Standing Again: Three Female Poets Meet At Sinai

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Yitro 2014

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Blessed be the Lord, Maker of Heaven and Earth, who has brought us to this generation. For too long our sins and the sins of our fathers caused us to languish in the exile of patriarchy. Until our mothers broke down the barriers, reclaimed their seats in the halls of Torah and called us all to stand again at Sinai. Now a new light shines on Zion: on women, on men, indeed on the whole wide world.

Yet as then, so now, standing again at Sinai “the divine word speaks to each and every person according to [her] particular capacity” (Pesikta 12). In the aftermath of that great event, I hear three female poets meet at the foot of the mountain:

I shall not float
unreined in space –

lest a cloud swallow
the thin band in my heart
separating good from evil.
I have no existence
without the lightning and thunder
that I heard at Sinai.

Zelda

Zelda (1914-1984)

For Zelda, Sinai is encountered straightforwardly. No feminist reading of history can pry her clenched knuckles away from the “lightning and thunder that [she] heard at Sinai.” She grasps tightly to the lessons and memories created there, as she struggles to maintain the “thin band between good and evil.” Without Sinai, humans “float unreined” in a universe of moral relativism, like an astronaut lost in space. Who dare tell her she wasn’t there?

Not so for others. Merle Feld, in a canonical poem which captures the gender predicament of history (his-story), also heard the “lightning and thunder”. But she was never given the chance to write it down:

  We All Stood Together | Merle Feld

My brother and I were at Sinai
He kept a journal
of what he saw
of what he heard
of what it all meant to him

I wish I had such a record
of what happened to me there

It seems like every time I want to write
I can’t
I’m always holding a baby
one of my own
or one for a friend
always holding a baby
so my hands are never free
to write things down

And then
As time passes
The particulars
The hard data
The who what when where why
Slip away from me
And all I’m left with is
The feeling

But feelings are just sounds
The vowel barking of a mute

My brother is so sure of what he heard
After all he’s got a record of it
Consonant after consonant after consonant

If we remembered it together
We could recreate holy time
Sparks flying

Merle Feld

Feld yearns to be of the consonants, of “the hard data, the who what when where why.” It’s a refreshing desire, especially as most liberal Jews prefer to settle for a Judaism of sounds (“the vowel barking of a mute”), staying away from the “particulars”, the consonantal certainty. It is a myth of a lost opportunity. Read this poem while standing in a Beit Midrash full of books. Feld invites us to imagine what was lost, what opportunities for Torah, wisdom and truth we had in reach – but never recorded because 51% of the Jewish people never had their hands free (or never had a spouse to pass the baby to...). If we can regain our standing together at Sinai, sparks would fly.

Back at the campsite, though, with an endless domestic to-do list, stands Israeli poet Chava Pinchas Cohen. She did not make it to the mountain. But what she gained instead was the explicit name:

Explicit Name | Chava Pinchas Cohen

Everyone’s gone to the mountain already, and they’re waiting,

waiting to see, waiting in great quiet –

even, strangely, the camels, the donkeys –

In this quiet not a bird twitters 

or children on their fathers’ shoulders. 

An overwhelming quiet, as if before some

wondrous thing.  Still—I want time

to hang out the laundry, 

time for myself to freshen up

and I warmed the baby’s milk so he won’t get hungry— 

and God forbid, cry at the wrong moment,

however long till then. You can expect

the laundry to dry—but the baby  

No one knew. 

And I saw that a light breeze, 

like the breath of a sleeping man, passed 

through the laundry and ballooned 

the belly of my nightgown, 

and the Shabbat tablecloth

was a white sail in the middle of the desert

and we went from there across the blue

far away to a place where 

we’ll split open pomegranates and suck their juice, 

to a place where 

love has 

an explicit name 

(Translation by Glazer: 2000, with emendations MZ; Hebrew original below)

Chava Pinchas Cohen

Where Feld yearned for “hard data”, Pinchas Cohen was invited to sail across the blue and split open pomegranates. As Elijah discovered at Mt. Sinai centuries later – God was “not in the noise” which the men experienced at the base of the mountain. God fled that scene and traveled like a light breeze across the Israelites’ encampment, seeking someone with whom to steal away to the pomegranate orchard…

Pinchas Cohen uses the Jewish texts and traditions as her own, not begrudging her distancing over the generations but not unaware of it either. She sits as an equal at the table of Jewish study and weaves from the (male) midrashic vocabulary a new religious language. Struggling with the humdrum rhythms of parenthood and the existential uncertainty of life, she recreates a Sinai which is relevant to her life as a modern mother, a modern seeker of God (truly, an ode to the struggle to find “time for myself to freshen up”).

Pinchas Cohen’s poem might be seen as giving in to an apologetic spirituality which is often hegemonically thrown at women (“you are holier than men, so you don’t need those particulars”). But I see in her embrace of the Shabbat tablecloth, of her nightgown’s fertile encounter with the “light breeze”, an opportunity for both men and women. Feld is grappling to move from vowels to consonants, a necessary endeavor. But Pinchas Cohen is sailing across the blue to a land of eros, where a new revelatory language is given “an explicit name”. That’s a Sinai men and women alike can yearn to stand at.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mishael

שֵׁם מְפורָשׁ - חוה פנחס-כהן

כֻּלָּם כְּבָר הָלְכוּ אֶל הָהָר וּמְחַכִּים

מְחַכִּים לִרְאוֹת, בְּשֶׁקֶט רַב מְחַכִּים,

שֶׁלֹּא כְּמִנְהָגָם גַּם הַחֲמוֹרִים, גַּם הַגְּמַלִּים

בַּשֶּׁקֶט הַזֶּה צִפּוֹר לֹא צִיְּצָה

גַּם יְלָדִים עַל כִּתְפֵי אֲבוֹתֵיהֶם,

וְהַשֶּׁקֶט רַב מִנְּשׂא כְּמוֹ לִפְנֵי דָּבָר

נוֹרָא וְגָדוֹל וַאֲנִי עוֹד רָצִיתִי

לְהַסְפִּיק וְלִתְלוֹת אֶת הַכְּבָסִים

לַעֲשׂוֹת זְמַן לְעַצְמִי לְתַקֵּן רֵיחוֹתַי

וְחִמַּמְתִּי אֶת הֶחָלָב לַתִּינוֹק, שֶׁלֹּא יִרְעַב

שֶׁלֹּא יִבְכֶּה חָלִילָה, בָּרֶגַע הַלֹּא

מַתְאִים, כַּמָּה זְמַן עַד כְּלוֹת. הַצִּפִּיָּה

שֶׁתִּתְיַבֵּשׁ הַכְּבִיסָה וְהַתִּינוֹק מָה.

אִישׁ לֹא יָדַע

וַאֲנִי רָאִיתִי שֶׁרוּחַ קַלָּה, כְּמוֹ נְשִׁימָתוֹ שֶׁל אִישׁ יָשֵׁן, עָבְרָה

בַּכְּבָסִים וְנִפְּחָה כְּרֵסָהּ

שֶׁל כֻּתָּנְתִּי וּמַפַּת הַשַּׁבָּת

הָיְתָה מִפְרָשׂ לָבָן בְּאֶמְצַע הַמִּדְבָּר

וְיָצָאנוּ מִשָּׁם עַל הַתְּכֵלֶת

הַרְחֵק לַמָּקוֹם בּוֹ  

נִפְרֹט רִמּוֹנִים וְנֹאכַל עֲסִיסָם

לַמָּקוֹם בּוֹ

לָאַהֲבָה

שֵׁם מְפֹרָשׁ.

I shall not float unreined in space lest a cloud swallow the thin band in my heart that separates good from evil. I have no existence without the lightning and thunder that I heard at Sinai. Zelda, "The Spectacular Difference," translated by Marcia Falk, p. 231

לֹא אֲרַחֵף בֶּחָלָל מְשֻׁלַּחַת רֶסֶן פֶּן יִבְלַע עָנָן אֶת הַפַּס הַדַּקִּיק שֶׁבְּלִבִּי שֶׁמַּפְרִיד בֵּין טוֹב לְרַע. אֵין לִי קִיּוּם בְּלִי הַבְּרָקִים וְהַקּוֹלוֹת שֶׁשָּׁמַעְתִּי בְּסִינַי. זלדה, עמ' 215

Release, Please: A Poem for the “Shabbat of Poetry”

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | BeShalach Shabbat Shira 2014

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.

Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator

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:

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

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

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 16^th century Galilee, 12^th century Germany, or 9^th century Babylonia. Tradition claims it harkens back to 2^nd 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

glorious kingdom for ever and all time.” ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד – the same response as is said upon reciting God’s explicit name, or after the first line of the Sh’ma. A version of this sentence, said in Aramaic, makes for the famous responsive line of the Kaddish – יהא שמיה רבה מבורך לעולם ולעולמי עולמיא – Yehey Shmey Rabba…

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

“Even Apolitical Poems are Political”: Seeking Holiness before a Political Summer Hits

There is perhaps nothing more counter to the idea of holiness than the reality of politics. Both terms are in dire need of re-framing.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)

Politics has long been mired as the realm of individuals who seem to serve only themselves. Last summer, a generation that was said to have given up on the political system decamped to the arena of politics and occupied it, in a variety of movements across the world. The months since that summer have returned many to the more cynical stance towards the political arena, where those who were cynical of these movements to begin with were waiting. This summer promises to be even more political.

Holiness has also been lost to the “regular world” as an aspiration. Too loaded, it seems to belong to those interested in separating from the world, rather than embracing it. Modernity has pushed holiness and its “rumor of angels” out of the world, and spiritualistic new-age has only strengthened that assumption.

A new frame for holiness, and a new frame for politics, is needed – and this week’s parsha might inform both of those. Parashat Kedoshim, the Torah’s “Holiness Code”, opens with the following famous lines:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the entire congregation of Israel, and say to them: Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. (Leviticus 19:1-2)

וַיְדַבֵּר ה' אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם: קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. (ויקרא יט:א-ב)

What is this holiness? The Sifra, the early Rabbinic commentary on the Torah, explains poignantly:

You shall be holy: you shall be separate.

:קדושים תהיו – פרושים  תהיו

The Sifra’s reading (quoted by Rashi) is in line with a classic understanding of holiness as separation. Just as God is utterly separate from this world, “wholly Other” as Rudolph Otto put it, the holy person must become wholly separate from the world. In this concept, the social world is a place of temptation, sin and profanity – and holiness is the act of separating from it.

But this is not the only understanding of Holiness. The Hasidic rebbe Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman Epstein of 19th century Cracow, in his book Maor vaShemeh, attacks the separatist understanding, and claims that holiness is only achievable through a social movement, through community:

A person might mistakenly thing that the meaning of “Be Holy” is that if a person isolates themselves, separating themselves from society, that they can attain holiness. But the truth is that… while separation helps to avoid the obstacles to Divine service, in order to achieve holiness one must join a group of spiritual people, who worship in earnest, and to join with them in their service – be it prayer or study... Indeed the majority of mitzvot must all be performed in an assembly with other seekers, and through this one can attain the highest holiness. This is why Rashi smartly commented first that “this chapter was given to the full community: ‘Speak to the entire congregation of Israel…” and only then “say to them: Be holy’” for holiness can only be achieved within a community of seekers, not through isolation. (Maor vaShemesh, Kedoshim)

יוכל האדם לטעות שהפירוש הוא "קדושים תהיו" דהיינו שאם יתבודד עצמו ויפרוש עצמו מן הציבור יזכה אל הקדושה. והאמת הוא ש...זאת אינו מועיל אלא להנצל מן הדברים המעכבים עבודת השם יתברך, אבל להשיג הקדושה העליונה אינו זוכה עד שידבק עצמו אל אנשי השם עובדי ה' באמת ולהשתתף עמהם יחד בעבודה רבה הן בתפלה והן בלימוד התורה. ועיקר המצות הכל יהיה בכנסיה יחד עם מבקשי ה' ואז יוכל להשיג הקדושה העליונה. לכן נתחכם רש"י ופירש קודם לזה מלמד שפרשה זו נאמרה בהקהל דהיינו שאינו זוכה אל הקדושה אלא בהקהל עצמו עם הציבור מבקשי ה' ) מאור ושמש - פרשת קדושים ד"ה וידבר

This understanding of holiness sees holiness not as “other” from the world, but emanating from the world. The contents of the rest of Leviticus 19, known as the “Holiness Code”, seem to strengthen this reading. Our chapter includes a combination of ritual laws (e.g. all sacrificial meat must be eaten on the same day) with a prescription of the basics of a just society: don’t take bribes, don’t gossip, do not prejudice the rich nor the poor, indeed – love your fellow as yourself. Leviticus 19 contains all you need to know about living among people, and how to manage the many things that will necessarily go wrong from such a social existence. And it claims that this is the path to holiness. In other words: Holiness is achieved through politics (it is this philosophy that another Polish rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschel, branded so powerfully here in America).

A different  Polish rebbe, the late Nobel laureate WislawaSzymborska, rallies against those who shy away from politics. Between the lines of her poem you can hear the call of artists who seek to stay away from “the political” for fear of losing touch with the transcendent:

Children of Our Era

by Wislawa Szymborska | translated by Joanna Trzeciak

We are children of our era;

our era is political.

All affairs, day and night,

yours, ours, theirs,

are political affairs.

Like it or not,

your genes have a political past,

your skin a political cast,

your eyes a political aspect.

What you say has a resonance;

what you are silent about is telling.

Either way, it's political.

Even when you head for the hills

you're taking political steps

on political ground.

Even apolitical poems are political,

and above us shines the moon,

by now no longer lunar.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Question? What question? Dear, here's a suggestion:

a political question.

You don't even have to be a human being

to gain political significance.

Crude oil will do,

or concentrated feed, or any raw material.

Or even a conference table whose shape

was disputed for months:

should we negotiate life and death

at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile people were dying,

animals perishing,

houses burning,

and fields growing wild,

just as in times most remote

and less political.

Szymborska calls on us to stop deluding ourselves that the “apolitical life” is a loftier one, for such a thing is not possible. Politics can bring us into the realm of the painfully trivial (conference tables, or a ban on gossiping), but it is through the trivialities of politics that life and death get negotiated. Read in conjunction with the Maor vaShemesh’s theory of holiness, an aspirational reading of politics emerges. Those who seek a life of meaning and holiness are invited to see that holiness is only possible through the political act. Those who love the rush of politics are invited to imagine a politics that see as its aspiration a moment when society will be larger than the sum of its parts. Leviticus 19 suggests that the struggle towards a just society is the struggle towards holiness; that deepest meaning, a “rumor of angels,” is found not through a person alone in a forest, but only through the constant jam session which is the social-political project: at times disharmony and a-tonality might rule, but if you listen closely, and if we do it right, an underlying rhythm will reveal itself amid the clamor of politics. It is the beat of the holy.

Thanks to Neta Polisar (Amitei Bronfman ’05) for teaching me this poem at last weeks Israeli Amitim Alumni Weekend on Mt. Meron. Neta spent the summer in a tent on Rothschild st in Tel Aviv, and is currently volunteering as an organizer for a new Israeli workers union, Koach la’Ovdim, which rivals the establishment Histadrut union; he is awaiting the resurgence of the Israeli tent protest, and acting behind the scenes towards its reappearance.

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Acahrei Mot- Kedoshim | Text and the City