expression ”innocent names” may imply that Ishmael and Hagar did not deserve to be expelled, while the expression ”cry out in the wells” may allude to Isaac’s difficult struggles with the Philistines to re-open the wells 167

CHAPTER THREE

that they stopped up (Genesis 26:17-22). After Isaac returns from these expressions of pain and grief, Rebekah will keep re-enacting the healing precious moment when they first met: she will ”go back to falling from camels” (29-30) and ”to veiling [herself]” (31), thereby entering his heart which has cried out to heaven to heal him of the trauma of ”the fire / and the wood,” two key elements in the story of his near sacrifice (32-35). In the third and fourth sections of the poem, Isaac declares that Rebekah’s act of digging into his beard puts her in touch with the ”thicket” which played such a crucial role in the story of his near sacrifice when Abraham discovered a ram caught in it that could serve as a sacrifice in place of Isaac. (36-39). While digging at the roots of his beard, it is as if his soul is a musical instrument on the strings of which she is playing (4044). Although he is unable to express the pain he feels (”and I was mute” [45]), the ”awe” he experienced at the time of his near sacrifice can still be seen in his eyes (46). As Rebekah seeks to heal Isaac of that trauma, he has before him the reassuring images of ”the softness of [Rebekah’s] face” (47) and the memory of the image ”in the thicket of my childhood / a ram is caught” (48-49). It is significant that the Hebrew term for ”is caught,” nilkad, is in the present participle form. The emotional complexities of Isaac’s childhood have, in a sense, been transformed into the image of the ram caught in the thicket, which he now sees before him. It was that ram that helped the story to conclude without Isaac being sacrificed, and so having a visual reminder of that moment in the story in his imagination provides him some measure of comfort. At the same time, one could read the image of the ram caught in the thicket as part of a recurring nightmarish recollection of when his father nearly sacrificed him, indicating that despite all of the efforts of Rebekah, the childhood trauma lives on in Isaac’s psyche. True intimate relations between a man and a woman in marriage involve a meeting of souls in which the darkest, most painful traumas of each become revealed to the other. This poem cycle by Avishar Har-Shefi makes use of the story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah to explore the ways that one may feel comfortable exposing one’s deepest inner vulnerabilities to one’s marital partner and the degree to which the partner can contribute to healing one’s pain. 168

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

The Visit of Divine Messengers to Abraham and God’s Revelation to Sarah in a Tent In the fourth poem of a poem cycle titled ”Sarah,” Sivan Har-Shefi provides the largely missing perspective of Sarah on the visit of the divine messengers that announce to Abraham and to her that they will have a child: The Lord appeared to him [Abraham] at Elonei Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent at the heat of the day. He [Abraham]

raised his eyes and saw three men standing by him and seeing that, he ran toward them from the entrance of his tent and he bowed down.

He said, ”My lords if I have found favor in your eyes, do not pass by your servant. Let some water be provided and you can wash your feet

and lie down under the tree. And I will get a loaf of bread and you can satisfy yourselves and then pass on, since you came by your servant.” They said, ”Yes, do as you say.” Abraham hurried to the tent to Sarah

and said: ”Hurry, knead three measures of choice flour into cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd and took a good tender calf and gave it to a servant boy, who quickly prepared it. He [Abraham] took curds and milk and the calf that was prepared and presented these to them and

stood over them while they were under the tree and ate. They said to him, ”Where is Sarah your wife?” He said, ”She is there in the tent.”

One said, ”Next year I will return and Sarah your wife will have

a son.” Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent behind him. (Genesis 18:1-10)

The biblical text suggests that this visit by the divine messengers may be seen as a visit by God. In one verse, Abraham addresses the visitors in the singular form: ”if I have found favor in your [singular] eyes, do not pass by your [singular] servant” (Genesis 18:3), as if he is speaking to God. In the very next verse, he addresses them in the plural form, as if he speaking to three divine messengers: ”Let some water be provided and you [plural] can wash your [plural] feet and lie down under the tree” (Genesis 18:4). Whether this is God or these are divine messengers, it is Abraham 169

CHAPTER THREE

who receives the announcement, and Sarah is relegated to listening to it from within a tent. It is not only here that the Bible suggests that Abraham has a more favorable relationship with God than Sarah does. We see this as well in contrasting stories of God’s reaction to each character’s skeptical response to the notion that they could have a child in old age. God does not object in an earlier scene when Abraham, after being informed by Him that he and Sarah will have a child, ”fell on his face and laughed, saying to himself: ‘Can a child be born to someone who is one hundred years old, and can Sarah, who is ninety years old, give birth?’” (Genesis 17:17). However, in the scene on which the poem is based, following the announcement of the birth, we read that ”Sarah laughed within herself, saying ‘After I have become withered, would I have enjoyment, my husband being so old?’” (Genesis 18:12), and God does rebuke her. Sivan HarShefi’s poetic reading of this biblical event undermines the preferential treatment of Abraham by God. She shifts the focus of the story to Sarah’s perspective, and we see how capable Sarah is of receiving her own divine revelation, which is different in nature but of equal or perhaps suprerior significance to the one her husband receives.

‫״שׂ ָרה ״‬ ָ :‫מתוך‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



‫ד‬ ‫ֱא־ל ִֹהים ְמ ַד ֵ ּבר ִא ִּתי ֵמ ֲאחוֹ ֵרי ַה ְּקלָ ִעים‬ ‫ח־הא ֶֹהל הוּא ִמ ְס ּתוֹ ֵדד ִא ִּתי‬ ָ ‫ְ ּב ִמ ְט ַ ּב‬ .‫ְּכמוֹ ׁ ְשכֵ נָ ה‬ ‫ ֲאפוּף ֵא ִדים‬,‫יחנִ י‬ ָ ‫ָמקוֹ ם ַחם וְ ֵר‬ ְ‫ֲאנִ י ְמנַ ּ ָפה ֶק ַמח וְ ֶק ֶרן אוֹ ר חוֹ ֶד ֶרת ָ ּב ֲאוִ יר ַה ִּמ ְת ַא ֵ ּבך‬ ‫זֶ ה סוּג ׁ ֶשל ִה ְת ַ ּג ּלוּת‬ ‫חשת ִמן ַה ִּסיר ַה ְממ ָֹרק‬ ֶ ׁ ‫ְ ּב ַרק ַה ְ ּנ‬ ‫ַס ֲהרוֹ נֵ י ַה ָ ּב ֵצק ַה ְּל ָבנִ ים ַעל ַה ַּטס ַה ׁ ּ ָשחוֹ ר‬ ‫ׁ ִש ְב ֵרי ַה ְּק ָע ָרה ׁ ֶש ָ ּנ ְפלָ ה‬ ‫ִע ְרבּ ו ְּביַ ת ַא ְבקוֹ ת ַה ַּת ְבלִ ין‬ ‫ֱא־ל ֵֹהי ַה ּי ִֹפי וְ ַהדִּ יסוֹ נַ נְ ס‬



170

5

10



THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

‫אוֹ ֵמר לִ י ִ ּב ְתמוּנוֹ ת‬ ‫לֹא ְ ּב ִמ ָּלה‬ ‫ֱא־ל ִֹהים ׁ ֶש ְּמ ַד ֵ ּבר ִעם ַא ְב ָר ָהם ַ ּב ּ ֶפ ַתח‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ִּמ ְת ַה ֵּל ְך ִע ּמוֹ ְּכאוֹ ֵר ַח ַ ּבחוּץ‬ ‫ו ַּמ ׁ ְש ִקיף ֶאל ֲע ִת ִידים‬ ‫ָ ּבא ְ ּבתוֹ כְ כֵ י ָה ִע ָּסה ׁ ֶש ֲאנִ י לָ ׁ ָשה‬ ּ ַ ‫ָ ּבא ְּכ ַב‬ ‫ת־ביִ ת‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ַשלְ ֶה ֶבת ַה ֵ ּנר ַה ְמ ַרצֶּ ֶדת‬ ‫עוֹ ָשׂ ה ִ ּבי ְּתנוּדוֹ ת‬ ‫אוֹ ַר ַחת לִ י ַּכ ָ ּנ ׁ ִשים‬ ‫צוּרוֹ ת ָע ִתיד ְמ ֻפ ָּתלוֹ ת‬ ‫אתי‬ ִ ‫ִ ּב ְמ ַרק ָה ֲע ָד ׁ ִשים ׁ ֶש ִה ְמ ֵצ‬ .‫יאה‬ ָ ‫ַמ ְתכּ וֹ ן לְ ַא ֲה ָבה ְ ּב ִר‬

From: ”Sarah”

Sivan Har-Shefi

4

God speaks to me from behind the curtain



like a woman who is my neighbor.



5

in the tent kitchen He secretly confides in me A place warm and filled with smells, wrapped in steam, I sift flour and a ray of light penetrates the rising air it’s a kind of revelation

a flash of light off the copper of the polished pot the crescents of white dough on the black tray pieces of the plate that fell

10 a mixture of powders and spices

the God of beauty and of dissonance



not in words



communicates with me in pictures

God who speaks with Abraham at the entrance

15 who walks around with him like a guest outside

and contemplates the future

171

15

20



CHAPTER THREE



comes within the dough I knead



in the lively candle flame



comes like a household member

20 causing me to quiver

my guest resembling women



in the lentil soup I invented



forms of future twisted

a recipe for healthy love.11

In the poem, we see a significant contrast between Abraham walking around with the divine presence (either in the form of divine messengers or of God) outside the tent and the appearance of God to Sarah within the tent. While God’s relationship with Abraham is out in the open, His relationship with Sarah is more private and intimate: ”God speaks to me from behind the curtain, / in the tent kitchen He secretly confides in me” (1-2). His visit does not resemble that of a stranger who sought temporary refuge in someone’s home, which is how He appeared to Abraham, but rather it is as if ”a woman who is [Sarah’s] neighbor” (3) has come to discuss something of a personal nature, or as if Sarah is having a conversation with ”a household member” (18). In these references to God as a neighbor or as a household member He is personified as a woman: kemo shekhenah (”like a woman who is my neighbor [3]) and kevat bayit (”like a household member,” in the feminine form [18]). There is a third reference to God as a woman in line 21. In Hebrew it reads oraḥat li kanashim, which is translated here as ”my guest resembling women.” This expression is a play on how the biblical narrator refers to the fact that Sarah is beyond her child bearing years and has ceased to have her menstrual cycle (ḥadal liheyot leSarah oraḥ kanashim [Genesis 18:11]). In the biblical story when the divine visitors arrive, Abraham commands Sarah, ”Hurry, knead three measures of choice flour into cakes” (Genesis 18:6), while in the poem it is in the process of preparing the baked goods in a warm, steam filled kitchen with the pleasant aromas of cooking that God reveals Himself to her: ”A place warm and filled with 11 Sivan Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), 13.

172

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

smells, wrapped in steam, / I sift flour and a ray of light penetrates the rising air / it’s a kind of revelation” (4-6). Sarah refers to ”God who speaks with Abraham at the entrance / who walks around with him like a guest outside / and contemplates the future”(14-16), while God appears to her ”within the dough [she] knead[s]” (17). Indeed, her divine revelation is not conveyed in words, but rather in the mundane visual images of her kitchen: ”a flash of light off the copper of the polished pot, / the crescents of white dough on the black tray, / pieces of the plate that fell, / a mixture of powders and spices, / the God of beauty and of dissonance / communicates with me in pictures / not in words” (7-13). She speaks of other mundane localities of divine revelation. She feels touched by God ”in the lively candle flame / causing [her] to quiver” (19-20), and rather than being told about the future by divine messengers or by God directly, she sees what will happen in ”forms of future twisted / in the lentil soup [she] invented / a recipe for healthy love” (22-24).

An Ironic Contrast Between the Exodus and the Second Intifada The poems by Avishar Har-Shefi and Sivan Har-Shefi that I have presented can be seen as attempts to open up the meaning of the retold biblical narrative by increasing our understanding of the full humanity of biblical characters and by presenting cultural models for contemporary times. In Avishar Har-Shefi’s poem, the model is that of a relationship of marital intimacy in which the wife helps to heal the husband’s traumas, and in Sivan Har-Shefi’s poem, the model is that of an alternative feminine spirituality. The approach of the third example, the poem ”A Palestinian Passover,” by Eliaz Cohen, is significantly different from that of the other two poems. In this poem, the situation of Israel during the Second Intifada is viewed in terms of the story of the biblical account of the night of the Exodus from Egypt, thereby presenting a disturbing ironic contrast between biblical and contemporary events. In the biblical text, we read of God’s command to the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb, put some of the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and lintels of their houses to protect themselves from the plague 173

‫‪CHAPTER THREE‬‬

‫‪of the killing of the first born of Egypt, and eat the lamb together with un‬‬‫‪leavened bread and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:1-28). In Cohen’s poem, the‬‬ ‫‪speaker is reliving with his people an Exodus story that has gone terribly‬‬ ‫‪wrong. It is not a night of redemption, only of destruction.‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ּ ֶפ ַסח ָפלַ ְשׂ ִּתינִ י‬ ‫אליעז כהן‬

‫ ‬

‫ַעד ָמ ַתי לֹא ִּת ְפ ַסח ָה ָר ָעה ַעל ָ ּב ֵּתינ ּו‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ְר ֵאה‪ְּ ,‬כ ָבר ָמ ׁ ַש ְחנ ּו ַה ּ ֶפ ַתח ְ ּב ָדם‬ ‫ית־אבוֹ ת‪ ,‬זָ ַע ְקנ ּו‬ ‫ְצנו ִּפים ִא ׁיש לְ ֵב ָ‬ ‫ט־א ָדם‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ֶש ֶק ָ‬ ‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪1 5‬‬

‫ְר ֵאה ַא ְר ַ ּבע כּ וֹ סוֹ ֵתינ ּו ָמלְ א ּו‬ ‫יַ יִ ן ָסמוּק וְ ָרתו ַּח‬ ‫לְ ׁשוֹ נוֹ ֵתינ ּו לְ ׁ ֶשל ֵא ׁש ָהי ּו‬ ‫ְּכ ֶשׂ ה ָטבו ַּח‬ ‫ֹאשנ ּו ׁ ַשח – וְ ֶע ֶצם סוֹ ְב ָבנ ּו‬ ‫ִאם ַ ּגם ר ׁ ֵ‬ ‫ָה ָבה וְ נִ ְתלַ ַּקח‪:‬‬ ‫יטב‬ ‫יְ הו ִּדים דְּ ׁ ֵשנִ ים בּ וֹ ֲע ִרים ֵה ֵ‬ ‫ו ַּמה יִ ָ ּו ֵתר ִמ ֶּמ ּנ ּו ַעד בּ ֶֹקר?‬ ‫יח ַה ֵּמת‬ ‫ִּכ ֵּסא ֵריק‪ּ ַ .‬ב ֲח ַצר ְּכנֵ ִס ַ ּית ַה ָּמ ׁ ִש ַ‬ ‫ְמ ַח ֶּכה לָ ָר ִאיס ׁ ֶש ֵ ּי ֵצא לַ ָח ְפ ׁ ִשי‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ָ ּיבוֹ א וְ יִ גְ ַאל‬ ‫ֲאנִ י רוֹ ֶאה אוֹ תוֹ ְּכמוֹ ָאז‪ ,‬יִ ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל ְמ ַצ ֵחק‬ ‫ַ ּב ַּליְ לָ ה ַה ֶּזה‬ ‫ֵאין ַ ּביִ ת ְ ּב ֶא ֶרץ ַה ּק ֶֹד ׁש ֲא ׁ ֶשר ֵאין ׁ ָשם‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ַעכְ ׁ ָשו הוּא מוֹ ִסיף עוֹ ד ְס ָאה‬ ‫לִ ְק ָע ַרת ַהדָּ ִמים‬ ‫‪174‬‬

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

‫עוֹ ד ְמ ַעט יֵ ָא ֶפה לֶ ֶחם ָהעֹנִ י ַה ָ ּגדוֹ ל‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ׁ ְשנֵ י ָה ַע ִּמים‬

A Palestinian Passover



How long till evil no longer passes over our houses?



Look, we’ve already smeared blood at the opening



5



Eliaz Cohen

wrapped up tightly each in his family home, we cried out in human-quiet

Look, our four cups are full

with wine that is reddish and boiled our tongues have turned to fire like a slaughtered lamb



Even if our heads are bowed – and sadness has surrounded us



fattened Jews burn well



An empty chair. In the courtyard of the dead messiah

10 let us rise up in flame:

15

and what will be left of us by morning?

waiting for the Rais to be released

so he can come and bring redemption



I see him just as back then, when Ishmael sported



there is no house in the holy land where there is no



20

on that night

Now he adds another measure to the bowl of blood

Soon will be baked the bread of great affliction of both these peoples 12

12 Eliaz Cohen, Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2004), 30.

175

CHAPTER THREE

On the first night of Passover in 2002, Palestinian terrorists massacred Jews attending a seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. In an author’s note at the bottom of the page on which the poem was printed, the poet conveys the irony of the fact that this poem, which connects Palestinian terrorism with Passover, was published in the newspaper Maqor Rishon just a few hours before that deadly attack at a Passover seder. Cohen then goes on in the note to inform the readers that as a reserve soldier in the Israel Defense Forces he participated in the Israeli military response to the attack when it invaded cities in the West Bank from which it had previously withdrawn during the Oslo peace process: ”Less than forty-eight hours after that [terrorist attack] I was already on the deck of a tank, preparing for the battle of Shechem.”13 The title of the poem, ”A Palestinian Passover” (”Pesaḥ falastini”) emphasizes that the sacred Jewish festival has been cruelly violated by the Palestinian enemy. The rabbis draw clear distinctions between what they call pesaḥ mitsrayim (Passover in Egypt) and pesaḥ dorot (Passover in subsequent generations). Pesaḥ mitsrayim refers to the rituals performed by the Israelites on the night of their Exodus in biblical times and includes actions not repeated afterward in the yearly commemoration of that night, such as spreading the blood of the Passover sacrifice on the doorposts and lintel of the house to protect it from the plague of the killing of the first born. Pesaḥ dorot refers to the practices enacted each year on Passover night, some of which were discontinued when the Temple was destroyed. In this poem, practices of both pesaḥ mitsrayim and pesaḥ dorot are mentioned. There are references to the custom of drinking four cups of wine, observed to this day at the Passover seder (although in the poem the wine is disturbingly ”reddish and boiled” [5-6]), as well as to the Passover sacrifice (8), which was performed in Egypt and for generations until the destruction of the Temple. The situation of Israeli Jews in the time of the Second Intifada, however, is more like pesaḥ mitsrayim than pesaḥ dorot. ”How long till evil no longer passes over our houses” (ad matay lo tifsaḥ hara’ah al bateinu [1]) the speaker declares, alluding to God’s reassurance 13 Ibid.

176

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

to the Israelites in Egypt that when He sees the blood on the doorposts and lintels, He will ”pass over (ufasaḥti) [them] and the Destroyer will not bring [them] harm when [He] smite[s] the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13 ). The expression ”wrapped up tightly each in his family's home” (tsenufim ish leveit avot [3]) alludes to God’s command to the Israelites in Egypt that each family should eat the Passover offering as a unit in its own house: ”and they shall take for themselves each person a lamb per household a lamb for the house” (veyiqḥu lahem ish seh leveit avot seh labayit [Exodus 12:3]). Contemporary Israeli Jews who have suffered so much bloodshed at the hands of terrorists are, in a certain sense, enacting the ritual of the spreading of blood on their doorposts on the night of the Exodus (2). The blood, however, does not protect the Jews; it is, rather, the result of their suffering. Furthermore, the plague of the killing of the first born that God intended for the Israelites is now being brought by the Palestinians to the Jews with no discrimination based on birth order. When the speaker declares, ”we cried out” (za’aqnu, based on the root zayin-ayin-quf [3]), he alludes to a verse from the begining of the Exodus story: ”The Israelites sighed because of their labors and they cried out” (vayizaqu, also containing the root zayin-ayin-quf [Exodus 2:23]). This allusion suggests that instead of anticipating freedom, as the Israelites did on the night of the Exodus, contemporary Israelis have been thrust back to a terrible period resembling the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians. These Israeli Jews do not offer a sacrifice; they are the sacrifice, ”like a slaughtered lamb” (8) as if their ”tongues have turned to fire” (7). When the speaker asks, ”and what will be left of us by morning?” (umah yivvater mimennu ad boqer [12]) he alludes to God’s command to the Israelites not to leave any of the lamb of the Passover offering uneaten overnight: ”And do not leave any of it until the morning (velo totiru mimennu ad boqer [Exodus 12:10]). In bitter irony, the speaker proposes that, despite their despair (”Even if our heads are bowed—and sadness has surrounded us” [9]), the Jews should celebrate the fact that as a result of filling up their stomachs with the sacrificial meal they will become so fat that when they are set on fire they will create a powerful flame: ”fattened Jews burn well” (11). In the Hebrew ”let us rise up in 177

CHAPTER THREE

flame” (havah venitlaqqaḥ [10]) alludes to the fire within the hail that was brought as a plague on Egypt: ve’esh mitlaqqaḥat betokh habarad (Exodus 9:24), thereby suggesting that in a certain sense the Israelis have actually been transformed into a plague. The speaker now shifts his focus to the Palestinian leader of that time, Yasser Arafat. In 2001, in retaliation for Arafat’s role in leading the Second Intifada, the Israeli government confined him to his living compound in Ramallah in the West Bank. The speaker refers to an empty chair at ”the Church of the dead messiah,” a reference to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was said to have been crucified and from which it was said he was resurrected. Palestinians look forward to the day when Arafat (referred to here by his Arabic title, Rais [leader]) will be released from the confinement imposed by Israel and be free to sit on that chair (13-15). By referring to ”the dead messiah,” the speaker makes clear that he sees Arafat to be as false a messiah for the Palestinians as the speaker considers Jesus to have been for the Jews in his time. The Palestinians hope in vain that Arafat will come and redeem (yavo veyigal) them (15), terminology used in Hebrew to refer to God’s redemption of the people of Israel. The speaker then associates Arafat with Ishmael, traditionally understood to be the forefather of Muslim Arabs. In the biblical narrative, Sarah saw Ishmael ”sporting” (metsaḥeq [Genesis 21:9]), which led her to insist that Abraham expel him and his mother Hagar from their household. The result of the sporting in the poem (16-17), however, is most deadly. Just as the biblical narrative declares that following the killing of the first born ”there was no [Egyptian] house in which no one was dead” (ein bayit asher ein sham met [Exodus 12:30]), the narrator declares that as a result of Palestinian terrorism, ”there is no house in the holy land where there is no” (ein bayit be’erets haqodesh asher ein sham [18]), leaving the sentence unfinished and thereby increasing the horror of this experience. In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker portrays Arafat as mixing flour and blood in a bowl (in Hebrew, qe’arah, which is a term used to refer to the plate on which the central symbols of the seder are placed [1920]). He is preparing dough in accordance with the infamous blood libel 178

THE BIBLE AND POETIC IMAGINATION

in which the Jews were accused of mixing the blood of Christian children into their matzah. From this mixture of dough and blood will be baked ”the bread of affliction” (leḥem ha’oni, a biblical term for matzah [Deuteronomy 16:3]), to be eaten by both Israelis and Palestinians, for both will continue to suffer as a result of this endless violence (21-22).

179

CHAPTER FOUR

POETRY AND EROS w

I

n the introduction to his commentary on the Song of Songs, Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook declares that ”the stirrings of the soul by natural feelings of love, which play a big part in reality, in morality, and in life, are worthy to be interpreted by literature.”1 Rav Yuval Sherlo, a leading religious Zionist rabbi, notes that it is impossible to know exactly what kind of love literature Rav Kook had in mind in this statement, since he did not cite any existing examples nor did he write such literature himself. Nevertheless, declares Sherlo, ”[o]ne would have expected that in the wake of Rav Kook’s principled stand and his considerable influence on the world of religious Zionism and its ideology an outpouring of creativity would flood the study houses of this world, or at least there would exist a wide circle of public romantic discourse [in it].”2 This expectation is, according to Sherlo, strengthened by the fact that the Bible and a

1

Quoted in Yuval Sherlo, ”Siaḥ ahavah torani pumbi – efshari?” in: Qovets hatsiyyonut hadatit: me’ah shenot ḥinnukh tsiyyoni dati, ed. Simhah Raz (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization Center for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora, 2006), 806.

2

Ibid., 807.

181

CHAPTER Four

variety of rabbinic texts write openly about human love, a significant indication that such writing is religiously legitimate. Nevertheless, observes Sherlo, ”we find that even those who continue the ways of Rav Kook keep themselves from bringing the language of love to the public sphere and even forbid it.” 3 He surmises that the reason for this lack of love literature in religious Zionist circles is that Rav Kook had very high standards for the proper ways to write about human love, and he declared that only the holiest people would know how to portray the natural purity of love. In the spirit of Rav Kook’s caution, Sherlo argues that if there is to be a public discourse of love among religious Jews, whether in works of literature or other forms, it is essential that it always be done in accordance with the value of what the Jewish tradition refers to as tseni’ut (modesty). One characteristic of tseni’ut is to limit explicit references to physical expressions of love. This is important, he argues, not only in order to avoid the improper sexual arousal of a person reading about physical love. Such an approach also prevents the moral degradation of the discourse of love by providing ”[a] kind of mysterious kerchief spread over reality, the words touch and do not touch, and there is in them more of the hidden than the revealed…. This saves love from vulgarity and hidden violence… and strengthens the extra soul that the world of the lovers bears within it.”4 As the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets have sought to follow the example of secular Israeli poets and poets from other cultures who write about love and the erotic, they have been inclined to accept some constraints on references to sexuality in keeping with the value of tseni’ut on which they were raised. Nevertheless, despite its relatively modest approach to the erotic, Mashiv Haruaḥ poetry has sometimes been criticized by the rabbinical establishment for violating religious norms of sexual modesty. As was mentioned in the Introduction, it was the presence of erotic imagery in a poem in the first issue of the journal that led to the ban on reading it promulgated by Rav Zvi Yisrael Tau. Rav Moshe Zvi Neria, Eliaz Cohen’s former high school teacher who had originally encouraged him to engage in creative writing, expressed to Cohen his disapproval of erotic imagery in the poetry that 3 Ibid. 4

Ibid., 829-830.

182

Poetry and Eros

he published as an adult. In one collection of poems, Cohen conveyed his experience of sexual tension when he observed the traditional practice of modesty by not touching his future wife until they were married. 5 After the collection was published, Cohen’s picture appeared in a newspaper with the caption, ”There is another kind of sex,” as a result of which he was almost fired from the ultra-Orthodox school in Jerusalem where he worked as a social worker. When his next collection of poems was published with the title Shema Ado-nay (Hear O Lord), a play on the biblical text central to traditional worship, Shema Yisra’el (Hear O Israel), the school finally did let him go. They simply could not accept Cohen’s daring transformation of a sacred liturgical text into the protest to God that is the central theme of the title poem of the collection. Furthermore, during the two years that Cohen was appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture to be its ”guest poet” who visits schools to read and discuss poetry, there were religious schools that asked him not to read poems from Shema Ado-nay and not to discuss anything related to the erotic. Cohen has expressed his concern that ”[t]he religious public has a problem not only with sexual intimacy but also with emotional intimacy.”6 He goes on to say that he thinks that ”the cultural renaissance that Mashiv Haruaḥ is part of is a way of bringing intimacy to this public and nurtur[ing] its new desire for individual self-expression.”7 Cohen has pointed out that this issue is part of a larger set of issues common to all cultures: ”Every artist, from any society,” he declares, ”deals with ‘the question of boundaries.’”8 He argues, however, that ”it is not possible to experience life nor to create without the erotic dimension.”9 Nevertheless, he does believe in the importance of avoiding explicit erotica in poetry, and he is convinced that there is an aesthetic gain in writing in less direct and more suggestive ways about sexuality. 5

Eliaz Cohen, Negi’ot rishonot (Tel Aviv: Milo, 2000).

6

Talya Halkin, ”Writing Beyond the Green Line,” Jerusalem Post 11 June 2004.

7 Ibid. 8 Yakir Englander, ”Higia hazeman lethitnatteq meharabanim Shapira ve’Eliyahu,” De’ot 22 (2005): 12. 9 Ibid.

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Although he sees the validity in setting boundaries on the explicit portrayal of the erotic, Cohen is wary of the external imposition of such boundaries on the poet. It is important, he believes, for the individual poet to find his way to an appropriate approach to the erotic. ”Within the blessed processes of the revolutionary cultural renaissance [in which religious Zionist poets are participating],” he argues, ”there is of course room for instruction, for placing emphasis on directions and goals. But the bottom line is that the establishment of boundaries in the creative process should be left to the creative artist himself.”10 There is, Cohen believes, a real danger in externally imposed restrictions in the realm of the erotic: ”[S]olutions, such as censorship, turning Jewish law into a pillory of torture to which the young poet should be shackled as his wings are cut, and certainly atavistic fears from paternalistic rabbinical authorities that are immersed in the struggles of the past, will uproot the young creative artists and their works from contents based on truth.”11 Avishar Har-Shefi recalls how the issue of achieving an appropriate balance between erotic images and modesty frequently came up when he was involved in discussions with other editors about what poems to publish in Mashiv Haruaḥ: ”More than once or twice,” he recalls, ”poets sent ‘test poems’ in order to test our dedication to the sanctity of free expression.”12 Like Cohen, he sees the erotic as an essential element in the writing of poetry. ”Whoever thinks that artistic creativity has no connection with the erotic,” declares Har-Shefi, ”either does not understand what artistic creativity is or he does not understand what the erotic is.”13 Har-Shefi advocates what he calls ”modest erotica” (erotiqah tsenu’ah), which operates on the assumption that there is a hidden dimension of the erotic that can be accessed in poetry only if it avoids the more explicit portrayals of the human body. ”[M]odest erotica,” he explains, ”comes from the understanding that contact with the hidden secret comes about 10 Eliaz Cohen, ”Harenesans shelanu,” Nequdah 230 (2000): 33. 11 Ibid., 34. 12 Avishar Har-Shefi, ”Uveshetayim ye’ofef: al erotiqah utseni’ut,” Mashiv Haruaḥ 14 (2003): 23. 13 Ibid., 22.

184

Poetry and Eros

only within the inner realm and only from the knowledge that the inner seed will always remain a secret, that we will never be able to grasp it, and so it [modest erotica] clothes it. But it is important to note [that] the clothing is not opaque, but rather reveals part and clothes part. I am not speaking of a veil or a black robe covering everything.”14 In one essay, Har-Shefi has surveyed the relationship of traditional Jewish texts toward sexuality, including rabbinic, medieval, and Hasidic sources, as well as the teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook. ”One of the basic conflicts that characterize sexuality [in traditional Jewish sources],” he writes, ”is the tension between the actualization of love and of the relationship of a couple and the satisfaction of desire. On the one hand, sexuality carries within it one of the strongest desires, and the desire to satisfy it constitutes a need which is fundamentally egotistical. In this sense, there is present not a relationship but rather the actualization of desire. However, on the other hand, the essence of sexuality is that it is actualized in the relationship of a couple, when a person directs full attention to the other.”15 Har-Shefi then goes on to demonstrate that while there is a line of thinking in traditional sources that is wary of the experience of sexual pleasure, there are many sources that find holiness in sexual pleasure experienced in the context of marital relations. It is clear from a reading of the essay that Har-Shefi’s purpose in writing it is to challenge the notion that sexuality and religiosity are at odds with each other. By validating sexual pleasure in the context of marriage, in effect, Har-Shefi provides further support for the celebration of the erotic in poetry, albeit with an approach in keeping with the traditional Jewish value of tseni’ut. One approach adopted by Mashiv Haruaḥ poets who write erotic poetry is to integrate sexual experience with the religious experience of Sabbath observance, examples of which may be found in poems by Sivan HarShefi and Yoram Nissinovitch. Another approach adopted by Mashiv 14 Ibid. 15 Avishar Har-Shefi, ”Kavvanah vehitkavnut beyaḥasei ishut,” in Vayiqra et shemam adam: zugiyyut umishpaḥah memabbat yehudi ḥadash, ed. Zohar Maor (Efrat: Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak, 2005), 144.

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CHAPTER Four

Haruaḥ poets to the writing of erotic poetry is to explore sexuality in the context of nature scenery, examples of which may be found in poems by Yoram Nissinovitch and Nahum Pachenik. While Mashiv Haruaḥ erotic poetry is not limited to these approaches, they both serve well to express the kind of less direct and suggestive approach of ”modest erotica”advocated by Eliaz Cohen and Avishar Har-Shefi. The Sabbath context of an erotic poem keeps the sexuality explored in the poem connected with holy experience and thereby affirms that one can write about the erotic without abandoning one’s commitment to religious values. The nature context of an erotic poem allows the poet to represent physical human eroticism with less graphic sensual images from nature.16

The Erotic, the Sabbath, and Religious Experience The custom in some Jewish communities to read the Song of Songs on Friday shortly before the beginning of the Sabbath establishes a connection of the Sabbath with the sacred dimension of sexuality. This approach is well in keeping with Jewish tradition, which encourages marital relations on the Sabbath at night. Two poems by Sivan Har-Shefi establish close connections between the experience of Sabbath and relations between male and female partners who presumably are married, and a poem by Yoram Nissinovitch personifies the Sabbath as a sexually licentious woman.

‫ָרזָ א ְד ֶא ָחד‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



‫בּ וֹ א לְ ִה ְת ַ ּג ֵע ׁש ִא ִּתי ְ ּב ֶב ֶטן ָה ָהר‬ ‫לְ ִה ָּט ֵמן ַ ּב ּק ֶֹד ׁש ְ ּבחוֹ ל ַה ְּמ ָע ָרה‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ַה ׁ ּ ַש ָ ּבת ְּכסו ֵּתינ ּו ַהיְ ִח ָידה‬ ‫נַ ֲע ֶשׂ ה לְ ָה ִטים ְ ּב ֵא ׁש ַה ּתוֹ ָרה ַה ִ ּנ ְס ֶּת ֶרת‬ ‫יח ָחרו ִּבים יִ ְד ַ ּבק ִ ּב ְב ָשׂ ֵרנ ּו‬ ַ ‫וְ ֵר‬

5

16 This notion of how nature imagery can be used to write about the erotic was suggested to me by Yoram Nissinovitch when I interviewed him in January 2009.

186

Poetry and Eros

‫וּנְ ָח ִלים יִ ָּמ ׁ ְשכ ּו ֵמ ֶא ְצ ְּבעוֹ ֵתינ ּו‬ ‫וְ ז ַֹהר עוֹ ֵרנ ּו ִח ָידה‬ ‫ּי־עינַ יִ ם‬ ֵ ‫ְלעוֹ ָלם ְ ּגלו‬ ‫ֹאהב ַּב ַּמ ְח ֶּת ֶרת‬ ַ ‫ּבוֹ א נ‬ ‫ִמ ְּפנֵ י עוֹ ָלם ּכֹל־יוֹ ֵד ַע‬ .‫ׁ ֶש ּלֹא עוֹ ד סוֹ ד לוֹ ַה ּׁ ְשנַ יִ ם‬

The Secret of Oneness



Come erupt with me in the belly of the mountain



with the Sabbath as our only cover



5

1 0



Sivan Har-Shefi

be hidden in holiness in the profanity of the cave

we’ll make flames out of the fire of the hidden Torah and the smell of carobs will stick to our flesh

and rivers will be drawn out from our fingers and the splendor of our skin will be a riddle to a clear-sighted world

come let us love underground

10 away from an all-knowing world

which understands not yet the secret of our being together. 17

In this poem, the poet integrates erotic imagery with images of holiness. She and her male lover enter into a cave within a mountain in which they have an intense experience that combines ”holiness” (2) with ”profanity” (2). The verb ”erupt” (1), the noun ”belly” (1), the expression ”make flames” (4), the references to ”flesh” (5) and ”skin” (7) all have erotic connotations, yet at the same time the couple is ”hidden in holiness” (2), protected by the Sabbath (”our only cover” [3]). They make fire out of ”the hidden Torah” (4), and their skin has ”splendor” (zohar [7]), a mystical form of light. The couple’s immersion in an eroticism that is raised to the level of sanctity is presented as a subversive act. Their love is ”under17 Sivan Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hemeuchad, 2005), 35.

187

CHAPTER Four

ground” (bamaḥteret, which connotes an underground political movement [9]). In the world outside of their experience – the ”clear-sighted world” (8), the ”all-knowing world” (10) – what the couple is doing is a ”riddle” (7), for the others cannot fathom the mystical secret (sod) of the nature of their joining as two ”together” (11). This is the ”secret of oneness” of the title, conveyed in the Aramaic language of the classical book of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, raza de’eḥad. The image of hiding away and engaging in Torah study alludes to the legend of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai and his son Rabbi Elazar, who hid in a cave because Rabbi Shimon was wanted by the Roman Caesar on charges of publicly defaming the honor of the Roman Empire: They hid in a cave. A miracle occurred and a carob tree and a wa-

ter spring were created for them. They would take off their clothes

and sit in sand up to their necks. All day they studied Torah and at the time of prayer they would get dressed, and afterward they

would take off their clothes so that they would not wear out. They

lived for twelve years in the cave, and then Elijah came and stood at

the entrance to the cave and said, ”Who will inform Bar Yohai that Caesar has died and his decree is annulled? [Rabbi Shimon and his

son] went out [from the cave]. They saw people plowing and sow-

ing, and they said: ”They are putting aside eternity and dealing with worldly matters?” Every place they turned their eyes was immedi-

ately burned. A heavenly voice said to them: ”Did you go out [of the

cave] to destroy my world? Return to your cave!” They returned and dwelled there for twelve months. They said, ”The evil are judged in

Gehenna for twelve months.” A heavenly voice said, ”Leave your

cave.” They left and every place that Rabbi Elazar [the son] harmed [with his look] Rabbi Shimon [the father] healed. He said to him, ”My son, it is enough for the world that there are you and I.” On the eve of the Sabbath they saw an old man holding two bundles of

myrtle branches running at twilight. They said to him, ”Why do you have these?” He said, ”In honor of the Sabbath.” They said to him, ”You only need one.” He said to them, ”One is for [the Sabbath com188

Poetry and Eros

mandment that begins] ‘Remember’ and the other is for [the Sabbath

commandment that begins] ‘Guard.’” He said to his son, ”See how

beloved the commandments are to Israel,” and they were reconciled in their minds. (Shabbat 33b)

A number of elements in this legend are found in the poem: hiding away to study Torah (1-4), carobs (5), a source of water (6), and in general the sense of being completely separated from the world and feeling superior to it. The line translated as ”be hidden in holiness in the profanity of the cave” (2) could also be translated as ”be hidden in holiness in the sand of the cave,” since the Hebrew word ḥol which appears in the line can mean either ”profanity” or ”sand.” According to this reading, the speaker and her lover will follow the practice of Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar, who studied Torah while sitting in sand. The reason that Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar did so was because they wanted to be naked most of the time so that their clothes would not wear out, but they also wanted to cover their nakendess while studing holy texts. The rabbis’ nakedness, however, may be associated here with that of the speaker and her lover when they are engaged in a sexual encounter. The Sabbath context of the poem is found in the legend when the rabbis question the old man holding the myrtle branches just before the onset of the Sabbath. Furthermore, the speaker states that ”the splendor [hazohar] of our skin will be a riddle” (7), and according to tradition Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai was the author of the Zohar. All of these associations with a legend about the great Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai and his son raise the integration of the erotic and the holy in this poem to a level of great distinction. At the same time, since the legend appears to be critical of the rabbis’ attitude of spiritual superiority toward the world, it would appear that the poet is suggesting that it may be wrong for a couple to focus exclusively on their erotic-religious relationship rather than reaching out to help improve the state of the world in which they live.

189

CHAPTER Four



A Delicate Balance



Our Sabbath



and only you can bring out





5

‫ִא ּזוּן ָע ִדי ן‬ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



‫ֶאת ַה ׁ ּ ַש ָ ּבת ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ַרק ֲאנִ י יְ כוֹ לָ ה לְ ַהכְ נִ יס‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ַרק ַא ָּתה יָ כוֹ ל לְ הוֹ ִציא‬ .‫יקים ׁ ְשנֵ י נֵ רוֹ ת‬ ִ ִ‫ַמ ְחז‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ְ ּבסוֹ ָפ ּה נִ ְהיִ ים ֶא ָחד‬ ‫ׁ ְש ֵּתי ּ ְפ ִתילוֹ ת ְ ּבנֵ ר ֶא ָחד‬ .‫לְ ַה ְת ָחלָ ה ֲח ָד ׁ ָשה‬ ‫ּ־פ ְרצו ִּפין‬ ַ ּ ‫אשית ָהיִ ינ ּו דּ ו‬ ִ ׁ ‫ו ְּב ֵר‬ .‫ְ ּבחוּט ׁ ִש ְד ָרה ָהיָ ה ָּתלוּי עוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫ַעכְ ׁ ָשו ׁ ְשנֵ י ַע ּמו ֵּדי ׁ ִש ְד ָרה‬ ‫יקים ַ ּביִ ת‬ ִ ִ‫ַמ ְחז‬ ,‫וּכְ ׁ ֶש ֲאנִ י ְק ָצת ִמ ְתכּ וֹ ֶפ ֶפת‬ .‫ ִא ּזוּן ָע ִדין‬.‫וּכְ ׁ ֶש ַא ָּתה‬



Sivan Har-Shefi

that only I can bring in

is held by two candles.

But when it ends they become one two wicks in one candle for a new start.

And in the beginning we were double faced in a spinal cord hung a world.

10 Now two spinal columns

support a house



and when you do. A delicate balance. 18



and when I bend a bit,

18 Ibid., 49.

190

5

10



Poetry and Eros

The female speaker addresses her husband, noting the equally important roles they each have in connection with Sabbath observances. As is typical in traditional Jewish homes, she, as the wife, inaugurates the Sabbath by lighting two candles, and her husband marks the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the new week by reciting the Havdalah prayer, which is accompanied by a single candle made of a minimum of two wicks. The Sabbath is a time for the couple to rediscover the unity between them, and this is symbolized by the fact that the woman lights two distinct candles at the beginning, but by the end of the Sabbath individual candles have been interwoven to create one unified candle (1-7). The speaker declares that once they were one entity with two faces: ”And in the beginning we were double faced / in a spinal cord hung a world” (8-9). Now, although they have been divided into two units they work together: ”Now two spinal columns / support a house” (10-11). The speaker is alluding here to the midrashic notion that originally Adam and Eve were created as one two-faced entity (du partsufin) and then God cut them in half to make two separate beings (Vayikra Rabbah 14:1). This midrash suggests that because originally the first man and woman constituted a unified being, all of their male and female descendants long to restore that primordial unity in sexual intercourse. However, while the unyielding position of their spinal columns is necessary to keep their life going, it is not enough. At times they each must ”bend a bit” (12) one to the other, and in this flexibility they find the ”delicate balance” (13) of a true relationship.

‫יפס‬ ַ ּ ‫ׁ ַש ָ ּבת ִ ּב ְרחוֹ ב ַאגְ ִר‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬



‫יפס‬ ַ ּ ‫ׁ ַש ָ ּבת יָ ָפה סוֹ ֶב ֶבת ִ ּב ְרחוֹ ב ַאגְ ִר‬ ‫ֵשׂ ָער ּ ָפזוּר ַעל ְּכ ֵת ֶפ ָיה‬ .‫ימה לְ ָבנָ ה ַמ ְס ִּת ָירה ּגו ָּפ ּה ֶה ָחטוּב‬ ָ ִ‫ְ ּגל‬ ‫לִ ׁ ְש ִריקוֹ ת ַה ְ ּג ָב ִרים ִהיא ְמ ַח ֶ ּיכֶ ת‬



‫ׁ ַש ָ ּבת ַמ ִ ּג ָיעה ִמ ִּכ ּווּן ַמ ֲע ָרב‬

5

191

CHAPTER Four

‫נַ ֲע ָרה ִמן ַה ׁ ּ ְש ֵפלָ ה ְמ ַט ּ ֶפ ֶסת ֶ ּב ָה ִרים‬ .‫ְשׂ ִריטוֹ ת ַה ּקוֹ ִצים עוֹ שׂ וֹ ת ְ ּבגו ָּפ ּה ְּכ ִמיהוֹ ת‬ ‫יש ּה‬ ָ ׁ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ַש ַער ָה ִעיר ַמ ְמ ִּתין לָ ּה ִא‬ ‫דַּ ק ו ִּמ ְת ַעדֵּ ן‬ .‫ו ְּמ ַס ֵּקל ֶאת ְשׂ ִר ֵידי ַהחוֹ ל‬

15

,‫ׁ ַש ָ ּבת יְ הו ִּדית ְמ ַח ֶ ּב ֶקת ְ ּג ָב ִרים ְצ ִע ִירים‬ ‫ּגוּף ְ ּבגוּף ִמ ְתדַּ ֵ ּבק ו ִּמ ְת ַר ּ ֶפה‬ ‫ְּכח ֶֹמר ָמכוּר לְ ַא ֲה ָבה‬



Sabbath on Agrippas Street



Beautiful Sabbath walks around on Agrippas Street



a white robe hiding her shapely body.

5

Yoram Nissinovitch

scattered hair on her shoulders

To the men’s whistles she smiles Sabbath comes from the west

a young woman from the coast climbing up the mountains thorn scratchings making longings on her body. At the gate of the city waits her man thin and refined

10 removing what remains of the profane.

Sabbath gives me her hand



her two hands lit up on the table



10

‫ׁ ַש ָ ּבת נוֹ ֶתנֶ ת לִ י יָ ד‬ ‫לְ לֹא ּ ַפ ַחד אוֹ יִ ּסו ִּרים‬ ‫ׁ ְש ֵּתי יָ ֶד ָיה דְּ לוּקוֹ ת ַעל ַה ׁ ּ ֻשלְ ָחן‬ ‫לוֹ גֶ ֶמת ִמן ַה ַ ּייִ ן ַה ּטוֹ ב‬ ‫וּבוֹ ַצ ַעת ַח ָּלה לִ ׁ ְשנַ יִ ם‬





with no fear or suffering

192



Poetry and Eros



she drinks from the good wine



A Jewish Sabbath embraces young men,



like material addicted to love19

15 and breaks the bread in two



body to body clings and lets go

Agrippas Street is one of the main thoroughfares in the group of neighborhoods in the center of Jerusalem known as Nahlaot. Jewish residents of Jerusalem began to develop these neighborhoods in the middle of the nineteenth century as part of the movement to settle outside of the walls of the old city. Over time, after the establishment of the State of Israel, these neighborhoods underwent a decline and were characterized by poverty and crime. In recent years, the city has attempted to revive the neighborhood.20 At the beginning of the poem, the Sabbath is personified as a loose woman, perhaps even a prostitute, wandering around this declining neighborhood, enjoying the admiring whistles of the men who see her (1-4). The ”scattered hair on her shoulders” (2) indicates that she is a free spirit willing to flaunt her sexual attractiveness, yet her erotic physicality is wrapped in a symbol of purity: ”a white robe hiding her shapely body” (3). In the second stanza, the Sabbath is personified differently. As the speaker observes the setting sun in the west on Friday, an indication of the onset of the Sabbath, he imagines the Sabbath as a young woman climbing up the mountains of Jerusalem from the coastal plain (5-6). The coastal plain is known in Hebrew as hashefelah, which can have the connotation of something that is lower in status. The region is associated with the very secular city of Tel Aviv, and thus the Sabbath comes across here as seeking to escape a profane life by climbing up to the holiness of Jerusalem. In the process, however, her skin is scratched by the thorns that are so prevalent in the hills surrounding Jerusalem, and the streaks of red in the sky of 19 Yoram Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2008), 45. 20 ”Naḥla’ot,” http://he.wikipedia.org.

193

CHAPTER Four

sunset represent those scratches, which are the price she is willing to pay to fulfill her longing for a transcendent spiritual experience (7). At the gate of the city, her ”man” (ishah, which could have the connotation of ”her husband”), representing the typical observant Jew, awaits her (8). In contrast to the personified Sabbath, who is adventurous, daring, and a spiritual seeker, he is ”thin and refined” (9), and his preparation for the Sabbath is characterized by an attempt to carefully remove whatever is left of the profane in this world (10). In the expression ”removing what remains of the profane” (umesaqel et seridei haḥol), the Hebrew word for ”removing,” mesaqel, literally means ”to remove stones,” and the Hebrew word for ”profane,” ḥol, can also mean ”sand.” In that sense, the act of the Jew getting ready for the Sabbath is rather mundane and perhaps overly meticulous, in contrast with the urgent drive of the Sabbath to arrive in Jerusalem. In the third stanza, the Sabbath is personified as a woman who puts forth her hand to the speaker, is not afraid, does not suffer, and willingly joins him at his Sabbath Friday night dinner (11-12). As the personification of the Sabbath she embodies three main home rituals associated with Friday night. She is the two Sabbath candles traditionally lit by the wife just before sunset (”her two hands lit up on the table” [13]), and she acts like the husband who recites the Kiddush and then, ”drinks from the good wine” (14), after which he recites the blessing over the Sabbath loaves ”and breaks the bread in two” (15). Thus, she represents the union of the male and female that is an integral part of the Sabbath experience. The poem then concludes with the metaphor of the Sabbath as a sexual partner of youthful male figures: ”A Jewish Sabbath embraces young men, / body to body clings and lets go” (16-17). When the speaker refers to the Sabbath as being ”like material addicted to love” (18), he suggests that the Sabbath is strongly driven to meet the underlying need of this world for the redeeming power of men and women joining together.

194

Poetry and Eros

The Erotic and Nature One of the ways to write about the erotic without being overly explicit is to associate human sexual experience with nature imagery. In the following poems by Yoram Nissinovitch and Nahum Pachenik, a male speaker addresses his female lover as they are situated in a natural setting. In the poem by Nissinovitch, the plant world is erotically charged and thereby serves to represent the sexual energy that flows between the man and the woman. In the poem by Pachenik, nature images convey the speaker’s fear of physical intimacy and his gradual move toward responding to the sexual energy put forth by his lover.

‫ְ ּב ֶד ֶר ְך נֵ ס ָה ִרים‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬



‫ׁ ְש ֵק ִד ָ ּיה‬



‫ַעל ְשׂ ַפת ַה ְּכ ִב ׁיש‬ ‫ִמ ְתנוֹ ַע ַעת‬ ‫יח דַּ ק ְמגָ ָרה‬ ַ ‫יצה ֵר‬ ָ ‫ְמ ִפ‬ ‫אוֹ ִתי‬



‫ֲ(אנִ י נוֹ ׁ ֵשק ָשׂ ָפה ֶאל‬ )‫ְשׂ ָפ ֵת ְך‬

5

‫ֲאנִ י ַס ּ ִפיר וַ ֲא ָבנִ ים‬ ‫טוֹ בוֹ ת‬ ‫ַ ּב ְּס ַב ְך ַה ְמ ֻצ ָ ּיץ‬



* ‫יח דְּ ַב ׁש‬ ַ ‫ֵר‬ ְ‫ִקדָּ ה לָ ך‬

‫אוֹ ַא ְּת ִע ִירית‬ 195

10



‫‪CHAPTER Four‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ְמ ֻק ּ ֶפלֶ ת לֶ ֱאהֹב‬ ‫ַ ּב ֲח ִמ ׁ ּ ָשה ַא ְב ָקנִ ים‬ ‫וְ ׁ ִש ׁ ּ ָשה כּ וֹ ַת ְר ִּת ִ ּיים ְמ ֻצ ָ ּי ִרים ַ ּב ָ ּיד‬ ‫ִמי יָ ַדע ׁ ֶש ָּתבוֹ ִאי‬ ‫לַ ֲעשׂ וֹ ת ִ ּבי‬ ‫ִצ ּפוֹ ר ֶ ּב ֶטן ֲא ֻד ָּמה‬ ‫ֹאש ׁ ָשחוֹ ר וַ ֲאדֹם‬ ‫ר ׁ‬ ‫ַמ ּקוֹ ר ָארֹךְ‬ ‫זוֹ ֵר ַע אוֹ ר‬ ‫ָּכל ָה ָהר יוֹ ֵקד‬ ‫ׁ ְש ֵק ִד ּיוֹ ת‬ ‫ִמ ְת ַא ְּספוֹ ת ֵע ֶדר לַ ׁ ּ ְש ָקתוֹ ת‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ְמנַ ֶּסה לִ כְ ּתֹב י ִֹפי‬ ‫ַעל ׁ ְש ִביל נְ ִחילִ ים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ְּכמוֹ ִתי‬ ‫ְמ ַט ְפ ְט ִפים ִּת ְקוָ ה ִמ ֶ ּג ׁ ֶשם‬ ‫ּ ִפ ְתאֹם מוּל ֵעץ‬ ‫א ֶֹרן ָמצוּי‬ ‫זוֹ ֵהר ְ ּב ֵמאוֹ ת ִא ְצ ְט ֻר ָ ּבלִ ים‬ ‫ֵמ ַעל ָה ַעיִ ן‬

‫ ‬

‫ן־ב ְרכֵ נִ ַ ּ‬ ‫א ֶֹר ָ ּ‬ ‫ם־אנִ י‬ ‫י־ג ֲ‬

‫ ‬

‫ְ ּב ׁ ִש ּפוּלֵ י ַהר‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ׁ ְש ֵק ִד ָ ּיה‬ ‫ימת ַר ָּקפוֹ ת‬ ‫ּפוֹ ַת ַחת נְ ׁ ִש ַ‬

‫‪196‬‬

Poetry and Eros



On the Way to Nes Harim



Almond Tree



At the edge of the road



spreading a faint smell stimulating





Yoram Nissinovitch

it sways

me. 5

(I kiss my lip to your lip)

*

The aroma of



I am sapphire and precious



in the sprouted shrubbery



Or you are an asphodel



with five stamens



cassia honey from you

10 stones



folded up to love

15 and six plants with petals drawn by hand

who knew that you would come



a red breasted bird



to make in me

with a head black and red

20 a long beak

sowing light 197

CHAPTER Four



The whole mountain is aglow with



a flock gathering at the troughs



almond trees

25 I try to write beauty

out of a swarm of bees



dripping hope from the rain



like me



Suddenly before



there shines with hundreds of pine cones



a pine-tree-bless-me-too



near the bottom of the mountain

30 an ordinary pine tree

above the spring

35 an almond tree

opens the breath of cyclamens 21

The male speaker is visiting Nes Harim, a rural settlement near Jerusalem, with his female lover. While the only direct physical contact between them mentioned in the poem is in the words, ”I kiss my lip / to your lip” (5-6), presented in parentheses, the nature imagery has many erotic associations. There are references to elements of the reproductive system of flowers: ”the aroma of / cassia honey” (7-8), ”an asphodel (12),” ”stamens” (14), and ”a swarm of bees” (26). Nature serves here to represent the erotic nature of this couple’s encounter: ”Or you are an asphodel / folded up to love / with five stamens / and six plants with petals… / who knew that you would come / to make in me a red breasted bird / with a head black and red / a long beak / sowing light” (12-21). In Hebrew, the expression 21 Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah, 11-12.

198

Poetry and Eros

”sowing light” (zorea or) is significant, for the Hebrew word for ”sowing” (zorea) is related to the Hebrew word zera, which can mean seed or sperm, while the expression zorea or alludes to a biblical expression, ”light is sown for the righteous one” (or zarua latsaddiq [Psalms 97:11]). In addition, the speaker imagines that he is a ”sapphire” (9), an image that appears in an erotic biblical description of a male lover: ”his stomach is a slab of ivory covered with sapphires” [Song of Songs 5:14]). Other nature imagery contributes to the bucolic tranquility of the location: the stimulating ”faint smell” of the almond tree (3), ”the sprouted shrubbery” (11), ”[t]he whole mountain…aglow with / almond trees” (22-23), ”a flock gathering at the troughs” (24), ”rain” (28), a ”pine tree” (30), and ”cyclamens” (36). The poem explores the process of making art out of nature. The speaker refers to ”six plants with petals drawn by hand” (15), and later he speaks of trying ”to write beauty / out of a swarm of bees” (25-26). Toward the end of the poem, one pine tree stands out within this nature scene: ”Suddenly before / an ordinary pine tree / there shines with hundreds of pine cones / above the spring / a pine-tree-bless-me-too” (oren barkheni-gamani [30-33]). This tree is like the biblical Esau begging his father Isaac to bless him after his brother Jacob received the blessing in a deceitful manner. ”Bless me too my father [barkheni gam ani avi],” he cries out (Genesis 27:38). It is as if in using Esau’s words, the tree wants to be sure that no part of nature will be rejected or ignored. Near the bottom of the mountain an almond tree, whose aroma we learned at the beginning of the poem was very stimulating (3), has the effect of ”open[ing] the breath of cyclamens” (34-36), a final sensual image in this powerful joining together of nature and the erotic.

‫ֵעינַ יִ ם ׁ ֶש ִּלי‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬ ‫א‬ ‫ֵעינַ יִ ם ׁ ֶש ִּלי‬ ‫ִמ ַּת ַחת לְ ֵעץ ַה ּתוּת‬ ‫ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ְר ׁשוֹ ת ָּכמוֹ ה ּו‬ .‫ַמ ִ ּביטוֹ ת ְ ּב ֵעינַ יִ ְך‬ 199



‫‪CHAPTER Four‬‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ָחתוּל ְמ ֻפ ָחד ָּכמוֹ נִ י‬ ‫קוֹ ֵפץ ִמ ּ ַפח ַא ׁ ְש ּ ָפה ׁ ֶש ּ ָפ ַת ְח ִּתי‪,‬‬ ‫קוֹ ֵפץ ְ ּב ֶב ָהלָ ה ִמ ְ ּב ּתוֹ ְך ֵעינַ יִ ְך‪.‬‬ ‫ֵעינַ יִ ם ׁ ֶש ִּלי רוֹ ְדפוֹ ת ַא ֲח ֵרי‬ ‫ָחתוּל לְ לַ ֵּטף‪ ,‬רוֹ ְדפוֹ ת לְ ַה ְר ִ ּג ֵיעךְ‬ ‫ִמ ַּת ַחת לְ ֵעץ ַה ּתוּת‬ ‫ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ְר ׁשוֹ ת ָּכמוֹ ה ּו‬ ‫ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ֵר ׁש ַ ּגם לִ ִ ּבי‬ ‫ְמלַ ֵּטף ְ ּבתוֹ כָ ן ָחתוּל ְמ ֻפ ָחד‬ ‫ָחתוּל ִמ ְת ַק ֵּמר‪ָ ,‬חתוּל ִמ ְתנַ ֵּמר ְ ּבלִ ּטו ִּפים‪.‬‬ ‫ַ ּב ָּכחֹל ַה ַ ּי ִּמי ׁ ֶשל נִ צַּ ן ֵעינַ יִ ְך‬ ‫נִ ְב ָקע זִ יק‬ ‫ְּתכַ לְ ַּכל ְּכיָ ם ְר ִק ַיע ַה ִּכ ֵּסא‪,‬‬ ‫ִמ ְת ַר ֵחב ָ ּב ֶהן‬ ‫ֵעינַ יִ ם ׁ ֶש ִּלי ְק ֵרבוֹ ת עוֹ ד‪,‬‬ ‫ְמגַ ְמ ַ ּג ְמ ֵ ּגם ֵאלַ יִ ְך‬ ‫ִמ ׁ ְש ַּת ֵ ּבר ָעלַ יִ ְך ְ ּבכָ חֹל‬ ‫ִמ ְתנַ ּ ֵפץ לְ ַאט לְ תוֹ ְך ֵעינַ יִ ְך‪.‬‬ ‫ב‬ ‫ֵעץ ַה ּתוּת ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ַר ׁ ְש ֵר ׁש‬ ‫ּ ְפ ִרי ִמ ְת ַ ּב ׁ ּ ֵשל בּ וֹ לְ ַאט‬ ‫לְ ַאט‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ַמ ְח ַסן ֵע ִצים ַ ּב ַקיִ ץ‬ ‫ְמ ַח ֶּכה לְ גֶ ׁ ֶשם‪,‬‬ ‫ֶר ֶחם זוֹ ֶע ֶמת ּתוֹ ַב ַעת ְ ּב ֶפה‬ ‫ָמלֵ א‪ּ ,‬תוֹ ַב ַעת ְ ּב ֶאגְ רוֹ ִפים ְקפו ִּצים‪.‬‬ ‫ֵעינַ יִ ְך‪ָּ ,‬כ ֵעת ַח ָ ּיה‪ּ ְ ,‬ב ֵאר‬ ‫ֲע ֻמ ָּקה ֲח ׁשוּכָ ה ׁ ְשכו ָּחה‬ ‫ַר ֲח ִמים ַר ֲח ִמים ֵהד קוֹ ֵרא ָ ּב ּה‬ ‫‪200‬‬

Poetry and Eros

‫ַר ֲח ִמים לְ ִה ְת ַמ ֵּלא ַמיִ ם ַח ִ ּיים‬ ‫ַר ֲח ִמים לְ ִה ְת ַמ ֵּלא ַמיִ ם‬ ‫ַר ֲח ִמים לְ ִה ְת ַמ ֵּלא‬ ‫ַר ֲח ִמים‬ ‫ַר ֲח ִמי‬ ‫ַעל נִ ׁ ְש ַמת יְ הוֹ ׁ ֻש ַע נַ חוּם ֶ ּבן‬ ‫ג‬ ‫לְ ַאט ֲאנִ י ֵמ ִסיר ַה ּלוֹ ט‬ ְ‫ֵמזִ יז ַה ּגוֹ לֵ ל ֵמ ַעל ְ ּב ֵאר ׁ ֶש ָּלך‬ :‫ַמ ׁ ְש ִמ ַיע ֲה ָב ָרה‬ ‫ֵהד חוֹ זֵ ר עוֹ לֶ ה‬ ‫ֵּת ַבת ַה ְּתהו ָּדה ִמ ְת ַמ ֵּלאת‬ ְ‫ֲחלַ ל ַה ֲחצוֹ ְצ ָרה ָרווּי נִ ּגוּן ָ ּבך‬ ‫ֲאנִ י מוֹ ׁ ִשיט ַה ָ ּיד ֶאל ֵעץ ַה ּתוּת‬ ,‫עוֹ ד ָקט ֶא ְקטֹף לָ ְך ַה ּ ְפ ִרי‬ ‫ימ ֶטר ֶא ְצ ָ ּב ִעי‬ ֶ ‫עוֹ ד ֶסנֶ ִט‬ .‫ַעל ָה ָאדֹם ַהבּ וֹ ְרדוֹ ַה ֻּמ ְחלָ ט ַה ֶּזה‬

My Eyes

Nahum Pachenik

1

My eyes



rustle like it

5

under the berry tree and look at your eyes.

A frightened cat like me

jumps from the garbage can I opened,

jumps in alarm from within your eyes. My eyes chase after

a cat to caress, chase to calm you down

10 under the berry tree

201

35

40

45





CHAPTER Four



rustle like it



caressing within them a frightened cat



my heart also rustles

a cat with arched back, mottled with caresses.

15 In the oceanic blue of the blossom of your eyes

breaks out a spark



widening in them



bluish like the oceanic sky of the throne,



My eyes draw nearer,



breaking upon you in blue

20 I stutter to you

shattered slowly into your eyes.

2

The berry tree rustles

fruit ripens on it slowly

25 slowly

like a wood storage room in the summer



a furious womb demands full



waiting for rain,

throatedly, demands with clenched fists.

30 Your eyes, at this very time, a well

so deep and dark and forgotten



mercy to fill up with living water



mercy mercy an echo calls out in it mercy to fill up with water

35 mercy to fill up mercy

have mercy

on the soul of Yehoshua Nahum son of 202

Poetry and Eros



3

Slowly I remove the covering

.

40 move the stone from on top of your well

and utter a syllable:



the sound box fills up



a returning echo arises in you is the hollow space inside a trumpet saturated with a tune.

45 I stretch out my hand to the berry tree

in a moment I will pick for you some fruit,



on this absolutely dark red color. 22



another centimeter and my finger will be

The central scene of the poem consists of the male speaker and his female lover sitting under a berry tree. The title of the poem, ”My Eyes,” signals that much of the relationship between the two will be by means of the sense of sight. As the speaker looks at his lover, his eyes cannot stay still, but rather they ”rustle” like the berry tree (1-4). The speaker’s fear of intimate connection mixed with his desire to reach out to the lover is represented by the image of a cat who is afraid: ”A frightened cat like me / jumps from the garbage can I opened, / jumps in alarm from within your eyes. / My eyes chase after a cat to caress, chase to calm you down / … my heart also rustles / caressing within them a frightened cat / a cat with arched back, mottled with caresses” (5-14). The lover’s eyes are blue, reflecting the depths of the ocean and the unfathomable heights of the sky, in which God’s throne has appeared to prophets (15-18). A spark breaks out from the lover’s eyes (15-16), and the speaker seeks to draw near to her, moving in a hesitant fashion to have contact with her through stuttering speech, feeling as if the solidity within him that kept him from her is finally in the process of being broken up. The tentative nature of his stuttering is emphasized when the speaker adds an extra syllable to the Hebrew word ”stutter,” saying megamgamgem rather than megamgem (19-22). 22 Nahum Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 49-51.

203

CHAPTER Four

In the second section, the gradual development of the lovers’ relationship is captured in images of an Israeli summer, when ”[t]he berry tree rustles, / fruit ripens on it slowly / slowly” (23-25) and ”a wood storage room… / [is] waiting for rain” (26-27). As he did with the word for ”stutter” the speaker adds an extra syllable to the word for ”rustle” (merashresh) and says merashrashresh, thereby suggesting the long drawn-out nature of this process. Then follows the image of the lover as a womb fiercely demanding to be filled (”a furious womb demands full / throatedly, demands with clenched fists” [28-29]). At the same time, her eyes are like a well calling out to someone to have mercy on her and fill her with ”living water.” The speaker also calls for mercy for himself, ”Yehoshua Nahum son of” (30-38). His feelings of desperation are expressed by means of the the fact that he does not mention his father’s name as one would expect in accordance with traditional Jewish practice, as if he is all alone in the world without parental support. In the third and final section, the speaker makes use of the image of uncovering a well in order to express his attempt to get beyond that which separates him from his lover’s inner being (39-40).The speaker makes use of two different words to convey the cover over this well-like inner being of his lover: lot, which can connote ”veil” (39) and golel, which often connotes a stone that covers the entrance to a burial grave (40). By removing that stone, the fear of intimacy that denies life is defeated by the affirmation of love. The speaker then utters to his lover only a single ”syllable,” and from the well of her inner being a tuneful echo returns to meet him (39-42). It is as if she is a musical instrument which expresses itself only when the musician acts upon it: ”the sound box fills up / in you is the hollow space inside a trumpet saturated with a tune” (43-44). That experience of intimacy on an oral level of communication prepares the way for the speaker to finally overcome his fears of intimacy, expressed by his intention to pick one of the berries with an ”absolutely dark red color” from the tree under which they have been sitting and to present it to her (45-48).

204

CHAPTER FIVE

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS w

O 1

f the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets included in this book, Eliaz Cohen, Nahum Pachenik, and Elhanan Nir have been the most politically outspoken on issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the one hand, they support the right of Jews to settle throughout the Land of Israel, a central principle of Gush Emunim on which they were raised. This position came across clearly in their opposition to Israel’s dismantling of all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and some settlements in Samaria in the West Bank, known as ”the disengagement” (hahitnattequt) in 2005.1 On the other hand, they

Poetic responses to the disengagement by two of these poets may be found in Eliaz Cohen, Hazmanah levekhi: shishah shirim al hahitnattequt (Ra'anana: Even Hoshen, 2005) and Nahum Pachenik, ”Shirei galut yisra’el 2005-2006,” in his collection Sus ha’emunah (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 55-62. For other poems and diary selections by religious Zionist opponents of the disengagement, see Tsir kissufim: tefillot al erets yisra'el (qayyits 5765), ed. Ido Levinger, Elhanan Nir, Devorah Raziel (Jerusalem: Orot, 2005). A bilingual book which includes selections from Tsir kissufim was also published: In the Land of Prayer: Personal Tefillot from Israel in Turbulent Times, ed. Daniel Gutenmacher, trans. Toby Klein Greenwald (Jerusalem: Chaim Nissan Books, 2006). See also the following essays by Elhanan Nir written in response to the disengagement: ”Lirqod et hahitnattequt,” ”Tefillah aḥarei hahitnattequt,” ”Tefillah le’ani ki ya’atof,” http://massculture.co.il.

205

CHAPTER FIVE

have expressed a strong interest in relating to Palestinians on a human level and an openness to understanding their plight. Eliaz Cohen recalls growing up with a complex relationship with the Palestinians who lived near his home in Elkana: ”We didn’t have close relations with our Arab neighbors, but the relations we did have with them were shaped by a mixture of strangeness and intimacy. From a naïve, child’s point of view, we certainly didn’t feel any hostility or fear. There was a fence around Elkana that had a hole in it, and the hole was used to cross over both ways.”2 Nahum Pachenik has pleasant memories of times spent with the Palestinian neighbor children: When I lived in Beit El, we would hike, as children, going to the village below us, sitting at the edge of the spring and speaking [with the

Palestinian children], we with the beginnings of the Arabic we had

learned, and they with the beginnings of the Hebrew they had learned. We swam in the spring. It was the beginning of co-existence.3

He even recalls that one summer he was among thirty settler children who traveled from the settlement of Beit El to a hotel pool in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah, and there they enjoyed a swim with Palestinian children, even though they did not fully understand each other’s language.4 Cohen has spoken of his discomfort with the two main political forces that have opposed each other over the question of Israeli-Palestinian relations for decades: Gush Emunim and the dovish political movement Peace Now. ”In retrospect,” Cohen declares, ”I see in [Gush Emunim and Peace Now] two messianic movements at opposite extremes.”5 In effect, Cohen’s approach to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a mixture of the positions of both of these opposing political movements. In keeping with the Peace Now ideology, he has stated that he sees the relationship 2

Talya Halkin, ”Writing Beyond the Green Line,” Jerusalem Post 11 June 2004.

3

Linoy Bar-Gefen and Miron Rapaport, ”Mitnaḥalim ufalastinim mukhanim ledabber al du-qiyyum, beli she’af eḥad yitstarekh levatter al habayit,” Ha’arets 14 January 2010.

4

Nahum Pachenik, ”Qaytanah beramallah? halevay,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 6 August 2009.

5

Yakir Englander, ”Higia hazeman lehitnatteq meharabbanim Shapira ve’Eliyahu,” De'ot 22 (2005): 9.

206

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

between Israelis and Palestinians as based on ”a story of two separate national groups, sharing ancient roots (ethnic, cultural, and even religious) that in the historical conditions that were created arrived at a conflict over the same piece of land.”6 With words that could easily have been uttered by a supporter of Peace Now he has stated, ”Today we know that we [Jews] did not come to an ‘empty land.’ Today we know that with the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in this place, as justified as it was, the Arabs of the Land of Israel were harmed directly, for very close to our national revival they developed their own national consciousness and aspirations.”7 Cohen has even referred to the events of 1948 with the Arabic word nakba (disaster) a term that is in standard use among Palestinians but is never used by religious Zionists nor by most Israelis.8 As a resident of Gush Etzion, from which Jews fled in 1948 and to which they returned after the Six-Day War in 1967, he argues that that return should be able to help Jews develop an understanding of ”the connection of the Palestinian refugees to the places where they lived, to the property they owned during decades and hundreds of years before our War of Independence in 1948.”9 Cohen is highly critical of the religious Zionist ideology that developed at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav and became the basis for Gush Emunim. ”The great blindness in this vision,” he asserts, ”…[was] in that they almost did not see the Palestinians. They did not understand that a national problem was growing, a problem of two peoples in one place.”10 He is strongly opposed to what he considers to be racist attitudes of the more extreme Jewish settlers toward Arabs, and he condemns the violent attacks by some settlers on the property and persons of their Palestinian neighbors. In particular, he has condemned the group of settler youths who have come to be known as no’ar hageva’ot (the hilltop youth), who have established illegal settlements 6

Eliaz Cohen, ”Bizekhut hashivah,” Maqor Rishon 8 June 2007.

7 Ibid. 8

There have even been attempts in the Israeli Knesset to pass a law outlawing the commemoration of ”Nakba Day,” which is marked by some Arab citizens of Israel on Israel Independence Day.

9

Eliaz Cohen, ”Bizekhut hashivah.

10 Yiram Netanyanu, ”Shelifot im Eliaz Cohen,” Ma’ariv 20 December 2005.

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CHAPTER FIVE

in the West Bank and have often engaged in violent interactions with their Palestinian neighbors. In one interview he declared, ”[They] are one of the dangers about which I have been shouting for a long period. They are likely to harm the entire settlement project…for within them has been created a kind of extra-territorial [approach] from the point of view of law and authority, such that they very much frighten me.”11 In response to an incident when some settlers stole olives from Palestinians and uprooted their olive trees Cohen observed, ”With settlers like these we will not be able to bring together again the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. We are the sons of the same father [Abraham]. Ishmael is my brother, not my enemy. He is part of our ethos and we cannot escape sharing this same parcel of land.”12 Cohen has also spoken of incidents during his army service in which he opposed what he considered to be the use of excessive force by members of the Israeli army against Palestinians. Cohen is not willing to completely reject the religious Zionist belief that the creation of the State of Israel and subsequent events of Israeli history indicate that the Jewish people are at the beginning of their redemption (atḥalta dege’ulah, in Aramaic). He cautions however, that ”[w]e have to understand that perhaps it is worthwhile to slow a bit the pace of ‘the beginning’ and that the pace is not as fast as we thought.”13 He has even expressed openness to some sort of compromise with the Palestinians regarding who has political sovereignty over the land. Nevertheless, he has not been willing to accept any agreement that would involve uprooting either Jews or Palestinians from where they currently live. 11 Ibid. For articles about the hilltop youth among the settlers, see Shlomo Fischer, ”Teva, otentiyyut ve’alimut bahagut hatsiyyonut hadatit haradiqalit,” in Dorot, merḥavim, zehuyyot: mabbatim akhshaviyyim al ḥevrah vetarbut beyisra’el leShmu’el Noah Eisenstadt bahagiyo legevurot, ed. Hanna Herzog, Tal Kohavi, Shimshon Zelniker, Ronna Brayer-Garb (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad; Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2007), 421-454, and Shlomo Kaniel ”Mityashvei hageva’ot—ha’im tsabbar tanakhi? meḥqar gishush (shelav aleph) al toshavei hageva’ot beyehudah veshomron,” in Hatsiyyonut hadatit: iddan hatemurot: asuppat meḥqarim lezekher Zvulun Hammer, ed. Asher Cohen and Yisrael Harel (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2004), 533-558. 12 Linora Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim,” Ha’arets 19 November 2003. 13 Netanyanu, ”Shelifot im Eliaz Cohen.”

208

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

Nahum Pachenik finds fault in the attitude of his parents’ generation toward the Palestinians. ”The biggest mistake [of the settlement project], for which we are paying a price” he declares, ”is…that we were not able to pay attention and say: there are other people here.” 14 Like Cohen, Pachenik considers the Gush Emunim ideology to be a form of false messianism. For so long, he has noted, Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook taught that the land conquered by Israel in 1967 would always be in the hands of Israel. This teaching, however, was ultimately undermined by the reality of the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and the later disengagement of Israel from the Gaza Strip and part of Samaria. As a poet, Pachenik has declared, he cannot live with an ideology that does not fit the truth of reality. Pachenik has stated that he is open to engaging in dialogue with the Palestinians. As he puts it, he was born into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but he is looking for a way to interact with his enemies. Pachenik sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as primarily religious and not nationalistic. That being so, he believes that the solution will also take place in the religious sphere. When he sees a religious Palestinian in the territories, he feels that he wants to speak to him, not in the language of politics, but in the language of religion. He as a religious Jew and the Palestinian as a religious Muslim might, he thinks, find a common language that could lead to peace. At the same time, he recognizes that the conflict with the Palestinians is extremely difficult and that resolving it will not be easy. Pachenik’s approach of reconciliation on a religious level was recently embraced by a group of mostly second-generation religious Zionist settlers, including three of the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets in this study, Eliaz Cohen, Nahum Pachenik, and Shmuel Klein, called ”Jerusalem,” dedicated to dialogue encounters between settlers and Palestinian residents of the West Bank.15 A founding member of the group was Rav Menahem Fruman, the rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, who believes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be best resolved by means of dialogue between religious Jews and religious Muslims. In keeping with this belief, 14 Bar-Gefen and Rapaport, ”Mitnaḥalim ufalastinim mukhanim ledabber al du-qiyyum. 15 Ibid.

209

CHAPTER FIVE

he has conducted discussions with Muslim clerics, including even those who support the radical Palestinian movement Hamas.16 In an article on one of the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue encounters in which ”Jerusalem” participated, the reporters note the way that the religiosity of both sides played a role in connecting them one with the other: It was difficult to remain completely cynical when the poet Eliaz Co-

hen of Kefar Etzion read the verse, ”Do not plan in your heart to do evil to each other” from the prophet Zechariah [7:10], on whose grave,

according to Muslim tradition, stands the local mosque. There was not

even a gram of cynicism in anyone who witnessed that same evening Rav Fruman concluding the meeting by saying Allahu akbar [”God is great” in Arabic] accompanied by ya’aseh shalom [”He will make peace”

in Hebrew], and bearded settlers spread their hands toward their faces according to the Muslim prayer custom and repeated the words of the rabbi together with their Palestinian neighbors.17

Elhanan Nir has expressed strong opposition to the way the attempted peace process between Israelis and Palestinians has been conducted. He sees it as ”not only paternalistic but even colonialist.”18 He characterizes the process as ”an attempt to impose Western ways of thinking on people whose ways of thinking are different, instead of honoring the Palestinian Eastern way of life and trying to engage with it in a meaningful dialogue that begins from within the discovery of that which is held in common.”19 It is interesting to note that the disengagement from Gaza bothered Nir not only because it involved uprooting Jewish settlers, but also because he believes that by unilaterally withdrawing with no effort at coordination with the Palestinians, Israel has in effect abandoned the 16 See Menahem Fruman, ”Raq anshei emet, anshei dat, yekholim leyashev et hasikhsukh,” Nequdah 165 (1993): 40-43; Menahem Fruman and Hadassah Fruman, ”Gush ma’aminim beshalom akhshav,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 25 January 2010; and Shiri Makover-Belikov, ”Rav siaḥ: Menahem Fruman meḥapes aḥim muslemim,” Ma’ariv 2 January 2010. 17 Bar-Gefen and Rapaport, ”Mitnaḥalim ufalastinim mukhanim ledabber al du-qiyyum.” 18 Amichai Shalev, ”Meshorer hamahpekhah,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 29 January 2009. 19 Ibid.

210

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

Arab residents of Gaza: ”[W]e left [in Gaza] more than a million Palestinians in distress, about whom we do not care, and we did not solve anything by doing this.”20 He is very critical of the security barrier that Israel erected through the West Bank, because he sees it as reflecting the failure of Israel’s approach to the conflict. He bemoans the fact that the barrier ”buried the dream that it is possible [for Israelis and Palestinians] to live together.”21 Not every poem on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the Mashiv Haruaḥ poets is as empathetic toward the Palestinians as the statements by Eliaz Cohen, Nahum Pachenik, and Elhanan Nir we have been considering. In this chapter, poems by Eliaz Cohen, Avishar Har-Shefi, and Shmuel Klein will provide significant examples of strong responses to the suffering caused Israelis by acts of terrorist violence perpetrated by Palestinians against them, including fear, anger, and grief. Nevertheless, we will also consider poems by Yoram Nissinovitch, Eliaz Cohen, Avishar Har-Shefi, Sivan Har-Shefi, and Nahum Pachenik which do display considerable empathy for the suffering of their Palestinian enemies and a desire to find ways for Israelis and Palestinians to understand each other and maybe some day to make peace.

Responses to Palestinian Violence The following poems were written in response to the upsurge of violent Palestinian attacks against Israeli Jews during the Second Intifada. Eliaz Cohen writes of the fears experienced by Israeli Jews that their life was constantly in danger from the main form of attack, suicide bombings on buses and in other public places. Avishar Har-Shefi writes in response to an actual event, a Palestinian attack on a kibbutz near the ”green line” border between Israel and the Palestinian territories. Shmuel Klein writes of the experience of settlers risking violent attacks by Palestinians on their vehicles when they travel between the West Bank and Israel. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.

211

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬

‫אליעז כהן‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫יוֹ ׁ ֵשב ָ ּבאוֹ טוֹ בּ וּס ַה ְמ ַת ְק ֵּתק‬ ‫לְ ִה ְת ּפוֹ ֵצץ‬ ‫וְ כוֹ ֵתב ֶאת ׁ ִש ִירי ָה ַא ֲחרוֹ ן‪.‬‬ ‫עוֹ ד ְמ ַעט יִ ְת ַא ֵ ּב ְך ַהכּ ֹל וְ יַ ֲעלֶ ה ִ ּב ְס ָע ָרה ְּכ ֶרכֶ ב ֵא ׁש‬ ‫וְ נִ ְהיֶ ה ְמ ֻפ ָּז ִרים לְ כָ ל ָה ֲע ָב ִרים וְ נִ ְהיֶ ה ֶא ָחד‬ ‫וְ נִ ְת ַע ׁ ּ ֵשן לַ ֲענָ נִ ים דַּ ִּקים ִ ּב ְר ִק ַיע ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם וַ ֲחבו ִּרים‬ ‫ לָ ֲע ׁ ָשנִ ים ִמן ַה ָ ּי ִמים ָה ֲא ֵח ִרים‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫לְ ַמ ָּטה וַ דַּ אי ְּת ַב ִּכי אוֹ ִתי‬ ‫וְ ִקינָ ה ִּת ָ ּנ ֵשׂ א וּנְ ִהי‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ַא ַחד ַה ְמ ׁשוֹ ְר ִרים (אוֹ ָה ַר ָ ּבנִ ים) יְ ַצ ַ ּוח ְ ּבקוֹ ל ַמר ַּכ ׁ ּשוֹ ָפר‪:‬‬ ‫ֵאי ַה ָּל ׁשוֹ ן ַה ְמ ַמ ֶה ֶרת ְ ּב ִא ְמ ֵרי ׁ ְש ָפר‬ ‫לוֹ ֶחכֶ ת ַע ָּתה ֶאת ָה ַא ְס ַפלְ ט‬ ‫ְ ּב ֶט ֶרם יִ ְס ְּתמ ּו ַה ּגוֹ לֵ ל ִּת ְק ְר ִאי לְ ָפנַ י‬ ‫ֶאת ׁ ִש ִירי זֶ ה ָה ַא ֲחרוֹ ן‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ישי יָ זוּב ַעד ָהעוֹ לָ ם‬ ‫ו ְּבכִ י ֲח ִר ׁ ִ‬ ‫‪Eliaz Cohen‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪Sitting in a bus that ticks‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪writing my last poem.‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪before it explodes‬‬

‫‪Soon all will rise up and ascend in a storm like a fiery chariot‬‬ ‫‪and we’ll be spread out in all directions and we’ll be one‬‬

‫‪and our smoke will be transformed into thin clouds in the heavenly‬‬

‫‪sky joined‬‬

‫‪to smoke from other days‬‬

‫‪212‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‪5‬‬ ‫ ‬

‫ ‬

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS 22



Below you’ll certainly cry over me

10

when one of the poets (or the rabbis) will yell in a bitter voice like



and you’ll lament and wail



Where is the tongue so fluent with fine words



Before they close the grave read before me





a shofar:

that now licks the asphalt

this my final poem

15 and a hushed cry will flow forever23

During the Second Intifada, Israelis who rode public buses had to cope with the fact that the bus in which they were riding could be blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber without warning. The speaker imagines himself writing what will turn out to be his last poem as he rides in a bus which is about to blow up (1-3). His description of the remnants of the bombed out bus, ”all will rise up and ascend in a storm like a fiery chariot” (yitabekh hakol veya’aleh bese’arah kerekhev esh [4]), alludes to the words used to portray the prophet Elijah’s ascent to heaven in a fiery chariot: ”and behold a fiery chariot…and Elijah ascended in a storm to the heavens” (vehinneh rekhev esh…vaya’al Eliyahu base’arah hashamayim [2 Kings 2:11]). As a holy prophet, Elijah is accorded the privilege of rising to heaven in his chariot without having to go through the normal process of dying. In contrast, the explosion of the terrorist attack will raise the people up in the bus (their modern-day chariot) for no justifiable reason. The smoke of the bombed out bus recalls the smoke of countless attacks on Jews, culminating in that which rose out of the chimneys of the crematoria in the concentration camps of the Holocaust: ”and our smoke will be transformed into thin clouds in the heavenly sky joined / to smoke from other days” (6-7). Ironically, in the process 22 A woman (presumably the speaker’s wife) is the person addressed in the poem. 23 Eliaz Cohen, Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2004), 52.

213

CHAPTER FIVE

of being blown apart, these victims of terror will reach a level of unity they never achieved as a group in life: ”and we’ll be spread out in all directions and we’ll be one” (5). The speaker imagines his wife mourning him (8-9) and a fellow poet or a rabbi eulogizing him ”in a bitter voice like a shofar” bemoaning the fact that his tongue, which produced such beautiful poetry, has been reduced to licking the asphalt of the street on which he was killed (1012). The image of licking the asphalt (loḥekhet…et ha’asfalt [12]) calls to mind an image used by the prophet Micah, who declared that Israel’s enemies will be so humiliated that they will ”lick dust like a serpent” [yelaḥakhu afar kanaḥash (Micah 7:17)]. In the poem, however, the situation is reversed: it is Israel’s enemies who have forced Israelis into a state of humiliation. The speaker wants this final poem that he wrote on the bus to be read at his funeral and in response he hopes ”a hushed [mournful] cry will flow forever” (13-15). The Hebrew word for ”flow,” yazuv, can connote the continuous flow of life sustaining nourishment, as in the biblical expression ”a land flowing with milk and honey (erets zavat ḥalav udevash [Exodus 3:8 and elsewhere]), but it is also used in the Bible with a more negative connotation referring to the flow of bodily emissions that make a person ritually unclean, as in the biblical expression ”and when a woman has a flow of blood” (ve’ishah ki yazuv zov damah [Leviticus 15:25]). At the bottom of the page on which the poem appears are words in the form of a crawl caption as one would find at the bottom of a TV news broadcast, continuously repeating: lo raq shir hashalom mukhtam bedam (”not only ‘The Song of Peace’ was stained by blood”). This refers to the piece of paper from which Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sang ”The Song of Peace” at a peace rally in Tel Aviv shortly before he was assassinated in 1995, which was found in his pocket stained with his blood. This reference makes use of a powerful image from the Rabin assassination to convey the broader effect that terrorism has had on the spirit and hopes of the Israeli people as a whole. 214

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ֲאנָ ׁ ִשים הוֹ לְ כִ ים לָ ֲעבוֹ ָדה‬ ‫אבישר הר־שפי‬

‫ ‬

‫לאבי‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ֲאנָ ׁ ִשים הוֹ לְ כִ ים לָ ֲעבוֹ ָדה‬ ‫ְמ ַס ּ ְפ ִרים ׁ ָש ַמ ְע ָּת ָמה ָהיָ ה‬ ‫ָהיָ ה ּ ִפ ּגו ַּע‬ ‫ִא ׁ ְש ּתוֹ ָהלְ כָ ה‪ַ ,‬ה ְ ּילָ ִדים‬ ‫וְ ׁשוֹ ְת ִקים‬ ‫אוֹ אוֹ ְמ ִרים‬ ‫ָצ ִר ְ‬ ‫יך לַ ֲהרֹג‬ ‫ֶאת ֻּכ ָּלם ָצ ִר ְיך‬ ‫יקים ַר ְדיוֹ‬ ‫עוֹ ִשׂ ים ָק ֶפה‪ַ ,‬מ ְדלִ ִ‬ ‫ׁשוֹ ְמ ִעים מוּזִ ָיקה‬ ‫אוֹ ֵר ָאיוֹ ן ִעם זֶ ה‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ָהלְ כָ ה ִא ׁ ְש ּתוֹ וְ ַה ְ ּילָ ִדים‬ ‫וְ ֵא ְיך ַ ּב ַּליְ לָ ה הוּא ָע ַמד לִ ְפנֵ י ַה ׁ ּ ַש ַער ֶה ָחלוּד וְ ַה ּ ָפרוֹ ת ָ ּגע ּו‬ ‫וְ לֹא נָ ְתנ ּו לְ ִה ָּכנֵ ס‪ָ ,‬ה ֵארו ַּע ְ ּב ִעצּ וּמוֹ‬ ‫ְּכ ִא ּל ּו ֶה ָח ָתן עוֹ ד ְמ ַעט יָ ִשׂ ים ֶאת ַה ַּט ַ ּב ַעת ַעל ַה ִּמ ְד ׁ ָש ָאה‬ ‫ ‬ ‫יטן יַ ֲחלִ יף לְ ״‪Beauty Love‬״‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ַה ַּת ְקלִ ָ‬ ‫וְ לֹא ִק ַ ּבלְ ָּת ַהזְ ָמנָ ה‬ ‫וְ הוּא אוֹ ֵמר זוֹ ִא ׁ ְש ִּתי‪ ,‬זֶ ה ַה ְ ּילָ ִדים ׁ ֶש ִּלי‪ַ ,‬מ ׁ ּ ֶשה ּו נוֹ ָרא ָק ָרה‬ ‫וְ ֶר ֶטט ּ ְפ ִעימוֹ ת ַה ּ ַפ ַחד‬ ‫ו ָּב ֵע ֶבר רוֹ כֵ ן ִא ׁיש ַה ָּמזָ ּ‬ ‫״פ‬ ‫ַעל ְ ּגוִ ַ ּית ִא ׁ ּ ָשה ׁ ֶש ְּמסוֹ כֶ כֶ ת ַעל ׁ ְשנֵ י ַה ְ ּילָ ִדים‬ ‫חוֹ ׁ ֵשב ַעל ַה ַ ּנ ְפ ּתוּלִ ים‬ ‫ימה ו ָּמה ָע ַבר לָ ֶהם ַ ּב ּמוֹ ַח ָ ּב ְרגָ ִעים ָה ַא ֲחרוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫וְ ָה ֵא ָ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫הוּא ְּכ ָבר ָח ׁ ַשב ַעל זֶ ה ִמ ְס ַפר ְפ ָע ִמים‬ ‫וּכְ ָבר נָ ַתן ִמ ְס ּ ַפר ְּת ׁשוּבוֹ ת ַה ִּמ ְת ַק ְ ּבלוֹ ת ַעל ַהדַּ ַעת‬ ‫הוּא לֹא חוֹ ׁ ֵשב ַעכְ ָׁשו ִמ ִּלים‬ ‫׳יֶ לֶ ד׳‬ ‫׳לָ לֶ ֶדת׳‬ ‫׳לְ גַ דֵּ ל׳‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫‪215‬‬

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 45‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 50‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 55‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ו ַּמה זֶ ה לְ ַח ֵ ּבק ִא ׁ ּ ָשה ׁ ָשלוֹ ׁש ׁ ָשנִ ים וּלְ ַה ִ ּג ַיע ַה ַ ּביְ ָתה ַא ֲח ֵרי ׁ ֶש‬ ‫ַ ּגם ֶאת ַה ּגוּפוֹ ת ְּכ ָבר לָ ְקח ּו‬ ‫וְ נִ ׁ ְש ַא ְר ָּת‬ ‫חשךְ‬ ‫ִס ָ‬ ‫ימנִ ים וְ ׁ ֶ‬ ‫ית ַהכּ ֹל ְּכמוֹ‬ ‫ַא ֲח ֵרי ׁ ֶש ׁ ּ ָשלוֹ ׁש ׁ ָשעוֹ ת ִח ִּכ ָ‬ ‫ית ַ ּב ְּמכוֹ נִ ית וְ ָר ִא ָ‬ ‫ְ ּב ֶס ֶרט‬ ‫ֵמ ַה ְּזגוּגִ ית ַה ִּק ְד ִמית‬ ‫יצ׳קוֹ ק‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ְ ּב ִה ְ‬ ‫ו ַּפס ַה ּקוֹ ל ׁ ֶשל ִמ ְבזְ ֵקי ַה ֲח ָד ׁשוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ ַה ְּמ ַר ֲאיֶ נֶ ת ׁ ֶש ׁ ּשוֹ ֶאלֶ ת ִאם נִ ׁ ְש ֲאר ּו עוֹ ד יְ לָ ִדים‬ ‫זֹאת אוֹ ֶמ ֶרת ַה ִאם יֵ ׁש ׁ ְ׳ש ֵא ִרית ַה ּ ְפלֵ ָטה׳‬ ‫וְ הוּא אוֹ ֵמר לֹא‬ ‫וְ ֵהם אוֹ ְמ ִרים לֹא יָ ַד ְענ ּו ׁ ֶש ָּככָ ה‬ ‫ִמ ְת ַאדָּ ה ִמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפ ָחה‬ ‫וְ חוֹ זְ ִרים לַ ַ ּנ ֶ ּי ֶרת אוֹ לַ ְּמכוֹ נוֹ ת הוֹ לְ כִ ים ַה ַ ּביְ ָתה‬ ‫יקים ַר ְדיוֹ‬ ‫עוֹ ִשׂ ים ָק ֶפה ַמ ְדלִ ִ‬ ‫ׁשוֹ ְמ ִעים מוּזִ ָיקה אוֹ‬ ‫יוֹ ַמן ָה ֶע ֶרב ׁ ֶש ְּמ ַס ֵּקר ַ ּב ְּלוָ יָ ה‬ ‫וְ ָה ַא ָ ּבא אוֹ ֵמר ֲח ָבל‪ֲ ,‬ח ָבל ׁ ֶש ָּל ַקח ַרק אוֹ ָתם‬ ‫ַ ּגם ֲאנִ י יֶ לֶ ד‪ּ ֶ ,‬בן ׁ ְשלוֹ ׁ ִשים וְ ַא ְר ַ ּבע‪ָ ,‬הלְ כָ ה ַה ִּמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפ ָחה‬ ‫וְ זֹאת ֵמ ַה ַּמזְ ִּכירוּת אוֹ ֶמ ֶרת ָצ ִר ְ‬ ‫יך לִ זְ כּ ֹר‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּלֹא ֻּכ ָּלם ָהי ּו ַח ְב ֵרי ִקבּ וּץ‬ ‫ָצ ִר ְיך לִ זְ כּ ֹר ֶאת זֶ ה‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ֲאנַ ְחנ ּו ְמ ַח ְּז ִקים וְ תוֹ ְמכִ ים‬ ‫ַ ּב ׁ ּ ָשלוֹ ם זֹאת אוֹ ֶמ ֶרת וְ יַ ֲח ֵסי ַה ׁ ּ ְשכֵ נוּת וְ כָ ל זֶ ה‬ ‫וְ ֵהם ִ ּבכְ לָ ל לֹא ִק ְ ּבל ּו ַהזְ ָמנָ ה‬ ‫ְ ּב ַס ְך ַהכּ ֹל‬ ‫ָרצ ּו גִ ָ ּנה‬ ‫לְ יַ ד ַה ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫ַה ְ ּילָ ִדים‬

‫‪216‬‬

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



People Go to Work



To Avi



People go to work



there was a terror attack



Avishar Har-Shefi



and say did you hear what happened



his wife is dead, the children

5

and people are quiet or they say



we have to kill them



we have to kill them all



they make coffee, turn on the radio

10 listen to music

or an interview with the one



and how at night he stood before the rusty gate and the cows lowed



whose wife and children have died



and they wouldn’t let him in, the event was at its peak

15 as if the groom will soon give the ring on the lawn while the dj



and you didn’t get an invitation

and he says this is my wife, these are my children, something and the trembling of the beats of fear



changes to ”Beauty Love”

awful happened

and on the other side leans the forensics investigator

20 over the corpse of a woman shielding her two children



he thinks of the struggle

and the horror and what passed through their minds in their last he’s thought of this a number of times

and he’s given a number of answers that make sense

25 he doesn’t think now of words ”boy”

217

moments

CHAPTER FIVE



”to give birth” ”to raise”

and what it’s like to hug a woman for three years and to arrive home after

30 even the bodies have been taken away

and you remained



after you waited three hours in the car and saw it all as



signs and darkness in a movie

35 from the front windshield

as in Hitchcock



and the interviewer who asks if any children remain



and the sound track of the news bulletins that is, is there ”a saving remnant”

40 and he says no

and they say we didn’t know that’s how



and they return to their paper work or to their machinery or go home



a family evaporates

they make coffee turn on the radio

45 listen to music or

the evening news that reports on the funeral



I too am a child, thirty-four years old, my family is dead



and the father says too bad, too bad only they were taken and a member of the secretariat says we must remember

50 they weren’t all kibbutz members

we must remember this



peace that is neighborly relations and all that



that we strengthen and support

and they didn’t get an invitation at all

55 ultimately

they wanted a garden



the children24



beside the house

24 Avishar Har-Shefi, Susei esh (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2004), 53-55.

218

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

In this poem, Avishar Har-Shefi responds to a terrorist attack on Kibbutz Metzar in November, 2002, at the beginning of the third year of the Second Intifada. During the attack, a Palestinian terrorist entered the kibbutz and killed five Jews before he fled from the scene. Among those who were murdered were the girl friend of a kibbutz member, who herself was not a member of the kibbutz, and the secretary general of the kibbutz. The other three victims were Roitl Ohyon, age thirty-four, and her two small children, Matan, age six, and Noam, age four, who had recently begun to live in an apartment on the kibbutz. Roitl had been divorced from the children’s father, Avi Ohyon, to whom the poem is dedicated, and he was living at the time in Caeseria. When the terrorist entered Roitl’s home, Avi was in the middle of a phone conversation with her. After hearing shouts and losing the connection, he became concerned and drove to the kibbutz. He had to a wait a few hours at the gate of the kibbutz because no one was being let in as they searched for the terrorist. Eventually, Avi received the awful news that Roitl was found huddled with her children in a room full of their blood and thereby he had lost his entire family.25 The poet has preserved a number of details of the event that he undoubtedly received from news reports, such as the father waiting by the gate of the kibbutz in his car not knowing the fate of his children and their mother (13-14, 33-36) and the dead mother found protecting her small children (20). As the father waits, he is ironically compared to a person being kept out of a wedding to which he was not invited, where there is a disk jockey playing a romantic song, ”Beauty Love,” (the title of which appears in English in the Hebrew poem [15-16]). In lines 47-48, the speaker refers to a comment that Avi was reported to have made: ”It doesn’t make sense that I would be a bereaved father, I myself am a child, thirty-four years old.”26 25 For news accounts of the event, see Sharon Rofe and Itay Rapoport, ”Ḥamishah harugim befiggua beqibbuts metsar,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 11 November 2002; Itay Rapoport and Sharon Rofe, ”Ha’em ḥibqah et yeladeha haqetanim—vehameḥabbel ratsaḥ otam,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 11 November 2002; and the online articles: ”Piggua beqibbuts metsar,” ”Avi Ohyon hake’ev, hashekhol,” and ”Huvu lemenuḥot Roitl Ohyon ushenei baneha minirtseḥei hapiggua bemetsar,” http://www.kan-naim.co.il. 26 ”Avi Ohyon hake’ev, hashekhol.”

219

CHAPTER FIVE

The poem locates this personal tragedy in the larger context of Israeli society. The attack (piggua as it is known in Hebrew) has been well integrated into routine Israeli life. People discuss it on their way to work (1-4). As they make coffee, news reports of the interview with Avi and of the funeral of the mother and children are as routine as listening to music on the radio (9-12, 4446). Some Israelis react to the attack quietly and some want revenge against all Arabs (”we have to kill them / we have to kill them all” [5-8]). Such a tragedy defies the imagination. Even the forensics investigator, whose work exposes him to ghastly crimes, has trouble conceiving of what this woman and her children went through and the suffering of the surviving father (1930). People are dumbfounded at the reality that a family can just suddenly disappear (41-42). Such a thought is so horrible that they develop the defense mechanism of distracting themselves with their work (”and they return to their paper work or their machinery” [43]). People try to fit the event into some larger framework that will help to explain it. When Avi is interviewed, the interviewer asks him if there is ”a saving remnant” (in Hebrew: she’erit hapeletah), a term which is often used to refer to Holocaust survivors (38-40), thereby relating this event to the long history of enemies seeking to kill Jews. At the same time, there is something unreal about what happened, and so the speaker compares the father waiting in the car by the kibbutz gate looking through the windshield to a scene in an Alfred Hitchcock movie (33-36). Kibbutz Metzar was known at the time for the good neighborly relations it maintained with Arab citizens of Israel and with Palestinians in the West Bank who lived near them. In one news account it was related that kibbutz members emphasized that the attack would not change their inclination to maintain such relations with Arabs: ”The Arabs continue to be our best friends,” a member of the kibbutz was quoted as saying. ”They haven’t stopped contacting us to express their sorrow. These are relations that are deeply rooted.”27 The speaker relays this attitude with words that indicate the kibbutz does not feel that they were attacked for who they were as members of that kibbutz: ”and a member of the secretariat says we must remember / they weren’t all kibbutz members / we must remember this / that we strengthen and support / 27 Rapoport and Rofe, ”Ha’em ḥibqah et yeladeha haqetanim.”

220

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

peace that is neighborly relations and all that” (49-53). In the poem, the kibbutz members come across as rather naïve in their conclusion that this horrific terrorist attack was unrelated to them directly because of their good relations with their Arab neighbors. The speaker ends the poem with a poignant reference to the simple desires of the Ohyon family, which have been destroyed by the violence of Palestinian terrorism: ”ultimately / they wanted a garden / beside the house / the children” (55-58).



‫ִמ ׁ ּ ִש ֵירי ַה ִּמנְ ָהרוֹ ת‬ ‫שמואל קליין‬

‫״אנחנו הזבל של הדור הבא״‬ ‫מניה שוחט‬ ‫ֲאנִ י‬ ‫ִא ׁ ְש ִּתי‬ .‫וּכְ ִב ׁיש ַה ִּמנְ ָהרוֹ ת‬ ,‫ׁ ְש ֵּתי נְ ׁ ִשיקוֹ ת לָ רוֹ ִבים ׁ ֶשל ַה ַּליְ לָ ה‬ .‫ַקיִ ץ ֶא ָחד ְ ּבגו ּׁש ֶע ְציוֹ ן‬

5

‫ְ ּג ָפנִ ים ׁ ֶשל ֲא ָהבוֹ ת‬ ּ ִ‫ְ ּב ׁשוּל ַהדֶּ ֶר ְך וְ ג‬ ‫׳יפ ַמ ָ ּג״ב‬ .‫ַמ ְט ֲא ֵטא ׁ ֶשל ַּכדּ ו ִּרים ַח ִ ּיים‬



)‫ְּכמוֹ ְמטוֹ ס ִסילוֹ ן ַה ּסו ַ ּּבארוֹ ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו (מוֹ ֶדל ׁ ְשמוֹ נִ ים וְ ׁ ֵש ׁש‬ .‫ ִ ּב ְפנִ ים‬,ּ‫וַ ֲאנַ ְחנו‬ .‫ מוֹ ֶדל ַאלְ ּ ַפיִ ם וְ ַא ַחת‬,‫ַה ֶּז ֶבל ׁ ֶשל ַהצִּ ּיוֹ נוּת‬

10



.ּ‫ ַרק ִּת ְק ְטפו‬,‫ לְ ִה ְת ּפוֹ ֵצץ‬,‫ַ ּבצַּ ד ִר ּמוֹ ן ָ ּב ׁ ֵשל‬ .‫ ֵא ׁש‬,‫ו ַּב ְקבּ ו ִּקים בּ וֹ ֲע ִרים‬ .‫ַרק ָּת ֵאט אוֹ ַּת ֲעצֹר ׁ ְשנִ ָ ּיה לוֹ ַמר ׁ ָשלוֹ ם‬ ,‫ָ ּברו ְּך ַה ׁ ּ ֵשם‬ .‫לְ ַאט לְ ַאט ִמ ְתנַ ֲחלִ ים ַ ּבלְ ָבבוֹ ת‬ 221

15



CHAPTER FIVE



From Poems of the Tunnels



”We are the fertilizer for the next generation.”



Shmuel Klein



Manya Shochet

I

my wife



Kissing twice the rifles of the night,



and the highway of the tunnels.

5

one summer in Gush Etzion.



Vines of love



sweeping away live bullets.



at the side of the road and a border patrol jeep



Like a jet our Subaru (model eighty-six)



The fertilizer of Zionism, model two thousand and one.



Along side of us a ripe pomegranate, about to explode, just pick it.28



Just slow down or stop a second to say Shalom. 29

10 and we, within.



And burning bottles, fire.

15 Praise God,

little by little we are settling in people’s hearts. 30

After the signing of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, a road from Jerusalem to the settlements in Gush Etzion was built for the purpose of allowing Israelis to travel between these two points without having to drive through the Arab city of Bethlehem. The 28 In the plural masculine imperative. 29 In the singular masculine imperative. 30 Mashiv Haruaḥ 10 (2001/2002): 73.

222

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

road passes through two tunnels and therefore has come to be known as ”the highway of the tunnels” (kevish haminharot). During the Second Intifada, there were a significant number of incidents in which Palestinians shot at Jews traveling along this road or placed roadside bombs to blow up their cars. This situation created a tremendous challenge to residents of Gush Etzion attempting to travel to and from their settlements. At that time, Eliaz Cohen conveyed to a reporter the difficulties of driving on this road: Every trip [on the highway of the tunnels] is in effect a game of Russian roulette….We have cut out almost completely any pleasure trips. Every family trip to Jerusalem is accompanied by physical reactions:

stomach aches, diarrhea, constipation. After Shmuel Gillis and Tzahi Sasson were killed on the highway of the tunnels, we adopted a new

practice. We travel at night turning off our headlights and turning them on. Once a van came toward me and we almost ran into each

other because it also had extinguished headlights. On the bridge at

night we travel 140 kilometers per hour, because people are standing

with sniper rifles at night and are just waiting for you. We have built up defense mechanisms and have continued to travel, and then again another murderous attack comes and someone is killed and everything collapses and depression and fear overwhelm you.”31

Eventually barriers were erected by Israel along the above-ground parts of the road to protect Israeli cars from being shot at by Palestinians, and the situation improved with the ending of the Second Intifada.32 As the speaker in the poem travels along the highway with his wife one summer (1-5), he presents a mixture of imagery of conflict on the one hand and of love and nature on the other. In the first stanza, he kisses the rifles he carries in his car for self-protection (4). At the side of the road there are ”[v]ines of love” (6), a pomegranate (rimon, also the Hebrew word for grenade), which is about to explode (12), and Molotov cocktails 31 Robik Rosental, ”Shenat hapaḥad,” Ma’ariv 27 September 2001. 32 See the discussion of the effect of terrorist attacks on settlers during the Second Intifada in Michael Feige, Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), chapter 6.

223

CHAPTER FIVE

(”burning bottles, fire” [13]). One may wish to ”slow down or stop a second” to greet the threatening Palestinian terrorists (”to say Shalom” [14]), but that would not be the prudent thing to do. The safety of the speaker and his wife depends on the efforts of the Israeli border patrol jeep to, as it were, sweep away live bullets from the Palestinians (7-8). In Hebrew the word for ”border patrol” is the acronym magav, which stands for mishmar hagevul. The word magav, however, can also mean ”windshield wiper.” In that second sense, the speaker relates to the sniper attacks as if they are analogous to a rain storm, which is not an impediment to travel if one turns on one’s windshield wiper. Palestinian violence, the speaker suggests, feels like bad weather which is a regular part of life from which one must defend oneself. Yet, while windshield wipers can defend against rain, it takes the border patrol to defend against terrorism. Due to this constant danger, the speaker and his wife drive in jet-like speed through this area so vulnerable to Palestinian attacks (9-10). Underlying this experience is the question of the historical significance of the life of the speaker and his wife as settlers in Gush Etzion. The Subaru car he is driving is not historically important; it is just an older model of car, from 1986 (9). The speaker and his family, however, are part of important historical events; they are the latest version of Zionism being enacted in 2001 (10-11). At the beginning of the poem the speaker presents a quotation by Manya Shochet (1880-1961), an early Zionist pioneer. In an autobiographical account, Shochet tells of a particularly difficult period of hunger at her settlement in 1923. When she complains bitterly to Luka, a fellow pioneer, that there is no food to serve the members of their settlement, he replies, ”Don’t you know that we are only the fertilizer for the next generation?” This statement immediately turns her mood around: ”Suddenly I felt lighter: Of course Luka is right! If we are only the fertilizer for the next generation, we must really measure our daily difficulties by a different standard. And his gaiety stuck to me too.” When the workers return from the field, she repeats Luka’s statement, which then inspires the pioneers to break into song and dance.33 33 Muki Tzur, Tair Zevulun, Hanina Porat, eds., Kan al penei adamah (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Sifriat Poalim, 1981). Excerpted at the website of The Israeli Labor

224

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

The Hebrew word for ”fertilizer” in the poem is zevel, which also means ”trash.” In the dual meaning of this word one can discern the ambivalent attitude of the speaker to his current situation as a victim of Palestinian violence. On the one hand, he could be saying that he and his wife are ”fertilizer,” in the sense that their suffering will enrich Israel’s future, in the spirit of Luka’s comment to Manya Shochet. On the other hand, however, he could be saying that they are just ”trash,” in the sense of being the victims of the dehumanizing manner in which they are being treated by the Palestinians, and there is really no meaningful way to understand their suffering in the present. The speaker concludes the poem with the words, ”Praise God, / little by little we are settling in people’s hearts” (15-16). The Hebrew word for ”settling” (mitnaḥalim) means to make one’s home in the occupied territories. The expression ”settling in people’s hearts” (mitnaḥalim balevavot) has come to mean to gain the support of those who are apathetic or hostile to the settlement project.34 At this point, however, it actually does not seem that the settlers are in the process of winning over the hearts of the majority of the Israeli Jewish population, and certainly not the hearts of their Palestinian neighbors, and so the speaker is most likely speaking in an ironic manner.35 Movement, http://tnuathaavoda.info. 34 See Feige, Settling in the Hearts, 4. Feige refers to an article by Rav Yoel Bin Nun, an advocate of the efforts to ”settle in the hearts” of the Israeli public, in which he explains the concept. The article appeared in Nequdah 158 (1992): 30-31. 35 After the time depicted in this poem, during the period leading up to the disengagement from Gaza and Samaria in 2005, the settlers were faced with one of their greatest challenges to ”settling in the hearts” of their fellow countrymen. Whereas once they thought they were part of the mainstream of the Israeli political consensus, they now had to face the fact that they were beginning to be marginalized by the powers that be. The question at the time was how best to shift public opinion, and consequently Israeli public policy, back to one of strong support for the settlement project and thereby save the settlements from being dismantled. Some tried to do so by staging dramatic demonstrations. In response to such a demonstration, which involved pouring oil and spreading nails on one of Israel’s main highways, Shmuel Klein argued that that was not an effective way for supporters of the settlements to convince their fellow Israelis that the disengagement was a misguided policy. ”Instead of arousing hearts,” he declared, ”you are arousing hatred, instead of connecting our friends to us and awakening the Jewish corner in the heart of the individual,

225

CHAPTER FIVE

Empathy for Palestinian Suffering and Longing for Closer Relations with the Enemy Defying the stereotype of the settler as having no interest in understanding the Palestinian point of view, a number of works by Mashiv Haruaḥ poets express a strong sense of common humanity shared with Palestinians, a sympathy for Palestinian suffering, and a desire to develop some kind of relationship with their Arab neighbors in the territories. In a poem by Yoram Nissinovitch, the speaker witnesses an event in a former Arab village within the pre-1967 borders of Israel that allows him to understand, if not support, the Palestinian demand for the right to return to lands from which they fled or from which they were expelled in 1948. In two poems, Eliaz Cohen presents images of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. Sivan Har-Shefi recreates in another poem the experience she had as a participant in a dialogue group with Palestinians. Eliaz Cohen celebrates the accomplishments of his former Arabic teacher who is now an Israeli diplomat. In the same poem, Cohen expresses his discomfort serving as an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. Nahum Pachenik expresses in one poem a strong identification with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, so long exiled from his homeland, and he and Avishar Har-Shefi each write of sensing a connection with Muslim Palestinians as fellow religious traditionalists.

you have spread anger and hatred…A popular protest can succeed when the majority of the public is behind you and not when you harm the people. You are pulling the rug out from under the popular struggle that should come.” The central goal of this struggle, he argues, should be to convince their fellow Israelis that ”Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Givatayim will not be secure, that we are all knitted together and we will all be much more vulnerable here after the expulsion from Gush Katif [in Gaza] in 2005.” The most effective way of making that case, he argues, would be by means of a demonstration ”done in silence, without smoke, without blood, without fire. No one will be able to ignore the power of hundreds of thousands of silent people before the government buildings.” Shmuel Klein, ”Meḥa’ah metsora’at,” Yediyot Aḥaronot 29 June 2005.

226

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

‫ֶּכ ֶרם ַמ ֲה ָר״ל‬ ‫יורם ניסינוביץ׳‬



.1 .‫ִט ָירה ְמ ֻש ּ ֶפ ֶצת‬ .‫ִמ ְס ָ ּגד ֻמזְ נָ ח וְ נָ עוּל‬ :‫ָה ֲא ָד ָמה ִמ ְת ּפוֹ ֶר ֶרת ֶאל זְ כוּת ַה ׁ ּ ִש ָיבה‬ ‫ַה ְּכ ָפר ַאגְ ׳זָ ם‬ ‫יח ְ ּבוָ רֹד ֶצ׳כִ י ׁ ֶשל‬ ַ ִ‫ַמ ְבל‬ .‫יחת ַהבּ וֹ ִהנְ יָ ה‬ ַ ‫ּ ְפ ִר‬



.2 :‫ַה ַּכ ְר ֶמל ָמלֵ א ֲאנָ חוֹ ת‬ ,‫אדי‬ ֵ ‫נְ ִב‬ ִ ‫יאי ַ ּב ַעל ְ ּב ֵצל ַה ָ ּו‬ ‫ֲע ֵצי א ֶֹרן ׁשוֹ כְ ִבים ּ ְפ ַר ְקדָּ ן‬ ‫וְ ָשׂ רוּף‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ׁשו ָּעל ַמ ְרוֶ ה ֶאת יְ רו ׁ ָּשלַ יִ ם‬ ‫ְ ּבנַ ַחל ֶּכלַ ח‬ ‫ֶעלְ יוֹ ן‬ Kerem Maharal

Yoram Nissinovitch

1.

A restored castle.



The land crumbling towards the right of return:



5

A mosque neglected and locked. the village Ajzam

flickers in a Czech pink of

a flowering bauhinia plant.

2.

The Carmel is filled with sighs:

prophets of Baal in the shade of the dry riverbed, 227

5

10



CHAPTER FIVE



pine trees lying flat



but a fox quenches Jerusalem’s thirst



Nahal Kelah36

10 and burnt

with the waters of Upper

Kerem Maharal was founded in 1949 as a Jewish agricultural settlement (moshav) in the Mount Carmel region by Jewish immigrants from Czechoslovakia. The name literally means ”Vineyard of the Maharal.” It was named after the Maharal of Prague, the sixteenth century rabbi who, according to legend, created a golem to defend the Jews against attacks by Gentiles. The settlement was built, as the author indicates in a footnote, ”on the ruins of the [Arab] village of Ajzam,” which its residents left during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. A crusader castle from the eleventh century is located in Kerem Maharal. Beginning at some point in history after the defeat of the crusaders and until the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, the castle was owned by the Al-Mahdis, a wealthy Arab family. In the seventeenth century, the Al Mahdis built a mosque near the castle. In the 1970s, the castle was completely renovated and now it serves as a guest house for individual tourists and for special events.37 Nissinovitch describes the genesis of the poem in an interview: During one of my many sojourns in Israel, I arrived at Moshav Kerem

Maharal in the Carmel mountain range. I saw a couple, a man and a

woman, Arabs, who had come to the mosque that has been located in the middle of the moshav since the period when it was the village Ajzam. They wanted to pray, but on the door was a heavy lock that pre-

vented them from entering. Someone from the settlement sent them to

Haifa to get the key. They did not say a word, but their eyes spoke. At 36 Yoram Nissinovitch, Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshu’ah (Ra’anana: Even Hoshen, 2008), 76. 37 ”Kerem Maharal,” http://he.wikipedia.org. See also the website of Kerem Maharal, http://www.kerem-maharal.co.il, and the website of the castle at Kerem Maharal, http://thecastle.co.il.

228

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

that very moment the concept of the right of return [the right claimed

by Palestinians to return to the homes from which they fled or were expelled in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948] took on for me a realistic, horrifying dimension. The people were robbed of their houses and even a key to their house of prayer did not remain.”38

At the beginning of the poem, the speaker notes the contrast between the castle which has been ”restored” and the mosque that once served the Arab Muslim residents of the village which is ”neglected and locked” (1-2). The Jews now thrive in this location, benefiting from the restored castle, while the Arab Muslims do not even have access to their house of prayer. It appears that this situation is so established that it cannot be changed. In the next four lines, however, something stirs. The images of ”[t]he land crumbling” (3) and the ”flowering bauhinia plant” (6) introduce dynamic movement that opens up the question of the much debated right of Arabs to return to the lands they left in 1948 (3). This right, however, is problematic, for the Jews have put down roots in this location, as we see in the speaker’s reference to the color of the bauhinia flowers as ”Czech pink” (5), an allusion to the European origins of those Jews who founded Kerem Maharal in 1949. In the second part of the poem, the speaker refers to events that took place on Mount Carmel, where Kerem Maharal is located, in ancient and modern times: the biblical struggle between Elijah and the priests of Baal (1 Kings 18) and contemporary arson attacks on forests by Palestinians. The speaker hears the sighs of both the priests of Baal, whom Elijah defeated, ”in the shade of the dry riverbed” and the pine trees of the Carmel, which were burned down by Palestinian terrorists, now ”lying flat” (7-10). The juxtaposition of these events suggests the way that history is filled with both triumphs and failures: Elijah succeeded in countering the influence of the prophets of Baal on the Israelites in biblical times, but the Palestinians succeeded in destroying an important Israeli natural resource in modern times. Significantly, since the sighs of pain come from both the priests of Baal and the trees, it would appear that the speaker’s empathy 38 Asa, ”Ruaḥ peratsim.”

229

CHAPTER FIVE

is as much for the priests of Baal whom the ancient Israelite hero Elijah defeated as for the trees, the contemporary Israeli objects of Palestinian destruction. It is also important to note that the poet’s choice of juxtaposing the crusader castle with the mosque alludes to the prolonged struggle over the Land of Israel between Christians and Muslims in the past, which has been transformed into a struggle between Jews on the one hand and Christian and Muslim Arabs on the other hand. The poem concludes with the enigmatic words: ”but a fox quenches Jerusalem’s thirst / with the waters of Upper / Nahal Kelah” (11-13). According to the poet, the image of the fox in the poem is based on an experience he had seeing a fox while hiking in Nahal Kelah, a wadi located in the Mount Carmel region: ”That same fox [in a legend about Rabbi Akiva] was also in Nahal Kelah (a place where I hiked…), that is there was a fox who entered the poem and there was a spice plant by the name of marveh [the Hebrew word for ”quenches” in the poem], and [I developed an image in which] the fox quenched the thirst of Jerusalem for redemption. I…was surprised at the connection of the fox [I saw] to Jerusalem and it took me time to see it.”39 The legend about Rabbi Akiva and the fox is found in a midrashic passage in Eikhah Rabbah 5:18 interpreting a biblical verse describing the desolate state of Jerusalem after the destruction of the First Temple: ”Mount Zion desolate; foxes move around in it (Lamentations 5:18). In the course of interpreting the verse, the midrash tells a story in which four rabbis approach the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Temple and see a fox coming out of the place where the Holy of Holies used to be located. This sight induces great sadness in three of the rabbis, while the fourth, Rabbi Akiva, actually sees it as a hope for the eventual restoration of the Temple. The fox in the poem may be the harbinger of a new hope for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians: it brings water from the normally dry wadi of the Carmel mountain range to Jerusalem, reviving it with a vision of peace.

39 In an e-mail correspondence with me, 10 June 2009.

230

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫וּכְ ׁ ֶש ׁ ּ ָש ַאלְ ְּת ֵמ ַאיִ ן ַה ׁ ּ ַש ָ ּבת ָּתבוֹ א‬ ‫אבישר הר־שפי‬

‫ ‬

‫לסיון‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫וְ ֶא ְצ ְ ּבעוֹ ַתיִ ְך‬ ‫נִ ְפזְ ר ּו ַעל ַה ְ ּג ָבעוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ֵ ּבין ַטלְ ִ ּב ָ ּיה לְ מוֹ ָאב‬ ‫אחר‪ִ ,‬ה ְפנֵ ית ַמ ָ ּבט‪ֵ ,‬מ ַה ִּקירוֹ ת ַה ְּמ ֻפ ָ ּי ִחים‬ ‫אוֹ ִמצּ וּר ַ ּב ֶ‬ ‫ּ ִפ ְתאֹם ָע ַבר רוֹ ֶעה ּפוֹ ֶעה ְּכ ָב ָשׂ יו‬ ‫ְ ּג ְר ְרר ְ ּג ְר ְרר‬ ‫ְצה ְצה‬ ‫ִמי ַ ּב ַּמיִ ם‬ ‫ִמי ָ ּב ֵא ׁש‬ ‫וְ ַטבּ וּנִ ים ָאפ ּו ַה ֶּל ֶחם ְ ּביוֹ ם ׁ ִש ׁ ּ ִשי ָה ַא ֲחרוֹ ן ׁ ֶשל ַר ַמ ָדאן‬ ‫ֵמ ַה ִּמזְ ָרח‪ֵ ,‬מ ָהר ָקטוּם ָעגֹל ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי‬ ‫ֵמ ַה ֵהרוֹ ְדיוֹ ן‬ ‫ָּתבוֹ א לְ ָאן ָק ׁ ַשר נָ ִביא ֶאת סו ָּסתוֹ‬ ‫ַאל־בּ ו ָּרק צוֹ נֶ ֶפת ְשׂ ָע ָר ּה ֻמ ְב ָר ׁש ָאדֹם‬ ‫ל־ק ְר ָ ּבנוֹ ת‬ ‫ֻמ ַח ַּמ ִדים רוֹ ְק ִדים ָ ּב ָהר ֶאת ִעיד ֶא ָ‬ ‫ִמ ׁ ּ ַש ַער ַה ִּמזְ ָרח ָּתבוֹ א‬ ‫נִ ְרקֹד לָ ּה ִּכ ְמ ׁ ֻש ָ ּג ִעים‬ ‫לְ כ ּו נְ ַר ְ ּננָ ה‬ ‫ַא ְּת ַה ָ ּב ָאה ִמ ִּמזְ ָרח‬ ‫ְמ ֻק ֶּט ֶרת מֹר וְ ַטבּ וּנִ ים‬ ‫ִה ֵ ּנה ֶה ֱחלַ ְפ ִּתי ִשׂ ְמלוֹ ַתי‬ ‫וּכְ ָבר ִהצַּ ְע ִּתי ִמ ָּטתוֹ ׁ ֶש ִּל ׁ ְשלֹמֹה‬ ‫ִה ֵ ּנה נִ ְרקֹד ְמ ׁ ֻש ָ ּג ִעים‬ ‫ֵ ּבינֵ ינ ּו ָהרוֹ ֶעה‬ ‫ְ ּג ְר ְרר ְ ּג ְר ְרר‬ ‫ְצה ְצה‬ ‫יַ הוּד‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ּ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪231‬‬

CHAPTER FIVE



And When You 40 Asked From Where the Sabbath Will Come



For Sivan



And your fingers



or from Zur Baher, you turned your gaze, from the sooty walls,



5

Avishar Har-Shefi

were spread out on the hills between Talbieh and Moab suddenly a shepherd passed by bleating to his sheep grrr grrr tsi tsi

who by water who by fire

and taboons baked bread on the last Friday of Ramadan

10 from the east, from a circular truncated mountain I said

from Herodion



Al-burak neighing its hair brushed red



it will come to where the prophet tied his horse Muhammads dance on the mountain the Id al-Qurban

15 from the eastern gate it will come,

let’s dance before it as if we are insane



you who come from the east



come let us sing

infused with the aroma of myrrh and taboons

20 look, I changed my clothes

and I’ve made the bed of Solomon



the shepherd between us



behold we’ll dance insanely grrr grrr

25 tsi tsi Yahud 41 40 Throughout the poem a male speaker addresses a woman. 41 Har-Shefi, Susei esh, 99-100.

232

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

We learn from the title of the poem, dedicated by Har-Shefi to his wife Sivan, that a woman has asked a male speaker ”from where the Sabbath will come.” On the face of it, this is a strange question. A traditionally observant Jew might ask when the Sabbath will begin, but not from where it will come. Nevertheless, the speaker goes along with the notion that the Sabbath is an object that can come from somewhere. It is significant that in the course of considering the places from where the Sabbath might arrive, images from both Arab and Jewish culture are intertwined. At first, the woman spreads out her fingers to point to possible places from where the Sabbath might come, all of which have been or continue to be places where Arabs live: perhaps from the hills between the formerly Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, Talbieh, now occupied by Jews, and the ancient land of Moab, now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the east of the city, or perhaps from Zur Baher, an Arab village incorporated into Jerusalem after the Six-Day War (1-3). As the woman turns away from unpleasant ”sooty walls” (3), a mixed set of Jewish and Arab images appears. An Arab shepherd makes the special sounds that keep his sheep under control (4-6), and that sight and those sounds are followed by the smell of bread baked in taboons (an Arabic term for ”oven”) that will be eaten in the final Friday evening of the month-long Muslim Ramadan fast (9). Between these two images the narrator quotes a passage from the traditional Jewish liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur which relates how people may be punished by God to die for their sins, ”who by water / who by fire” (7-8). The speaker then offers other suggestions of the possible places from where the Sabbath will come. Perhaps it will come ”from the east” (10) or perhaps from ”the eastern gate” (15). Perhaps it will come from ”a circular truncated mountain” in the Negev, Herodion, a stronghold built by King Herod south of Jerusalem (10-11), or the Temple Mount, the place to which, according to Muslim tradition, Muhammad traveled on his horse Al-Burak before rising to heaven (12-13). As Muslims celebrate Id al-Qurban, which commemorates the sacrifice by Abraham of a ram instead of his son Ishmael (adapted from the biblical story in which a ram is sacrificed by Abraham instead of his son 233

CHAPTER FIVE

Isaac in Genesis 22 [14]),42 the speaker calls on his wife to join him in an insane dance in which they as Jews will celebrate the Sabbath (16, 22). The speaker alludes to the first expression in the Sabbath eve Kabbalat Shabbat service from the beginning of Psalm 95, ”Come let us sing” (17), as well as to expressions that occur near each other in the Song of Songs, which is recited on Friday before the Sabbath in some Jewish communities: ”infused with the aroma of myrrh” (mequteret mor, Song of Songs 3:6 [19]) and ”the bed of Solomon” (mittato sheliShlomo, Song of Songs 3:7 [21]). These expressions are also accompanied by a passage from a Friday evening prayer in which the Jew declares he has made the necessary preparations for the Sabbath: ”look, I changed my clothes and I’ve made [my] bed” (hinneh heḥlafti simlotay ukhevar hitsati mittat[i] [20-21]). As the biblical ”aroma of myrrh” intermingles with that of the bread being baked in the Arab ”taboons” (19), the insane dance of this Jewish man and woman is accompanied by the sounds the Arab shepherd makes to control the sheep, and that shepherd has the final word in the poem: ”Yahud,” the Arabic term for Jew (22-26). In contrast to the usual sense that Jewish and Muslim religious celebrations must be totally separate, in this poem they merge together as if the Jewish Sabbath can only come from a place enriched by Muslim spirituality.

‫יט ִט ִיבית‬ ִ‫ׁ ְשכֵ נ‬ ַ ‫יחה ֶמ ִד‬ ָ ׂ‫ים – ש‬ ִ ‫סיון הר־שפי‬



‫לאשרף וללינה‬



‫ַה ֵּס ֶבל ׁ ֶש ְּל ָך יָ רֹק יוֹ ֵתר‬ ֹ‫וַ ֲאנִ י ְמ ַח ֶ ּב ֶקת אוֹ תו‬ ‫ְמנַ ָּסה לִ כְ ּתֹב ׁ ִשיר ׁ ֶשל ַד ְרוִ ׁיש‬



‫ֲע ֻמ ָּקה וַ ֲעגֻ ָּלה ַה ִּת ְקוָ ה‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ְ ּב ֵאר ְ ּב ֶמ ְר ַּכז ַה ְּכ ָפר‬



42 ” ‘Id al-Adha,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com.

234

5

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ַ ּבדְּ לִ י ַה ָּמלֵ א ָ ּבבו ַּאת ּ ָפנַ יִ ְך‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫יח ַצ ָ ּבר צוֹ ֵמ ַח ֶאל ּתוֹ ְך ִ ּב ְטנִ י‬ ‫ִשׂ ַ‬ ‫אשוֹ נוֹ ת‪.‬‬ ‫ֵמנֵ ץ ְּכמוֹ ׁ ִש ַ ּניִ ם ִר ׁ‬ ‫ְקרוֹ קוֹ ִדיל ְ ּב ִצ ְב ֵעי ַה ָ ּנ ָהר‪ִ ,‬מ ְת ָק ֵרב‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬

‫נוֹ ׁ ֶש ֶפת ַעל ַה ַּכ ַעס‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ ְמיַ ֶ ּב ׁ ֶשת לַ ק ָאדֹם‬ ‫ַעל ִצ ּ ָפ ְרנַ יִ ְך‬ ‫נִ ּ ְפצ ּו לִ י ֶאת ַה ׁ ּ ִש ְמ ׁ ָשה‬ ‫נִ ּ ְפצ ּו לִ י ֶאת ַה ׁ ּ ֶש ֶמ ׁש‬ ‫נִ ּ ְפצ ּו לִ י ֶאת ַה ׁ ּ ֵשם‬ ‫(גוֹ נְ ג‪.‬‬ ‫לִ ׁ ְשאוֹ ף ָעמֹק‬ ‫וְ לִ נְ ׁשֹף‬ ‫ִשׂ ימ ּו לֵ ב לַ ְ ּנ ׁ ִשימוֹ ת‬ ‫יסה‪.‬‬ ‫יְ ִצ ָ‬ ‫יאה‪ְּ .‬כנִ ָ‬ ‫לְ ִה ָּכנֵ ס ְ ּב ׁ ָשלוֹ ם לָ ֵצאת)‬ ‫יֵ ׁש לְ ָך אוּלַ י כּ וֹ ס ֻס ָּכר‬ ‫ַא ְחזִ יר לְ ָך ָמ ָחר‬ ‫ָשׂ ָמה ֻס ַּכר ַעל ַה ָּמוֶ ת‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ִשׂ ים ֻק ִ ּב ַ ּית ֻס ָּכר ֵ ּבין ׁ ִש ֶ ּנ ָ‬ ‫יך‬ ‫ׁ ְש ֵתה ִמ ִפינְ גַ ׳אן ְ ּבכוֹ ס ְק ַט ָ ּנה‬ ‫ֶאת ַה ָּק ֶפה ַה ַּמר‬ ‫ָמ ַתי ַא ֶּתם ָ ּב ִאים‬ ‫ָ ּב ָא ִביב‪ְּ ,‬כ ׁ ֶש ַה ְ ּב ֵרכוֹ ת ַ ּב ֻ ּב ְס ָּתנִ ים‬ ‫לִ ְק ּפֹץ ֶאל ּתוֹ ְך ָ ּבבו ַּא ְתכֶ ם‬

‫‪235‬‬

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ִמי ַה ְמ ַת ְדלֵ ק ׁ ֶש ָּל ְך‬ ‫ִמי ַה ַ ּג ָ ּנן ׁ ֶש ָּל ְך‬ ‫ִמי ַה ּפוֹ ֵעל ׁ ֶש ָּל ְך‬

‫ ‬

‫ַא ְּת‪ ,‬סו ַּפת ַהחוֹ ל‬ ‫ֵה ֵצ ְר ְּת ֶאת ֵעינַ י‬ ‫ֲאלַ כְ סוֹ נִ ים ׁ ֶשל ֲח ׁ ָשד‬ ‫חוֹ ִצים ֶאת ָה ְרחוֹ ב‬ ‫וְ ֶאת ּ ָפנַ י‬

‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫(גונְ ג‪.‬‬ ‫ַ ּגב זָ קוּף ֲא ָבל ׁ ְש ִר ִירים ְרפוּיִ ים‪.‬‬ ‫לִ נְ ׁשֹף ֶאת ַה ֶּז ֶפת ַה ׁ ּ ְשחוֹ ָרה‬ ‫לִ ׁ ְשאֹף ֲאוִ יר ַּכחֹל‪.‬‬ ‫ְּת ַד ְמיְ נ ּו ׁ ֶש ַא ֶּתם ֲע ִפיפוֹ נִ ים‬ ‫יישה)‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ְש ֵמי ְד ֵה ׁ ֶ‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 45‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 50‬‬

‫ַה ׁ ּ ְשזִ יף ּפוֹ ֵר ַח‪ַ .‬על ְשׂ ַפת‬ ‫ל ַֹע ַה ַ ּ‬ ‫ר־ג ַע ׁש‬ ‫ׁ ְש ֵּתי נְ ָמלִ ים נוֹ ְשׂ אוֹ ת ּ ֵפרוּר‬ ‫ַה ָ ּגלוּת ׁ ֶש ִּלי ָרחוֹ ק ֹיו ֵתר‬ ‫תוכִ י‬ ‫ַה ָ ּגלוּת ׁ ֶש ִּלי ְ ּב ֹ‬ ‫מו ֻע ָ ּבר‬ ‫ְמ ֻק ּ ֶפלֶ ת ְּכ ֹ‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫מו ַמ ְר ּ ְפ ִקים ַ ּב ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬ ‫ְ ּב ָר ִקים ְּכ ֹ‬ ‫ִח ָּטה ְ ּב ׁ ֵשלָ ה נִ זְ ֶּכ ֶרת‬ ‫ְ ּב ֶר ֶחם ָה ֲא ָד ָמה‬

‫ ‬

‫מות ׁ ֶש ׁ ּ ְשכַ ְח ֶּתם‬ ‫ֲאנַ ְחנ ּו ׁ ָש ַמ ְרנ ּו ַעל ַה ׁ ּ ֵש ֹ‬ ‫אתם לֹא יְ ַד ְע ֶּתם ַמה ִּתלְ ֲח ׁש ּו ְ ּב ָאזְ נָ ּה‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ָ ּב ֶ‬ ‫״סו ְּמסוּם‪ִ ,‬ה ּ ָפ ְת ִחי״‬

‫‪ 55‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪236‬‬

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 60‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 65‬‬

‫אר ָך‬ ‫ַה ַּמ ְפ ֵּת ַח ַה ָ ּי ׁ ָשן ַעל ַצ ָ ּו ְ‬ ‫ַעל ַּכ ּפוֹ ת ַה ַּמנְ עוּל‬ ‫יָ ַדי‬ ‫אר ָך‬ ‫ַה ַּמ ְפ ֵּת ַח ַה ָ ּי ׁ ָשן ַעל ַצ ָ ּו ְ‬ ‫ָּכל ַמה ׁ ּ ֶש ִ ּנ ׁ ְש ַאר ֵמ ַה ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫חוֹ ר ַה ַּמנְ עוּל‬ ‫ְ ּב ָמה ַא ָּתה ִמ ְת ַע ֵּק ׁש לֶ ֱאחֹז‬ ‫ָא ָדם נוֹ לָ ד ִעם ֶאגְ רוֹ ף ָקמוּץ‬ ‫ֵמת ִעם יָ ד ּ ְפתו ָּחה‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫(לְ נַ ֵער ֶאת ַה ָ ּי ַדיִ ם‪.‬‬ ‫לְ ִה ְתנַ ֵער ְּכמוֹ ֶּכלֶ ב ִמ ַּמיִ ם‪.‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫וְ ַעכְ ׁ ָשו ִּת ְת ַר ְּכז ּו ְ ּבקוֹ לוֹ ׁ ֶשל ַהדָּ ם‬ ‫ַהזּוֹ ֵרם ַ ּב ּגוּף‬ ‫‪ 70‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ִמן ַה ֵּלב ֶאל ְ ּבהוֹ נוֹ ת ָה ַרגְ לַ יִ ם‬ ‫ֹאש‬ ‫ִמן ַה ֵּלב ֶאל ַשׂ ֲערוֹ ת ָהר ׁ‬ ‫ִמן ַה ֵּלב‬ ‫וְ ֵאלָ יו‬ ‫ֵא ּל ּו ַה ַח ִ ּיים ׁ ֶש ָּלכֶ ם)‬

‫ ‬ ‫‪ 75‬‬

‫ַא ְּת ִענְ ִדי ַס ַהר‬ ‫ֲאנִ י ֶא ֱענֹד כּ וכָ ב‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ּלֹא יְ ַע ְר ֵ ּבב אוֹ ָתנ ּו ַה ַּליְ לָ ה‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַא ְּת עוֹ נֶ ֶדת ַס ַהר‬ ‫ֲאנִ י עוֹ נֶ ֶדת כּ וֹ כָ ב‬ ‫ַה ׁ ּ ַש ַחר עוֹ לֶ ה‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫‪ 80‬‬

‫‪237‬‬

CHAPTER FIVE



Neighbors – A Meditative Dialogue



For Ashraf and for Lena



Your (m) suffering is greener



trying to write a poem of Darwish





5

43

Sivan Har-Shefi

and I (f) embrace it

Deep and round is hope

like a well in the middle of a village

in the full pail the reflection of your (f) face



A sabra bush grows into my stomach



A crocodile in river colors, draws near



budding like first teeth.

10 You (f) are blowing on your (f) anger

as if drying red polish



My windshield was shattered





on your (f) fingernails

my sun was shattered

15 my name was shattered (Gong.

Inhale [pl] deeply



pay attention [pl] to your [pl] breaths



and exhale [pl]

20 Let out [pl]. Let in [pl].

Let in [pl] in peace let out [pl])

43 The gender of the speaker and the addressee change frequently in the poem. Changes are indicated in parentheses in the body of the translation: (m)=masculine singular; (f)=feminine singular; (pl)=masculine and feminine plural.

238

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



Do you (m) maybe have a cup of sugar



I (f) am placing sugar on death



I’ll (f) return it to you (m) tomorrow

25 Place (m) a sugar cube between your (m) teeth

drink (m) from the finjan in a small cup



When will you (pl) come





the bitter coffee

In spring, when there are pools in the gardens

30 to jump into your (pl) reflection

Who fills your (f) gas tank



Who’s your (f) worker



Who’s your (f) gardener



You (f), sand storm



diagonal lines of suspicion



and my face

35 besieged my eyes

divide the road

(Gong.

40 A straight back with loosened muscles.

Exhale [pl] the black tar



Imagine you [pl] are kites





inhale [pl] the blue air.

in the skies of Deheisheh)

45 The plum tree blooms. At the edge

of a volcano’s mouth

two ants carry a crumb 239

CHAPTER FIVE



My exile is further

my exile is within me

50 folded up like a fetus

Lightning like elbows in the sky



the womb of the land



ripe wheat remembers



We preserved the names you [pl] forgot



”Open, sesame”



The old key on your (m) neck



my hands

55 when you [pl] came you [pl] didn’t know how to whisper in its ear



at the opening of the lock

60 The old key on your (m) neck

all that is left of the house



What do you (m) insist on holding





is the key hole

A person is born with a clenched fist

65 and dies with an open hand

(Shake your [pl] hands.



And now focus [pl] on the sound of the blood





Shake yourself [pl] off like a dog shaking off water.

flowing in your [pl] body

70 From your [pl] heart to the big toes of your [pl] feet

from your [pl] heart to the hairs on your [pl] head



to Him



from your [pl] heart

240

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



this is your [pl] life)

75 You (f) wear a crescent

I’ll (m) wear a star



You (f) are wearing a crescent





so the night does not mix us up

I (f) am wearing a star

80 the dawn rises 44

This poem is based on an experience the poet had participating in a meditation workshop of young Arabs and Jews organized by a person from the Far East. The participants were of various backgrounds: the Jews included religious and secular people, those with right-wing and those with left-wing political orientations, and the Arabs included Muslims and Christians. In the poem, a female speaker, who represents the Jewish side, and a male speaker, who represents the Arab side, engage in a dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A third speaker, the person conducting the meditation workshop, leads the participants through exercises designed to defuse the tension between them. The workshop leader’s instructions appear in the poem in parentheses. At the beginning of the poem, the Jewish speaker expresses empathy for the suffering of the Arab speaker: ”Your suffering is greener / and I embrace it” (1-2). She even speaks of trying to write a poem about or perhaps in the style of the great twentieth-century Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish (3). For his part, the Arab speaker expresses a degree of hopefulness with the image of a village well, in the water of which he can see the reflection of the Jew’s face (4-6). The next two stanzas shift to a focus on that which divides the Jew and the Arab. The Arab speaker makes use of the image of ”a sabra bush” (alluding to the image of the native born Israeli as having the qualities of the sabra fruit) that ”grows into [his] stomach” and that causes him pain like that experienced by a small 44 Sivan Har-Shefi, Galut halivyatan (Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005), 31-34.

241

CHAPTER FIVE

child when teeth first come in or that threatens him like a crocodile (7-9). He accuses his Jewish dialogue partner of stoking her own anger: ”blowing on your anger / as if drying red polish / on your fingernails” (10-12). The images of an automobile windshield, the sun, and a name shattered (in Hebrew: shimshah, shemesh, shem – similar words with increasingly shorter lengths) could be shared by Arab and Jew alike, who have been victims of violence emanating from the other side (13-15). This mutual anger is brought to a halt by the sound of a gong and the instructions of the workshop leader to engage in deep breathing to calm their souls and put themselves in a peaceful frame of mind (16-21). Following that meditative exercise, the dialogue partners come back together again. The Jewish speaker asks the Arab speaker for a cup of sugar, which she promises to return the next day, as if they are good neighbors (22-23). When she states, however, that she is ”placing sugar on death” (24), she indicates that the neighborly feelings she has are tinged with anger at suffering caused her by Arabs. The Jewish speaker then tells the Arab speaker to ”place a sugar cube between [his] teeth,” a method of drinking hot drinks that was practiced among Eastern European Jews, as well as one that is prevalent in the Middle East. She instructs him to drink strong black coffee from an Arab coffee pot, a finjan, in a small cup, as is the practice among Arabs. Just as ”the bitter coffee” can be sweetened with sugar, perhaps there is an antidote to the constant presence of death in this conflict. (25-27). In the next stanza, a question and answer regarding a future visit is conveyed with images of spring and of a reflection in water from earlier in the poem (28-30). The verbs in this stanza are in plural form, and therefore it is not clear if the speaker is the male Arab or the female Jew. As in the earlier section, however, the hopeful atmosphere soon deteriorates to an atmosphere of conflict. The Arab speaker asks three rhetorical questions for the purpose of making clear his conviction that the only use Jews have for Arabs is to do their menial labor: ”Who fills your gas tank / Who’s your gardener / Who’s your worker” (31-33). He then proceeds with images that convey conflict and lack of trust that he blames on the Jew: ”You, sand storm, / besieged my eyes / diagonal lines of suspicion / 242

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

divide the road / and my face” (34-38). Once again the gong sounds and they are guided through exercises that will ease the tension between them. The participants are to sit with ”[a] straight back,” and ”with loosened muscles” (39-40). The instructor tells them to ”exhale the black tar” (41) of conflict and anger and ”inhale the blue air” (42) of peace. They are then led in an exercise in guided imagery, which includes free-flying kites over the Palestinian refugee camp of Deheisheh (43-44), a blooming plum tree (45), and the poignant cooperation of two ants carrying a crumb ”[a]t the edge / of a volcano’s mouth” (45-47). Now, the Jewish speaker states that although in contrast to that of the Arab, her exile is further away in the Jewish diaspora, it is still very much within her memory, ”folded up like a fetus,” with the potential of being born again (48-50). That image is interrupted by the startling ”[l]ightning like elbows in the sky,” which leads to the notion that the land itself has a kind of ”womb” that reminds one of ”ripe wheat” that could emerge and feed all (51-53). In the next two exchanges the Jew and the Arab focus on that which divides them. The Arab speaker declares that the Arabs were the ones who remained faithful to the land and helped the Jews reconnect with it when they returned. If not for the Arabs, the Jews would not even know what names to call places. Only the Arabs know the secret password of ”open sesame” that is necessary to connect with the land (54-56). The Jew takes note of the key to the Arab’s house abandoned in 1948, which he wears around his neck for safe keeping, but she wonders why the Arab insists on holding a grudge for what happened to him. Unclench the fist of anger, she suggests, let go before it is too late and you die (57-65). The workshop leader intervenes again with suggestions of how to get their bodies into a state of true relaxation: ”Shake your hands. / Shake yourself off like a dog shaking off water” (66-67). Each participant is then to focus on the sound of the blood flowing in his or her body, connecting him or her with life and with divinity (68-74). The poem then concludes with a suggestion by the Arab that the Jew would wear the Muslim symbol of the crescent and that he, the Arab, would wear the Jewish symbol of the Star of David. He proposes this switch in identities, paradoxically, 243

CHAPTER FIVE

”so the night does not mix [them] up” (75-77). It appears, however, that this exercise of exchanging identities to develop greater empathy for the enemy does not continue. In the first line of the final stanza, the Arab describes the Jew as wearing a crescent, but then in the next line the Jew states that actually she is wearing a star. Apparently she cannot bring herself to accept the Arab’s challenge to try to feel what it is like to live his life. The Jew is now back to her original identity on one side of the divide, and then ”the dawn rises” (78-80), as if this whole meditative dialogue has been like a dream and now a new day, in which the conflict continues, has begun.

‫ׁ ְשנֵ י ׁ ִש ִירים ַעל יִ ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל‬ ‫אליעז כהן‬



* ‫יִ ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל ְמיַ דֶּ ה ִ ּבי ֲא ָבנִ ים‬ ‫״מ ִּלים״‬ ִ ‫הוּא צוֹ ֵעק‬ ‫ית‬ ָ ִ‫ וְ ֵאיפֹה ָהי‬,‫ִמ ִּלים ָק ׁשוֹ ת ֵמ ֲא ָבנִ ים‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ֵ ּג ְר ׁש ּו אוֹ ִתי ִעם ׁ ַש ַחר וְ ֵח ַמת ַמיִ ם‬ 5 ‫ַה ָ ּבנִ ים ׁ ֶש ָּלנ ּו‬ ‫צוֹ ֵעק יִ ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל‬ ‫יִ ְתרוֹ ְצצ ּו ְ ּב ִק ְר ֵ ּבנ ּו יַ ַע ְבד ּו זֶ ה לָ זֶ ה‬ ‫ נָ ׁ ִשים‬,‫ ַמלְ ָאכִ ים‬,‫יִ ּ ְשׂ א ּו ֻס ָּלמוֹ ת‬ ‫ יְ יַ דּ ּו זֶ ה ָ ּבזֶ ה זִ כְ רוֹ נוֹ ת‬10 * ּ ‫עושׂ ים לִ י ֶאת זֶ ה‬ ִ ‫נְ ָע ִרים ַע ְר ִב ִיים‬ ‫לשת ֲאלָ ִפים ׁ ְש ַבע ֵמאוֹ ת ׁ ָשנָ ה ָאחוֹ ָרה‬ ֶ ׁ ‫זוֹ ְר ִקים אוֹ ִתי ׁ ְש‬ ‫ ַה ְ ּג ָבעוֹ ת ְמ ַק ׁ ּ ְשתוֹ ת‬,‫ָר ִצים ֵע ֻיר ִּמים‬ ‫ֵ ּגוָ ן ַה ָ ּירֹק לְ גו ֵּפנ ּו‬ ‫ ְּכמוֹ לֹא רוֹ אוֹ ת‬,‫ִא ּמוֹ ֵתינ ּו דָּ ׁשוֹ ת ִמנְ ַחת ְקנָ אוֹ ת‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ִ ּי ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל וַ ֲאנִ י זוֹ ְר ִעים ְ ּברוּחוֹ ת ַה ׁ ּ ָש ַמיִ ם‬ 244

15



ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



Two Poems on Ishmael Eliaz Cohen

*

Ishmael hurls stones at me



he shouts

5

when they expelled me at dawn with only a water skin

”words”

words harsher than stones, and where were you our sons

cries Ishmael

will struggle within us will be servants to each other will bear ladders, angels, women

10 will hurl memories at each other *

Arab boys do something for me



they throw me three thousand seven hundred years back in history



We run naked, the hills arch



their green backs on our bodies

15 our mothers pound an offering of jealousy as if they don’t see

when Ishmael and I sow in the winds of heaven 45

In this poem the speaker, an Israeli Jew, is the biblical Isaac, and his Palestinian contemporaries are the biblical Ishmael, Isaac’s half-brother. The attack by Ishmael, the Palestinian, starts out as stone throwing but soon becomes verbal insults, which cause the speaker more pain than stones do (1-4). Ishmael calls Isaac to account for not protesting his expulsion from the household of their father Abraham (Genesis 21): ”and where were you / when they expelled me at dawn with only a water skin” 45 Cohen, Shema Ado-nay, 14.

245

CHAPTER FIVE

(4-5), implying that just as Isaac should have protested his half-brother’s expulsion from their home, so Israeli Jews should have stood up to defend the Palestinians who lost their homes when the State of Israel came into being. Ishmael declares that this conflict will continue into the next generation (6-10). He uses expressions that allude to the struggle between the biblical twins Jacob and Esau. The expression ”will struggle within us” (yitrotsetsu beqirbenu, [8]) alludes to the struggle of the twins while still in the womb of their mother Rebekah, ”the sons struggled within her” (vayitrotsetsu habanim beqirbah [Genesis 25:22]), and the reference to the brothers serving each other (ya’avdu zeh lazeh [8]) alludes to God’s revelation to Rebekah that ”the older [son] will serve the younger [son]” (verav ya’avod tsa’ir [Genesis 25:23]). Words that are central to the Jacob story now become a common inheritance for both Jew and Arab, as both ”will bear” (9) them. The images of ”ladders” and ”angels” (9) refer to Jacob’s dream of angels going up and down on a ladder (Genesis 28:12) and his later wrestling with an angel (Genesis 32: 25-33); the word ”women” (which could also be translated as ”wives” [9]) refers to Jacob’s relationship with Rachel and Leah, the two sisters he married. In the end, it is not stones but memories that Ishmael and Isaac will throw at each other – the Palestinian memory of their defeat in 1948 and of the persistent barriers to the fulfillment of their national dreams and the Israeli memory of Arab attacks on Jews and of their suffering in the diaspora, which culminated in the Holocaust (10). The speaker then shifts the focus to that which attracts him to his Palestinian enemies. ”Arab boys do something for me” (11), he declares; there is some need in the speaker that Arab boys fulfill. Rather than throw stones, they actually throw him back to biblical times (”three thousand seven hundred years back in history,” [12]). These Arab boys are wild and playful and together with them the speaker romps in nature: ”We run naked, the hills arch / their green backs on our bodies,” (13-14). Arab and Jewish mothers, much more caught up in the conflict than their sons are, are engaged in preparing ”an offering of jealousy” (15). In the Bible, the ”offering of jealousy (minḥat qena’ot) is a meal offering that accompanies 246

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

the biblical ritual established to determine whether a husband’s suspicion of his wife’s infidelity has a basis in fact (Numbers 5:11-31). The mothers, however, are apparently not aware that Isaac and Ishmael, the Jew and the Arab, would rather ”sow in the winds of heaven” (zorim beruḥot hashamayim [16]), an expression that alludes to the biblical verse in which it is related that ”Isaac sowed in that land and reaped a hundred times that year” (vayizra Yitsḥaq ba’arets hahi vayimtsa bashanah hahi me’ah she’arim [Genesis 26:12]). Here, however, both Isaac and his rival brother Ishmael are sowing together, with no interest in maintaining the dispute between them over who controls the land, but rather with an orientation toward more spiritual matters, such as the search for reconciliation.

‫ׁ ֶשלֶ ג‬ ‫אליעז כהן‬ ‫ׁ ֶשלֶ ג ַעל יְ רו ׁ ָּשלֶ ם ַה ְמ ַד ֶּמ ֶמת‬ ‫ְּכמוֹ לְ ַח ֵּתל ּ ְפ ָצ ֶע ָיה‬ ‫ַהכּ ֹל נָ ח ְ ּב ׁ ַשלְ וָ ה ַעכְ ׁ ָשו‬ ‫ְמ ַמ ֵּלא ִס ְד ֵקי ַ ּג ְע ּגו ִּעים ׁ ֶש ַ ּבכּ ֶֹתל‬ ‫יְ לָ ִדים ִ ּב ְרחוֹ בוֹ ַתיִ ְך יְ רו ׁ ָּשלֶ ם‬ ‫ְ ּבנֵ י יִ ְצ ָחק וְ יִ ׁ ְש ַמ ְע ֵאל‬ ‫ְמ ַצ ֲח ִקים ִמלְ ָחמוֹ ת לְ ָבנוֹ ת‬ )‫(ו ְּפגִ ָיע ָתם ַר ָּכה‬ ‫ֲא ִפ ּל ּו ַה ּיוֹ נִ ים ִמזְ דָּ ְרזוֹ ת ַה ּיוֹ ם‬ ‫ְמנַ ֲהמוֹ ת ִּכי ָמ ְצא ּו ֲע ֵקבוֹ ת ֲח ָד ׁ ִשים‬ ‫ַ ּבדֶּ ֶר ְך ָהעוֹ לָ ה ֶאל ׁ ַש ַער ָה ַר ֲח ִמים‬ Snow

Eliaz Cohen



Snow on a bleeding Jerusalem



all rests in tranquility now



as if to wrap her wounds

247

5

10



CHAPTER FIVE

5

filling the cracks of longing in the Western Wall children in your streets Jerusalem sons of Isaac and Ishmael sporting at white wars

(and their blows are soft)



Even the doves are spurred on today



on the path that ascends to the Gate of Mercy46

10 cooing, for they found new footsteps

It rarely snows in Jerusalem in the winter, but when it does the thin layer of snow that typically falls severely limits the ability of people to move around in the city either on foot or in vehicles, and the city is granted a respite from conflict and strife. It is significant that in this poem the author chooses to refer to the city not in its usual Hebrew pronunciation, yerushalayim, but rather in an unusual pronunciation, yerushalem, the ending of which sounds like the Hebrew word shalem, which connotes being undivided and whole. The healing wholeness of this day is captured in the image of the snow wrapping the bleeding wounds of warfare between Jews and Arabs with a large bandage, so that finally ”all rests in tranquility now” (1-3). As the snow lands in the cracks in the stones of the Western Wall, it prevents people from making their requests of God in notes placed in those cracks, as if peace has arrived and there is nothing more for which to yearn (4). Rather than fighting real wars, the Jews (”sons of Isaac”) and the Arabs (”sons of Ishmael”) are having a snow ball fight (”sporting at white wars”) in which the main weapon is much softer than bullets (5-8). The Hebrew term for ”sporting” (metsaḥeq) is the activity in which Ishmael engaged and for which Sarah insisted that Abraham expel him and his mother (Genesis 21: 9-10). It also has the same root as the name for Isaac in Hebrew, Yitsḥaq. Here, the sporting repairs the separation between Isaac and Ishmael, who are now joined together in play. The term ”white wars” (milḥamot levanot) calls to mind the Hebrew name for the Lebanon War (milḥemet levanon) 46 Ibid., 44.

248

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫‪that began in 1982, in which Israel sought to expel the Palestine Libera‬‬‫‪tion Organization from Lebanon. This snow ball fight, thus, has turned the‬‬ ‫‪horrors of that war into delightful play. The doves, who symbolize peace,‬‬ ‫‪are excited because they see fresh footprints in the snow leading up to the‬‬ ‫‪”Gate of Mercy” of the Old City of Jerusalem where, according to Jewish‬‬ ‫‪tradition, the Messiah will enter when he comes to redeem the world (9-11).‬‬ ‫‪Perhaps those are his footsteps and redemption is near.‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ּפוֹ ֵרץ ַה ַּמ ְחסוֹ ִמים ‬ ‫אליעז כהן‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫לעלי יחיא‪ ,‬מורי מני‪-‬אז‬ ‫עם מינויו לשגריר ישראל באתונה‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ְמ ֻד ְמדֶּ ֶמת זוֹ ‪ ,‬לְ ַמ ְר ְ ּגלוֹ ת ַה ִ ּגלְ בּ ַֹע‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ׁ ֶש ֲאנִ י לְ בו ּׁש־זַ יִ ת וְ ַע ָּ‬ ‫ל־כ ְר ִחי‬ ‫נֶ ֱא ָסף ֶאל ׁשוֹ ְמ ֵרי ַהחוֹ ָמה‬ ‫ַ(מ ֲע ַבר ַה ְ ּגבוּל גָ ׳לָ ֶמה‪ַ ּ ,‬פ ַעם ַמ ְחסוֹ ם‪ַ ּ ,‬פ ַעם‬ ‫דֶּ ֶר ְך עוֹ לָ ה ֵמ ֵע ֶמק ֲעפוּלָ ה ֶאל ֵע ֶמק דּ וֹ ָתן‬ ‫וְ ֶאל דֶּ ֶר ְך ָה ָהר וְ ָה ָאבוֹ ת)‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה זוֹ ֲאנִ י חוֹ ׁ ֵשב ָעלֶ ָ‬ ‫יך ַעלִ י יִ ְחיָ א‬ ‫ֵא ְ‬ ‫את וְ כָ ל ֻּכ ְּל ָך ַה ַחם ַה ְּכ ַר ְס ָּתנִ י ְמגַ לְ ֵ ּגל ֵאלֵ ינ ּו‬ ‫יך ָ ּב ָ‬ ‫י־מ ְתנַ ֲחלִ ים ְק ַט ִ ּנים ְ ּבנֵ י ַשׂ ְ ּב ָעה וְ ָת ָ׳מנִ יָ ה ְ ּב ֶא ֶרץ ַה ׁ ּשוֹ ְמרוֹ ן ַה ִּמ ְתעוֹ ֵרר‬ ‫יַ לְ ֵד ִ‬ ‫ֶאת ַה ְ ּגרוֹ נִ ּיוֹ ת ַה ְמ ַר ְּקדוֹ ת‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ְשׂ ַפת ַה ַ ֿדאד‪.‬‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪ 15‬‬

‫שדוֹ ת‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ְמ ֻד ְמדֶּ ֶמת זוֹ ׁ ָש ִבים ְ ּבנֵ י ַע ְּמ ָך‪ַ ,‬עלִ י‪ַ ,‬עם ׁ ֶש ַ ּב ּ ָ ׂ‬ ‫ֹאש‪ּ ְ ,‬בכָ ל ַה ִ ּבדּ ו ִּקים‬ ‫וַ ֲאנִ י עוֹ ֵמד לָ ֶהם ֵמ ַעל לָ ר ׁ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫וְ ַה ְ ּגרוֹ נִ ּיוֹ ת ָה ֵהן ׁ ֶש ָ ּבא ּו ָאז לְ ִפיוֹ ֵתינ ּו ַה ְּז ִע ִירים‬ ‫ׁ ָשבוֹ ת ו ְּמ ַח ּ ְפשׂ וֹ ת לָ ׁשוֹ ן‪.‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ְמ ֻד ְמדֶּ ֶמת זוֹ ַהכּ ֹל ִּכ ְמ ַעט וְ ֶא ְפ ׁ ָש ִרי‬ ‫ְּכ ׁ ֶש ִּל ִ ּבי ׁ ָשר ַע ְר ִבית וְ יוֹ ֵצא ֶאל ָה ִא ׁ ּ ָשה‬ ‫שק לְ כָ ל ָה ֲע ָב ִרים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ְ ּב ָצלֶ ָיה ִה ְת ּ ַפ ְּזר ּו ִמ ּתוֹ ְך ַה ּ ַ ׂ‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫‪249‬‬

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬

‫וְ ֵא ְיך ַ ּב ׁ ּ ֶש ֶקט ַה ֵ ּג ֶאה ַה ֶּזה ׁ ֶש ָּל ּה ִהיא ְמלַ ֶּק ֶטת ו ְּמלַ ֶח ׁ ֶשת‬ ‫ֶא ָחד ִמן ַה ׁ ּ ִש ִירים‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ִּל ַּמ ְד ָּת אוֹ ָתנ ּו ַעלִ י יִ ְחיָ א ִמ ַּכ ְפר ַק ַרע ְ ּב ֶאלְ ָקנָ ה ַה ְ ּבתוּלָ ה ַה ִ ּנ ְבנֵ ית‬ ‫[וְ לֹא יָ ַד ְע ִּתי ׁ ֶש ׁ ּ ָש ָר ׁ ִשים לְ ָך וְ לִ כְ ָפ ְר ָך ְ ּבגִ ְבעוֹ ֵתינ ּו‬ ‫ם־אל־גֻ ְ׳מ ָעה לִ ְפנֵ י‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ֵּת ָ‬ ‫ל־אבוֹ ת ׁ ֶש ְּל ָך ׁ ֶש ֶ ּנ ֱעזַ ב ְ ּב ֶא ָחד יוֹ ֶ‬ ‫יתן ְשׂ נִ ין ָ(מ ְצא ּו ַ ּב ֵּתל ִסיר ָ ּב ָשׂ ר וַ ֲע ָצמוֹ ת ָעזוּב ַעל ּ ֶפ ָח ִמים)‬ ‫ִמ ֵ‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫ָסמוּך וְ נִ ְר ֶאה ֵמ ֶא ְצלֵ נוּ]‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ְמ ֻד ְמדֶּ ֶמת זוֹ ֲאנִ י רוֹ ֶאה אוֹ ְת ָך ַעלִ י יִ ְחיָ א‬ ‫נוֹ ֵשׂ א ְ ּב ֶדגֶ ל ַה ַּט ִּלית‬ ‫ִ ּב ְמרוֹ ֵמי מוֹ ׁ ַשב ֵאלֵ י יָ וָ ן ׁ ֶש ָ ּב ַא ְקרוֹ ּפוֹ לִ יס‬ ‫־ע ְר ִבי־הוֹ ִמ ָ ּיה ְמ ַא ֶחה ֶא ְצלִ י ֶאת ָּכל ַה ֲח ָתכִ ים‬ ‫וְ ֵא ְיך ְ ּבנֶ ֶפ ׁש ַ‬ ‫ַ ּב ֶ ּנ ֶפ ׁש ָה ַא ַחת‬ ‫ָּכאן ַ ּב ַּמ ְחסוֹ ִמים יוֹ ֵרד ַעכְ ׁ ָשו ַה ׁ ּ ֶש ֶקט‬ ‫יח‬ ‫ב־קלִ ּפוֹ ַ‬ ‫וְ ַרק זְ ַה ְ‬ ‫ת־ה ְ ּב ָצלִ ׁ ֶ‬ ‫ים־ש ֶ ּנ ֶא ְספ ּו עוֹ ד ְמגַ לְ ֵ ּגל ֵר ַ‬ ‫יח‬ ‫ַה ׁ ּ ִשיר ַההוּא וְ ֵר ַ‬ ‫ְמבוּכַ ת ָה ִא ׁ ּ ָשה וְ ַה ַח ָ ּיל ׁ ֶש ֵּמ ָעלֶ ָיה‬ ‫(הוּא ֲאנִ י)‬ ‫וְ ָאנָ א ֻמ ׁ ְש ָּתאק־לַ ְּכ יָ א ִסיד ַעלִ י‬

‫ ‬ ‫ְ ּב ׁ ָש ָעה ְמ ֻד ְמדֶּ ֶמת זוֹ ‪ ,‬לְ ַמ ְר ְ ּגלוֹ ת ַה ִ ּגלְ בּ ַֹע‬ ‫ ‬ ‫עוֹ ד ְמ ַעט יִ ּפֹל ַה ּיוֹ ם ַעל ַח ְרבּ וֹ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫וְ ֶע ֶרב ָּכחֹל־קוֹ ַ ּבלְ ִטי יַ ֲעלֶ ה‬ ‫ִמ ְ ּבלִ י יָ ֵר ַח‪.‬‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ִמ ֶג׳נִ ין ַה ָי ָפה ו ְּבנוֹ ֶת ָיה ׁשוּב יִ ְס ַּתלְ ֵסל ַה ׁ ָש ַמיְ ָמה‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ָה ַאלְ לַ ֻה ַא ְכ ַ ּבר ַ ּב ָּמ ָקאם ַה ֻּמ ְפלָ א‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫וַ ֲאנִ י ֲא ׁ ַש ַלח ֶא ְצ ְ ּבעוֹ ת כּ ֵֹהן ִע ְב ִרי‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ֶאל ֲאהו ַּבי ׁ ֶש ֶ ּב ָה ִרים‬ ‫וְ גַ ם ֵאלֶ יךָ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪45‬‬

‫‪250‬‬

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



The Breaker of Barriers



To Ali Yihya, my teacher of old



At this twilight hour, at the foot of Mount Gilboa



I’m gathered together with the guardians of the wall







Eliaz Cohen

upon his appointment as the Israeli Ambassador in Athens.

at this time that I’m wearing olive green and against my will (the border crossing Jalameh, sometimes a barrier, sometimes

5

a road ascending from the Afula Valley to the

Dothan Valley



and to the road of the mountain and the forefathers)



how you came all warm and full bellied rolling to us



at this time I think of you Ali Yihya



little settler children ages sabaa and thamania47 in the awakening

10

land of Samaria

the dancing gutturals

of the language of thad.48



At this twilight hour when the members of your people, Ali,



and I stand over them, during all the inspections



return, a people of the fields

and those gutturals that came then to our tiny mouths

15 return and seek a tongue.

At this twilight hour everything is almost possible



when my heart sings in Arabic and goes out to the woman whose onions scattered out of her sack in all directions

and how in her proud silence she gathers and whispers

20

one of the songs

47 ”Seven” and ”eight” in Arabic. 48 A name for Arabic which derives from the fact that Arabic has two different ways of pronouncing the sound ”d.”

251

CHAPTER FIVE



that you taught us Ali Yihya from the village of Kara in virginal



[and I didn’t know that you and your village have roots in our hills



miten snin50 ago (they found in the mound a pot of meat and bones



Elkana as it was being built

that an ancestral mound of yours that was abandoned one el-juma49 abandoned on coals)

25 was within sight of us]

At this twilight hour I see you Ali Yihya



at the heights of the dwellings of the gods of Greece in the Acropolis



carrying the prayer shawl flag



and how with a yearning Arab soul you stitch up for me all

30

in my one soul

Here at the barriers quiet now descends



and only the gold of the gathered-onion-peels rolls out a smell



that song and the smell of

35

(he is I)



the cuts

the woman’s perplexity and the soldier standing over her

and ana mushtak-lak ya sid Ali51

At this twilight hour, at the foot of Mount Gilboa



and a blue-cobalt evening will arise



soon the day will fall on its sword

40

without a moon.

From beautiful Jenin and its daughters again will spiral up to the

heavens

49 ”Friday” in Arabic. 50 ”two hundred years” in Arabic. 51 ”And I long for you Sir Ali” in Arabic.

252

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS



the Allahu akbar 52 in this wondrous makam 53



and I will send forth the fingers of a Hebrew priest

45

to my loved ones in the mountains and also to you. 54

The title of the poem, ”The Breaker of Barriers” (”Porets hamaḥsomim”) operates on three levels of meaning. On one level of meaning, it refers to the person to whom Cohen dedicated the poem, Ali Yihya (1947-), who broke a political barrier when he became the first Arab citizen to serve as an Israeli ambassador upon his appointment to the Israeli Embassy in Finland in 1995. The poem was written on the occasion of his later appointment as the Israeli Ambassador to Greece in 2006. Cohen had a personal connection with Ali Yihya in his youth. For many years, Yihya taught Arabic in Ulpan Akiva in Naharia. After Eliaz Cohen’s family moved to Elkana on the West Bank, his father arranged for Yihya to come there to teach the children Arabic, because his father believed it was important for Jewish Israelis living among Palestinians to be able to speak their language. In that sense too, as an Arab lending support to the settlement enterprise, Ali Yihya was a breaker of barriers. On a second level of meaning, as the speaker recalls Ali Yihya, he stands guard as a member of the Israeli army at a roadblock in the West Bank designed to check Palestinians and to keep them from breaking through the barriers set up to maintain security in the area. On a third level of meaning, the term ”breaker of barriers” refers to a special vehicle used by Jews to break through Arab road blocks during the Israeli War of Independence. This vehicle is associated in particular with a famous battle during that war. On March 27, 1948, an armed convey headed by a ”breaker of barriers” vehicle traveled from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion to bring supplies to aid the settlements there that had been under Arab attack. On its way back to Jerusalem, a battle ensued between 52 ”God is great” in Arabic. 53 ”A melodic mode used as a basis for improvisation or composition in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish music.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, http://dictionary.oed.com. 54 Eliaz Cohen, Hear O Lord: Poems From the Disturbances of 2000-2009, trans. Larry Barak (New Milford, CT and London: The Toby Press, 2010), 152, 154.

253

CHAPTER FIVE

the convoy and Arab fighters, in the course of which some members of the convoy were able to flee to Gush Etzion, some took refuge in a nearby house, and some remained in the ”breaker of barriers” vehicle. At a point when the battle became desperate the commander of the vehicle, Zerubavel Hurwitz, urged all who could do so to leave the vehicle and then he blew up the vehicle with himself and those who were too wounded to leave, thereby causing the deaths of several Arab attackers. This battle became one of the highlights of the celebrated narrative of Israel’s War of Independence, and, as Cohen has stated, the ”breaker of barriers” vehicle was ”one of the outstanding mythic images” of that war.55 It would appear that Cohen felt a special connection to this image because of his family’s connection to Gush Etzion and the fact that he has settled there. Throughout the poem, the speaker is stationed at one of the many road blocks that the Israeli army has set up in the West Bank to check the movement of Palestinians, a duty which, he makes clear is ”against [his] will” (1-3). The speaker refers to his army duty obliquely by informing the reader of the color of the uniform he is wearing: ”at this time that I’m wearing olive green” (2). By mentioning this fact as the only one that identifies him as a member of the Israel Defense Forces, he expresses a desire to escape from being a disruptive presence in the eyes of the Palestinians and to harmoniously fit into the landscape of the West Bank, in which olive trees are so prevalent. The speaker identifies his location with a list of terms: ”the border crossing Jalameh, sometimes a barrier, sometimes / a road ascending from the Afula Valley to the Dothan Valley / and to the road of the mountain and the forefathers” (4-6). The Arabic name, ”Jalameh,” is followed by the word ”barrier,” which is followed by references to the Hebrew names of places in the area. By interspersing this list with the word ”sometimes” (pa’am) the speaker conveys the degree to which this place can have different meanings for different people. 55 In an e-mail correspondence with me, 16 June 2009. I thank the poet for pointing out to me in this e-mail correspondence that the title refers, in part, to this event. For accounts of this battle see, http://www.etzion-bloc.org.il and http://www.aka.idf.il. A book for young adults, Porets hamaḥsomim, by Amos Bar (Tel Aviv: Y. Shereberk Ltd., 1977), published in a series titled ”No’azim” (”Daring Ones”) featuring heroes of Israeli history, tells the story of Zerubavel Hurwitz’s heroic deeds culminating in the battle in which he lost his life.

254

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

The speaker is very uncomfortable with the superior power he has over the local population, ”stand[ing] over them, during all the inspections” (13), especially when he observes the humiliating experience of a Palestinian woman at the check point: ”when my heart sings in Arabic and goes out to the woman / whose onions scattered out of her sack in all directions / and how in her proud silence she gathers” (17-19). Later in the poem, the speaker refers to himself in third person, in an attempt to dissociate himself from the situation, but in the next line he admits that indeed he is the soldier witnessing the helplessness of this Palestinian woman: ”the woman’s perplexity and the soldier standing over her / (he is I)” (34-35). The speaker recalls Ali Yihya coming to teach him and his friends Arabic in their settlement of Elkana in Samaria: ”at this time I think of you Ali Yihya / how you came all warm and full bellied rolling to us / little settler children ages sabaa and thamania [seven and eight years old] in the awakening land of Samaria / the dancing gutturals / of the language of thad [Arabic]” (8-11). The speaker sprinkles Arabic words and expressions throughout the poem (which have been presented in transliteration in the translation to capture the effect of their presence in the Hebrew poem). These Arabic expressions establish a connection between the speaker and his former teacher, but they also express the speaker’s longing to be more connected with the Palestinians he is inspecting at the check point. The speaker thinks about Ali Yihya’s connection as an Arab to the Palestinians over whom he is exercising power. He refers to those Palestinians as ”members of [Yihya’s] people” (12). The gutteral Arabic words he learned in his youth now ”return and seek a tongue” (14-15), that is he longs to recall that language as a way to open up a line of communication with the Palestinians he controls. As his heart goes out to the woman at the check point whose onions spill out on the ground, it ”sings in Arabic” (17), and she in turn ”whispers / one of the songs” that Ali Yihya had taught the speaker and his friends (19-21). The connection between the speaker and Ali Yihya becomes even more charged when the speaker relates what he knows now but did not know when he was growing up in Elkana. This information, which appears in square brackets, is that the village of Kara, from which Ali 255

CHAPTER FIVE

Yihya comes, has it roots in the hills near Elkana. The supposedly ”virginal Elkana” (21) was actually preceded by an Arab presence, located in an archeological ”ancestral mound” (tel avot [23]), where evidence of life was discovered (”they found in the mound a pot of meat and bones abandoned on coals [24]).” The speaker imagines Ali Yihya joining together his Arab and Israeli identities in his role as an Israeli ambassador. Ali Yihya will symbolically bear the Israeli flag, which was originally modeled after the Jewish ritual prayer shawl, representing Israel in what was once a pagan world: ”At this twilight hour I see you Ali Yihya / carrying the prayer shawl flag / at the heights of the dwellings of the gods of Greece in the Acropolis” (2628). Just as the Israeli national anthem speaks of ”a yearning Jewish soul” (nefesh yehudi homiyyah), now Ali Yihya will translate that into ”a yearning Arab soul” (nefesh aravi homiyyah [29]). Ali Yihya’s ability to be both Arab and Israeli goes a long way toward resolving the tensions experienced by the speaker throughout the poem: ”you stitch up for me all the cuts / in my one soul” (29-30). All of this has taken place at twilight, when day and night mix, when vision is obscured, and identities can be confused. At the end of the poem evening arrives, and ”[h]ere at the barriers quiet now descends,” punctuated by the smell of ”the gold of the gathered-onion-peels” that fell from the Palestinian woman’s basket (31-32). Like King Saul, who fell on his sword on Mount Gilboa when he was defeated in battle (1 Samuel 31:4), ”soon the day will fall on its sword” (38) and a very dark, ”blue-cobalt evening will rise / without a moon” (39-40). In accordance with Muslim tradition the muezzin will call out from the West Bank town of Jenin ”Allah is great,” and at the same time the speaker, a descendant of the priests of ancient Israel, will extend his fingers in the traditional priestly blessing for Arab and Jew alike, and especially for Ali Yihya (41-45).

256

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַה ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫״ה ֵ ּנה ָּכאן ָּתל ּו ַה ָּז ִרים ֶאת רוֹ ֵב ֶיהם ַעל‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫ת־ע ֶרב‬ ‫ַענְ ֵפי ַה ַּזיִ ת‪ ,‬וְ ִה ְת ִקינ ּו לְ ַע ְצ ָמם ֲארו ַּח ֶ‬ ‫ְמ ִה ָירה ִמן ַה ּ ַפ ִח ּיוֹ ת‪ ,‬וְ ַא ַחר נֶ ְח ּ ְפז ּו‬ ‫לְ ֵע ֶבר ַה ַּמ ּ ָשׂ ִא ּיוֹ ת…”‬ ‫(מתוך ״לֵ יל הלילית״‪ ,‬מחמוד דרוויש)‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ֵמ ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת ַה ָּכסוּף ׁ ֶשל ַמ ְחמוּד‬ ‫בּ וֹ ְק ִעים קוֹ לוֹ ת יַ לְ דו ִּתי‪.‬‬ ‫ׁ ָשם נָ ׁ ַשם לִ ִ ּבי ֶאת ָה ָהר‬ ‫עוֹ ד ֶט ֶרם ָק ָרא לוֹ ִ ּב ׁ ְשמוֹ ‪.‬‬ ‫ׁ ָשם ָרא ּו ֵעינַ י ֶאת ָה ַעיִ ן‬ ‫וְ ַרק ֵעינַ י ְ ּבלֹא ִמ ָּלה‪.‬‬

‫‪ 5‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 10‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬‬

‫ ‬

‫ֵמ ַעל ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת ַה ָּכסוּף‬ ‫נוֹ ֲה ִרים ֲענָ נִ ים וְ רו ַּח‪.‬‬ ‫וְ ִא ִּמי‪ָ ּ ,‬פנֶ ָיה נוֹ ֲהרוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫קוֹ ֵראת לִ י ְ ּבקוֹ לָ ּה‪.‬‬ ‫ׁ ָש ָרה לִ י ׁ ִשיר ֶע ֶרשׂ הוּנְ גָ ִרי‬ ‫ימה אוֹ ִתי ִעם ׁ ֶש ֶמ ׁש ְ ּב ִע ְב ִרית‪:‬‬ ‫ו ַּמ ׁ ְש ִּכ ָ‬ ‫״על חוֹ ף ַה ַּזיִ ת ַה ֶּזה‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫יִ גְ דַּ ל ְ ּבנִ י״‬ ‫ִהיא לוֹ ֶח ׁ ֶשת‪ ,‬נִ ׁ ְש ַ ּב ַעת לָ רו ַּח‪.‬‬

‫ַ ּגם ִּכי יַ זְ ִקין ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת‬ ‫ְמ ֻד ָ ּיק וְ נָ ִהיר יַ ֲעמֹד‪.‬‬ ‫יֶ ֱאצֹר ֶאת ָּכל ַה ּקוֹ לוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫יִ ּ ָשׂ א ֶאת ְּכבוֹ ד ַמ ְחמוּד‬ ‫ַה ֻּמ ׁ ְש ּ ָפל ְּכמוֹ יַ לְ דו ִּתי‬ ‫ַה ָּמ ֳע ֶק ֶמת ְ ּב ֵצל ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת‪.‬‬ ‫‪257‬‬

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 25‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 30‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 35‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 40‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 45‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 50‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַעל ְ ּגדוֹ ת ָה ַע ְר ִבית ַה ַּס ְס ּגוֹ נִ ית‬ ‫יתי ַט ָ ּי ָרה ִמ ְתעוֹ ֶפ ֶפת ְ ּב ׁ ֶש ֶקט‬ ‫ָר ִא ִ‬ ‫ֵמ ַה ְּכ ָפר ַה ׁ ּ ָשכֵ ן ֶאל ׁ ָש ֵמינוּ‪.‬‬ ‫נוֹ ֵפל ְ ּב ִע ְב ִרית לַ ֲח ַצר ִמ ׁ ְש ּ ַפ ַחת ֶק ֶדם‪.‬‬ ‫ִמ ׁ ּ ָשם יִ ְתעוֹ ֵפף ְ ּביָ ֶד ָיה ַה ׁ ּ ְש ֻח ּמוֹ ת‪ַ ,‬ה ְּק ַטנְ ַט ּנוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל ַח ָ ּוה‪ ,‬יַ ְמ ִריא ֲע ִפיפוֹ ן ֶאלְ ָעל‪.‬‬ ‫ְ ּביַ ד ֲעיֵ ָפה ו ְּב ֵעינַ יִ ם קוֹ ְרנוֹ ת‬ ‫ִא ִּמי ַמ ְצ ִ ּב ָיעה וְ אוֹ ֶמ ֶרת‪:‬‬ ‫יתים ָה ֵא ֶּלה ַמ ְח ַמדִּ י‬ ‫״מ ַה ֵּז ִ‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫יִ כְ ְּת ׁש ּו ַהכּ ֲֹהנִ ים ׁ ֶש ֶמן זַ יִ ת‬ ‫ָּכ ִתית ָּכ ִתית לִ ְמנוֹ ַרת ַה ָּז ָהב״‬ ‫יתי ֶאת ָּכל ָה ֵע ִצים‬ ‫וַ ֲאנִ י ָאז ָר ִא ִ‬ ‫בּ וֹ ֲע ִרים ְּכלֶ ָהבוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ נֶ ֱאכָ לִ ים ְּכמוֹ יַ לְ דו ִּתי‬ ‫ׁ ֶש ָ ּג ְדלָ ה ְ ּב ֵצל זַ יִ ת ֶא ָחד ָאהוּב‪.‬‬ ‫ֲאנִ י רוֹ ֶאה יְ לָ ִדים ׁ ֶשל ַמ ְחמוּד‬ ‫ְמ ַשׂ ֲח ִקים ַ ּב ִּמ ְר ּ ֶפ ֶסת לְ יַ ד ׁ ַשגָ ָ׳רה ַא־זַ יְ תוּן‬ ‫ִ ּב ְפנֵ ֶיהם אוֹ תוֹ ַה ּ ַפ ַחד ַה ַחד‬ ‫ׁ ֶשל יַ לְ דו ִּתי‬ ‫ו ִּב ְפנֵ י ַמ ְחמוּד ִשׂ נְ ָאה לְ יָ הוּד‬ ‫ו ִּב ְפנֵ י ָא ִבי ּ ַפ ַחד ֵמ ַע ְר ִבי‪,‬‬ ‫וְ ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת יַ ִ ּביט ַ ּבכּ ֹל‬ ‫וְ יִ ׁ ְש ּתֹק‪.‬‬ ‫לַ ֶּט ַר ָּסה ְ ּב ִק ְד ַמת ַה ַ ּביִ ת‬ ‫ֵאין ִמ ָּלה ְ ּב ִע ְב ִרית‪.‬‬ ‫ֲא ָבל ֲאנִ י ֵמ ִקים אוֹ ָת ּה ֵמ ָע ָפר‬ ‫ִ ּב ׁ ְש ֵּתי יָ ַדי‪,‬‬ ‫ְ ּבזֵ ַעת ַא ּ ִפי ַמ ִּקיף ָ ּב ּה ָח ֵצר‪,‬‬ ‫ַ ּביִ ת לִ ְבנוֹ ת לָ ְך ֲאהו ָּב ִתי ַה ְּל ָבנָ ה‪.‬‬ ‫ַ ּב ֲח ֵצ ֵרנ ּו נִ ַּטע נֵ ֶצר זַ יִ ת‪ֶ ׁ ,‬ש ִ ּיגְ דַּ ל‪ֶ ׁ ,‬ש ִ ּיגְ דַּ ל‪,‬‬ ‫וְ יִ ׁ ְש ַמע ֶאת יְ לָ ֵדינ ּו צוֹ ֲח ִקים ַּת ְח ָּתיו‬ ‫‪258‬‬

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

.‫ר־הצָּ ֳה ַריִ ם‬ ַ ‫ְמ ַר ׁ ְש ְר ׁ ִשים ָּכמוֹ ה ּו ְ ּברו ַּח ַא ַח‬



,‫ׁ ְש ַמע ַ ּב ֲע ַצת ֵעץ ַה ַּזיִ ת ַה ָּז ֵקן‬ ,‫רוּחוֹ ת ְ ּב ֶא ֶרץ ִ ּבנְ יָ ִמין ְממוֹ לְ לוֹ ת ֵעץ ְ ּב ֵע ָצה‬ ‫ַה ֵּטה ָאזְ נְ ָך לַ חוֹ ר ַה ּ ָפעוּר‬ ‫ְ ּבלֵ ב ַה ֶ ּגזַ ע ַה ְמ ֻס ָּקס‬



‫ִמ ׁ ּ ָשם ָּתבוֹ א רו ַּח ַה ׁ ּ ֵשם‬ :‫וְ ִתלְ ַח ׁש לְ ָך‬



55





The Home



”Behold here the strangers hung their rifles on



an instant dinner from containers, and afterward they hurried





Nahum Pachenik

olive branches, and prepared for themselves over to their trucks…”

(From ”The Owl’s Night,” Mahmoud Darwish)



From the longed-for olive tree of Mahmoud



There my heart breathed the mountain

5

burst forth sounds of my childhood. even before it was called by name. There my eyes saw the spring

only my eyes without a word.



Above the longed-for olive tree



And my mother, her face shining,



stream by clouds and wind.

10 calls to me in her voice.

Sings me a Hungarian lullaby



”At the edge of this olive tree



and wakes me with the sun in Hebrew: my son will grow”

259



CHAPTER FIVE

15 she whispers, vowing to the wind.

Even when this olive tree grows old



Storing all the sounds,



precisely and clearly it will stand. it will lift the honor of Mahmoud

20 degraded like my childhood

made crooked in the shade of the olive tree.



On the banks of the varicolored evening



from the neighboring village to our sky.



I saw a kite fly quietly

25 Falling in Hebrew to the yard of the Kedem family.

From there it will fly held by the dark brown, tiny hands of



With a tired hand and radiating eyes





Hava, taking off as a kite beyond.

my mother points and says:

30 ”From these olives my darling

the priests will squeeze the olive oil



and I then saw all the trees



beaten well for the golden candelabrum” engulfed in flames

35 devoured like my childhood

growing up in the shade of a beloved olive tree.



I see children of Mahmoud



in their faces that same sharp fear



playing on the porches by an olive tree

40 of my childhood

and in the face of Mahmoud hatred for the Jew



and the olive tree will observe it all



and in the face of my father fear of the Arab, and be silent.

260

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

45 For the terrace at the front of the house

there is no word in Hebrew.



with my two hands,



But I raise it from the dust

by the sweat of my brow I surround it with a yard,

50 building a house for you my love so white.

In our yard we’ll plant an olive sapling, may it grow, may it grow,



rustling like it in the afternoon wind.



and may it hear our children laughing under it

55

Heed the advice of the old olive tree,

the winds in the land of Benjamin wear away a tree with



let your eye pay heed to the gaping hole



from there will come the spirit of God





advice,

in the heart of the knotty trunk

and will whisper to you:56

Mahumoud Darwish (1941-2008) is generally considered to be the leading Palestinian poet of the twentieth century. He grew up in Mandatory Palestine and in Israel, which he left in 1970. In 1995, after the signing of the Oslo peace accords, he returned to live in Amman, Jordan and in Ramallah in the West Bank. The quotation which the poet places at the beginning of the poem contains the last four lines of the final stanza of a poem by Darwish translated into Hebrew. 57 Darwish’s poem conveys the suffering of Palestinians who were exiled from their land in 1948. The Palestinian speaker keeps returning to the question of the relationship of the painful past to the present life which he is trying to live. In the final stanza, most of which is quoted by Pachenik, the speaker is haunted by the image of Israeli soldiers (referred to as hazarim [”strangers”]) pausing 56 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 16-18. 57 The Hebrew translation of the poem, by Anton Shammas, was published in Ḥadarim 12 (1996): 8-9.

261

CHAPTER FIVE

to eat in the course of their mission to expel the Palestinians. In this passage, there is a jarring contrast between the dignity and age of the olive tree, which is so native to the landscape of Israel/Palestine, and the Israelis portrayed as soldiers of occupation who use the tree merely as a place to hang their rifles and who hurriedly eat an instant meal and go off quickly to return to their trucks. The speaker in Pachenik’s poem begins by observing that the very landscape – the olive tree, the mountain, the spring, the clouds, the wind – for which Darwish longed in exile was the kind of landscape in which he himself grew up (1-8). When the speaker was young, his mother, an immigrant from Hungary, sang to him at night and woke him in the morning with the determination (”she whispers, vowing to the wind”) that by the olive tree near their home he will grow up to be big and strong (9-15). She connects the olive tree to bigger dreams as well, to the longed-for messianic era when the Temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt and olive oil will once more be used to light the Temple’s candelabrum (28-32). Throughout the poem, the speaker makes connections between the experiences of Jews and those of Arabs. Darwish’s honor was ”degraded like [the speaker's] childhood / made crooked in the shade of the olive tree” (19-21). A kite, called by its Arabic term, tayyarah, flies from a nearby Arab village into the speaker’s Jewish settlement. When a Jewish child sends it off into the sky again, the kite is called by its Hebrew term afifon (22-27]. When the speaker’s mother refers to him as ”my darling” she uses the Hebrew term maḥmadi, which shares a cognate root with the Arabic name Mahmoud (30). When the speaker relates that he grew up ”in the shade of a beloved olive tree” (36), he uses the Hebrew term for ”olive tree,” zayit, and in the next stanza when he writes of seeing Arab children ”playing…by an olive tree” (37-38), he uses the Arabic term for ”olive tree,” shajara a-zaytun. Despite all of these connections between Arabs and Jews, hatred, fear, and destruction haunt this poem. The Arab children have ”that same sharp fear” that the Jewish speaker experienced as a child (39-40). Arabs hate Jews (referred to with the Arabic term Yahud), and the speaker’s father fears Arabs (41-42). Given all of 262

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

this tension, it is not surprising that as a boy the speaker had imagined all the trees burning some day (33-34). As the speaker erects a house for his wife, he realizes that there is only a term of French origin for the terrace he is building (45-46), thereby suggesting the European influence on the culture of Israeli Jews. The building of the house is associated with the creation story in Genesis. Just as God created Adam out of dust (Genesis 2:7), so does the speaker erect his new home out of dust (47-48), and he works ”by the sweat of [his] brow” (4950), as Adam was required to do after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:19). Continuing the childhood experience of Arabs and of Jewish settlers, he and his wife will plant a new olive tree under which their children will play (51-53). The wisest of all is the age-old olive tree, which for many years has continued to hold within itself all that has taken place in its presence: ”Even when this olive tree grows old / precisely and clearly it will stand. / Storing all the sounds” (16-18). The tree takes in everything, including Mahmoud’s hatred of the speaker’s father and the speaker’s father’s fear of the Arab, and remains silent (41-44). Toward the end of the poem, the speaker declares that the old olive tree has advice, which the winds where the ancient Israelite tribe of Benjamin was located have brought to it, wearing it away over time (54-55). One may find this advice in the gaping hole of the trunk of the olive tree, where the spirit of God whispers, but the poem never reveals what the advice is (56-59).

‫ַה ָּזר‬ ‫נחום פצ׳ניק‬



* .‫ִפ ָיראס עוֹ לֶ ה ַעל סוּס ָה ֱאמוּנָ ה‬ ֹ‫ִעוְ רוֹ נו‬ ,‫ימה‬ ָ ‫ַמ ְד ִהיר ֶאת ַה ּסוּס ָק ִד‬ ,‫ימה‬ ָ ‫ָק ִד‬ .‫ לֶ ָה ִרים ַה ְּקדוֹ ׁ ִשים‬5 ‫ְּת ִפ ּלוֹ ָתיו ְּכ ֻא ָּכף‬ 263

‫‪CHAPTER FIVE‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ַמנְ ִמיכוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫ְמיַ צְּ בוֹ ת ֶאת ָה ַא ָ ּגן ַעל ַה ּסוּס‪.‬‬

‫ *‬ ‫ ‬ ‫אשוֹ נָ ה‬ ‫ִפ ָיראס ִמ ְת ּ ַפ ֵּלל ִר ׁ‬ ‫‪ֶ 10‬ט ֶרם ׁ ַש ַחר‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ִמ ְתעוֹ ֵרר לְ לֹא ֻק ׁ ְשיוֹ ת‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַמ ְבדִּ יל ֵ ּבין ְּתכֵ לֶ ת לְ כַ ְר ִּתי‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ָּכנו ַּע ִפ ָיראס לִ ְפנֵ י ֵאל ַה ַּס ַהר ַה ָ ּירֹק‪,‬‬ ‫זָ קוּף ַעל ַה ּסוּס‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 15‬נִ צָּ ב ֶאל מוּל ַה ׁ ּ ָש ֵקד ַה ּפוֹ ֵר ַח‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַ ּב ֻ ּב ְס ָּתן‪.‬‬ ‫ *‬ ‫סו ָּמא ִפ ָיראס‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫יצ ּיוֹ ַתי וּזְ ָקנִ י‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫לֹא רוֹ ֶאה ּ ְפאוֹ ַתי ִצ ִ‬ ‫סו ָּמא ִפ ָיראס‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪ 20‬לֹא רוֹ ֶאה ַס ְמ ָמנַ י‬ ‫ ‬ ‫לֹא רוֹ ֶאה ְ ּב ֵע ַרת ֵעינַ י‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַאלְ לַ ּה ִּכ ָ ּבה ְמאוֹ ר ֵעינָ יו‬ ‫וְ ִה ְדלִ יק ִ ּב ְשׂ ָערוֹ ֶה ָח ׁשוּךְ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ֶאת ְ ּב ֵע ַרת ַה ֵּלילוֹ ת‪.‬‬ ‫ *‬ ‫‪ 25‬לַ יְ לָ ה‪ֶ .‬ע ֶשׂ ר‪.‬‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ִפ ָיראס ִמ ְת ּ ַפ ֵלל ַב ֲח ִמ ׁ ִשית‬ ‫ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ישית‬ ‫ְּת ִפ ַלת ַא ׁ ְש ָּכ ָבה ֲח ִר ׁ ִ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַּת ַחת ׁ ְש ֵמי ֲאדֹנָ י‬ ‫זְ רו ֵּעי כּ וֹ כָ ִבים‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ֹאשוֹ ֶה ָעיֵ ף‬ ‫יח ר ׁ‬ ‫‪ 30‬סו ָּהא ִ ּב ּתוֹ ַּת ִ ּנ ַ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַעל ַה ַּכר ַה ַּקר‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ְ ּב ֵאין ֶּכ ֶסף לְ נֵ ְפ ְט‬ ‫ ‬ ‫טוּב לִ בּ וֹ יְ ַח ֵּמם ֶאת ַה ּ ְשׂ ִמיכָ ה ַהדַּ ָקה‪,‬‬ ‫ֱאמוּנָ תוֹ ַּתצִּ ית ֶאת ַה ַּתנוּר ַה ַּקר‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫‪264‬‬

‫‪ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS‬‬

‫ *‬ ‫‪ִ 35‬פ ָיראס דּ וֹ ֵהר ַעל סוּס ָה ֱאמוּנָ ה ַה ׁ ּ ָשחֹר‪.‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ִאם ֶא ְצ ַעק ַ ּב ַּליְ לָ ה ַאלְ לַ ּה ַאלְ לְ לַ ּה‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ֶא ׁ ְש ַמע לְ ֶפ ַתע ַס ָ ּבא ׁ ֶש ִּלי‬ ‫ ‬ ‫יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַ ּב ַעל ׁ ֵשם טוֹ ב‬ ‫‪ִ 40‬מ ְתיַ ׁ ּ ֵשב ַעל ַס ְפ ַסל ָה ֵעץ ַה ָ ּי ׁ ָשן‬ ‫יבלָ ְ‬ ‫ַ ּב ׁ ּ ְש ִט ְ ּ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫עטל ְ ּב ֶמעזִ ׳יבּ וּז׳‪,‬‬ ‫אך ׁ ֶש ַ ּב ׁ ּ ְש ֶט ְ‬ ‫ָקרוֹ ב ָקרוֹ ב ֵאלַ י‪,‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ַמ ִ ּביט ַ ּבכּ וֹ כָ ִבים ׁ ֶש ַ ּב ַח ּלוֹ ן‬ ‫ ‬ ‫וְ יוֹ ֵד ַע ָּכמוֹ נִ י ַהכּ ֹל וְ לֹא כְ לוּם‪.‬‬ ‫‪ 45‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ו ְּבגַ ְר ִעין ַה ַּליְ לָ ה ׁ ֶש ֶּט ֶרם נָ ַבט‪,‬‬ ‫ָ ּב ַא ׁ ְשמ ֶֹרת ַה ׁ ּ ְשנִ ָ ּיה‪,‬‬ ‫יוֹ ֵד ַע ִפ ָיראס ִ ּב ׁ ְשנָ תוֹ‬ ‫ו ְּמ ׁ ַש ֵ ּנן ז׳ ּ ְפ ָע ִמים ְ ּב ַע ְר ִבית‪:‬‬ ‫ַה ׁ ּ ֵשם הוּא ָה ֱאל ִֹהים‪.‬‬

‫‪ 50‬‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫ו ְּב ֶע ֶצם ַה ַּליְ לָ ה‪ְּ ,‬כ ׁ ֶש ֵעינָ יו ֲעצוּמוֹ ת‬ ‫וְ ַה ֻ ּב ְס ָּתן ַה ְמלַ ְבלֵ ב ְ ּבלָ ָבן‬ ‫ֲעמוּס ֲח ׁ ֵשכָ ה‪,‬‬ ‫יאת מו ַּא ִּזין ֵה ֵּלב‪:‬‬ ‫ַק ׁ ּשוּבוֹ ת ָאזְ נָ יו לִ ְק ִר ַ‬ ‫ֲאדֹנָ י ֱאל ֵֹהינ ּו ֲאדֹנָ י ֶא ָחד‬ ‫‪The Stranger‬‬

‫‪Nahum Pachenik‬‬

‫ ‬ ‫ ‬

‫* ‬

‫‪Firas mounts the horse of faith.‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪spurs the horse ahead,‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪His blindness‬‬

‫ ‬

‫‪ ahead,‬‬

‫‪to the holy mountains.‬‬

‫‪His prayers like a saddle‬‬ ‫‪265‬‬

‫ ‪5‬‬ ‫ ‬

CHAPTER FIVE

lower,

make stable his pelvis on his horse.

*

Firas prays first



awakens with no religious doubts,



Subservient is Firas to the God of the green crescent,

10 before dawn,

distinguishes between azure and green. erect on his horse,

15 standing opposite the blooming almond tree

in the garden.

*

Blind is Firas,



blind is Firas,



he doesn’t see my side curls ritual fringes and beard,

20 he doesn’t see my features

doesn’t see the fire in my eyes.



and kindled in his darkened hair



Allah extinguished the light of his eyes the fire of nights.

* 25 Night. Ten o’clock. Firas prays a fifth time a quiet bedtime prayer under the heavens of the Lord sown with stars. 30 Suha his daughter places his tired head on the cold pillow. With no money for fuel the goodness of his heart warms the thin blanket, his faith ignites the cold oven. 266

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

* 35 Firas gallops on the black horse of faith. If I’ll cry out at night Allah Allah I’ll suddenly hear my grandfather Israel Baal Shem Tov 40 sitting on the old wooden bench in the shtiebels of the shtetl Mezhibozh, near so near to me, looking at the stars through the window and knowing like me everything and nothing. 45

And in the seed of the night before it sprouts, at the second watch, Firas knows in his sleep repeating seven times in Arabic: The Lord is God.

50

And in the middle of the night while his eyes are closed and the orchard blossoming in white is burdened with darkness, his ears are attentive to the cry of the muezzin of his heart:



The Lord our God the Lord is one 58

The Arab character at the center of this poem, Firas, has an unfortunate life. He is blind (2, 17-22) and very poor – without even the basic necessity of heating fuel (32-34). He lives alone with his daughter who cares for him (30-31). He is, however, a paragon of faith. His faith is likened to a ride on a horse (1-8). He arises each morning ”with no religious doubts” (11). He fulfills his religious obligation as a Muslim to pray five times a day, from the time he rises before dawn until he goes to sleep at night (9-10, 25-29). He is ”[s]ubservient” to the Muslim God, ”the God of the green crescent” (13), and well integrated into his natural setting: ”erect on his horse, / standing opposite the blooming almond tree / in the garden” 58 Pachenik, Sus ha’emunah, 19-21.

267

CHAPTER FIVE

(14-16). His faith allows him to overcome all physical discomforts: ”With no money for fuel / the goodness of his heart warms the thin blanket / his faith ignites the cold oven” (32-34). At one point in the poem, the speaker calls attention to the religious differences between himself as an observant Jew and Firas as an observant Muslim. Because Firas is blind, the speaker notes, he cannot see the obvious external signs of the speaker’s Jewish religiosity (his ”side curls ritual fringes and beard”) or the particular religious intensity expressed by his eyes (17-21). To a certain extent, however, each one’s religiosity is similar to that of the other. The speaker cries out the Arabic name for God, Allah, and this makes him hear his ancestor, the founder of Hasidism, ”Israel / Baal Shem Tov / sitting on the old wooden bench / in the shtiebels [Yiddish for ”small prayer houses”] of the shtetl [Yiddish for ”village”] Mezhibozh” (36-44). When Firas awakens before dawn, he waits to pray until he can tell the difference ”between azure and green,” which is the earliest time one can recite the morning Shema (biblical passages at the heart of the Jewish morning prayer service) according to one rabbinic legal opinion expressed in the Mishnah (Berakhot 1:2 [9-12]). In his nighttime prayer, Firas recites an Arabic translation of the Hebrew expression ”The Lord is God” (45-49). This was recited by the Israelites as an affirmation of faith in the time of Elijah (1 Kings 18: 39), and like Jews at the end of Yom Kippur services in the synagogue, Firas recites it ”seven times” (48). ”And in the middle of the night while his eyes are closed / and the orchard blossoming in white / is burdened with darkness” (50-52), within his heart Firas hears a kind of muezzin call to prayer consisting of words from the first verse of the Shema: ”The Lord our God the Lord is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4 [53-54]).

268

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282

INDEX

w

Abel (in Bible) 79 Abraham (in Bible) 32, 128-130,  159n3, 161,162,  167-168, 169-170,  172-173, 178, 208,  233, 245, 248 Adam (in Bible) 126, 191, 263 Ahasuerus (in Bible)  103 Amichai, Yehuda  ix, 43, 52, 60, 67 Antebi, Shur  19n3 Appelfeld, Meir  72 Arabic  84, 178, 206, 207,  210, 226, 233, 234,  253, 254, 255, 262, 268 Arabs  x, 30, 33, 43, 61, 89,  118, 178, 206-207,  211, 220-221, 222,  226, 228-230, 233-234,  241-244, 245-247,  248-249, 253-256,  262-263, 267-268 Arafat, Yasser  178 Ariel, Rav Yaakov  54 Ariel, Rav Yisrael  152 Arieli, Rav Asher 96, 102-103

Aviner, Rav Shlomo

55, 65, 91, 159n3

Bat-Shahar, Hanna 25 Be’er, Haim 60 Begging for Intimacy: See Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut Begin, Menahem  30 Ben Yosef, Reuven  69 Benjamin (in Bible)  136 Bible, biblical  x, xii, 22, 32-33,  40, 44, 46n69, 47,  68, 81,105, 106,  119, 136, 157-161 Bin-Nun, Rav Yoel  158

Cain (in Bible)  78-79 Carlebach, Shlomo  115 Cedar, Joseph  25-26 Chalfi, Rachel  67 Christianity, Christians  23n9, 31n31,  144-145, 230, 241 Cohen, Eliaz  xiii, 19, 27n22,  28-35, 43-44,

283

Index

      Covenant  

46, 58-62, 118, 119, 127, 131, 160, 161, 173-174, 176, 182-184, 186, 205-211, 223, 226, 253-254 24n12, 82-85, 109-110, 128-130

Darwish, Mahmoud  226, 241, 261-263 Disengagement from Gaza Strip and Samaria  xi, 30, 61, 205,  209, 210-211, 225n35 Divon, Hava  25 Dreyfus, Rav Yair  xiii, 36, 83n57

Eliyahu, Rav Mordecai 62 Elijah (in Bible) 188, 213, 229-230, 268 Esau (in Bible)  98, 199, 246 Esther (in Bible)  103 Eve (in Bible)  126, 191 Exodus from Egypt  91, 161, 173-174, 176-179

Far East  72, 115, 155, 241 China  155-156 India  63-64, 70, 115-117 Thailand  42 Far Eastern religions  145 Buddhism  116 Hinduism  116 Meditation  241-244 First Touch: See Negi’ot rishonot Fogel, Shimon  xiii, 19n3 Fruman, Rav Menahem  209-210 Galut halivyatan (Sivan Har-Shefi) 

69

284

Gilboa, Amir  43, 70 Ginsburgh, Rav Yitzchak  39 God  27, 41, 46n69, 47,  54, 72, 76-77,  78-79, 81, 83-84,  91, 94, 98, 105-106,  110, 115-119, 123,  127, 128-130,  131-132, 135-137,  138-139, 140-141,  143-144, 144-145,  149-152, 155-156,  158, 161, 162, 167,  169-170, 172-173,  176-178, 191, 203,  210, 225, 233, 246,  248, 263, 267-268 Greenberg, Uri Zvi  43, 69 Grinberg, Yehoshua  25 Guri, Haim  60 Gush Emunim  17-18, 20, 29,  31, 33n33, 42,  49, 91, 98-99,  205, 206-207, 209

Hagar (in Bible)  162, 167, 178 Halakhah (Jewish law)  xii, 24, 26, 35,  37, 62, 82, 103, 119 Haman (in Bible)  98 Har-Shefi, Avishar  xiii, 19, 36, 38,  66-67, 69, 119,  127, 161, 162, 168,  173, 184-185, 186,  211, 219, 226, 233 Har-Shefi, Sivan  xiii, 19, 36, 67,  68-69, 119, 132,  135, 160, 161, 169,  173, 185, 186,  211, 226, 233

Index

Hasidism  35, 37, 66, 68,  114-115, 117, 268 Baal Shem Tov (Besht)  114, 268 Bratslav Hasidim  149, 151-152 Chernobyl Hasidism  63 Habad Hasidism  37-39 Nahman of Bratslav  65n34,  82-85, 149, 152 Schneur Zalman of Liadi  37-38 Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshuah (Nissinovitch)  54 Hazmanah levekhi (Cohen)  61 Hear O Lord: Poems of the Disturbances of 2000-2004: See Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 Hezekiah (in Bible)  71 Holocaust:  52, 63, 127, 141n39,  213, 220, 246 Horse of Faith, The: See Sus ha’emunah Horses of Fire: See Susei esh Hosea (in Bible)  127 Hurwitz, Zerubavel  254

Intifada, Second  118, 128, 148, 161,  173, 176, 178, 211,  213, 219, 223 Invitation to Cry, An: See Hazmanah levekhi Isaac (in Bible)  159n3, 161, 162,  167-168, 199, 208,  233-234, 245-247, 248 Isaakson, Miron  23 Ishmael (in Bible)  162, 167, 178, 208,  233, 245-247, 248 Israel, Land of  17, 20, 30, 31n31,  33n33, 38, 99,  156, 205, 207, 230 Israel, State of  x, 17, 30, 99,  193, 208, 246 Israel Defense Forces  176, 254

Israeli-Palestinian conflict  xi, 47, 115,  205-211, 241 Israeli War of Independence  61, 207,  228-229, 253-254

Jabotinsky, Zeev  58 Jacob (in Bible)  109, 159n3, 199, 246 Jewish law: See Halakhah Jewish holidays Passover  92, 173-174, 176-179 Purim  98 Rosh Hashanah  113, 155, 233 Shavuot  72 Tisha B’Av  67 Yom Kippur  155, 233, 268 Jewish ritual Havdalah  191 Kiddush  39, 194 Mezuzah  105 Prayer shawl  113, 123,  140, 256 Sabbath candles  91, 194 Tefillin  64, 68, 105,  119-120, 122-124 Jonah (in Bible)  94-95 Joseph (in Bible)  136-137, 138, 148-152

Kabbalah   Kaplun, Yonadav   Kedar, Mira  Klein, Shmuel    

285

35, 39n50, 114, 117, 141n39 xiii, 23, 38-39, 40n51, 54 25 xiii, 19, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41n53, 42, 45, 57, 59, 209, 211, 225n35

Index

Kook, Rav Avraham Yitzhak 20-23, 26n20,  35, 37, 59,  181-182, 185 Kook, Rav Zvi Yehuda  20-21, 29, 43,  55, 58, 62, 96,  97-100, 114, 209 Kosman, Admiel  ix, 23, 40n51

Laban (in Bible)  136-137 Leah (in Bible)  246 Lebanon War  248-249 Leviathan’s Exile: See Galut halivyatan Libes, Yehuda  72 Lober, Hagay  25 Low Table of Salvation, The: See Hashulḥan hanamukh shel hayeshuah Luria, Zippora (Zippi)  27-28, 34, 57

Maharal of Prague  228 Maimonides  150 Mashiv Haruaḥ  18-19, 25n14, 27,  34-35, 37-39,  40-47, 49-51,  54, 56, 57, 59,  60, 64, 160, 161,  182, 183-186, 205 Meḥumashim (Cohen)  60 Messiah  71, 150, 178, 249 Messianic redemption  17-18, 20, 31,  91, 99, 150, 156,  208, 230 Micah (in Bible)  214 Midrash  35, 71, 157, 159, 161 Bereshit Rabbah  167 Shemot Rabbah  111 Vayikra Rabbah  191 Shir Hashirim Rabbah  71 Eikhah Rabbah  230 Miriam, Rivka  ix, 72

286

Miron, Dan  53 Mishkovsky, Zelda  ix, 23, 27n22,  37-38, 43, 52,  67, 68, 70 Moses (in Bible)  110-111 Muhammad  233 Muslims  145, 149-151, 178,  209-210, 226,  228-230, 233-234,  241, 243, 256, 267-268 Mysticism  72, 82, 85, 91,  114, 187-189

Negi’ot rishonot (Cohen)  61 Neria, Rav Moshe Zvi  35, 59, 182-183 Nir, Elhanan  xiii, 19, 27n22, 29,  33-34, 36, 38,  44, 46n69, 69-73,  74, 96, 101, 113-118,  119, 132, 145, 149,  152, 205-206, 210-211 Nissinovitch, Yoram  xiii, 19, 39,  52-55, 56, 73,  74, 76n51, 104,  185, 186, 195,  211, 226, 228-230 Noah (in Bible)  65

Obadiah (in Bible) Onan (in Bible)  Oslo peace process   Oz, Amos  Ozer, Yosef 

Pachenik, Nahum    

99 81 30-32, 176, 210, 222, 261 28 19n3, 23

xiii, 19, 36, 39, 40n51, 50, 63-65, 73, 74, 83n57, 96, 113, 116, 119, 145,

Index

 186, 195, 205-206,  209, 211, 226, 261-262, Palestinians  x, xi, 29, 30,  47, 100, 109, 128,  145, 148-149,  151-152, 176-179,  205-211, 213,  219-221, 222-225,  226, 228-230,  245-247, 248-249,  253-256, 261-263 Partzovitz, Rav Nahum  102n70 Peace Now  206-207 Pedaya, Haviva  xiii, 23 Peli, Pinhas  66 Pinhas-Cohen, Hava  ix, 23, 40n51 Prayer  39, 40, 47, 64,  68, 113-120,  122-124, 126-127,  132, 135, 140,  144-145, 148-152,  188, 210, 228-229,  234, 256, 267-268

Rabin, Yitzhak  30, 214 Rachel (in Bible)  136, 246 Rand, Shuly  25 Ratosh, Yonatan  43 Ravikovitch, Dalia  43, 44, 60, 67 Rebekah (in Bible)  161, 162, 167-168, 246 Reich, Asher  ix Rimon, Yosef Zvi  23, 43 Rosenberg, Rav Shimon Gershon (Rav Shagar)  35-37, 38, 44,  54, 64, 67, 71, 76n51 Sabato, Rav Hayim  25, 35, 57 Sabbath  39, 67, 76-77,  94, 103, 114, 117,  131, 137, 149-151,

 167, 185-186,  187-189, 191,  193-194, 233-234 Sadeh, Pinhas  52-53, 70 Sarah (in Bible)  161, 162, 167,  169-170, 172-173,  178, 248 Saul (in Bible)  256 Schonfeld, Michael  25 Sexuality  20, 34, 42, 43,  46n69, 47, 53,  65, 81-85, 91,  103, 137, 143-144,  181-186, 187-189,  191, 193-194, 195,  198-199, 203-204 Shagar, Rav: See Rosenberg, Rav Shimon Gershon. Shaked, Naama xiii, 19, 39, 50,  55-56, 57, 68,  73, 104, 132 Shamir, Moshe  44, 60, 69 Shapira, Rav Avraham  61-62 Shapira, Eliezer (Leyzi)  25 Sharon, Ariel  30 Shekhinah  85, 159n3 Shema Ado-nay: mishirei me’ora’ot 5761-5764 (Cohen)  61 Sherlo, Rav Yuval  65, 158-159, 181-182 Shochet, Manya  224-225 Shok, Shlomo  37 Shulhan Arukh  82 Sinai Campaign  61 Six-Day War  ix, 17, 20, 61,  97, 207 Solomon (in Bible)  129, 234 Somekh, Aya  19n3 Spirituality  32n32, 41, 47,  114, 117, 120, 124,  137, 145, 151-152,  161, 173 Steinsaltz, Rav Adin  53, 72

287

Index

Sus ha’emunah (Pachenik)  65 Susei esh (Avishar Har-Shefi)  67 Synagogue  113-114, 122-124,  135, 149-151, 160, 268 Talmud  35, 36-37, 40,  53, 66, 67, 70,  75-76, 81-82, 87,  89, 91n64,  101-103, 110,  157, 159 Tractates Avodah Zarah  110 Berakhot  268 Bikkurim  141 Kiddushin  101 Nidah  82 Sanhedrin  84n58, 103 Ta’anit  67 Sages Rabbi Akiva  230 Rabbi Ami  82 Rabbi Asi  82 Rabbi Elazar  188-189 Rabbi Hanania ben Tradyon  110 Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai  188-189 Rabbi Yitzhak  82 Rabbi Yohanan  82 Tau, Rav Zvi Yisrael  43, 182 Tehillim for a Day of Thunder: See Tehillim leyom ra’ash Tehillim leyom ra’ash (Sivan Har-Shefi)  69 Teḥinnah al ha’intimiyyut (Nir)  72 Terrorism  109, 118, 128-130,  176-179, 211,  213-214, 219-221,  222-225, 229 Torah 24n12, 29, 36,  56, 60, 70, 71-72,  78, 98, 105,  109-111, 160, 161, 187-189

288

Ultra-orthodoxy  

Weiss, Hillel  Wollach, Yona  Yaoz-Kest, Itamar  Yihya, Ali  Yom Kippur War  Yonatan, Natan  

18n1, 25, 61-62, 66, 102, 183

59 42, 43, 68 60 253, 255-256 17, 31n31, 61, 98 44, 52, 60, 69-70, 71

Zionism  17, 20n6, 24n12,  32, 159, 224 Hapoel Hamizrahi  58 labor Zionism 27, 58, 62 religious Zionism  ix-xii, 17-23,  24n12, 25,  27-28, 32n32,  34, 38, 40-44,  49-51, 52,  55-56, 57, 58,  59, 61-62,  64-65, 68-69,  71-72, 74, 98,  104, 113-116,  145, 156, 159n3,  160, 181-182,  184, 205n1, 207-209 revisionist Zionism  58 Zinger, Rav Dov  64 Zohar  66, 68, 82, 188-189

INDEX OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES

w

Genesis 277 2:11-14143 2:7263 3:19263 3:24126 4:1279 15128 15:1130 15:5129 15:10 128, 130 15:18-21129 17:17170 18:1-10169 18:6172 18:11172 18:12170 21 162, 245 21:9 178, 248 21:10248 22 162, 234 24:63-67162 25:22-23246 26:12247 26:17-22168 27:38199 28:11109

28:12246 31:19136 32:25-33246 37138 38:981 44:2136 Exodus 2:23177 3:8214 9:24178 12:1-28174 12:3177 12:10177 12:13177 12:30178 19:6110 20:422 24:10-11110 34:29-35110 Leviticus 15:25214 Numbers 5:11-31247

289

Index of biblical passages

Deuteronomy

Micah

2:598 5:822 6:4268 8:17117 16:3179

4:4140 7:17214

1 Samuel

Zechariah 7:10210 Psalms

31:4256

3:8129 5:5140 18229 18:39268

22:2132 29150 29:3-9150 81:4155 95234 97:11199 126:1156

2 Kings

Song of Songs

2:11213 18:31140

1:2144 1:13132 3:6-7234 5:14199 8:6132

1 Kings

Isaiah 36:16140 40:26129

Lamentations

Ezekiel

5:18230

1:4144 1:27144

Esther

Hosea 2:21-22127

290

9:198