Release,
please
Release, please, this bound one
By the power of your right hand
Receive the song of your people,
Exalt
us, Lord, and make us
pure. Almighty one, protect
those
who seek your oneness:
Bless them, and cleanse them –
bestow
Upon
them your merciful justice.
Mighty one, holy one, in your
Goodness
guide your assembly.
Turn, sole one on high,
To
those who remember your sanctity,
And accept our cry and plea –
You
who fathom all mysteries.
Translation by Peter Cole
Translation is merely a preliminary way of
coming to terms
with the
foreignness of languages to each other.
This Shabbat is known as “Shabbat Shira”,
the Shabbat of Song, thus named because we read the Song at the Sea, perhaps
the first Hebrew poem. This month many Bronfmanim have committed to study a
book of poetry in honor of Edgar Bronfman (other are studying Mishna Pirkei Avot
or one of two books). I have been plowing through a
new anthology of Hebrew Mystical Verse, with Hebrew original and new
translation side by side. It is there that I came across the above translation.
I often find that poem’s are locked to me, until I read them in
translation. The translations’ attempt to –as Benjamin
described it - “find the intention toward the language into which the work has
been translated” allows “an echo of the original [to] be awakened”. I guess I see
the light of a poem best through the dull refractions of a translation.
Those who fathom mysteries might have recognized the source of the poem
quoted above: the Hebrew poem “Ana b’Koach”, which appears in numerous places
in the Siddur. Here are two translations and the original, side by side:
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Release, please, this bound
one
By the power of your right hand
Receive the song of your
people,
Exalt us, Lord, and make us
pure. Almighty one, protect
those who seek your oneness:
Bless them, and cleanse them –
bestow
Upon them your merciful justice.
Mighty one, holy one, in your
Goodness guide your assembly.
Turn, sole one on high,
To those who remember your sanctity,
And accept our cry and plea –
You who fathom all mysteries.
Translation by Peter Cole, The
Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, 2012, pg.
35
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אָנָּא בְּכֹחַ גְּדֻלַּת
יְמִינְֶךָ תַּתִּיר
צְרוּרָה
קַבֵּל רִנַּת עַמְֶּךָ
שַׂגְּבֵנוּ טַהֲרֵנוּ נוֹרָא
נָא גִבּוֹר דּוֹרְשֵׁי
יִחוּדְֶךָ כְּבָבַת שָׁמְרֵם
בָּרְכֵם טַהֲרֵם רַחֲמֵי
צִדְקָתֶךָ תָּמִיד גָּמְלֵם
חֲסִין קָדוֹשׁ בְּרוֹב
טוּבְךָ נַהֵל עֲדָתֶךָ
יָחִיד גֵּאֶה לְעַמְּךָ
פְּנֵה זוֹכְרֵי קְדֻשָּׁתֶךָ
שַׁוְעָתֵנוּ קַבֵּל וּשְׁמַע
צַעֲקָתֵנוּ יוֹדֵעַ תַּעֲלוּמוֹת
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This poem has enchanted readers for centuries with its opening phrase in
Hebrew: : אנא, בכח “Please, by the power”. “Oxymoron of oxymorons” as one Israeli poetdescribed it. This opening phrase has enchanted modern Hebrew poets as they employed it in
various means. Please, with power. Please, without power. Please, softly; Please,
with full force. Please.
But Cole, our translator, has flipped the order of the words,
releasing something which seems to recover a new "echo of the original":
Release, please, this bound oneBy the power of your right hand
In Cole’s rendition, the focus is not on the power, but on the bound
one, and its need to be released. Who is the bound one? In one new Siddur, the
following explicit translation is preferred:
Please, by the power of Your great right hand
Set the captive nation free.
“The bound one” becomes “the captive nation”, losing the nuance and
double meaning which has propelled this song for generations. In Hebrew liturgy
the bound one refers just as much to a person’s soul – bound in the
twine of the physical body – as it refers to the bind of exile. And what is
that exile, that captiveness? The exile of the Jewish people, or the exile of
God herself, the exile of the Shekhina. Truly, in the mind of the
Kabbalists, those three are all one. כולא חד – an individual’s soul, the Jewish people,
God’s feminine presence in this world – they are all metonymic of each other,
all echoes of something greater than all three, yet equally present in every individual’s
existence. And it is that bind for which we ask release.
As the poem continues, it weaves power and gentleness, protection and
prowess. From the first “please”, it cajoles the powerful God into a different
dynamic. God’s powerful right hand, which appears in the Song of the Sea with
all its scary might – נָטִיתָ
יְמִינְךָ תִּבְלָעֵמוֹ אָרֶץ – “You stretched out your right-hand / the
Underworld swallowed them” (Exodus 15:12)
is asked to engage in the most delicate of tasks.
Nuance is everywhere. The Jewish people are described as those who “seek
your oneness” (not those who know anything for certain). God – as one who
“fathoms all mysteries” (so different from, say, “knower of truth”). The
“mighty one” is asked merely to “guide”. The “sole one” – to “turn”. The “fathomer
of all mysteries” – to “accept”. Asking God to make us pure, we seek to be
cleansed. Yet the image this conjures is that of a parent washing a baby, the
full force of the adult body honed into an almost painful delicateness as it
handles the fragile bundle. In Cole’s echoing, “Release, please” the image is
of an amazingly powerful force minimizing itself (tzimtzum!) in order to
very gently unwind a tightly knotted ball of string.
This poem has a long and clouded history. Scholars squabble if it was
written in the 16th century Galilee, 12th century Germany,
or 9th century Babylonia. Tradition claims it harkens back to 2nd
century Judea. What is known is that this poem is actually a poetic encoding of
God’s 42 letter name (as opposed to, say, the seventy-two letter version, or
the four letter one). In Hebrew the poem consists of seven lines with six words
each – totaling 42 words – the first letters of which make up the 42-letter
name. It is with this name that God created the world, says the Talmud (In case
you’re curious, it begins אבגיתצקרעשטנ…). Being the most potent of names, it must be hidden from
humans, who might abuse its power for their narrow-minded intentions. The best
place to hide the name is, of course, in plain view, so it was encoded into
poetry. Here’s a challenge: take these 42 letters and try to write a poem using
them as the first letter of each word. Over the generations, various poets
attempted to write poems
which begin with those specific letters (such as אנא באש גבורת ידך תלהט צרי). It is the Kabbalists soduko.
Most of those poems have been left to languish in musty manuscripts. A handful
were published. Ana b’Koach is the only one to receive
inter-generational success, even becoming a hit on Israeli radio a
few years back. With its mixture of Nuance and mystery alongside clarity and
potency, it has managed to transcend the math and mysticism and become its own
being. In some siddurim it appears in as many as 13 different places.
The poem is recited at times of liminality, those times
which are “betwixt and between”: before falling asleep, or just as the soul
leaves a body. Most prominently, it is recited just before Lecha Dodi, during
Kabbalat Shabbat, at the exact moment between the work-week and the holy-day. Times
of transition are times of vulnerability, times in which we feel the fact that
we are “in a bind”. Whether it is the call of freedom, or the burden of
constriction, we feel the weight of our boundedness most deeply. It is from
there that we call out: “Release, please”. Or at the very least: loosen the
straps on our existence.
In prayerbooks – but not in
the original poem – an additional line is added: “Blessed by the name of His
With its beginning and
ending, this poem evokes a different one, from Leonard Cohen’s “Book of Mercy”:
Sit down, master, on this rude chair of praises, and rule my nervous heart with your great decrees of freedom. Out of time you have taken me to do my daily task. Out of mist and dust you have fashioned me to know the numberless worlds between the crown and the kingdom. In utter defeat I came to you and you received me with a sweetness I had not dared to remember. Tonight I come to you again, soiled by strategies and trapped in the loneliness of my tiny domain. Establish your law in this walled place. Let nine men come to lift me into their prayer so that I may whisper with them: Blessed be the name of the glory of the kingdom forever and forever.
Shabbat Shalom,
Mishael
