לילה שקט עובר ברגבה

This is a poem I wrote for my Garin 'newspaper' a couple of weeks ago.  It details a middle-of-the-night-screaming-wake-up our two חיילות (we have two lady soldiers -- chayalim are males and chayalot are females, that are in charge of our garin) treated us to.  Such events in the army are called הקפצות/hakpatzot, and entail running half asleep soldiers around for any given amount of time, and our חיילות, both 21 year olds and both named Sharon (thus, henceforth, the Sharoniot), thought it would be a cute idea for us to 'experience' this during our period of absorption here on Regba. 

The poem is in limerick style (AAbbA, CCddC, etc.), or חמשיר in Hebrew.

Enjoy!

לילה שקט עובר ברגבה

לילה שקט עובר ברגבה

צברים חדשים נהנים בזולה

לא חוששים, לא דואגים

כי מחר יש שמש ובריכה...

קומו! צועקות המפקדות

צאו! מהמיטות הנוחות

זמן לסיים את החלומות שלכם

תהיו בחוץ תוך שתי דקות

מה קרה? שואל בחור עם סכין

פיגוע! צעק צעיר הגרעין

כמה פוחדים, אחרים מתעצבנים

ואחד ישן כתינוק עדין

הקפצה! צורחות המפקדות

לריצפה! לפעמים בלי סיבות

עומדים באיזה ח', חצי לילה-- יו בט

עד שמגיע כבר זמן לשחות

לילה שקט עובר ברגבה

צברים חדשים נהנים בזולה

לא חוששים, לא דואגים

כי מחר יש שמש ובריכה...

יונה ליבן

  23/8/2011

P.S. Bonus points to anyone who gets the homage in the title

First Post as a Citizen, Ben Gurion style

Shabbat Shalom l'kulam,

I hope everyone is having a restful weekend.

First of all I have to apologize; I have been in Israel now for exactly one month and a NEW IMMIGRANT (woo!), and only now am I starting to find time to write a bit. I imagine that as per previous posts, I won't really be giving day by day updates of what I'm up to, but more snippets, poems, and relevant opinions that will hopefully, when taken as a whole, shed light onto what I'm up to over here.

That said, I wanted to devote my first post to a letter from David Ben Gurion dated on 5.5.53/כ' אייר תשי"ג sent to his Minister of Finance (who, in Israel's 4th government, happened to be Levi Eshkol). The letter -- or more appropriately, the memo, was shown to me in an excellent class I took in my final semester at the Seminary called Revival of the Hebrew Language, and for multiple reasons I simply love it.

First, allow me to quote the letter in entirety, and I'll follow with comments.

לשר האוצר,

חתמתי היום על "הצהרת העובר(ה) לצורך קביעת נכויי המס".

בהצהרה, כסעיף 4 נאמר שם בעלי/אשתי. לדעתי יש להגיד: אישי/אשתי.

במלה בעל יש משמעות של אדנות ועבודה זרה, שאינה הולמת כבוד האשה, השווה לגמרי בזכויותיה לאיש.

תעשו כדברי הושע הנביא: "והיה ביום ההוא - תקראי אישי ולא תקראי לי עוד בעלי (הושע ב' 15).


בכבוד רב,
ד. בן-גוריון

I just Google Translated that and it completely botches the meaning, so follow my explanation instead. Basically, Prime Minister Ben Gurion is writing to his MOF to scold him. On a tax form that DBG had been filling out earlier that day, he had the option of circling either "בעלי" or "אשתי." Traditionally (and still very much the status quo today), a wife calls her husband her בעל, which can be translated as husband, master, lord, owner, and Baal (a Biblical era idol) among other things. אשתי, on the other hand, is simply translated as "wife." So the husband circles "wife" and the wife circles "husband/master/Baal." DBG immediately calls this out and says the options instead should be "אשתי" or "אישי" which immediately give a more egalitarian parallel. After all, he explains, "בעל" has the meanings of mastery and idolatry [whereas "אישי" simply means husband]. And here comes the kicker. Ben Gurion finishes his memo to Eshkol by telling Eshkol to act in the ways of Hosea, and ending with a quote from the ever humanistic and social justice oriented prophet. 'And it will be in this day, you shall call me husband/man ["אישי"] and you shall not call me master ["בעלי"] anymore' [Hosea 2:15, my translation].

So here's why I love this memo so much. It is 1953 and David Ben Gurion is nearly 5 years post Independence. He is desperately trying to absorb over a million immigrants (primarily Jews of the Middle East and N.Africa who fled/were kicked out of their homes in the aftermath of the creation of Israel, but also Holocaust survivors from Europe), many of whom spend several years in transitional tent camps in the fledgling state. His budget is by all means tiny. He is trying to feed a country (food stamps were the norm; everything was rationed) that is growing rapidly. He is trying to keep the country defended in a region that actively seeks its destruction -- dealing both with bellicose cries in the media from neighboring countries as well as actual terrorist attacks (sound familiar?). And on and on. The point is DBG was literally building a nation. And yet, he finds time to do his taxes, and while doing them, take note that something is remiss in his vision of a progressive social democracy in the Jewish homeland. In one minute's worth of a memo, Ben Gurion is seeking to change something fundamental about how his government functions, and how it portrays itself. And he does so by quoting the Jewish canon.

David Ben Gurion, the self proclaimed Atheist, could quote the Jewish Bible at will, as well as much of the Talmud. Judaism, though not necessarily important to him in a religious sense, permeated all aspects of Ben Gurion's life. On the international and national scales, Ben Gurion was able to do things that we should all dream to be able to do. And incredibly, Judaism was infused in the macro and micro levels of all of his actions. I think that the conversation surrounding DBG's personal educational upbringing/history and how that history affected his personal and national Zionisms which thus affected his choices on how education in the new country should look like (he was a staunch believer in the separation of church and state) deserve an entire thesis worth of discussion (I'll also try to tackle it one of these days in a post). However, what I can conclusively say right now is that it is letters like these that give me confidence in what I am doing here in Israel today.

I am a proud Zionist with tons of questions and doubts about Judaism. I naively thought that after four years at JTS (and I guess at Columbia, too) I would be comfortable with my Judaism and ready to move to Israel as a man comfortable with his faith and level of observance. Instead I came out of there with more doubts about religion than ever. But, at the same time, my doubts have never once deterred my involvement with Judaism, my constant intermingling with Jewish history, literature, philosophy, and language. What is beautiful about Judaism is that even if we have our crises of faith and questions that remain unanswered, we can still look to it as a wellspring of ideals and values to make the world a better place.

Ben Gurion was here to make Israel a viable place for Jews to live, for whenever they wanted to and for whatever reason. His vision was social, democratic, and Jewish. He is an obvious inspiration in my life, and so in my own small ways, I too am here to make this country a better place.


I'm off to the beach now with my garin, but more posts to come soon!

With love,

Jonah/יונה

Joseph Cedar on his movie "Campfire," and Comb Overed Settlers

I had a great opportunity to catch a screening of the Israeli film מדורת השבט/Campfire (literally: Tribal Bonfire), a 2004 movie directed by the esteemed Joseph Cedar. The movie won several Israeli awards when it came out, and Cedar has since gained international notice and applause for his Oscar nominated Beaufort in 2007.

Since Cedar himself was showing it followed by a conversation moderated by my former professor, Uri Cohen, I figured I should probably go. Well let's be honest, I helped publicize the event (sponsored by Columbia's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies -- IIJS) and was even invited to dinner with Uri and Mr. Cedar the previous evening (unfortunately not until 3 hours before the reserved time and long after I was already booked for the eve) so I planned on going a long time ago. Both the film and discussion were excellent and I was not disappointed.

As per Wikipedia's summary, CAMPFIRE is "the story of a young widow, mother of two beautiful teenage daughters, who wants to join the founding group of a new religious settlement in the West Bank, but first must convince the acceptance committee that she is worthy. Things get complicated when the younger daughter is accused of seducing some boys from her youth movement." The setting is 1981 Jerusalem, in the immediate years following the Labor party's fall from 30 years of dominance in successive Israeli governments and when the country saw for the first time a corresponding rise of settlement growth with the Likud in charge. Most people today say that settlement building back then was looked at much differently, naively really, in the post-'67 generation. And no, I am not talking about the religious who justified their ideological yearnings by pulling the security card (i.e. Israel needs to settle these areas for they are strategic assets) in order to align themselves with the secular Rightist camp, I'm talking about the majority of the rest of the country who naively went along with the plan. Cedar himself spoke about how his family was 'on that bus in 1981,' how they went with a group of prospective families to scout out an area in the West Bank to see if it was suitable for a settlement's location, but in the end chose to remain in Jerusalem.

I thought Cedar's keenest comment of the discussion came in the form of a metaphor he made about one of his central characters. Motke (played by the ever-excellent Assi Dayan and shown on the right), the leader of the founders of the would-be settlement, is middle aged, pot bellied, and balding. He also has an obvious comb over. Cedar noted that when Motke stands in his house and looks at a mirror at a very specific angle with very specific lighting, he appears and even truly convinces himself that he has a full head of hair, even though from every other angle and light one can obviously see the balding. Just as Motke can convince himself, so too can today's ideological settlers choose to see themselves as pure, moral, and just -- but only in the very narrowest of viewpoints. Agree or disagree with Cedar's analogy (and concomitant not-so-couched political statement), the metaphor certainly provided the audience with a striking image to ponder.

Translating Bialik, Take 1: "In the City of Slaughter"

"?חציר תלוש העם - ואם-יש לתלוש תקווה"

As is well known, Ch. N. Bialik wrote his famous poem “בעיר ההרגה”/"In the City of Slaughter," as a response to the infamous Kishniev Pogrom of 1903. The question in the above title, posed by Bialik in line 173, is for me one of the most important passages of the epic. Klein translates it as “The people is plucked grass; can plucked grass grow again?” but I believe some of the meaning is compromised in order to fit into Klein’s admirable attempt (a successful one overall) to maintain the rhyme and rhythm of the high Hebrew in his Victorian-esque translation. I personally would interpret it as “the nation is [like] plucked grass – and is there any hope for the plucked?” I find the key difference between the two translations is with the word תקווה, hope, left out entirely in the Klein edition. The scathing nature of Bialik’s tone throughout the poem is well documented and is based on his lack of faith in East European Jewry to rise to the challenge of self-defense in an age of heightened political self-awareness.

As Professor Alan Mintz aptly writes in his introduction to the Kishniev 100 collection of essays, “the shame of mass victimization had spurred the emergence of political Zionism and Jewish socialism, both of which emphasized the exigent need for organized self-defense” (p.1). Even though there were examples of Jewish resistance in the Kishniev pogroms - documented by Bialik in his notebooks but problematically ignored in the poem itself, these instances were but individual blades of grass among the torn fields, at the end of the day still plucked and disseminated to die out like the rest of the massacred innocents. On the one hand, if one only reads Klein in English one can legitimately debate whether grass can regrow if replanted -- and surely it can. But Bialik’s worry is not in the short term whether Jews will find a new home and life in a neighboring village or return to life as usual in Kishniev. His question is meta: how long can a people continue like this? For if indeed the nation was spread so thin with stocks so easily uprooted, then was there any long term hope to be found? It is within this context that the line should be read, and unfortunately the reader loses some of it in Klein’s translation.

Miike Snow, Keeping it Real

I dunno what it is, but I love this song "Animal," by Miike Snow

Pretty simple riff, very catchy. Love (some of) the lyrics, too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHjKgQt39s

Theo-ethical Problems with Radha Worship

Radha, one of several revered goddesses in the Hindu tradition, provides her worshipers with what is widely considered an appropriate metaphor for the divine-human love affair. David Kinsley writes in his pan-Hindu text/source book, Hindu Goddesses, of the origins of the divine love relationship between Radha and the extremely important male deity, Krishna. Explicit references to Radha in the Hindu cannon do not appear until rather late in the religion's trajectory, most notably in Jayadeva's Gitagovinda (see below post).

Kinsley writes, however, that starting in Northern India in roughly 500 C.E. there began a "mythological tradition surrounding Krishna's sojourn in Vraja and his dalliance there with the gopis, the cowherd women of the village" (p.83). It is from the gopi tradition that the character of Radha truly develops. Although Krishna had long been worshiped as a supreme god, the Vraja mythology additionally gives him the reputation as ideal lover. Kinsley expounds:

The gopis "are all married women, but none is able to resist Krishna's beauty and charm. He is described as retiring to the woods, where he plays his flute on autumn nights when the moon is full. Hearing the music, the women are driven mad with passion and give up their domestic roles and chores to dash away to be with Krishna [...] They are so distraught and frenzied as they rush to his side that their clothes and jewelry come loose and fall off (10.29.3-7). The text makes no attempt to deny the impropriety of the gopis' leaving their husbands and abandoning their social responsibilities in order to make love to Krishna" (p.84).

Indeed, Kinsley continues, "the nature of true devotion, the text [in this case, the Bhagavata-purana] says, is highly emotional and causes horripilation, tears, loss of control, and frenzy (11.14.23-24). Those who love the Lord truly behave like the gopis. When they hear his call they abandon everything to be with him. Even though they are married [...], even though they incur the censure of society, they rush off to be with Krishna when they hear his call" (84-85).

This utter disregard for societal norms and values is thus an appropriate metaphor for how one should act in devotion toward God. Jayadeva takes this gopi model of many cowherdesses and applies it specifically to Radha in his epic, Gitagovinda, elevating Radha's status as a gopi higher and more special to Krishna than the other women, and thus making her a specific object of worship.

Does anyone see something wrong with this story? Look, I imagine that if I had been born female and encountered someone who seemed to be a combination of King David's military prowess and musical skills and King Solomon's ability to pull off some 1,000 wives and still keep the peace in the home, I might be tempted to cheat, too. Even though Kinsley, and to be sure the theologians who are Radha and Krishna devotees, explain that the love affair notion is just a metaphor for how one should act toward his/her god, it seems more than a little problematic to encourage infidelity, metaphorical or not. What kind of example does it send to the men out there? Maybe this is crude, but it's hard not to think of the Krishna paradigm as being misappropriated to encourage extra-marital relationships and upon chastisement using religious texts to justify actions.

I don't know, something about the cheating gopi just doesn't rub me the right way even if it is at the end of the day her choice...

Jayadeva, in Gitagovinda

Barbara Stoler Miller writes in her introduction of Jayadeva's Gitagovinda that "the lyrical techniques of Jayadeva’s songs combine with the conventional language of Sanskrit erotic poetry to express the intimate power of divine love."

I think I know what she's talking about; the following is from the beginning of the 12th century epic love poem:

"Like a flowering creeper [Radha wandered] in the forest wilderness,
Seeking Krishna in his many haunts.
The god of love increased her ordeal,
Tormenting her with fevered thoughts,
And her friend sang to heighten the mood..."

And really, it gets much more explicit.
Indian love poetry is awesome.